Chapter Twenty-Five Lies Aren’t Better After All
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lies Aren’t Better After All
We’re sitting on the couch with two mugs of steaming tea between us. Nikki changed into some borrowed clothes of mine while
I put hers in my dryer. I’m trying not to get too distracted by the sight of her in my hoodie, but it’s sending strange and
delicious thoughts spiraling through my head. There’s just something about her tucked up on my couch, in my tiny sleep shorts
and oversized hoodie, that has my primal brain howling at the moon to make her officially mine.
I think we’ll get there.
No, I know we will. She showed up for me, she keeps showing up for me, and if we’re going to have a real chance, I need to
not just trust that but also do the same for her. It’s time we get our lives together, for real, as equals who love each other,
instead of desperate apologists and angry has-beens.
Nikki stirs the sugar into her tea and takes a deep breath. “Is there anywhere in particular you want me to begin?”
I consider the options, latching on to the most glaring thing I saw before I closed the document. “Your book says you’re sober.”
“I am,” she says seriously.
“You had a beer that time you came over here.”
“No, I held a beer that was forced on me by your friend. I never took a sip.”
“What about at the bar? The whiskey. You said—”
“Didn’t drink that either,” she says, looking me right in the eyes. I can tell she’s taking this seriously. “You asked me
how much I had to drink and I said, ‘Not enough,’ because that night, having none didn’t feel like enough. I didn’t give in,
though. I never took a sip. I only ordered it to prove to myself that I could. I wanted to feel like I had a choice, since
things with you felt very out of control that night.”
“That seems very dangerous.”
“It was, and very stupid. I called my sponsor the next morning to tell them what happened and went to an extra meeting that
afternoon.”
“Meetings? Are you in AA?”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to ask that,” she says with a laugh. “The second ‘A’ does stand for ‘anonymous,’ you know,
but since I’m the one who brought it up: yes, for years now. I did inpatient for a while—the good old ‘exhaustion’ rumor.
Then I did a long-term outpatient day treatment and progressed from there. I’ve been going to meetings pretty regularly ever
since.”
I tilt my head, suddenly putting it all together. “All those visits to the church across the street.”
“Did you think I got really into religion or something?” She smiles. “I guess I did a little, but not all organized like that
and definitely not that one. No, there’s a women’s meeting there three days a week and a general meeting the rest. I’ve been going whenever I’m in town. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t fall off the wagon and I also wanted to make sure I wasn’t just trading addictions.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re very . . . enticing,” she admits. “I wanted a place to process my thoughts and make sure I wasn’t trading one addiction
for another or having sex with you instead of dealing with my emotions.”
My breath catches, snagging on her verbalizing what has been my biggest fear this whole time. “Were you?” I ask quietly.
“No,” Nikki says, shaking her head. “Which is why it hurt so bad when you accused me of it.” She looks away. “The first time
we were together was impulsive, I admit it. I did some soul searching and some extra meetings after that, and I really think
that I went in with my eyes open the rest of the time I was here.
“I think you may have been, though, but I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and see how it all played out. Was it a little
pathetic of me? Yes. Was it me falling back into my old codependent routine? No. I don’t think so. I had a lot of discussions
with my sponsor and my therapist about it, and while they weren’t exactly thrilled with how everything was going down, we
talked through all the possible outcomes and why I was willing to take that risk,” she says, waving her hand. “Believe it or not, I had a couple boundaries. We just didn’t
hit them until that last night.”
“What were they?” I ask, thinking over all the time we spent together these last few months.
“If I felt bad after being intimate with you, instead of good, was the biggest one. My care team felt like that would be a red flag that we shouldn’t ignore, and I never did until that night.
If you were cruel to me was another one—not angry, I did things to deserve that, but actually cruel for the sake of being cruel. ”
“You thought I would do that to you?” I ask, frowning at the realization that she was making an even bigger leap sticking
around here than I realized.
“I thought you were very upset with me,” she says, “and that I caught you out of the blue. I didn’t know what to expect.”
“Was there anything else?” I ask, nervous about the answer.
“I had one other big one,” she says. “If I thought we were hurting each other instead of healing, then I needed to leave for
good. My therapist’s advice was to ‘be curious.’ It’s one of his favorite sayings whenever I get anxious about anything. ‘Don’t
get upset, don’t try to predict, just be curious.’” She laughs, lowering her voice in an apparent impression of him. “‘Watch
what happens and adjust accordingly instead of wasting your energy worrying about something you have no control over.’”
“It’s that easy for you to do?”
“God no.” Nikki laughs. “But the plan was, whether you remembered you were in love with me or we got closure instead, I was
going to ‘be curious’ and see how it all shook out,” she says, taking in my raised eyebrow. “Hey, I’m not saying I didn’t
have an agenda! I was hoping it would go a certain way, but I also recognized that there could be beauty in an ending between
us—a real one this time. We left things in such an ugly way that first time. If the only thing that came out of seeing you
again was a period at the end of our sentence instead of an angry exclamation point, I think it still would have been worth
it.”
“Wow,” I say, and I mean it. “That is . . . really, really, healthy.”
“I’m trying. I still screw things up a lot, though, don’t worry,” she says and then bites her lip. “What else do you want
to know?”
I take a deep breath. “I was kind of wondering if you really didn’t know I was here when you decided to come to town and finish
the book.”
“I’ll swear on whatever you need me to. I had no idea you were here. That part was just fate or luck or whatever you want
to call it.” She smiles. “I rented the cabin to write the book . . . but you’re right in that it wasn’t the only reason I came. This place felt like the closest I could be to you, since I had no idea where in the world you actually were.
There’s this thing when you can’t make actual amends to the people you’ve hurt—you’re supposed to find other ways to kind
of balance things and make peace with them. That’s the other reason I was here.”
“How were you going to do that?”
“I was going to see what the town needed and donate it—maybe a little garden or green space? I didn’t have a great plan.”
She shrugs. “I just knew I wanted it to be here, anonymously, and involve flowers or plants somehow. I was still working up
the courage to go talk to the town planner about it. Doing that felt so final—I wasn’t quite ready—and then you texted.”
I nod, trying to process everything Nikki just said. She was going to let me go, put her apology out into the universe, with
flowers. Here. I might’ve walked by them a hundred times and never known. Nikki could have come and left while I sat here
still trying to hate her because I was too scared to admit that I made mistakes too.
“We might need two anonymous gardens, actually,” I say, giving her a sad smile. She quirks her eyebrows up in a silent question.
“It feels a little ridiculous. You were doing all this work on yourself the whole time, while I was hiding here, mad about
a stolen role because I was too much of a coward to admit that some of it was my fault too. Not to mention that ghosting you
after everything we’d been through was probably not the best way to extract myself from the situation. I called Janet, by
the way, my old therapist. I’ve been working with her a few times a week since you left this last time—it sounds like we’ve
been talking about a lot of the same things as you have.”
“That’s good.” Nikki shifts in her seat, sucking in her lips as she sets her mug down.
“I really am sorry for how I left,” I say, and she shakes her head. “It was probably the most traumatizing way to handle it
for both of us.”
“No, you had to. I don’t blame you for—”
I hold up my hand, cutting her off. “I had to leave, yes, but I didn’t have to pack up in the middle of the night without
a goodbye. We had been together for years and I didn’t even leave a note. I picked so many fights and lied to myself that
the stolen role was the straw that broke the camel’s back.” I swallow hard. “But the truth is, I think I just wanted to be
done anyway. Not only that, but by the time I left I was so messed up and bitter, I think I wanted you to be scared for me the way I spent so many nights being scared for you. I wanted you to hurt, and that’s . . . It’s not the right way to go
about things. I don’t regret leaving, I can’t be sorry about that, but I am horrifically sorry for the way I chose to do it.”
“Thank you,” she says, meeting my eyes so I can see the sincerity in them. “I know that was hard to say and it means a lot.”
She scratches the back of her neck, hesitating. “There’s something else I should probably clear up, though, before we go any
further.”
“Oh god,” I say, jokingly bracing myself to try to lighten the mood. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Nikki gives me a small smile. “Okay, so, I . . . I don’t really know where to start with this.” She shakes her head. “I guess
I’ll just say it. I never stole your role. I wouldn’t have done that to you, not even back then. That’s not part of the flower