Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 114467 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 572(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114467 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 572(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
I smile and look out the window as the driver takes us to Long Island. The whole time, my phone gets heavier and heavier in my pocket.
Chapter Seven
Viktor
I hightail it so fast out of that open house, I’m sure I look like the cartoon coyote. This morning was shaky after getting off the phone with Zoe. There was this sudden burden and then an even bigger urge to use, so I texted every person on the sponsor list to talk to, and when one finally answered me, I bailed on the open house. I walk down the street, looking down at my Google maps and following the blue fucking arrow. I look around, checking to see the numbers on the doors.
“You must be Viktor,” someone says from the side, and I look over at a man sitting at a cast iron table right in front of the coffee shop I’m looking for.
“Jeffrey?” I ask him, and he just nods as he sits up, pushing his rounded glasses up on his nose. His salt and pepper hair is short on the sides and long on the top, his white goatee a little long. He is dressed in jeans and a white linen button-down shirt.
“That would be me.” He smiles and then motions for me to sit in the empty seat in front of him. “Please sit down.”
I pull out the chair, the metal scraping across the concrete walkway, and I sit down. “Sorry about the urgency,” I finally tell him.
“Not a problem. It’s what I signed up to do,” Jeffrey says and then stops when the waitress comes over and asks for our order.
“I’ll have an ice coffee please,” Jeffrey says.
“I’ll have an ice water.” I force a smile, and she turns and walks away with our order. I look around and find the street crowded with a lot of people walking. A man with fifteen dogs walks down the other side.
“How long?” Jeffrey asks, and I look over at him. An older man, he has brown hair with white in it, his beard matching the hair on his head. His sunglasses cover his eyes, but with me looking at him, he takes them off, and I see he has brown eyes.
“Ninety-two days,” I say softly. My stomach hurts, and my thumb strums on the table. Unlike Jeffrey, I’m sitting up in my chair, but my shoulders are slumped over.
“Not even at the tip of the iceberg,” Jeffrey says. “You are two days out of rehab, right?”
“Yes,” I say tightly. “Last night was the worst night I’ve ever had since I’ve been clean.”
“How so?” he asks me, and I look up at him. “What did you feel?”
“I tossed and turned the whole night,” I tell him honestly. “Every time I shut my eyes, the only thing I could hear was the voice in the back of my head telling me I just needed a hit.”
“Did you do anything about it?” he asks me, and I shake my head. “Because you didn’t know where to get it, or because you fought it off?”
“Both.” I sigh. “At first, I fought it off. Then I got out of bed and walked around the loft,” I tell him, recounting last night to him. But I can’t even put into words the despair I felt, the helplessness, the heart palpitations, and the images in my head of me sitting on the couch with my head back feeling nothing because I did just one line of the drug. “I walked in circles for an hour,” I spit out. “Maybe even two.”
“Did you have your phone?” he asks me the odd question.
“I did,” I answer him. “I mean, it was somewhere in the house.” I try to remember where it was. I don’t say anything because the waitress comes over and places our order on the table.
“Thank you,” Jeffrey says, sitting up. “What stopped you from using your phone?”
I look at him oddly, and I swear I’m starting to sweat. I feel drips of sweat forming on my back. “You could have gotten drugs in a snap,” he says, and I know this. “You could have picked up your phone and messaged just one person, and they would have had that number you needed.” I never thought of that, never thought that all I had to do was text someone. “But you didn’t do that.”
“I didn’t think of it.” I shake my head. “I sat on the couch after walking around in circles.” I close my eyes, and I’m right back in the middle of the loft on the couch, wearing just my boxers. The only light streaming in the pitch-black loft was from the full moon through the window. “In front of the couch was my chip,” I tell him. Taking it out of my pocket and rubbing my fingers over it calms my heart just a touch. The red coin with the words “Clean and Serene for Ninety Days” in gold.