Chapter 11 Maxx
chapter
eleven
maxx
i was going home. I couldn’t decide if I was glad or freaking the fuck out.
Part of me was ready because I had to be.
But then I thought about what leaving meant.
All the old temptations, all the old impulses, would be there, ready and waiting to pounce.
I hoped I was strong enough to resist them this time around.
I had spent the last thirty days convincing myself that I needed to stay, and now, here I was, convincing myself that I needed to leave.
Escape had always been my vice, and in many ways rehab had been just that.
Clean and sober escapism. Now it was time to man up and face the music of what lay out there .
. . in that place I couldn’t avoid forever.
I folded my shirts into neat piles and then put them into the duffel bag I had brought with me. Dominic sat on his bed, looking morose.
“I’m really gonna miss you, man,” he said, his head hanging low. I had gone out of my way to not make any connections, knowing that wasn’t what I was there for. But my roommate had latched on to me anyway. He wasn’t a bad person. He was just more than a little oblivious.
“You’ll be all right. You don’t have much longer in here yourself.
You’ll be out in no time,” I said, trying to be nice, even if I really wanted to tell him to stop being such a pussy and suck it up.
But then I looked at Dominic. Really looked at him.
He was that kid in high school who hung on the fringes, wanting to be liked and taking the teasing even though he knew people were laughing at him and not with him.
This was a person who didn’t need anyone else giving him shit.
Definitely not me, who wasn’t in a position to look down on anyone.
“I don’t know. My parents want me to do the full ninety days. They say I’m not ready to leave. That I’ll relapse,” he said miserably.
I rolled my eyes, wanting to smack the shit out of his ridiculous parents.
They hadn’t a clue what real addiction looked like.
If Dominic was addicted to anything, it was Ding Dongs and Doritos.
The only thing his drug of choice had done was to make him gain about fifty pounds and fanatically watch reruns of South Park for hours at a time.
I zipped up my duffel bag and threw it over my shoulder, determined that I would never make the Barton House my home again.
“Look, Dominic, you seem like a decent guy. Don’t let anyone decide your future for you.
You’re in charge of what happens, no one else.
If you think you need to be here, then stay.
If you don’t, then check yourself out. And good luck. I mean that.”
Dominic gave me a watery smile. “Thanks, Maxx. That means a lot coming from you.” He sniffled.
I turned and headed down the hallway, my steps lighter than they had been in a long time.
I stopped outside a closed door and knocked loudly and with purpose. I squared my shoulders and stood up straight. I was ready for this.
I had to be.
“Come in,” a voice called from the other side. I pushed open the door and walked into Stacey’s cramped office. It smelled like blueberry muffins and was filled with enough frilly shit that made me wonder whether she farted rainbows.
“Maxx. Come in, have a seat.” I did as I was told, choosing the only option available, a chair covered in bright orange upholstery. “I see that you’re all packed and ready to go,” she commented, indicating the duffel at my feet.
I kicked it with my shoe and nodded. “Yep. Just here to get the official sign-off and then I’m out of your hair.”
Stacey typed something on her computer, and then papers started coming out of the printer.
She looked up at me as she waited for the last of the paperwork to finish.
“You’re sure you’re not interested in the full ninety-day program?
Thirty days, while a great start, isn’t nearly as effective as the more intensive in-patient treatment plan,” she said, giving me the same shit she had been forcing down my throat for the last week.
I knew that she and the other counselors at Barton House thought I was making a huge mistake by not staying on for the longer program.
And there was that small part of me that agreed with them.
The whispering in my ear that told me that I wasn’t ready.
The self-doubt was almost crippling. But the truth was that the longer I stayed, the harder it would be for me to fix what I had messed up out there.
There was one thing I knew for sure, deep in my bones: I was going to take my newfound sobriety seriously.
“I’ll call on Monday and set up an intake at the clinic downtown. I’ll stick to the outpatient treatment plan,” I promised, taking the pile of paperwork Stacey handed me.
She nodded, handing me a pen. “That’s good to hear, Maxx, though you understand that coping with addiction triggers is much harder once you’re back in your own environment.
You have to make sure you have strategies in place to deal with them.
It’ll be tough. There will be days you will want to use.
So it’s extremely important that you keep those numbers on that last sheet handy, if you ever feel like you’re about to turn to drugs. ”
I flipped to the last page of the pile she had given me.
There was a list of numbers, including the statewide hotline and a crisis number at the rehab facility.
Christ, she acted as though my failing was inevitable.
Which sort of pissed me off. Because there was that voice again telling me that it was inevitable.
I’ll be there waiting for you. You can’t stay away from me forever.
I clenched my fists and worked on breathing through the sudden paralyzing apprehension. Maybe I should stay. Maybe I couldn’t do this.
I can do this! For Aubrey. For Landon. For myself.
I folded the paper and tucked it into my pocket and finished scribbling my signature on the required forms. When I was done, I handed them back to Stacey with what I hoped was a confident smile. “Thanks for everything,” I said, picking up my bag and getting to my feet.
“Don’t be afraid to admit you can’t handle things, Maxx.
You can’t control addiction. Addiction controls you.
The second you forget that, you’ve lost,” she said ominously, and I felt myself bristle defensively.
But I didn’t bite her head off. Because her words were ones I had thought a thousand times already.
Stacey gave me a wan smile and shook her head. “I really hope we don’t see you again, Maxx.”
I chuckled. “Well, thanks,” I replied blandly.
Stacey patted my back. “If we don’t see you again, then that means you’re doing all right. I really hope you succeed, Maxx.”
“Thanks,” I said again, wanting to get the hell out of there as fast as my legs could carry me.
Stacey walked me toward the front door. Hal, the security detail on duty, handed me a bag with my cell phone and a set of keys, the things they had confiscated when I had checked myself in.
“Take care, Maxx,” Stacey said, holding the door open for me.
“You, too,” I replied, actually meaning it.
I walked down the front steps and out into the driveway, where a cab waited to take me back to the real world.
I slid into the backseat of the cab and gave the driver my address.
He grunted in acknowledgment, and then we were driving away from Barton House and I refused to look back as we left.
I was ready to put that part of my life behind me.
I turned on my cell phone and it started to ding loudly in my hands. My screen lit up with a hundred texts and missed calls. Most of them from Marco and Gash.
Shit.
That was one piece of my world I wasn’t eager to have to deal with. Because I couldn’t go back there. That was obvious. It would be too easy to fall back into everything I had vowed to stay away from.
I was five minutes out of rehab and I was already hit with the strong urge to go back. Because fuck if Stacey wasn’t right. It was harder out here. Inside you could pretend these things didn’t exist. It made it easier to ignore the cravings. The desire to lose yourself all over again.
I erased every single text message without reading them.
It felt good to do that. I thought about calling Landon, letting him know I was out of rehab.
Maybe try to bridge that gap, but I didn’t think a phone call would erase the weeks of bad blood that had built up between us.
And truthfully, I didn’t have it in me to be rejected all over again.
The cab pulled up in front of my apartment building. I gave him my last ten-dollar bill and got out, duffel bag in hand, and walked up the narrow steps to the place where I lived but had never really been a home.
I dreaded going inside, knowing it was probably a mess. I had been in a rush when I got out of the hospital. I had come home, grabbed some clothes, and left, checking into rehab before I lost the nerve. I unlocked the door and was hit by the smell of lemons.
Lemons?
I turned on the light and looked around in shock. I had never seen my apartment so clean. The floors had been swept and the furniture dusted. All of the clothes I remembered being strewn across the floor were gone and there were even pillows on my couch. I didn’t even realize I had pillows.
I dropped my bag and walked into my kitchen, where the shock continued.
The dishes had been washed and put away.
There were dishrags folded and hung on the hook by the stove.
The cabinets had been scrubbed and the refrigerator gleamed white.
Further inspection revealed that the rest of the apartment was the same.
The bathroom was spotless, the tub had been cleaned, and the mold that had been a permanent fixture in the corners was gone.
I could eat off the floor, it was so damn clean.
Only two people had a key to my apartment, and I was pretty sure my landlord wouldn’t have bothered to do all this. He gave new meaning to the term slumlord. No, this was Aubrey. She was the only person who would think to come here and do this.
I walked into my bedroom and knew instantly that I was right.
All of my clothes had been washed and sat in the basket I didn’t even know that I owned.
My sheets had been changed and the covers pulled up.
And in the middle of the bed I could see the outline of an impression where someone had lain.
I ran my hand along the concaved pillow, indented where her head had been.
Aubrey had come into my apartment and cleaned it. Then she had lain down on my bed.
I kicked off my shoes and slowly lowered myself down on the exact spot where she had been.
I pulled the pillow to my face and thought I could smell her there.
I didn’t know when she had done this. It could have been weeks ago.
Or it could have been yesterday. I wasn’t exactly sure what it all meant except that she had come into my apartment and made it a home.
It was no secret that I wasn’t much of a cleaner.
And I was also aware of Aubrey’s OCD when it came to neatness.
The knowledge that she had thought about me at some point to come in and do this gave me a hope I hadn’t felt in a while.
As I lay on clean sheets and looked around my spotless bedroom, things suddenly didn’t appear so bleak.
I must have dozed off, because I woke up sometime later.
The sky had turned dark and the only light came from the soft glow of the clock on my dresser.
Hit by a desire that had become very familiar over the last few weeks, I jumped up and opened my closet, rooting around inside until I located a large container of sidewalk chalk.
I didn’t bother trying to find my paints, knowing that I had used up the last of them before I had gone into rehab.
I looked for my car keys, finding them in the same spot I had left them.
Driving my car after so long felt a bit like hanging out with an old friend.
It was a piece of shit, but it was my piece of shit and I had a crazy love for the clunking of the engine and the squealing of the brakes, even if these meant that it needed some serious maintenance.
I drove through town until I parked down the street from a particular brick building I knew all too well, though I had been inside only once.
I made sure to position my car behind a tree so I wasn’t immediately visible.
It wasn’t that late, but I noticed that the lights in the apartment on the third floor were out.
Feeling brave, I grabbed the chalk and walked down the street and stopped in front of the steps that led inside.
Dropping to my knees, I dumped out the chalk and grabbed the color I needed and started making long, harsh strokes.
It was hard to see, not the best environment to draw.
But I didn’t need to see what I was doing.
My hands didn’t need light to know what they were creating.
I didn’t know how long I was out there. It could have been hours or it could have been only minutes. People walked by, some stopping to watch me, others asking what I was doing. I ignored them.
When I was finished, I sat back on my haunches and squinted in the darkness at the final product.
It was hard to see, but what I could make out, I was pleased with.
My knees ached from kneeling on the hard concrete; my hands were covered in chalk dust. It was caked under my nails. My jeans were streaked with it.
I gathered the chalk that I had left and put it back into the container.
It wasn’t my normal medium, but I had to admit that it was easier to work with.
I just hoped it didn’t rain before morning.
I took one final look up at the darkened apartment and wondered if she would understand what I was trying to say.
Who was I kidding? She had always understood me better than I understood myself.
The picture wasn’t much. But in this crazy, fucked-up world I found myself in, it was the only way I could get her to see me. And right now, that was something.