HOW WE BLAZE
A sea of black swirls around me, but my eyes follow a blur of yellow polka dots. Dez runs up to me and throws her arms around me. Three months of nothing add up to now, and I hug her as tight as I can. I can hear her crying in my ear.
“I love you,” I say.
“I love you, too.” She pulls away and wipes a tear from her eye.
“So rehab is working, apparently?”
“It’s amazing the things you can do when you aren’t always half a human.”
At the hospital, she spilled the true story of Dez Coulter. She’d been taking Percocet all along. She’d been drugged from the moment I met her.
“You look like a real Dez,” Addy says over my shoulder. She lets go of Trey’s hand, walks up to her, and they hug almost as tight as we did. Dez really does look like a real Dez. That girl I saw the night we walked down the Brentwood cul-de-sac. The one who hoped and dreamed and talked about a future. This girl in front of me wearing a yellow polka dot dress is her. She’s someone I’d hoped for. Someone we’re all capable of being.
Trey puts an arm over my shoulder and whispers, “Dude, Dez Coulter is hot.”
I smile. “Yeah, she really is. Wait. Trey, you’re dating my sister.”
“I know! Isn’t that awesome?”
“You are so confusing,” I say.
“Tell me about it,” Elliot adds, walking around the hug fest that is Addy and Dez. My two everythings.
Finally Addy and Dez split apart, but Dez is still crying. She comes over to me and buries her head in my neck.
“Do you think they’re gonna make you stay longer because you broke out?” Elliot asks.
“I don’t know. I’m just ready to be out.”
“Are they coming for you? Are you like, a wanted chica now?” Trey asks. “Because that’d be pretty cool.”
She sighs. “I don’t know. I want to talk about something else besides my escaping from a rehab clinic. It’s too first and last line. What were you guys going to do after the funeral?”
“Get some to-go milkshakes from Pritchett’s and work on the album,” I say. “We’re working on ‘When We Reach the City.’”
“My favorite,” Addy adds.
Dez nods. “Well, I’d rather be captured recording an album than at a funeral. That’ll look pretty weird to the white coats. Also, I thought of new name for the album while I was in the slammer. I think it sums up Mr. Cratcher’s life better than Hounds of Eden.”
“What is it?” Elliot asks.
“Looking for Eden.”
We’re all silent for a few seconds, thinking through the name. We spent so much time looking for his album, Hounds of Eden, only to decide in the end that, even if it was in a box out in the garage, it didn’t matter. We were going to remake the album without it, together, which is what I think he wanted me to do ever since he brought me into that studio. I thought he was recording the album for himself, but I realize now that he was simply facing the story of his life at the end of his days it so he could pass it onto me. All those times he tried to get me to write a song or said, “I don’t think that’ll be my decision,” he wanted me to make the album mine. I didn’t.
I made it ours.
Dez is right. Looking for Eden is perfect. His story. Our story. It all converges in that one name.
I grab her hand and walk toward the door. “That is the most perfect album title I’ve ever heard.”
—
Addy calls in our milkshake order, and I’m nominated to go in and pick them up as she swings into the Pritchett’s parking lot. Before I can get out of the car, Dez pulls me back to her and says, “I’ll see you in a minute, forever?”
I nod. “Hell yeah.”
She smiles. “Good. Don’t mess up the order.”
I run inside and stand at the hostess podium, waiting for someone to help me. A few seconds pass and no hostess shows, so I look around the diner, hoping to catch someone’s eye, when I see them.
Daliah Howard, Bryonie Welch, and a few other girls. The Anti-Adam Order. I’d avoided them since I got back to school. Luckily, I didn’t have classes with them and we sat no where near each other in the cafeteria. I wasn’t proud of it, but I just couldn’t look at them without feeling like utter dirt. Without feeling like I deserved to be alone. Like it was unfair to them that I was changing and getting better because I’d done them so wrong.
But I’ve been to Deception Pass, now. I turned around. I’m here. With my friends and sister waiting for me in the car. People who love me enough to tell me wise things that someday I’ll understand. People who know the darkest me and haven’t left.
I watch the Anti-Adam Order talk, laugh. I remember asking each one to have sex with me. I remember how right I felt in doing so.
“Sir?”
I look back to the podium, and there’s a waitress standing in front of me.
“Uh.” I wipe at my eyes.
“Can I help you?”
I look at their table again, and I know there’s something I have to do, but to face them again … My feet feel like they weigh a million pounds. My mouth goes dry.
“What’s taking so long, Frenchie?”
I turn around and see Dez standing in the door. She sees my face. My tears.
“Adam, what’s wrong?”
“They’re here,” I say, looking back at the table of the Anti-Adam Order. “They’re here and I can’t just keep avoiding them.”
Dez looks over my shoulder and points at Bryonie. “Is that them?”
I nod.
Dez grabs my hand and pulls me toward them. My heart lurches. I feel hot. I pull back, but she pulls me harder and says, “You can do this. You’re my wife.”
We walk up to the table, and, at first, the girls don’t see me. They just see Dez, but when they do see me, their faces turn from confusion to anger and that’s all it takes for me to start crying again.
“Sorry to interrupt, girls,” Dez says, “but my boyfriend, Adam, has something to say to all of you.”
She lets go of my hand and steps behind me. “Adam, take it away. I’m right here.”
I can’t look up. I’m so afraid to look up, and my tears keep spilling down my cheeks. They drop onto the floor with earsplitting cracks. Then I feel Dez touch my back. A reminder that she’s here. That Addy, my dad, Elliot, and Trey are all still here.
I look up at them. They’re all looking at me, and I swear the entire diner is watching me, listening to me.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say. “I’m so damn sorry. I—”
Silence.
“I hope—I’m sorry.”
They don’t say anything, and after a few seconds of silence, I feel Dez’s hand slip back into mine. “Come on,” she says. “That’s good enough.”
Dez brings me over to the bar area and sits me on a stool. She kisses me on the cheek and says, “I’m so proud of you. Now don’t freak out. I’m gonna go get our milkshakes.”
She walks back toward the podium, and while she talks to the waitress, I look back at the table of the Anti-Adam Order.
Bryonie Welch is staring at me. The other girls are laughing. I wipe my stupid leaking eyes for the millionth time I pull my hand down and lock eyes with Bryonie, she nods. She doesn’t mouth anything after that. Just turns back to the girls.
And I’m filled with the beautiful kind of pain.
—
Dez stands at a microphone belting, “Come on reach the city. Come on reach the city lights.”
Trey and Addy sit on the floor listening to her sing. Addy leans her head on Trey’s shoulder and closes her eyes. Elliot practices his part downstairs in the kitchen. I put on the headphones and I hear the mix of everything we’ve recorded. As I listen to Dez, I think about Bryonie’s nod and, for the first time since the divorce, realize I’m finally feel free. I think through the days I’ve spent searching for wholeness. I think about the nights ahead where I’ll struggle with porn, but also think about the nights I won’t. I think about my mom moving back to Bothell. I think about the days where I won’t feel free, but I also think about the days made up of hallelujah moments like this.
Life is made up of two kinds of pain, the hurtful kind and the beautiful kind, and that’s okay. Why? Because though I’m broken, I’m not an addict. Just because I have a hard night or week or month, it doesn’t mean I haven’t changed.
I might never be fixed, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be whole.
We’re all variables of broken and holy light, and that’s the only thing about the world that doesn’t change. Addictions can never define Dez and me because they’ll never have the chance.
We’re never just one thing, but we can always choose to love.
And that’s how we blaze.