Now
Rock bottom isn’t the same place for every person. Some people find it in the depths of a bottle. Others get there via the sharp point of a needle. Then there are those who seek it in a never-ending parade of sexual encounters, each one more meaningless than the one before. Or maybe it comes after yet another beating at the hands of someone who’s supposed to love you.
For my boyfriend Matt, his appointment at the bottom came in a place of absolute calm. Ironic, really, considering how much he enjoyed chaos during his life, but there you go. The last time we were together, down in Carolina at the apartment he shared with Leo, I’d sensed a difference. I didn’t know what it was; a year before I would’ve let myself believe he was finally changing. But now I knew better, so no matter how much he begged, no matter how many times he assured me that he had a plan this time . . . I was strong. I wouldn’t listen. I stuck to the party line I’d rehearsed all the way down there.
“Matt, we’re not good for each other. We’re destroying each other. We bounce from hurt to hurt, and in between . . . yes, things are good. I’ve loved you more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my life. But God, Matt. Even when things are good between us, I’m waiting. Waiting for the next time they get bad, and holding my breath, afraid of what might set us off again. I can’t live that way. Not anymore. You don’t want to get better, and all I’m doing is giving you another excuse not to change.”
When I’d left, it hadn’t been with the sense of sad finality I’d expected. I’d fled the apartment, crying, still not sure I’d done the right thing. And for two weeks, I’d lived in that place of limbo, trying to move on even while dread held on tight.
In those two weeks, Matt found his rock bottom. I’ll never know exactly how or what happened. Either out of spite or compassion, he didn’t leave that information for me. No, the only thing Matt left for me was a piece of paper with the words I’m sorry printed on it, and an odd assortment of personal effects zipped up in a duffel bag in his closet, things that might have meant something to his grandparents, to Leo or to me.
I don’t remember the week after his death or his funeral. When I couldn’t stop screaming the day Leo gave me the news, a doctor sedated me, and my mother and friends kept me medicated all during that time, through the viewing, the funeral and the wake. The only thing I did recall, vaguely, was someone murmuring that Matt was finally at peace.
It stuck with me, that phrase. Probably because in finding peace—if in fact he had—Matt had stolen from me any chance of knowing the same feeling. The end of his journey was the beginning of my own.
If Matt’s rock bottom was forever a mystery to me, my own was crystal clear. It happened in the snack aisle of a grocery store, just about a year after Matt killed himself.
In the space of that year, I’d graduated from college, started grad school and landed a job as an assistant at a local television station’s news department. I’d rented an apartment that was tiny and crappy, but it was mine. I’d helped my friend Quinn get through the last months of our friend Nate’s life and watched her flee to California in the wake of his death and her own grief. To the world at large, it probably seemed like I was finally moving on, finding my stride and recovering, but nothing could’ve been further from the truth.
The only moving I was doing was through life, in the same numb way I’d been pushing through for months. I got up, went to school, went to work, came home, ate crappy take-out food or frozen dinners and went to bed. Oh, there were times when Zelda, who’d been one of my college roommates and now lived in Philadelphia, too, forcibly removed me from my apartment and made me go out with her. But that rhythm of predictability was something I clung to; on some level, it gave me comfort.
Weekends meant burying myself at home with homework and endless marathons of old television series. I’d pick out the show and seasons I planned to watch every Friday morning, just to give myself something to look forward to that night. I’d stop on the way home for my favorite snacks: two jumbo bags of ridged potato chips, one huge container of onion dip and a case of flavored seltzer water. The six-packs of beer I passed on the way to the chip aisle tempted me, but I never gave into that particular vice. I didn’t have a problem with alcohol. I’d partied hard through school with no residual ill-effects, and I sure loved a good beer when I was indulging in snack food. But drinking alone was too scary for me. It was too much like Matt. So I saved my beer calories for the rare times I was out with Zelda or visiting Quinn.
But on that particular day, I didn’t even give the beer a second glance. I’d already cued up the fourth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on my subscription service, and all I needed were my chips and dip, my seltzer, and a box of frozen veggie eggrolls. (I called those my concession to healthy eating.) Once I got home, I planned to change into comfy sweats, sit on my bed in my tiny, run-down apartment, surround myself with the junk food and watch Buffy, with occasional intervals for sleep, until Sunday night.
In my small basket, I already had the dip, the eggrolls and the seltzer. All I needed were the chips, which I always got last so that they weren’t crushed by the other items. I walked expectantly to the spot on the shelf where they always waited for me.
Nothing. Empty. Nada. Zip. Out. Of. Stock.
Frantically, I pawed through the bags on either side of the empty slot, sure they must’ve gotten mixed with a different variety. But no, they weren’t there. Once I accepted that hard truth, there was only one thing to do.
I sat down on the cold, dirty tile of that grocery store and began to cry.
That, my friends, is rock bottom.
But wait. It gets worse.
“Uh . . . Gia?”
The voice that filtered through my sobs wasn’t familiar, but clearly, the person to whom it belonged knew my name. I risked a peek up at the guy, wondering who’d happened by to witness my final breakdown. Lucky me—even in a city where I was acquainted with less than a handful of people, I couldn’t manage a simple crying jag in the middle of a grocery store without someone I knew just happening to stroll by.
I didn’t know this dude. But the tiny hidden part of me that was still alive and interested thought that I wished I did. He was seriously ripped, and the red T-shirt he wore beneath an open jacket looked like it barely contained his chest and arms. All that muscle tapered down to a narrow waist, where faded denim took over, hugging massive thighs. I couldn’t see his ass from where I sat, but judging from the rest of the package, it had to be fine. I just knew it had to be.
His blond hair was short, and his eyes were a striking bright green. But when he crossed his arms over that drool-worthy chest and his lips twitched—not in humor, I thought, but maybe in bemusement—a dimple popped out in his left cheek.
And that was what made me remember.
I did know this man. He’d been one of Matt’s classmates and football teammates at Carolina, but he was actually from South Jersey, just like me. I’d met him on the first road trip Quinn and I had made down to that college, for her to visit Leo. It had been the same weekend I’d hooked up with Matt for the first time. I had a sudden and vivid memory of meeting this guy—his name was Tate—at the bar where I’d gone that night with Leo and Quinn. Leo had introduced us, and this dude had asked me why I had a rule about not dating football players. I remembered now that he’d made me uneasy, not because he was at all threatening—he wasn’t—but because it felt like when he looked at me with those incredible green eyes, he was seeing through to my soul.
That was a part of me I didn’t want anyone getting a look at. So I’d been flippant and kind of rude, and a few minutes later, I’d fallen into Matt’s arms on the dance floor. Literally fallen, or just about . . . and he’d danced with me, whispering the filthiest, most erotic words into my ear, until there wasn’t any doubt in my mind that he was coming back to my hotel room with me that night.
It was the beginning for Matt and me . . . the start of a long, painful story that had only brief blips of mind-blowing happiness. But even before Matt, apparently, there’d been this guy.
This Tate whoever-he-was.
“Are you okay?” Ignorant of my trip down memory lane, he dropped to a crouch next to me, his eyebrows knit together.
“I, uh . . .” It was all I could get out.
“I’m Tate Durham. I’m a friend of Leo’s. We met—”
“Down in Carolina, at the college. I remember.” I swallowed. “Um, what’re you doing here?”
He grinned then, and his entire face lit up like an evergreen on Christmas morning. “I play football for Philadelphia, and one of my teammates lives around here. I’m heading over there to hang out and play video games, but I promised I’d bring the snacks. Figured I’d just pick them up here.” He cocked his head. “Weird, though. Usually I’d go to the grocery store near my house, in Jersey. But tonight, I was running late, and I actually forgot to stop until I got over the bridge. I’ve never been to this store. I guess running into you was meant to be.”
My face burned. God, could this get any more embarrassing? Couldn’t a girl even lose her mind in peace and private? Was that asking too much?
“If by meant to be, you mean running into me is a good thing, I’d advise you to get your head checked. You’re probably taking too many hits on the field.” I scrambled, trying to find my feet. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m sitting on the floor in the chip aisle, crying like a crazy bitch. That’s not someone you’re happy you ran into, buddy. That’s a train wreck you pretend not to see as you walk quickly in the other direction.”
Tate shrugged, his large shoulder moving and down. “I don’t look at it that way. You must be having a bad night, and it was probably kismet that I’m here.” He offered me a hand. “Come on. Why don’t you let me help you up, we’ll pay for your stuff—” He nodded to my small handbasket, sitting on the floor next to me. “And then I’ll take you out for a drink. Or dinner, if you’re up to it.”
There were so many things wrong with that suggestion, so many reasons why it was the worst idea in the entire universe, that I couldn’t decide which one to pounce on first. So for a few seconds, my mouth opened and closed like a fish who was looking to get back into the nice, safe pond.
Tate took advantage of my inability to speak and grabbed my hand, hauling me to my feet and picking up my basket. I followed him down the aisle, mostly because he held both my hand and my food. I was still too shocked to speak up when he paid for the stuff in the basket—minus the chips, thank you very much, which I’d have to do without this weekend—and led me outside into the frostiness of the late winter air.
It was probably the change in temperature that jerked me out of my stupor. I stopped dead on the sidewalk, and Tate, who apparently didn’t want to be seen dragging a girl along in the middle of the city, obligingly halted, too.
“You can’t do this. I can’t do this. I don’t know what your deal is, but I’m not a pity case. I’m not a good bet for you getting laid, either. Thanks for the food. I’d pay you back, but I don’t have any cash. I’m broke, I’m an emotional mess and I might be slightly mentally unhinged. If you had half the intelligence God gave a goose, you’d leave me right here.”
Tate still hadn’t let go of my hand. Instead, if anything, now he held it tighter in his huge grip.
“I’m just a football player. Never claimed to be that smart.”