My hands cover my face. The crying hurts—it strangles me. I fight for breath. My eyes are straining closed. I bring my legs up on the chair, knees bent, pressing them tighter and tighter against my body.
“Hey!” Melonie shouts at me. She claps her hands twice. “Hey, Nic, where’d you go?”
I breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe.
“Nic,” she says again, leaning forward, her elbows resting on her gelatinous knees. “Nic, listen to me. I need you to sit up straight, okay. You need to sit up straight right now.”
I try ’n’ do what she says.
“Okay, good. Now I want you to put both feet on the floor. Good. Press down on the carpet. I want you to ground yourself. When you panic like that, all you’re doing is making things worse. Panicking is a way for people to not have to feel their real feelings. By panicking you work yourself up into such a frantic state that it’s no longer about what’s truly going on, it’s about the act of panicking. Understand? As long as you keep running from your feelings, you’ll never move past them. Right now you’re scared. You’re sad, too, but mostly scared. So what I want you to do is check in with your body. Try to find where it is exactly that you feel this fear. Is it in your head? Your stomach? Your legs? Then sit with the fear. Explore it. Try to understand it. Believe me, Nic, the fear of the fear is always much, much worse than the fear itself. Because when you sit with it, embrace it, the fear will begin to lose its power. And eventually it’ll be gone completely. And then you’ll be free. But as long as you keep running, Nic, you’ll never move past it. The fear and trauma will haunt you the rest of your life. Do you understand?”
I tell her I do, wiping my nose on the inside of my sleeve. The crying has stopped by now. My eyes are all swollen, and my throat is sore.
“Good,” she says, straightening up so her back goes pop. “So look, I have some business stuff I need to go over with you. But first I want to say two things. One is that, trust me, you are absolutely incapable of loving anyone. What you think is love for Zelda is actually something else entirely.”
My hands grip the metal arms of the chair, and I clench my teeth.
Still, I don’t say anything.
She continues with an even, meaningless smile.
“Zelda used you. She’s getting older and I’m sure terrified of what that means for her—since, from what I can tell, she’s always been dependent on her looks. You come along—young, attractive, and completely in awe of her—and she takes advantage of you with no thought to your well-being at all. She used you for her emotional and physical validation, then she tricked you into using again with her. You’re right, Nic, she is a black hole. So whatever love you think there is between you is not love at all—it’s codependency and mutual exploitation.”
I breathe in deep through my nose, helpless to do anything but nod my head.
I mean, what choice do I have?
I need her on my side if I’m ever gonna get out of this place.
So I nod and nod like the idiot I am.
And Melonie smiles—so goddamn pleased with herself.
“So the last thing I want to talk to you about is your twelve-step meeting schedule. From what I remember, you told me that you don’t believe in the twelve-step program, is that right?”
My teeth clench together again.
“Well, no, not exactly. All I was saying is that I feel sort of let down by it, you know? I mean, every time I’ve gotten sober I’ve been, like, so fanatic about the program. I give it everything I have—going to meetings every day, working with a sponsor, studying the twelve steps and all the literature until I can practically recite it all by heart. But the thing is, no matter how much I keep trying to do it right, I keep relapsing, you know? And I guess I just can’t figure out if it’s because the program doesn’t work for me, or because I’m not working the program right.”
Now it’s Melonie’s turn to nod self-consciously.
“And the higher-power thing? How are you feeling about that?”
I crack the knuckles on my left hand.
“I don’t know. I mean, I guess it’s sort of the same thing. I’ve tried so hard to believe, right? I’ve prayed and meditated and studied. But it’s never worked for me—I keep relapsing—and, you know, in the center of me, after everything, it just feels like there’s nothing there.”
Melonie’s still kind of bobbing her head for no reason.
“Okay, Nic, that’s okay. But the thing is, without twelve-step meetings, without a higher power, you have absolutely zero chance of staying sober. Now, I am impressed with the progress you’ve made regarding your girlfriend, and I’d like to take you off probation so you can go on outings with the other clients, but I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to do that until you agree to go to twelve-step meetings at least six nights a week. And I need you to get a sponsor and start working the steps as soon as possible, okay? It’s the only chance you have, Nic. And, believe me, there’s nothing so special about you that makes you any different from the millions of other people whose lives have been saved by the twelve-step program.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know. And I really do want to get involved in the program again. I mean, I’ve seen the way it’s helped all my friends back in LA.”
She swivels ’round slowly in her chair, grabbing a stack of papers and a clipboard off her desk.
“So you can agree to six meetings a week?” she asks.
I tell her I can, and she checks off a little box on the page in front of her.
“Also I
