“Hurting me? I’m perfectly fine,” I insisted.
Zoey let out a frustrated sigh. “Shall we take inventory? How many friends have you made in the past two years?”
“I don’t know,” I said, averting my gaze. “What do you want me to do, count them?”
“Please do. I know it won’t take long.”
“Look—”
“Next question. When was the last time you went to a party? Remember how excited you were about letting loose once you got to college?”
I began to toy with my earring. “Yeah, I was, but then I decided there was no point—”
“Next question,” Zoey interrupted. “How many times have you gone out on a date?”
Ha! “I saw Jack all the time last year,” I said triumphantly.
She snorted. “Meeting in either of your dorm rooms doesn’t count. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy you’re at least getting it from someone, but there’s nothing authentic or vulnerable about your arrangement with Jack. If he disappears tomorrow, you wouldn’t blink an eye. That’s not putting yourself out there.”
Frustration and anger rose in my chest. “I’m trying, okay? Give me a break. I can’t fall in love with someone on command.”
“You can’t fall in love because your heart still belongs to Oliver. A man you’ll never have.”
I knew she was right. I knew that whatever hope I had of rekindling things with Oliver should have burned out when months passed, and he never committed to seeing me in person. I knew that the texts we’d exchanged over the past two years were a poor excuse for a friendship, let alone a relationship.
Was there anything worse than logically knowing I should have moved on ages ago but being emotionally unable to do it?
Zoey reached over the counter and covered my hand with hers. “Are you still texting him?”
Shame filled me as I nodded. Zoey had told me to block his number more times than I could count, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
She sighed, shaking her head. “I’m not going to lecture you on that point again, but maybe if you’re not ready to get closure with Oliver, you can start by getting it with Jamie.”
I didn’t feel like Ineededany closure with Jamie until she said it. The image of him pale and unresponsive on that stretcher flashed inside my head. The way he’d practically begged me to take him to the hospital. I didn’t care about the lead singer, not really, but some part of me was curious to see what had happened with him. Had he really managed to turn his life around? If he had, maybe that meant there was still hope for me.
“I guess…” I still wasn’t fully convinced.
“C’mon, Ivy. There are plenty of good reasons to meet him. Do you really want to be the kind of person that makes someone’s recovery more difficult? Think about what ignoring his request says about you.”
I groaned. Zoey was a master of the guilt trip. I’d been intimately familiar with this superpower of hers for years, but it still made me squirm.
“Jesus,” I said. “Now, I’m going to spend all night thinking about what it says about me.”
She grinned. “Or you can just set up a fifteen-minute coffee meeting in a public place, and then move on with your life.”
“Goddamn it, Zoey.” I sighed. “Fine. I’ll set up a time to meet.”
8
JAMIE
As I satin the midday rush-hour traffic, amidst long rows of honking cars, I was beginning to better appreciate my new habit of being early for things.
For many years, I was never early for anything. In fact, I built such a reputation for being late, that the record label had to actually hire someone whose sole job was to make sure I showed up for the shows.
How things had changed in the past two years. Now, I woke up before the rest of my sleepy neighborhood, went to the gym, and if Google Maps told me that driving to my destination that day would take thirty minutes, I gave it an hour. I felt no urge to honk. It was a futile attempt at changing the reality of the situation. No, I was blissfully at peace in the leather seat of my car on a blisteringly hot LA day, blasting Queens of the Stone Age on the stereo, and knowing that I was safe in my few square feet of space from any temptation to drink.
That was the thing with recovery that I’d initially failed to properly appreciate. A relapse could be one trigger away, and the triggers were everywhere. The bottles that clinked as I walked past bar patios in Venice, the glint of a cocktail glass in a hotel when I went out of town, the sound of young women giggling at something late at night—all these things and so many more managed to rouse the cravings.
