Addicted for Now (43 page)

My new therapist doesn’t seem equipped to help me, and I can
just imagine his methods to combat this fear, a monster-sized shock machine in
hand. So I refuse to share my anxieties with him.
 

But I won’t drown in self-love either. I’m going to try
something new, and just wade in my unease until I figure out how to handle the
close scrutiny and media properly. Until I figure out how to breathe again.

{ 47 }

LOREN HALE

I feel like a creep.

Sitting in my rental car for an hour and staring at the same
four-story brick house. The lawn has newly mowed lines, a sign poking from the
grass:
McAdams Middle Honor Student
.

Maine carries a breeze that beckons people outdoors, but I’m
still rooted to the seat, my joints frozen solid. My biggest fear is staying in
this damn sedan, coming this far and not mustering the courage to walk up the
driveway.

I can smash a bottle of liquor on another guy’s door, but I
can’t put one foot in front of the other to say hi to a woman. There’s irony
somewhere in that. And maybe if I wasn’t scared out of my fucking mind, I’d
laugh.

I rub my neck that gathers with nervous heat. I should have
brought Ryke and Lily like I originally planned. When I told Lily I was looking
into meeting my mother, she was nothing but supportive. They both wanted to
come.

But I ended up only buying one plane ticket.

I have to do this on my own.

No one has entered or exited the house. From the outside it
resembles a normal middleclass family home. It’s what I could have had. Normal.

I let out a long breath and run my hands through my hair.
Just go. Just get it over with, you fucking
bastard
.

Before I can process what I’m doing, I climb from the car
and reach the mailbox. I breathe like I’m in the middle of a five mile jog.
Inhale. Exhale. One…two…three. But I’m not sprinting. I’m not running. I’m
barely walking.

 
My worn sneakers land
on the front stoop. My legs weigh me down. My shoes, however ugly, are filled
with lead.

I raise my fist to the door, falter and drop my hand to my
side.
Come on. Do it.
I’ve replayed
conversations in my head, thinking about this moment for years.
Come on, Loren. Grow the fuck up.

Inhale. Exhale.

One…two…

I ring the doorbell.

The door opens. And my mind goes blank.

A woman stares at me with an identical stunned and stupefied
expression. I never called her, never warned her about this meeting. I was too
scared that she’d shut me down. I just wanted to see her face, hear her voice,
all at the same time.

She’s young, not even forty. I search her features: slender
nose, thin lips, and shiny brown hair. I suddenly realize I’m looking for
me
in her.

“I’m—”

“I know who you are.” Her voice is velvet, the kind you can
close your eyes and fall asleep to. I bet she reads her kids bedtime stories.
The thought knots my stomach. “I’ve seen you on the news.”

I wait for her to invite me in, but she grips the knob like
she’s seconds from swinging the door in my face.

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

I’m not sure what reaction I expected. My dad—he told me
that she didn’t want me. I thought, maybe, he was lying. I still grasp to that
futile hope that she cared for me like a mother would a son.

Inhale. “I just wanted to talk.” My voice sounds coarse
compared to hers. Like an animal to an angel. It fucking sucks. And I can’t
stop staring at her, like she’s moments from being ripped from my memory.

“There’s nothing to talk about.” Her eyes carry apologies
even if her words don’t.

“Right,” I say and nod to myself. I could walk away. I could
leave it at that. I’ve seen her. What else do I need? What the fuck am I
searching for? “You’re my mom.” I want to take back the words as soon as I say
them.

She cringes, the door shrinking closed, but she stays beside
it, wedged between the frame. And she stares at me like I’m a mistake, a black
mark on her resume that she’s been trying to scrub clean. She doesn’t say it,
but I can see the phrase all over her face.
You’re
not my son, not really.

She didn’t raise me. I was a bad part of her life that she’s
been trying to forget.

She clears her throat, uncomfortable. “Did Jonathan tell you
anything?”

“Not much.”

“Well…what do you want to know?”

The open-ended question takes me aback for a second. What do
I want to know?
Everything.
I want
all the answers that have been kept from me. “What happened?”

“I was a teenager…” She glances over her shoulder for a
minute and then says, “I was young and was easily drawn to a guy like Jonathan.
We slept together once. That’s it. And I was careless, and that’s why you’re
here.”

Something nasty sits on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow
down the more spiteful retort. I sweat through my shirt, so fucking hot. I wipe
my brow and say, “So that’s what I am to you then?”

Her eyes flit past my body. A neighbor across the street
stares hard from his mailbox, and I wonder if he’s trying to place me—figuring
out where he recognizes me from.

“You can invite me in,” I offer.

She shakes her head and clears her throat again. “No. It’s
best if you stay outside.”

“Right.” That’s all I can say without yelling, without
screaming everything that weighs on my chest.
Why didn’t you come back for me? Why didn’t you fucking care? I’m your
goddamn son!
I spent years without a mother, without that maternal figure.
The most I had were the people who paraded in and out of my house in the
mornings. Makeup-smeared, half-dressed women who had no words of wisdom for me,
no answers to my problems, no sweet, nurturing voice to ease me to sleep.

“You have to understand…” Her eyes fall to the ground. “I
didn’t want you.”

“Yeah, I got that,” I say sharply. My father was right. I
shouldn’t have sought her out.

“I was in high school,” she says. “I was just a girl, and I
planned to go to college, to have boyfriends and a life. You were going to take
all of that from me.”

You were going to take
all of that from me.
The words ring in the pit of my ears.

I stare at the bright sky, just staring, just looking for something
that will never reveal itself to me.

What the hell am I doing here? Not just here, at this house.
I feel like I was born to destroy people’s lives. I did it before I even came
into the world. And I did it after.
You
were going to take all of that from me.

“Out of respect for Jonathan, I told him that I was going to
an abortion clinic.”

I shut my eyes, and a hot tear slides down my cheek. I wipe
it. Exhale. “I wish you went through with it,” I suddenly say. Because then I
wouldn’t have to bear this pain. My face wouldn’t twist this way. Lily wouldn’t
have spent her childhood in my broken house. Her mother would have loved her as
much as she did her sisters. Ryke would have grown up with two parents instead
of one. My existence ruined so many people, so many things. Life would have
been easier without me.

“What?” Her velvety voice spikes.

“You heard me,” I say, no longer nice. “I wish you would
have killed me.”

She pales. “You don’t mean that.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

She touches her lips for a moment, just staring at me.
“Because…your father, he gave you everything.”

You have everything,
Loren. Don’t be such an ungrateful little shit, Loren.

“Yeah,” I nod. “He gave me everything.” Before she can
speak, I ask, “So what stopped you? Your parents? Some religious belief? Cold
feet?”

“Jonathan stopped me,” she says. “He was furious with the
idea of losing his child. We came to an agreement. I would have you, and then
you would be his entirely. I would get the life I planned, and you’d grow up in
luxury, something I wouldn’t have been able to give you on my own. I thought
you would be happy.”

“Yeah, I’m still working on the happiness part.”

I wait for the flash of regret to fill her eyes, but it
never comes. I’m the spoiled rotten heir, the one who drinks until he’s wasted.
The one who went to rehab like it was some publicity stunt. And I have a sex
addict girlfriend.

Emily quiets as a school bus rolls to the curb. The doors
open and middle school kids dart out. A girl with my light brown hair and my
nose adjusts her backpack, walking towards the house.

Emily forces a smile for her daughter. “Hi honey, can you go
inside please?”

Her daughter squints at me, fixing her large round glasses
on her nose. “Aren’t you Loren Hale?”

I hate that a middle school girl knows me. My face is all
over the tabloids. Yesterday, they dissected a photograph of me leaving a
restaurant hand-in-hand with Lily.

And then it hits me fully.

She’s my half-sister.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“And you’re at my house…? Do you know my mom?”

Emily waits impatiently for her daughter, about to
interject, but I do her a favor and shut down her inquiry.

“Not really,” I say. “She’s a friend of my father’s.”

“Mom,” she whispers. “You know famous people?”

Emily shrugs, her shoulders stiff.

And then my eyes catch a pin on the strap of the girl’s jean
backpack.
Mutant
&
Proud.
What are the odds? “You like
X-Men?”

“The cartoons,” she says. “
X-Men: Evolution
.”

“My girlfriend likes those too.”

“You mean your fiancée? I just read in
Celebrity Crush
that you’re getting married.” She rocks on her feet
and pushes her glasses further up her nose as they slide down. “Is it true?”

“Yep, it’s true.”

Her eyes brighten like she’ll have something good to tell
her friends tomorrow at lunch.

Emily widens the door so her daughter can pass. “Willow,
inside please.”

Willow examines me with an inquisitive gaze before she
resigns to her mother’s pleas. And then she slips indoors and out of sight.

“You named your daughter after a Buffy character?” Maybe we
like the same things, I stupidly think. Probably because Willow strangely does.

She frowns. “What?”

“The televisions show,
Buffy
the Vampire Slayer?
” She’s still confused. “Never mind.”

“What do you want, Loren?” she finally asks. “What did you
think would happen by coming here?” Her voice lowers and the door begins to
close so I can’t see past her body and into her house. I can’t see the life
that I never would’ve had. “You’re twenty-one. You’re an adult.”

“You’re not my mother. I think I got it,” I say roughly. I
hate
that I don’t hate her. Not even a
little bit. I take a step back, my eyes flitting over the house, over something
that I don’t want to destroy. I ruin everything I touch.

And I’m not going to mess up her life. Even if mine is all
fucked up. Right as I’m about to leave this all behind, something else catches
my eye in the window.

A girl. A child. No older than two or three. She peers through
the glass, clutching a stuffed dinosaur. I see me. Growing up and being lied
to. Never knowing about my brother and finding the answers in the most jarring,
horrific way. The secrets. The betrayal.

I face Emily again. She seems at peace with her decision and
her life, but she’s repeating the same mistake as my father. As Sara Hale. She
doesn’t see it now, but the lies she weaves will eat at her family from the
inside out.

“You should know,” I say, “that even though I’m not your
son, I’m still their brother.”

Her lips press in a line.

But I keep speaking. “And maybe you don’t see it like that,
but take it from someone who’s been in their situation before—
they
will.” I think of Ryke. “I’m not
saying that you have to tell them about me now or anytime soon, but they’ll
find out eventually. If not from the press, then from some stranger, and they
should hear it from you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she says shortly. “Anything else?”

Fuck you
. I can’t
say it though. I don’t really feel it. More like,
Fuck me. For being so stupid
.
For
thinking you’d care
.

I shake my head, everything draining from me like I’ve been
slit open on the sidewalk. I take another couple steps off the stoop, glance up
at the three-story brick house. Middleclass family. Happy. Normal.

I turn around and never look back.

{ 48 }

LILY CALLOWAY

With Lo in Maine, he wanted me to skip my therapy
session with Dr. Evans today, but the therapist called me and said that if I
skip, he’d contact my parents and tell them how poor my progress has been. So I
sit alone in Dr. Evans’ office, constantly checking my phone. Lo said he would
call after he sees Emily. If their meeting doesn’t go well, I’m worried that he
may choose to escape with alcohol. I really wanted to go, but at his request,
I’ve stayed here.

Dr. Evans applies the electrodes to my wrist and hands me
the small black box with all the wires poking out. He nestles behind his desk
in his seat, wearing a smug look. He loves the fact that Lo isn’t here to
interrupt the session.

“So are we doing magazines again?” I fidget in my seat, a
little nervous to be doing this with only Dr. Evans in the room. When Lo’s
here, it feels less weird.

“I think we should move on to another compulsion today.”

I try to wrack my brain. What else could I conquer with
aversion therapy besides fantasies and porn?

His eyes drop to my thighs. “It would have been easier if
you wore a dress or skirt, but I think you can manage.”

My heart bangs against my ribcage. Maybe I heard him wrong.

“I want you to masturbate. You’ll be shocked until your
brain responds to the negative stimuli.”

Oh my God.

My head moves on its own accord, shaking fiercely from side
to side. “No,” I blurt out. “No way.” I am not masturbating in front of him!

“Lily, your parents hired me specifically,” he explains.
“This is what works. You need to condition your mind to recognize masturbation
as a bad impulse.”

My parents are my weakness. I have vocalized that I’d do
anything
to fix what I’ve done. But how
far am I willing to go?

“Is there anything else I can do today?” I ask.

He mulls this over, fingers by his temple in thought. “I
suppose we can try something else,” he says to my relief.

Dr. Evans stands and walks to the front of his desk, he
leans his butt on the edge, the remote still in one hand. The other falls to
his zipper.
Oh fuck
. This is not the
something else
that I had in mind!

“What are you doing?” I croak, frozen in my chair.

“Whores like you are obsessed with male genitalia. You’re
going to look at it, touch it, suck it and I’ll shock you until you’re nice and
normal.”

“No.”

Rose found my
perfect
therapist, Dr. Banning, after meeting with horrible ones. And I wonder if she had
to put up with situations like
this
for me, just so I would avoid it. I know she did. I know because I remember the
look Connor and her shared when they were discussing therapists they visited
together.

Dr. Evans is already tugging down his silver zipper, and his
dick emerges from his khaki pants. My hands shoot to my eyes as the familiar
buzzzz
pulses in my skin.

I’m not looking. I’m
not looking. I’m not here. Not really
.

The room quiets, and I think maybe I’ve won.

And then I feel it. On my leg.

I jump up like my entire body has been electrocuted this
time. The shock box falls to the floor, ripping out the wires that connect to
the electrodes on my arm. I stumble back, my eyes bugging. Dr. Evans closes the
distance between us, right in front of me. I refuse to drop my gaze to his
dangling penis.

“Get away from me,” I sneer. I’m not about to fall to my
knees with my tongue lagging out of my mouth. I’m not the same girl who’d fuck
everything away for a quick high. I’m stronger. Even without Lo. I know that
now.

Dr. Evans shoos my threats, and he grabs my wrists. His
mouth finds my ear. “You will sit down and comply, or I’ll tell your parents
just how much of a whore you really are.”

Tell them
, is my
first thought. I won’t sacrifice my own pride, my own dignity for them. Nothing
in the world is worth the shame that I will feel from this. Nothing.

I stare right back and all my hate and resentment towards
everyone that has vilified me as a slut or whore rumbles up in two words. “Fuck
you.”

His grip tightens and I realize how small I am compared to
him, compared to any man. I might as well be a bag of bones. I take a deep
breath and scream, “GARTH!”

Dr. Evans presses a hand over my mouth and his other hand
starts descending to my shorts. “If you won’t do it yourself, I’ll have to do
it for you.”

I fight back and struggle against his hold, trying to bite
and kick, but he ends up pinning me back into the seat. His hand rests in
between my legs, pressing the spot over my pants. I can’t stop screaming against
his palm.

 
The door whooshes
open and before he can do anything else, my bodyguard bounds over and throws
him back against his desk. I shake like a trembling leaf, but I’m on my feet
and in one piece. Garth jostles Dr. Evans like a stuffed doll. He looks ready
to annihilate the man, so I’m surprised when he releases his grip. “You’ll be
hearing from Greg Calloway’s lawyers. I’d advise you to pack up your office
today.”

Garth turns to me and gives me a sympathetic, almost
apologetic, look. I’m just glad he was here. Lo was right about the bodyguard.

He ushers me out of the room, and I glance back for one last
image of my evil therapist. My heart does not slow down just yet. I think…I
think I’m in shock a little bit. I can’t close my eyes or blink.

Dr. Evans slumps down to the ground and stares dazedly at
the wires from the shock box.
 

“Are you okay?” Garth asks in the lobby.

“I think so.” I’m trying to sparse through my emotions. I
feel less like a wilted flower, but mostly, I just can’t stop breathing so
quickly. I rub my wrist. Yep, I’m in shock.

“Back home?” he wonders.

“Can we make a stop first?”

He nods and we drive a few blocks over to another high-rise.
My hands still shake, but they also feel a little disconnected from the rest of
my body. When we arrive at the office, I knock on the door, my breathing on a
slow descent.
 

The door swings open, revealing a woman with a black bob and
warm smile. I haven’t seen her in almost two months. I don’t realize how much I
missed her until her arms are around my shoulders, and mine are around hers.
Tears prick my eyes.
 

“Oh, Lily,” she says, “we have lots to talk about.”

Yes, we do. I know what good guidance looks like now, and
I’ll never let it go.

I wipe my eyes, about to tell her that I want to reinstate
our sessions. But something else tumbles from my mouth. “Do you think I can
call you Allison?”

“I’d like that very much.”