This is karma coming back in the worst way. I was a douche growing up and while I was doing coke, and I hurt a lot of people. Now Kim’s shown me that I can hurt too. Feeling the way I do now makes me want to repent every misdeed I’ve done in the past. I have the urge to look up the chicks I dated and tell them how sorry I am that I was such a dick to them in high school and after. I should’ve known that someone like Kimberly was too good for me, even though most people would see it the other way around—according to Hollywood standards, I should have another A-lister on my arm, someone famous or the daughter of someone famous. Definitely not the daughter of a man who happens to run an exclusive rehab facility that caters to snobby rich kids like myself.
It occurs to me that that’s the classic fairy-tale romance that everyone is always looking for—minus the rehab part, of course. Celebrity falls in love with average girl, and they live happily ever after. Except we met at rehab, so that makes our story more like a Brothers Grimm version. Addict falls for his drug counselor, but in a twist of fate he’s drugged by his former dealer, and the one woman he wants to be with single-handedly destroys everything he thought was starting to go right in his life when she refuses to believe he’s telling the truth.
Maybe Kim saw the fairy tale turning into a nightmare and that’s why she left. I’d much prefer that she think she can’t fit into my Hollywood life than to believe I cheated on her or that I went back to snorting cocaine. And it’s funny, but this is why coke is the perfect numbing agent: it shuts off your thoughts. Your brain receptors shut down and you float through life on this high that you never want to come down from.
There are so many things I want to say to Kimberly. But the most important is that she didn’t need to love me in order to save me; she just needed to be my friend. Though it would have been hard if she didn’t feel the same love for me as I felt for her, I think in the long run I would’ve been perfectly fine with having her as someone I could trust, someone I could talk to when I needed to hear a voice of reason. But now I don’t even have that.
I don’t have her.
I don’t have anyone.
—
Someone is pounding on my bedroom door. I jolt awake and rub my eyes, swollen from crying. They open slowly, painfully. My mouth is dry and my lips chapped. Rain pelts the windows. The bedside clock flashes red numbers at me; there must have been a power outage at some point. I get up and press the switch for my bedside lamp. I search for my cellphone to see the time; when I find it, it’s dead.
“Shit,” I mutter as I make my way to my bedroom door. I twist the knob, only to find it won’t open. I must’ve locked it when I came home earlier. I unlock it and open it, and I’m shocked to see Kimberly standing there, her hair matted and makeup running down her face.
My hand rests on the doorknob, and my heart is beating loudly, drowning out the rainstorm outside. If I let her in, I’m letting my wounded heart bleed more. If I close the door in her face, I’ll always wonder why she came here in the middle of the night during a storm.
I’m torn. It would be easier to just walk away. I can heal, move on, and pretend that the past two months never meant anything to me. With the success of Virtuous Paradox, getting laid won’t be an issue. And I’m sure Rebel much prefers if I don’t have a girlfriend.
Except I love Kimberly and I want to be with her. And even if I can’t be with her that way, if she doesn’t love me, I need her in my life. I need the support she can offer me. Even if all we can be is friends, she’ll be there in the middle of the night when I’m feeling like I can’t do this anymore.
For that reason I step aside and let her in, closing the door behind her. In the end, I need her in my life in any capacity that I can have her.
“Hi,” she says after a long moment of silence between us. I wanted to be the first one to say something, but the lump in my throat has prevented me.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, my tone harsher than I intended it to be. She takes a step back, and for some reason I find it comical that she’s caught off guard by my tone.
She brushes the wet hair from her face, takes a deep breath. “I had to come here, to talk to you.”
“So talk.” I go over to stand by the window and watch as the rain splashes in the pool. When she doesn’t say anything, I glance at her.
She looks down for a second before bringing her eyes back up to mine and squaring her shoulders as if she’s preparing for battle. “I’m sorry about not believing you earlier. I foolishly looked you up on the Web one night and found numerous pictures of you and Aspen. I figured she was one of your triggers. So when I saw you guys together I…I didn’t know what to do. I’m in love with you, but I feel like I’m having to compete for your time. Our schedules are different. You stay up all night, whereas I’m usually in bed by ten. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to fit in with your lifestyle, and you’ll forget about me.”
When Kimberly pauses, I open my mouth to speak, but she holds her hand up and goes on. “I never had any difficulty working with other patients one-on-one, but from the moment I met you in the parking lot you made my insides quiver. I found it hard to breathe when you were near, and I was giddy every time I saw you. I should’ve asked that you be reassigned to someone else to help in your recovery, but I’m selfish. Falling for you while you were at Serenity Springs was ethically wrong, but I did it anyway.” She stops, her gaze fixed on me.
At last I ask, “Why’d you leave?”
Kimberly shakes her head and wipes away tears. “Because I thought you chose drugs and her over me, and I couldn’t bear to hear that from your mouth. When I asked at the club what was going on, the look you gave me was soulless. There was nothing but a void in your eyes, and I thought that I had lost you. I knew Aspen was my competition; I just didn’t expect to run into her so quickly.”
“She’s not your competition, Kimberly. She’s not even in your league.” I push away from the wall and sit down in a chair. Taking a deep breath, I tell Kim the story about Aspen. “Aspen was a friend for a long time—her mother is an actress, so we’ve run in the same circles for a long time—and when I needed a pick-me-up, she was there with the coke. Aspen was my dealer, for lack of a better word. I stupidly let her move in with me because that meant I could get high anytime I wanted. We were never lovers, although s
he tried many times and we did fool around.
“But I don’t love her. I never have. You’re the one I’m in love with.” I look straight into Kim’s eyes. “But if you can’t trust me, then this isn’t going to work.”
“I know,” she says, shaking her head.
My heart falls. I thought she’d come here to tell me she wants me back, but now I don’t think that’s it. I don’t want to accept that our relationship is over before it even really had a chance to grow, but that’s my reality right now.
Kimberly walks over to me and stands in front of me. I fight the urge to touch her, keeping my hands glued to my thighs. When she starts crying, though, it’s my undoing, and I pull her into my arms—against my better judgment, because touching her and not being able to be with her is going to be the death of me. Her hands grip my shirt and she cries into my shoulder. This makes me want to scream at Aspen again, but what’s the point? Aspen needs help and isn’t going to get it before it’s too late.
“I’m sorry, Bodhi.”
“I’m sorry too, Kimberly. I thought things would be different. That you’d trust me and believe in me. I can see what Dr. Rosenberg means by new relationships beginning just after rehab not being a good idea. They probably don’t start off very healthy.”
We sit there together for a moment in silence.