She didn’t look at me as we walked back to the unit, and I tried not to look at her. But it was impossible not to watch her as she walked in front of me. Her ass was insanely perfect in a pair of tight, black scrub pants. I physically had to hold onto my own hands to prevent myself from reaching out and grabbing her ass cheeks.
It wasn’t like me to have to control of myself. Normally, I was the center of attention. The girls would throw themselves at me; they wanted to land me just as badly as I wanted to land them. Girls literally showed up naked in my bedroom, just wanting to screw and take a selfie of us together in bed.
I wasn’t complaining. Most guys my ages wouldn’t complain about the number of women I had. But it got old. The same lines all the time. The same women, even. Well, not literally the same women, but they all tended to blend together. The women at my parties laughed at my jokes, dressed in tiny outfits, did drugs with me, and any sexual thing I asked of them. When I would get bored, I would come up with random things to do in the bedroom, just to see if they would do it.
“Pour that shampoo all over yourself and roll around on the tiles,” I had said to one girl when I was drunk.
She didn’t even hesitate. Before I knew it, she was slipping all over the ground.
It wasn’t real, though. That was the problem. The girls who showed up in my bedroom weren’t there because they had gotten to know me and thought I was a great guy. They were in my bedroom to say they had slept with Erik Levy, the Silicon Valley tech millionaire.
I didn’t blame them. I was much more at fault than they were. I could have said no. I should have said no on many occasions. But I was caught up in the drugs, booze, and girls at the time. There were plenty of guys in the Silicon Valley who were millionaires and didn’t act like total jerks. They had a normal life with friends and family, but I was on a totally different road.
Now, as I watched Cassidy walk, my primal instincts flooded back to me, but my clear head also brought a bit of sense. I knew I couldn’t have this girl. I knew that it didn’t matter if she was beautiful and intelligent; she was out of reach for me. It was an entirely new feeling for me. I didn’t normally feel like a girl was off limits, but Cassidy had to be.
A girl like Cassidy wasn’t going to fall for a guy that was in treatment, anyways, and definitely not a guy who was barely participating in treatment. If I ever wanted to land any sort of stability in my life, I really had to take more control of my decisions.
Certainly, I felt like people exaggerated my drug and alcohol use. I still felt like I could control myself. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to hang out at Paradise Peak through the end of the program. The staff was nice, even the other patients seemed pretty enjoyable. Suddenly, the idea of making the most of my time at the rehab center seemed like the best possible option.
I wouldn’t have to be alone at Christmas or feel bad for not going home to visit my father. The idea of staying at treatment was much more appealing than I had imagined it would be. It gave me the excuse I needed not to deal with my family.
Not only did I feel a little more motivated to explore what Paradise Peak had to offer me, I was also going to avoid the uncomfortable holiday season back at my big house all alone. It was perfect and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized it earlier.
“All right, there you go,” Cassidy said as she walked me onto the unit and then turned to leave.
“Wait,” I said and reached out and grabbed her hand. “I’m sorry for being inappropriate. The words just came out before I could stop them.”
“It happens all the time.” She laughed and then looked down at my hand on hers.
“I bet it does,” I said and pulled my hand away.
“I’m joking, Erik. It’s never happened before,” she said as she took another step away from me. “I’m not really the kind of girl who people call beautiful.”
Surely, she was joking. Did Cassidy actually not realize how truly pretty she was? Her clear skin looked like milk; it was perfectly smooth without even the slightest sign of aging. Then there was her red hair. It wasn’t a dull or brownish color; no, instead her hair lit up a room as the lights reflected off of the shiny deep red tones.
“That can’t be true,” I managed to say. “You are beautiful.”
I was one hundred percent sincere. I wasn’t trying to bullshit her and I wasn’t trying to get anything in return, I just really hated the idea that she didn’t think she was beautiful. Cassidy was both beautiful outside and inside; she was the ideal of what men looked for in a woman. It baffled me that such a beauty really couldn’t see what she brought into the world simply by being herself.
“You better get back to your room,” she said as she pulled the door shut.
She didn’t look like she believed me at all, but there was a small smile on her face as she left me on the unit. I was glad to be right where I was. For whatever reason, I was at the treatment center and I finally felt like it was good for me. Even if I just used the time to relax and better myself, that would be at least worth the time and money I was putting into it.
There was a new sense of purpose as I went back to my room and crashed on the bed. Somehow, my embarrassing incident with Cassidy had just motivated me to make a little effort and participate. What was the worst that could happen if I made an effort and participated during my treatment at the facility? I didn’t really see a down side, except maybe lack of sleep from getting up so damn early.
Lunch in the dining room, afternoon group therapy, evening individual therapy – I went to it all. I didn’t always participate, but I made more of an effort than I had since arriving. Even my conversations w
ith Jarrod during my individual therapy were much deeper than they had been before. There was still a wall up around me, but I felt like I was in letting people see a little bit of me.
“Erik, we are doing an AA meeting tonight; why don’t you join us?” Jarrod asked as he gathered up a few of the patients.
“I’m not really into that.”
“You’re not into what?” Jarrod asked.
He wasn’t asking sarcastically; he genuinely seemed to want to hear what I had to say about AA meetings. The truth was, I didn’t know all that much about them. What I thought I knew was that everyone stood up and admitted to being alcoholics and then prayed to God to forgive them. I didn’t have anything against people who went to AA meetings, they obviously had helped a lot of people, but it wasn’t really my thing.
Religion had never been my thing. Well, before my mother passed away, we had gone to church, but very infrequently. When Mom was sick, we went almost every Sunday. I prayed for her to get better; my brother and father prayed for her to get better. But God clearly wasn’t listening to our prayers because she died.