Chapter 17
NIK
A paper tower of new-hire potentials leaned scarily to the side, and my hand darted out just before it took a nosedive toward the floor. It took a couple of days, but I’d finally figured out a three-stack system of potentials, interviewed, and completed hire dates.
My brain hurt. There was a part of me that wanted to give every single one of these people a shot at working here, but I knew that wasn’t possible. Seeing their loose grip on sobriety shook me to my core, a reminder that falling off the wagon wasn’t too far away. After reading the same application three times, I pushed it aside. I needed a break.
I didn’t want to do this. This was too much responsibility, and who the hell was I to make the choice of who was “qualified” and who wasn’t? These people were desperate to move on, and I sure wasn’t a good judge of their potential for success.
In a perfect world, Chance could continue doing the new hires, but it was always meant to be temporary. His heart was in his carpentry studio working on his build-to-order business. But until I found the right way to tell Duncan that I didn’t think I was cut out for this, it would be up to me to carry on.
The office door opened, and Duncan walked inside, his phone tucked against his shoulder as he headed to his computer. I got up to make a pot of coffee, knowing by the look on his face he was going to need it.
“Yeah, he has a shift on Wednesday,” Duncan said, his mouth clicking furiously. He nodded along to whatever someone said to him on the other side and hummed. “All right, I’ll keep in touch with you. Thanks. Bye.”
“Who was that about?” I asked, heading back to my desk and pulling another new hire application out.
“Walt,” Duncan said with a tired sigh. “I was on the phone with his sponsor because he’s called out three times in the last week, and I’m worried this week he’ll just abandon his shift entirely.”
Sunrise Market’s call-in policy was very forgiving for employees who had court dates, therapy appointments, or check-ins with their parole officers. Duncan also had a working relationship with those contacts to verify that they were real and not some made-up excuse. But Walt was a straight shooter and usually loud about when he had to go to show up somewhere because he “hated getting up early in the morning if there wasn’t any monetary benefit,” and all of those meetings were pretty fucking early.
“He got any appointments today?” I asked Duncan, my heart shooting up to my throat as I watched Duncan shake his head out of the corner of my eye.
“Checked in with everyone. He did a no-call for a therapy appointment on Monday, and he hasn’t called his sponsor back.”
Pressing my tongue against the roof of my mouth, I tried to push away the sudden burst of nausea twisting in my stomach. The last time I’d worked with Walt, he was acting like his usual grumpy-ass self, grouching about how humid the weather had gotten.
I grabbed my phone on the desk and wrote out a quick text to Walt.
Hey, you doing okay?
Who knew if Walt would text back, but it was worth a shot. When a mug of black coffee appeared on an empty spot near the stack of papers of potential new hires, the overwhelming bold scent made me scrunch my nose. I looked at the thick black liquid and pushed it away.
“Bro, no offense, but the last thing I want right now is that,” I said.
Duncan turned in his rolling chair to rest his elbow on his desk and cross his legs. “I know, and I had a feeling you’d say that, but now I have your attention.”
“All right, you got my attention,” I said, slumping into my chair. “What do you want to say?”
“It never gets easier. I know that every single person I hire to work here has a greater chance of using again than not. Some of them do everything by the book and still fall off the wagon, leave, and never come back.” Duncan exhaled a shaky breath. “It’s always heartbreaking. Let’s just say that if anyone chooses to do this only for the successes, they’re a damn fool.”
I knew that there were people who came here that probably weren’t going to last long. I knew what the stats were about going back to using. Hell, I was one of them. But to face failure as much Duncan did, and to do it on purpose?
“So, then, why do you still do this?” I asked.
Duncan pursed his lips and tapped his thumb against his lip ring and shifted his away. He looked at me, his hazel eyes shiny, and whispered, “I do it for the scant few that do it and get clean and sober. That’s worth everything.”
There was a thickness in Duncan’s voice that made my eyes burn and my throat ache. What Duncan said poked at the entire belief I’d spent years living that the only thing stopping me from using was keeping my life predictable.
I turned to the tons of applications on the desk. So many people looking for a change, people who needed the opportunity to try. Walt wanted to be clean.
“Okay, so he’s not picking up his phone. How many hits does he get before he’s out?”
“We’re not going to terminate him because he’s not answering his phone, I promise.” Duncan patted my arm, and I looked up at him. “But I also can’t keep him on the payroll if he’s not reliable.”
“I know. Just let me know if you find anything out?”
“I will,” Duncan said with heavy promise in his voice as he pointed to the door. “Hey, I know you haven’t been doing the onboarding stuff long, but it can get a bit intense at times. Wanna take a long lunch break together?”
“For real for real?” I asked, my eyebrows flying up. Duncan laughed as he nodded, and I shot up from my chair. “Bro, say less. My eyes were crossing from reading and thinking too much.”
“You’re doing great,” Duncan said with a sincerity that made me feel appreciated. “How do you feel about sandwiches?”
We ended up at a place Duncan loved, a local joint that served locally sourced bread and ingredients. It wasn’t until I was about three bites into my sandwich that he asked, “What did you get into while Chance and I were gone? Aside from hanging out with Tristan and Kurt.”
I froze with my sandwich halfway to my mouth. Oil began to drip down the side of my hand, and I sat it down, grabbing several napkins from the dispenser and wiping up the mess.
“I went to Astral Motion.”
“Alone?”
I shook my head, balling up the napkin and tossing it on the table. “No. With a group of people. You don’t know them. Well, not all of them.”
“So, I know some of them?” Duncan asked, amused.
I pulled my Styrofoam cup of Diet Coke toward me. “You know one. Micah.”
At this, Duncan’s eyebrows flew upward. “I didn’t know y’all knew each other.”
“We didn’t. I mean, not before a month ago. We met at the party Destiny threw for Jonah’s grand opening.”
Of course, my brain took this opportunity to remember that night I’d met Micah, the way he took my breath away the first time I saw him. How he took me back to his apartment and turned me inside out. I sucked down my drink to cool off the heat on my face.
“Ah,” Duncan said, with a tone of understanding, and that only made me want to bury myself alive even more.
“It’s nothing serious,” I said, but it felt all wrong to say that, like I was lying. Maybe it’d started that way, but it didn’t feel like much of a hookup anymore. But I didn’t want to go making assumptions and an ass of myself in the process.
“That’s okay,” Duncan said, and I knew he meant it. “Did you have fun?”
“Yeah, for the most part. There was this chick I used to party with who saw me there and offered me some stuff. I didn’t take it, of course.”
“I figured.”
I began to bat the napkin back and forth between my hands. “Yeah, well, that’s cool you have that much faith in me, but I didn’t until that moment. Like, I’ve been clean for five years, and I still worry that it’s a possibility.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being vigilant. That’s why you have a support network in case it does come up or you’re thinking about it. But it shouldn’t stop you from trying new things or doing things you used to do every once in a while.”
“See, you say that, but how many people have we seen at work that fall off the wagon?” I said, slapping my hand over the balled-up napkin. “I’m not much different than them.”
“But what about the people who come and work at Sunrise and then never touch drugs again? Ever think maybe you’re like them?”
That was a tough one. Duncan had said that to me before, countless times. For a long time, I didn’t think that I had much going for me outside of keeping myself above water. Then Micah came crashing into my life and made me feel alive for the first time in five years.
“No, I hadn’t, but maybe I should,” I whispered, too scared to say it any louder in fear that this moment would shatter.
“I’m really proud of you, Nik,” Duncan said, hazel eyes shiny, his voice holding emotion I’d never heard before.
I pushed his sandwich basket at him and cleared my throat. “Let’s finish this up because someone’s put me in charge of the new hires. Which, still ain’t sure if it’s for me, but that’s a convo for another day.”
“I look forward to it,” Duncan said with a laugh.
We finished our lunch and headed back to Sunrise. Duncan talked about some waterfall that he and Chance found when they went on a hike during their weekend away and about a pretty outlook they’d found together.
It was nice to get away for a bit. But when we got back, Walt had called and left a message saying he wouldn’t be able to make it to work on Wednesday.
I checked my phone to see if he’d texted me back, and he hadn’t. I wasn’t really the praying type, but I took a moment to put out as much energy as I could into the universe, hoping that wherever Walt was, he could remember he wasn’t alone.