Wide Open (23 page)

He turned me and took my face in his hands before kissing all the good sense out of me. I clung to his shirt as his arms pulled around me, hauling me into the arms that seemed to always be there lately, always ready to catch me. My arms moved on their own up around his head until all of me and all of him were touching as he kissed me gently. He leaned back just enough to speak, shaking his head. "This is what
the long haul
looks like." He kissed the end of my nose. "I'm not going anywhere. Get used to it, sweetheart."

My chest shook with a silent sob. He pulled my chin up and kissed my trembling mouth just as the door swung open.

"You don't have to do that outside like a couple of teenage delinquents. I am not Mom and Dad."

I looked over at Will and let my glare loose. "What the hell are you doing off the couch?"

"I'm older than you, warden. I'm the boss." He slapped Milo's upper arm. "Now come on. Bring my sister inside and make out in the house like a real man. Wait." He made a gagging noise. "That sounded weird."

Milo chuckled and I turned to him. "Um…I've got to go. I'll…" He looked at Will over my shoulder. "Make out with you in the house…like a real man…" Will nodded, "later."

"Yep!" Will called and went to go lie down again.

I laughed at them. Boys. "Okay. Will you tell me at least if you get fired or something? I mean…geez."

"I called work already. He was fine with it."

"You did?"

"You were busy." He shrugged. "It's fine."

"Thank you." He nodded. "No, really. Thank you."

"Maya," he sighed. "It's not a burden to be here. If you need me, call me. Anytime, okay? I meant what I said. I'm not going anywhere."

"I promise," I said and meant it, too.

He lifted my chin to kiss my lips once more before hopping off my porch. I watched him go the entire way. For once, I felt a little lighter. To not have to worry about Will all by myself felt amazing. I'd never had that before. I didn't know whether I should trust that or not, but Milo had trusted me with everything last night. He had laid it all out there for me to see.

So I would trust this. I would trust that when Milo said he wasn't going anywhere, he wasn't.

I didn't go into work that day, but Milo went to work and did some extra stuff to catch up. Will and I watched movies all day. He was acting fine. His attitude and demeanor were great, but his energy was way down. He wasn’t quite right, but he had just been in the hospital, so I tried not to push him.

I hated to go to work the next day, but I had to. I hated to leave Will, but he said he was fine and seemed to be. Or at least acted like he was. He was good at that. That night, Milo came over and had dinner with us. Before I knew it, a week had passed.

Joey was coming back into town for her dad's birthday party and wanted to do dinner with Milo. So he wanted to do dinner with Will and me, with them. He said that he and she didn't speak all that often anymore. I believed him. I believed that he would tell me the truth about it, but I would be lying if I said it didn't irk me a little that she was this huge, important part of his life that I wasn't a part of.

Will said he was feeling well enough to go out, so Milo took us to this place that made whole wheat wraps with organic vegetables and chicken. The pita chips and hummus were amazing.

Milo sat next to me and across from Joey, who sulked as if she were being set up with Will or something. Neither one of us was being the way we usually were with each other. I think we both knew why, but was it also because he was trying not to make Joey uncomfortable? Did he know that she had feelings for him? Every now and then he'd reach over and rub his pinkie against mine on the table and wait for me to look at him. Then he would smile like he'd been told he'd won the lottery. I was a little confused, but understood this was territory that needed to be breached gently. This was not a guns-a-blazing kind of fight.

"I thought we were eating Chinese?" Joey asked about halfway through dinner. "We always eat Chinese."

Milo glanced at me. I knew he was doing it for me. For Will. "Figured it wouldn't hurt to eat healthy once in a while. It's pretty good, huh?"

"Eh," she said, noncommittally.

See, that was the thing with her. It was like she was never mean, but never really nice either. She was never on board with either thing and it drove me crazy that I was never justified in my anger with her.

"Want to go get smoothies?" I suggested.

"Oooh! Some of my friends are throwing a party tonight, I think. I'll text them."

Milo sat silent. A party? "Uh, I don't think that's a good idea," I tried.

"What? Why?" She looked around. "Why not?"

"Well, besides the fact that Will isn’t feeling well, addicts really shouldn't be around drinking and things."

She kinda laughed. "Oh, Miles is fine. He's all better now. He wouldn't smoke a joint or drink a drop. He knows I would kick his behind."

I looked over at him and he was watching me, his eyes flicking from her to me.

I continued. "I'm an addict, too, but-"

"Oh," she said sadly. "If
you
can't handle it, then-"

"It's not really that, Joey. It's that you shouldn't put addicts in that position." She looked confused, her iPhone poised in her hand, texting finger at the ready. "It's like putting raw meat in front of a hungry dog and telling him he can't have it."

"Are you saying Miles is a dog?" she asked angrily.

I stood. "What?" What the hell? How did this happen? "No." I looked at him. Did he want me to defend him? Did he want me to fight her over him and do this? What if he was forced to choose over this? Is that what he wanted? Would he choose me? Would he be angry about that? Why was he just sitting there?

"All I was saying is that it's never a good idea to take an addict somewhere where they'll be tempted. They may say no and have no problem at all a million times, and then a million times and one is the time that they can't take it."

"No. I've worked with Miles and he is perfectly fine," she said proudly. "He would never do that to me." She hinged his whole being-clean-thing on his loyalty to
her
. Their friendship.

I spoke slow and soft. "No offense, Joey, but that's setting him up to fail. He needs to do it for himself, not because he'll disappoint someone else if he fails." She frowned and looked a little angry.

"At the meetings we teach that, yes, a sponsor is someone who helps keep us straight, gives us tough love, but the whole point of that is that the sponsor will do what needs to be done and not care about the addict getting angry with them. The addict needs to learn that disappointing people is going to happen in their life. They can't be afraid of that. What they need to figure out is how to not disappoint themselves. How to live with themselves and the fact that they wake up every day and
still
want to drink,
still
want to snort and get high and any other thing that comes their way to escape. They have to forgive themselves and move on; rely on themselves. Learn to be themselves again. Deal with their past. A sponsor is supposed to be an addict who has been through it all and knows exactly what a newbie would need, when they would need it, and what it would take to reach them. A sponsor isn't a crutch or a superhero. A sponsor is a kick in the butt every once in a while."

She looked like I'd grown two heads. She looked at Milo. He looked at her. I waited. She waited, too, seeing if he'd tell her I was wrong. She looked back at me. "But…"

"You did good, Joey," I soothed. Then I did something I thought I'd never do. I moved around the table and hugged her to me. I'd never hugged such a stiff board before. "Thank you for doing what you did. It doesn't even matter the whats and whys. You saved him." I leaned back and saw she had softened an incredible amount. "If you hadn't kept bringing him back to the shelter and making him stay clean…he wouldn’t be here," I whispered the last part, because I was about to lose it just thinking about it.

She stared into my eyes. It was the first time she really looked at me since we got there. "So, you both will always battle this?"

"Once an addict, always an addict," I explained softly.

"Oh." She seemed sad and confused. "I didn't really realize that. I thought once you were over it, you were…over it." She looked at him. "Why did you go to those parties with me if you were having trouble with your addiction?"

"I wasn't really having
trouble
," he confirmed. "But like she said, once an addict, always an addict. I could control it, but it never really goes away, Jo."

She stood and gawked at him. "But you said you were fine and I assumed you were."

"Define 'fine'. What does that even mean?" He smiled, but his eyes found me with that smile. I smiled back, proud of him. He knew exactly what was going to go down tonight. He needed this, wanted this. His lips twitched before his gaze swung back to Joey. "If it means that I can control myself and that I function like a normal person from day to day, then yes, I'm fine. Does it mean that I don't wake up every single day and think about wanting something, anything, just to take the edge off…then I'm not fine, and I never will be again. No addict ever is."

She plopped back down in her seat ungracefully. "Well…I wish you had said something."

"I felt like I owed it to you to try to be normal."

She sent him a sulky look. Then she looked at Will. "Are you an addict, too?"

"Do whole grains count?" he asked with a completely straight face.

She frowned, her face ticking to the side. "Is that some new thing you smoke?"

Will snorted. Milo bellowed and leaned his head back. Joey was so mad she was red, but it was funny. Eventually the boys stopped laughing at her and we all starting acting like we normally did, mostly.

By the time they brought dessert, I was missing Milo's touch like a physical ache. I sat up with my revelation. I was an addict with him. Was I? No. If it was a normal night, it would be fine. The fact that he didn't want to touch me because Joey was here was what was bugging me.

I heard him. "What's the matter? You don't like gluten-free pudding?" I turned to find Milo's face right next to mine. I stared at him, trying to find an answer to my question there.

"The pudding's fine. It's good."

"You're awfully quiet," he said softly.

"Am I?"

He nodded. "You okay?"

"Yeah. You're awfully far away," I remarked pointedly. "You okay?"

His eyes changed as if he were thinking. He looked between me and the wicker couch we were sitting on the veranda. Will and Joey were having a conversation across from us on their own couch about none of us having any family pets and how it was a travesty.

His eyes met mine again and a small fire could have started right there in my chest. His hand snapped up and wrapped around my neck, but he pulled me slowly and gently to him. His mouth met mine with pressure before pulling back. He looked almost…angry. "You thought I didn't want this?" he whispered. "You thought I wouldn't want you in front of Joey because…why?"

"I don't know," I said truthfully. I didn't know why he was so angry about it. "I believe you when you said you didn't feel anything for her that way."

"Then what?"

"I don't know, Milo. You're just different."

"You think she has a thing for me?" His voice was high and incredulous.

"Why is that so hard to believe?"

He scoffed. "Because she's
Joey.
"

I felt a scowl. "What? She's too beautiful for you? Is that it?"

He rolled his eyes. "
Good night
, Maya." He grabbed my hand and pulled me up a little roughly. Will and Joey looked up to see where we were going, but one wave from Milo silenced them both and they went right back to talking like none of it mattered.