Recovered

by Jay Crownover

I knew from firsthand experience that addiction didn’t discriminate.

Addiction didn’t care about the square footage of your house or the kind of car you drove. It didn’t care about your pedigree or your GPA. Addiction was an equal opportunity life-ruiner,

I was always waiting for the day he would finally try his luck, test the waters, even though he knew I was a shark that could tell he was bleeding out from a mile away.

If you don’t get help, everything you have, everything you love, is going to go away. Addiction takes and takes and keeps on taking. It’s the most greedy and selfish thing in the entire world.”

When a god falls, he leaves a pretty big dent in the ground where his worshipers walked.

I never cared what the drugs were doing to me, what they were doing to my life, what they were doing to the people around me. All I cared about was the way I felt when I was high. I was free. I was above all the things pressing down on me. I was out from under the weight that was always there sitting heavy on my chest. I wasn’t happy . . . but it was as close as I’d ever been,

Someone I had thought about every single day since she told me she hated me. Someone I watched from the moment she showed up in Loveless looking as lost and alone as I felt. Affton Reed.

She offered me her free hand, and for a second all I could picture was grabbing it and pulling her under with me, letting the water cover us both and take us somewhere we would both rather be.

arm around my waist, empty bottle pressed into my side, a chilly reminder that I’d already fucked this up and it was only the first day.

I had no idea how either one of us was going to survive the summer, and if we did, I had no idea how I was supposed to survive beyond that when I was once again left to my own devious and duplicitous devices.

leaving me alone so I could discreetly sniff under my arm. I made a face and dropped my arm when I caught a whiff of the less-than-pleasant odor. I smelled like a drunk. I smelled like a bum. I smelled like bad choices and regret.

I couldn’t hold back a cringe at the idea of having to shake down strangers just because Cable couldn’t make good choices.

Those dark orbs were perfect for hiding secrets, but if you looked hard enough, you could see the storm raging inside of Cable McCaffrey. There were shadows in those dark eyes, and they were at war with him. They were winning.

“You should take the time to find something real that interests you, Cable. You should find the thing that keeps your mind occupied and soothes you when all those cravings and demons rise to the surface. If you have something that matters to focus on, then it won’t be as easy for your bad habits to clamor for your free time.”

“It’s not about saving them after they’re lost. It’s about getting to them before they lose their way in the first place.”

“Some souls were never meant to be saved. They might end up on the right path, but without fail, they will veer off. It’s all they know how to do. No matter how badly they might be hurting other people, they still lose their way. Honestly, the hurt they cause will never compare to how much hurt they inflict upon themselves.”

I wanted to tell him that sometimes the only way to excise an infected wound was to slice it open and let all the poison out.

I was living with a very attractive ghost. One who couldn’t see, hear, or interact with me at all. One who was haunting me. The more he vanished into himself and got lost inside his own head, the harder I tried to grab ahold of him, but it was like trying to clutch smoke between my fingers. He drifted away as soon as I touched him.

one of the beach bunnies who followed Cable around like he was the Pied Piper of sex and satisfaction.

He said he didn’t have anything he was interested in; he pretended the only thing he had going for him were his good looks and his ability to make women loopy with lust, but that was all a lie. The boy had a gift . . . was gifted . . . and he didn’t even seem to know it.

His darkness was caught on those pages, but so was the light he tried so hard to keep from shining through.

I went inside when he started to lower his head toward the girl in the bikini, hating that he was wasting himself on her . . . and hating that I cared.

I KNEW I was a mess. Unhinged and hanging on the precipice of becoming someone who was beyond any kind of redemption. I teetered on the brink of making bad choices every moment I was awake, but somehow, some way, I always managed to keep myself from going completely over.

I never wanted to be anyone’s first or their last. I just wanted to be a moment they would think about with fondness and a smile.

I was sure that if I took a single step out of line, if I veered even slightly off the path I’d set for myself, everything would end up crumbling down around me. I didn’t have the time to fail. I didn’t have the confidence to get back up if I fell . . . so, I never wavered, and I never wandered.

I could still see him on his knees, shaking and breaking apart in the counselor’s office. That night didn’t just hurt him when he talked about it; it destroyed him.

Talking about it, going over all the details, it’s not going to change anything. Someone is still going to be dead, someone is still going to be paralyzed, and I’m always going to be the bastard who’s responsible.”

“What if I don’t want to change how I feel about that night? What if I know I deserve every sleepless night and every single minute it haunts me when I’m awake?”

I was so used to people constantly trying to be something. Trying to be popular. Trying to be liked. Trying to be badass. Trying to be a family.

It was a daily struggle to present myself as something close to a normal human. And here I was, all kinds of twisted up and confused over a chick who made life, and all its ups and downs, her bitch.

Thinking about any of it was going to ruin the pleasant buzz I was feeling. The first one I’d ever had that didn’t come from shooting, snorting, or smoking something I shouldn’t be putting into my body.

Losing myself in someone who had no interest in knowing where I’d come from or any concern about where I was headed wasn’t going to work.

Because of Affton, I understood it had to matter more than that. I was starting to see I was supposed to matter more than that. I didn’t necessarily agree with her, but the part of me that woke up and took notice every time she told me she cared about me sure as hell did.

I was capturing a fantasy, creating a memory I could hold onto later. Holding something that shouldn’t be real, shouldn’t exist in my hands.

I hadn’t had a drink or a hit in almost a month, but I felt drunk on her taste.

The truth was, I’d never had my dick anywhere near a girl who was like Affton and everything about her was so potent. She wasn’t watered down or cut with any kind of filler. She was all honest response and heated reaction, and that was more of a turn on than being buried inside something easy and temporary had ever been.

Everyone else had been a distraction, but Affton Reed, she was a destination. She was the place I wanted to go and maybe, just maybe, she was the place where I wanted to stay. She was the place I was going to have to work my ass off to reach.

“Rich people are so complicated.”

“What if all of this is self-medicating gone horribly wrong? What if he got in too deep because the hole he was digging for himself never bottomed out . . . until he bottomed out?”

“Tell me what you need me to do right now, Reed. I’m used to being the villain, not the hero.”