SOMETHING WE CAN CONQUER
“So smooth, little bro,” Addy says, pulling into our driveway. “You did good.”
“You watched? Wow, that’s really creepy.”
“Nah,” she says, “it’s fine. So, are you official?”
“I mean, no? We didn’t actually say we were dating. Like, I didn’t ask her out. There was just—it wasn’t time yet.”
I didn’t ask Dez out because it didn’t seem right at the moment. To bulldoze past the hurt she was dealing with, but she did say, “Now we’re each other’s problem.” So, logically, to be each other’s problem, we have to be each other’s first.
Addy slams her head against the headrest. “Papi! That’s like, the first thing you do. If you like it, put a title on it.”
“So I’ve been meaning to talk to you about calling Dez ‘Dez,’ instead of calling Dez ‘It.’”
She laughs. “Like you can talk—you watch porn all the time. You’re calling girls ‘It’ every night.”
My stomach sinks at the comment, but not because it hurts. She knows?
How does she know? Was that a passive aggressive comment? No, Addy isn’t passive aggressive. Why tonight? Why did this have to come up tonight?
My silence coaxes her into an apology. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I forgot we hadn’t talked about that yet.”
“How long have you known?”
She looks at me, studying my face to see if I actually want to know. Finally, she sighs, then says, “A year ago. When I came down to help you and Dad clean out the garage, I used your phone to check on something and I stumbled onto your comprehensive playlist library. I swear, I saw seasonal playlists, like fall, winter, and spring. I mean, isn’t that why you started going to Addiction Fighters and the Knights of Vice thing?”
So my dad thinks I’m going to Addiction Fighters just because of what happened at school. Addy thinks I’m going to Addiction Fighters because someone found out I was addicted to porn. A few weeks ago, I would’ve been ecstatic that no one knew the whole story, but now I feel like because no one knows the whole story, no one knows the whole me. I consider telling Addy the whole of it, but something in me just halts at the idea of being wholly known, so I just say, “No. Not really. I mean, yes, but no.”
“Adam, come on. What aren’t you saying? You’re leaving something out.”
Again, I consider letting go of the whole story, but I can’t. “No. I’m not.”
She sighs. “Okay, regardless of what got you there, porn is still a problem for you.”
How does she know I’m leaving something out? How does she always know? I shake my head and focus on only the porn problem, I don’t want to think about the Anti-Adam Order and what happened at school.
“So, you’ve known that I didn’t tell you everything when we talked the first night you moved back?”
She laughs and shakes her head. “Adam, you’re Adam. You’ve just vowed to be honest after two years of lying. I knew there were a bunch of things you weren’t telling me, like being hurt and mad at me for leaving you with Dad, and this. That’s why I wanted to move back. I knew it’d take longer than a day to learn everything, and I wanted to be here for all these juicy revelations. I love you a lot, and I want you to be better.”
The statement makes me realize that my words won’t be enough for Dez. She needs love, real love, and time.
I think on all the things I want to be. For Dez. For Addy.
Finally I say, “I want me to be better, too.”
Addy hugs me and I don’t let go.
“Look,” she says, “we don’t have to talk about how I can help tonight. Go revel in your new not-really-but-sort-of relationship status. Revel all up in it, honey child, because I’m going to bed. I have to work early tomorrow.”
“Addy, I—”
I want to tell Addy I love her, but I’m just like Dad. The chord in my voice connected to the real me is rusted over with disuse.
“I—”
No, Master! Come quick, hide. We slips away, a silent way, to keeps us safe.
“I’m really glad you’re here,” I say.
She smiles. “Me too.”
I don’t watch porn at all when I get into my room. I don’t even have my nightly staring match with my computer. I just walk into my room and lay in bed, thinking about Dez Coulter, my messed-up volcano of a girlfriend. I’ve never had a girlfriend before I met Dez, and I don’t think I ever want another.
My phone rings. I pick it up in less than a second.
“Hello?”
“What if you turn into an addiction? What if I end up using you just like I use everything else?”
My heart sinks.
She continues. “What if you use me as an addiction? What if we just turn all of our unnatural disaster on each other? Remember what you said? ‘We’re all volcanoes and we wander around engulfing each other in our disaster.’ If that’s true, how can we last?”
“Wow,” I say, trying to ease the tension. “I’m pretty sure that was verbatim.”
“It is verbatim because I wrote it down. Adam, we will burn each other. There’s no avoiding it. Do we even want to attempt this?”
I don’t know what to say. I break everything down into formulas. She’s right. Everything she says is right.
I’ve considered it before, but now I’m forced to face it.
Can two broken people ever truly care for each other?
“I—I … can we just try?”
“No,” she says, “I like you too much to lose you. If we do this, I’ll kill you. I’m a cycle of death, Adam, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to break it.”
“But think about Dez in the future,” I say, even though I haven’t done it myself. “Think about what you want to be.”
“I can’t!” she yells, the words hot with anger, and I realize I sound just like her dad. “I can’t trust future Dez because she’s just as much of an addict as I am now. Doesn’t anyone fucking get that? My future is my now. My now is my future.”
“So, what do we do?” I ask.
She’s silent for a while. When she speaks again, her voice is a compilation of heaviness, calm, and resignation. “I don’t know. What do we do?”
I let out a deep sigh. A Trey “heaviest thing in the world” sigh. How can something be doomed before it starts? Is trying to change myself for Dez just a different kind of addiction? Shouldn’t I change myself for me, and in consequence, Dez? How can I do anything right in chaos? Everything I think I can do ends up being an addiction. Does human = addiction? Maybe, but if I can’t find the strength to fight for me, maybe it’s worth trying to fight for someone else.
“We fight for each other. So what if I’m too weak to do this for myself? If we can’t fight for ourselves, let’s fight for each other.”
“Hand is greater than magic rock,” she says.
“We’re greater than magic rock, together.”
“So, we kick our addictions for the potential of love? For the potential of us?”
“Why not?”
She’s silent for at least thirty seconds until she says, “Out of the gravel, peonies are growing.”
“Yeah they are. Big ass ones.”
She laughs in the middle of a sniffle. “Okay, future boyfriend, confession time. I’m not as strong as you, but I’ll keep singing if you keep writing the words.”
“A: You don’t know that, and B: You sing?”
“Well, it was an analogy, but yeah, I do. It may be the one thing I do well.”
“Then I may have something we can conquer.”