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. Maybe 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 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’ve never have slid down that slippery slope into Layla.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Layla.” Joanne adds, flashing me another happy grin. “Do you knit?”
Crap.
Do I have to make small talk with her? With anyone?
She gestures to her canvas bag, spilling over with yarn and 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, and 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.
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 and as I scan their faces all I see are their secrets.
Then my blood goes both hot and cold when I see him. The guy from last night with the scar across his right cheek.
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 now of what happens when you go too far.
I’d be able to handle this better if I could extradite 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, the West Village tattoo shop where I work, was the hottest girl I’d ever seen, and so damn innocent looking – a combination that killed my self-resolve to start over. She had a sweet smile, a sexy tee-shirt and a skirt that left just enough to the imagination at first. She wasn’t like the women I was used to. She was the total opposite. She wasn’t like my regular customers at the shop either. She’d never been inked, and she didn’t look like the type who’d want to mark up her body. She was the kind of girl who’d wear pearl earrings, and blow dry her hair, and apply pink lip gloss. She was all Manhattan preppy, gorgeous blond hair, and brown eyes, and so not the type for a tat.
“Can you do a red ribbon? Like this?” She handed me a drawing that was printed out from the Internet.
“Yeah. I can do whatever you want.” I held the paper, appraising the illustration. I figured it was a cause tattoo, like for all those charities that use red ribbons. “Anything special about red ribbons?”
“They’re special to me,” she said, and that was all she said on the subject. But we talked about everything else – drawing and music and school and what we wanted out of life – as she sat in the chair, and pushed up her sleeve to her shoulder, and it was a damn good thing I knew how to concentrate because I could smell her. She had on some kind of wild cherry lotion, and the scent drove me wild, along with her hair, her eyes, her body.
Which made zero fucking sense since I’ve never been attracted to girls younger than me.
Never ever ever.
But maybe the scar I’d landed last month was all I needed to change my ways.
When she was done, and I gave her the post-care instructions, she said thanks, and then turned on those hot little heels and started to walk out.
That’s all.
Nothing more.
But I wanted more. My shift was over, so I followed her to the door, and said, “Don’t go.”
I didn’t have time to craft a line, or feed her some bullshit, and trust me. I know how to feed lines. I know how to spin them on the spot.
But I didn’t want to lie anymore.
We went out for coffee, and we wandered around Manhattan, and there was this strange vibe in the air, like we were in Europe and had met on a backpacking trip, and only had twenty-four hours to spend, and so we spent them together.
There was a ticking clock all night long.
We went back to my apartment near school, and I hadn’t had a thing to drink, but I felt buzzed and tipsy just being near her.
We didn’t go all the way. But 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.
So when I walk into my first meeting of Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, I grab the doorway, and hold on. This whole room is rocking, like we’re on a ship, and hit choppy waters. I must be seeing things. There’s no way she can be here.
My heart trips over on itself, then it sputters out of control and collapses.
Harley.
She’s the only girl I’ve ever been with who’s not older than me. She’s the only girl where it didn’t feel like a fix.
And, evidently, she’s a lot like me.
No wonder the clock was ticking last night. We both took one last 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 the night with her is the last I’ll have like that for a long time. Even this Joanne lady running the show issues the reminder – some sort of rule we should follow. A guideline so we can stop being fucked up from sex.
“And 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.
At the end of the meeting, I do something I’m willing to bet is forbidden in whatever group laws have been laid down. I doubt we’re supposed to chit chat with the opposite sex, with someone who could be all our temptations, who could be a fix.
