I realize how crazy that sounds. But I was 100 percent sure of it; there were no butterflies in my stomach, only the certainty that this could be my last chance. For me, having the confidence to express that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with someone as well as confess my addiction was my way of saying, “You’re going to have to help me with that last one.” I wasn’t surprised in the least that Melissa didn’t balk. I saw something in her eyes the moment I looked into them: everything was going to be okay.
Crack addict, alcoholic, tabloid mainstay, political punching bag—it all had become such a profound part of who I was that it made it seem impossible I’d ever find somebody willing to work past any of those things.
Yet Melissa didn’t flinch. She didn’t turn away in shock or disgust. I told her about my addiction and my alcoholism. I told her about my divorce and about Hallie. I told her about my brother, my mother, my baby sister, my grief. I told her about my pain, about what they refer to in AA as the “God-sized hole” inside me. I rolled out an unvarnished version of the last four years and beyond.
Melissa absorbed it all. There was no stigma to addiction for her. She had known and loved too many friends and acquaintances who’d battled it, and she was committed to staying in the battle with me. She saw addiction as something the soul had to work through and be done with before one could move on to the next great thing. Setbacks weren’t world-ending. She put a karmic topspin on Beau’s part-of-the-process approach, but they amounted to the same thing. I felt in strong and steady hands.
Melissa then unreeled her story. She was a thirty-two-year-old activist proficient in five languages ranging from Italian to Hebrew and an aspiring documentary filmmaker who had spent time living with and filming indigenous African tribes. As a toddler she was placed in a children’s home for a year before being adopted by a South African family with three boys, in Johannesburg. She had come to the U.S. to visit friends in L.A. during a gap year after attending the University of Johannesburg, intending to go on to India, but stayed when she fell in love and got married. It didn’t last long. A two-year live-in relationship had ended just a few weeks before.
In fact, Melissa explained that she’d canceled on me so many times that day because she’d just flown back from visiting one of her brothers, who now lived in Atlanta. He’d consoled her over the breakup of that relationship, which she knew she should’ve exited much earlier. I later learned she’d told me things that night that she’d never talked about with anyone.
We hardly noticed the waiter whenever he came by; I guess we ate and drank. Two hours in we were discussing the kind of life each of us wanted. Before long, we mused about the kind of life we could have together. We both agreed we wanted to stay in California. When I told her about my three daughters, she said she’d love to have children someday. Not long after that, we talked about the possibility of that being something we could do together.
It went on like that for more than three hours. It was intense, raw, utterly bewitching. Melissa later said she felt as if she’d met a friend she’d known her whole life, but whom she’d been separated from for years and was finally getting to see again. I felt completely at ease, wide-open, mesmerized.
By the time we left, the tree lights strung around us twinkled in the gathering dusk. The scene had turned magical. I drove Melissa to meet up with a friend at the Chateau Marmont—thank God all I got was a smirk and a nod from one of the valets—and we went from there to a birthday party for another friend of Melissa’s at a nearby Mexican restaurant. Everyone was gathered around one big table. Amid all the unfamiliar faces, I felt a familiar twitch. I’d been so enraptured during dinner that I hadn’t hit the pipe all night. It was the longest I’d intentionally gone without using since I’d landed back in L.A. Now, before sitting down, I told Melissa I was going to run out to get a birthday gift, and assured her I’d be right back.
I drove to the hotel and headed up to my room. Before locating my pipe, I settled into a chair near the window, took a deep, reflective breath, and closed my eyes for just a moment, pausing to absorb everything that had happened that evening. When I opened them again, it was 7:15 a.m.
I panicked. I thought I’d blown my one chance at salvation. I fumbled around for my phone and saw a text Melissa had sent sometime after I left the restaurant the night before.
“Is everything okay?”
I texted back immediately to say how sorry I was. I told her I’d returned to my room exhausted and fell asleep. I promised it was an honest mistake.
Fifteen long minutes later, Melissa replied.
“Glad you’re okay. What are you up to today?”
“Spending time with you?” I typed hopefully.
Melissa asked if I wanted to come by her apartment and go from there to get breakfast. I raced over and apologized fifty times for flaking out the night before. She insisted it was no problem. We sat for a minute on the couch inside her modest one-bedroom in a pink stucco complex just up the street from the Petit Ermitage, whose verdant rooftop pool was visible from the fourth-floor walkway outside her front door. I lowered my head into her lap, then didn’t wake up until that night. Opening my eyes and seeing that she was still there, I remember telling her, with utter relief and
