I spot the first sign, and I stop in my tracks. The blocky letters wallop me with the reality that I now belong to a club I never wanted to be in.
On a sheet of white paper, the letters SLAA (College) have been written in all caps with a big blue marker.
How embarrassing. As if anyone can’t figure out what the acronym means. But still, I follow the arrows on the sign pointing to the stairwell, then down the musty wooden steps that creak with every footfall as they announce my descent to the basement. More signs are plastered on the flimsy brown plywood, more arrows directing me through the dark hallway, around the corner, then past another bend, deep into the bowels of the church.
My insides are comprised of knots tightening in and wrenching around themselves, pinching all my internal organs.
I wish, I wish, I wish that I weren’t going here.
But I have to.
I took the fall, and that brought me here.
I run my fingers across the fabric of the red shirt that’s against the skin of my shoulder, tender today after my new tattoo. My reminder of who I was. But even so, the reminder on my skin is not enough to quell the nerves. They snake through me, setting up camp in every cell of my body, as I enter a standard-issue Sunday school room with thinning brown industrial carpet. Earlier in the week, this room was probably crammed with cutesy blue wooden chairs adorned with drawn angels, clouds, and fluffy bunnies. Now, it’s filled with cold, hard folding metal chairs for addicts. The walls are bare, except for a few inspirational posters: Hang in There with the kitten dangling from a branch, Perseverance with a man climbing a snowcapped mountain, and Patience with a lone woman standing at the edge of a cold beach in the winter.
I’m five minutes early, and there’s one other person in the room. A thin woman with pink hair cut in a stick-straight bob rises and greets me.
“Hi. I’m Joanne. Welcome to the SLAA meeting,” she says, pronouncing the name of the group like slaw.
“Layla,” I mumble, not sure how words are even coming out of my mouth as I give her a fake name. There is no way I’d use my real name here. Besides, Layla is the name that brought me here. Layla is my other name. Layla is the other me.
I shake Joanne’s hand. It feels smooth, and she smells like lavender, like she just put on lotion.
“Coffee?” She smiles brightly at me, as if coffee is the answer to every addict’s deepest desires. Because it’s the only acceptable drug.
I am a junkie. I’ll take what I can get.
I nod, barely able to speak. I sit in one of the chairs as Joanne pours coffee from a pot into a chipped ceramic mug with the slogan When in Doubt, Don’t.
Great. If only I’d had a collection of mugs emblazoned with Keep It Simple and Just for Today, maybe I’d never have slid down that slippery slope into Layla.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Layla,” Joanne says, flashing me another happy grin. “Do you knit?”
Crap.
Do I have to make small talk with her?
She gestures to her canvas bag, spilling over with yarn, steely blue knitting needles, and what looks to be the start of a maroon scarf.
“I’m not very crafty,” I say, and leave it at that as she talks about the scarf she is working on and how she’s going to pair it with a matching sweater. I simply smile at her without showing any teeth.
There. I’m keeping it simple.
I’d rather go mute for this meeting because my mouth feels like cotton and my head is a pinball machine, and the last thing I want to do right now is talk about how my life has spun out of control.
Except for last night. Because there is one guy who didn’t make it on my list. One guy who never felt like a list. The guy from last night who inked my shoulder and kissed my body, and who gave me something I’ve never felt before—touch without agenda. A true and real want. He didn’t want anything more from me than me. It was such a foreign feeling, but such a wondrous one.
And I’ll never see him again.
Soon the room starts to fill, and I keep my head down, doing everything I can not to meet their eyes. I don’t want to know what other addicts look like. I don’t want to know if they look like me. I stare at my shoes, my Mary Janes, the black buckle shiny because it’s always shiny, because that’s what made me top of the line. I was the whole package—the shoes, the plaid skirt, the white blouse, the beyond innocent look on my face.
I hate that I miss that me.
I miss her terribly.
Even after last night, and all that it could have become, all the ways it was different from the past, I still miss me when I was Layla.
The circle of chairs has been filled in with guys and girls. I scan their faces, and all I see are their secrets.
Then my blood goes both hot and cold when he walks in. Trey, the guy from last night with the scar across his right cheek.
8
Trey
This is the last place I want to be even though it’s the only place I should be.
Seeing as how I have a permanent reminder on my face of what happens when you go too far.
I’d be able to handle this better if I could expunge the memory of last night from my stupid head. But I can’t because she’s staked a home in my skull, and the images aren’t going away anytime soon. That girl who walked into No Regrets was the hottest girl I’d ever seen, and so damn innocent looking—a combination that killed my resolve to start over. She drove me wild, which made zero sense, since I’ve never been attracted to girls younger than me.
Never ever ever.
And she let me touch her. She wanted me to touch her. She told me she’d never let anyone touch her the way I did. Hell, if that wasn’t a crazy turn-on, I don’t know what is.
Nothing could even compare to it.
Still, the scar I’d landed a few months ago was the final sign I needed to change my ways, put everything behind me, including her. Which is why I’m here.
But when I walk into my first meeting of Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, I grab the doorway and hold on tight. The whole room is rocking, like a ship that’s hit choppy waters. I must be seeing things. There’s no way she can be here.
She’s the last person I ever thought I’d see today. Hell, I didn’t think I’d see her ever again. I figured that was for the best. But here she is, in this meeting room with me, of all places.
My heart trips over on itself, then it sputters out of control and collapses.
The only girl I’ve ever been with who’s not older than me. The only girl who didn’t feel like a fix.
And evidently Harley’s a lot like me.
No wonder the clock was ticking last night. We both took one final hit before going on the wagon.
I grab an empty chair and try not to think about her during the meeting. But it’s impossible. Because last night with her didn’t feel like the reason I’m here. I didn’t touch her in the way I’ve touched others. She felt different. She felt real.
And I don’t know how the hell to navigate this. To see her like this. To run into her every week or so. Even this Joanne lady who’s running the show issues the reminder—some sort of rule we should follow. A guideline so we can stop being fucked-up from sex.
“It’s recommended that you abstain from sexual, romantic, or any type of love relationships in your first year of recovery,” Joanne says, while her knitting needles click faster and faster.