Dante
I walked into the meeting room, the group chat already having started without me. All the other addicts turned their heads to look at me as I headed for the only empty chair. I ignored them and sat down, noticing the annoyed look Clara was giving me. I gave her a smile in return, not needing to explain myself. I was paying for the rehab service... Well, my manager was. Either way, she was still employed by me, which meant she had to answer to me, not the other way around.
Her frown grew. “You’re ten minutes late, Dante.”
I combed my fingers through my wet hair. “I had a shower after my workout. It took a bit longer than anticipated.” I gave her a cheeky smile, the woman definitely wank worthy.
She sat up straighter, looking both flustered and annoyed. “Regardless, you’re required to be here on time.”
“Chill, not like you lot are goin’ anywhere.” I glanced around the circle of addicts, Candy one of them. She was glaring at me as though my presence offended her. I rolled my eyes at the bitch, receiving a sneer in return, which meant jack shit, because the nympho would drop to her knees and suck me off in a second if I offered up my schlong.
I blew her a kiss to piss her off further, realising my mistake a second later as Clara snapped out my name. I looked back at my ex teacher, her face turning as pink as her hair, the wavy locks reminding me of candy floss. I wondered whether it smelt sweet too, though her expression was anything but.
“Jesus, it wuz just a joke,” I said, the chicks in the room wound up tighter than a straight guy about to be reamed.
“What we’re doing here isn’t a joke!” Clara snapped, the woman looking like she was about to jump onto her high horse and ride all over me, yelling, ‘Giddy-up, motherfucker!’ Well, maybe not the motherfucker part, because she was way too prim-and-proper to swear.
“I know,” I said, wondering why she was overreacting.
“Then please respect everyone in this group by being on time and not causing trouble.”
“I’m not causing trouble.”
“Throwing kisses at fellow patients—”
I cut her off, “I’m not a patient, I’m a client, and right now I’m losing my patience with you. My manager is paying your boss a shitload of money, so I don’t appreciate being spoken down to. Treat me with respect and I’ll return it...” I sneered at her. “If I feel like it.” My eyes went to Candy. “And tell your other clients to keep their hands to themselves or the next time I’ll be laying a sexual harassment complaint.”
Candy’s eyes went wide. “You can’t do that; I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Talkin’ ’bout wanting to fuck me, touching me without permission, following me around when I told’ja to leave me alone... That’s sexual harassment, so stay clear of me, cos I ain’t fuckin’ putting up with it.” I returned my attention to Clara. “And you. Are ya gonna treat me like a client or...” I paused for effect, “a fifteen-year-old kid ... sumpthin’ I definitely ain’t.”
She visibly paled. “A client, and I’m sorry for what Candace did—”
Candy cut her off. “He’s exaggerating.”
Clara’s attention moved to her. “I did see you touching his chest in the dining hall.”
“His chest, not his cock.”
“Regardless, if he asked you to leave him alone, respect his wishes or you’ll be asked to leave the centre.”
Candy huffed and slumped into her seat, the glare she threw my way laced with venom. But I didn’t give a shit, as long as the skank kept her hands to herself.
Clara’s voice drew my attention back to her. “Dante, please introduce yourself to the group and tell them what you’re here for,” she said, glancing down at the folder on her lap.
“Booze. I drink it like it’s water, can’t get enough of it. I never thought I had a problem until this year.”
“Why this year?” the guy next to Candy asked.
I glanced at him. He looked like a fuck boy, one of those guys who dressed in labels and false compliments, though, the look in his eyes told me he was genuinely interested in what I had to say. I just wasn’t willing to tell him.
“That’s none of your biz,” I replied.
“There’s no need for rudeness, Dante,” Clara chided, pulling my attention back to her.
“I wuzn’t bein’ rude, just stating a fact. It’s my business, not his.”
She glanced down at her folder again.
“What are you lookin’ at?” I asked.
She glanced back up. “Your file. It says here that your drinking is more than just your business. It’s not only affecting your health; it’s affecting your family.”
I scowled at her, damn well knowing that, the intervention having shattered me. My older brother, his friend, my music producer, and my ex had cornered me in my room, forcing me to admit to why I’d started drinking: my stepfather raping me when I was thirteen. Everything else that followed just added to my alcoholism, but the final nail in the coffin was Beth’s accident. My mind went to that day a few months ago ... one of the worst days of my life.
Beth ran after me, shouting, “Dante!” the hurt in her voice like a dagger to my heart. But the breakup wasn’t my fucking fault. She’d lied to me about the baby being mine, even though she’d found out it was my brother’s. She hadn’t cheated, she’d been with Ash before me, but she’d purposely misled me so I wouldn’t leave her. It wasn’t as though I didn’t love her, I fucking did, but I couldn’t deal with her lies, or the way her and Kara constantly fought over me, both of them as manipulative as each other. It was just one step too far, the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I stopped by my red Holden, which was parked across the road from her house, and turned to tell her to leave me be, that I wasn’t going to change my mind, but those thoughts instantly evaporated at the sight of a car speeding down the road...
...heading right for Beth.
I screamed, “No!” but it was too late. The car ploughed into Beth, flinging her backwards like a rag doll, her body hitting the road hard. The car spun around, barely missing hitting her a second time. Burnt rubber wafted up into the air as the car turned a full circle, stopping a few feet away from where Beth lay on the ground, her right leg at an odd angle. I ran for her, screaming out her name...
Clara’s voice broke through the scream in my head, forcing my gaze back up. She was looking at me with sympathy now, something I didn’t want. “Which is why you need to be at the sessions on time,” she said, her tone softening. “You need to talk about why you drink, so we can help you get better.” She indicated to the others. “Everyone else has done the same. They’ve all spoken about how they came to be here, using each other to get through their past, as well as helping them move forward to a better future.”
I started clapping, laying it on thick. “Great pep talk,” I said, snidely, her rah-rah-rah cheerleader attitude making me want to chunder.
“Glad you think so,” she fired back, being a smart-arse, obviously knowing I wasn’t being sincere. Despite my sombre mood, it pulled a small smile out of me.
She raised her chin in response, obviously mistaking my smile as a challenge. “So,” she said, “are you going to tell us a bit more about why you drink?”
My smile dropped. “I used to drink to forget ’bout shit that went down when I wuz a kid. Now I drink to forget ’bout someone I lost.”
She looked down at the folder again.
I tapped my boot against the floor, what she was doing starting to irritate me. “If my life story’s already in there, why’re ya making me say this?”
She raised her gaze. “Not everything about you is in here, and it’ll do you good to open up.”
“I don’t deserve to feel good, especially after I basically got my ex killed. She’s braindead. It won’t be long before they pull the plug.” I closed my eyes for a second, seeing Beth lying on the hospital bed. She was wasting away, nothing but skin and bone, her pregnant belly looking unreal. The doctors were keeping her alive to give the baby a better chance of surviving, Beth basically nothing but an incubator.
Clara frowned, her grey eyes completely focused on me. “What happened?”
Unable to hold her stare, I looked down at my T-shirt and started picking at a loose thread. “She got run over,” I mumbled.
“By you?”
“No.”
“Then how’s it your fault?”
I looked back up. “I broke up with her. She ran after me, not paying attention to the traffic.”
“That’s hardly your fault, and why did you break up with her?”
I went quiet for a second, contemplating telling her to shove her question up her arse, but instead blurted out, “I found out she’d lied to me ’bout bein’ pregnant with my baby.” I scowled at Clara’s disapproving expression, not liking that she was judging Beth, which didn’t make sense, since my ex was anything but perfect.
“She didn’t cheat on me,” I added, wanting to defend her, “she wuz with my bro first. We’d been together for a li’l while before Beth found out she wuz preggers. She’d assumed it wuz mine. When she found out it wuzn’t, she kept it from me, scared I would leave her for an ex.”
“Would you have?”
“What?”
“Left her for this other woman?”
“Yes, I love Kara more.” I grimaced, feeling shit for saying it, although it was true. “But I pro’bly would’ve ended up goin’ back to Beth if she hadn’t lied ’bout having my baby.”
“Why would you go back to her if you love this other woman more?”
“Cos no matter how much I love Kara, it would never last.”
“Why?”
“Our relationship is toxic, filled with abuse.”
Her eyes went wide.
“Not like that!” I snapped, knowing what she was thinking. “Just cos I have tats and wuz in a gang doesn’t mean I abuse women.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“But you all think it.” I indicated to the other people in the room. “Go on, fuckin’ admit it.”
“You’re wrong, I didn’t assume anything,” Clara replied.
“Why? Cos you know chicks abuse me?” I shot back, getting at what she’d done to me, even though I didn’t know if she had done anything. Still, I’d been fifteen at the time we’d had the affair. What kind of woman fucked a fifteen-year-old? A predator. I sneered at her, wondering whether she’d fucked other students, the thought only just occurring to me.
She paled again, what I’d said obviously affecting her. “I don’t know anything of the sort, so tell us what happened with your partner, the one called Kara.”
“Ex,” I corrected her. “She abused me, both verbally and physically. Not in the sense of punching, but she had a bad habit of shoving me—”
A thirty-something bloke with a dumb expression and a child-like voice piped up. “Shoving is pushing,” he said, smiling at Clara as though he expected to be patted on the head and told he was a good boy. I wondered whether he was simple or had some kind of brain damage, because he definitely didn’t sound right.
Clara gave him a sweet smile. “Yes, that’s correct, Haden.” Her gaze returned to me, the smile disappearing. “Why did she shove you?”
“Cos I wouldn’t do what she wanted. One time she shoved me so hard that I fell and wuz knocked unconscious. The cops took her away, but I got her out after I came to, got them to back off. She ain’t a bad person, just loses her shit occasionally. She’s been through a lot.”
“That doesn’t give her the right to hurt you.”
I shrugged and looked around the room. Everyone’s eyes were locked onto me, the sad buggers obviously having nothing better to do than listen to my worthless fucking life story.
“I used to be the one who was the abuser,” the fuck boy next to Candy said, capturing my attention. He looked in his early thirties, but had the eyes of an old man who’d seen far too much. “I did a lot more than push my partner around.” A deep sadness fell over his face. “She gave me an ultimatum to get clean or she’d leave me. So, will you be going back to your ex once you’re out?”
I shook my head.
He nodded at me. “She doesn’t deserve you, like I don’t deserve my woman taking me back. Does she drink?”
I shook my head again.
He continued, “I’m fine when I don’t drink, but turn into a monster when I do. Booze brings the evil out in me. I can’t ever touch it again. I can’t afford to hurt my woman like my father hurt my mother.”
I nodded. “My dad wuz the same, but with meth. He fucked things up so bad for my whanau,” my family, “ending up goin’ to jail for it. Cos of it, he left us alone, a perfect target for a predator. My stepdad.” My mind went to the man who’d destroyed my family, the sick bastard thankfully rotting in prison. “He wuz the final nail in my whanau’s coffin, the reason why we’re so fucked in the head. You got kids?”
“A thirteen-year-old boy.”
My mind went to what had happened to me at thirteen, to what my sick bastard of a stepfather had done to me. My mouth ran dry at the thought, my mind screaming for some booze to drown that night out, sinking it like the fucking Titanic. But I couldn’t keep escaping that way. I was allowing him to continue fucking me over—and I was done with that. Done letting him ruin my life.
I refocused on the bloke, wanting him to be there for his kid, to be completely sober so he didn’t leave him open to predators. “Get clean for your son, don’t let any fucker come near him. Look after him or he might end up like me. If my dad hadn’t gotten addicted to meth, my mum wouldn’t have divorced him and married my stepdad, and I’d be a different person.”
“What did your stepfather do to you?”
I didn’t reply, the thought of saying it out loud making me feel sick. I’d said it to my brother, finally admitting what I’d hidden for so long, but I’d been a broken mess at the time. Ash and the others had forced me to face my traumatic past. Though, my confession had completely taken my brother by surprise. Ash hadn’t had a clue that our stepdad had raped me too. I’d kept it a secret from him, from everyone, the shame and trauma silencing me. I’d even tried to convince myself that it hadn’t happened. I’d had a bad fever that night. It was why I hadn’t gone with my family to my grandmother’s for her birthday. My stepfather had volunteered to stay home with me, but instead of looking after me, he’d gotten drunk and raped me, calling me Ash while he did it.
“No worries, mate,” the guy said. “You don’t have to say anything if you’re not ready. And thanks for the advice. I appreciate it.”
I nodded at him, hoping he got clean for his son before it was too late. Before his woman left him like my mum had left my dad. If anything, he kind of reminded me of my father. Although they looked totally different, like chalk and cheese, Pākehā and Māori, they did share one thing: guilt, the sadness in their eyes so similar.
Clara cleared her throat, pulling my attention back to her. “Thank you for opening up to us, Dante,” she said, looking like she was close to tears. There was also something else in her expression I couldn’t put my finger on. It felt familiar, something I’d seen before, just didn’t know from where.
“I didn’t really say much,” I replied, wondering why my words had affected her. Or why her expression was bothering me.
“You opened up,” she replied, “and I hope it helped.”
I glanced at the man with the son, hoping it helped him more.
Clara cleared her throat again. “Would anyone else like to talk?” she said, steering the conversation away from me.
The simple guy next to her put his hand up like a kid with a correct answer. Clara smiled at him, giving him permission to talk. I ignored what he was saying, preferring to watch Clara, still trying to work out where I’d seen her expression.