Amanda sat next to Sam. She was what most people think of when they think of drug addicts. She got in with a bad crowd in high school and became addicted to meth. She pimped herself out for a while, but her rich family found her and forced her into rehab. The brown roots of her platinum blonde hair were showing, but at least it had stopped falling out as much as it had before. She was starting to put on weight, but I could still see her ribs through the tight tank top she wore with skinny jeans that somehow managed to look loose on her. I had never seen skinny jeans look loose on anyone before. Amanda was nice enough, but quiet. She mostly kept to herself, and I was fine with that.
Two chairs to Doctor Emma’s left was Fiona. She was an alcoholic like myself, although she was about fifteen years older, and probably the closest thing I had to a friend in here. She had brown hair down to her shoulders in one of those trendy cuts you might expect Victoria Beckham to wear, and eyes of the exact same shade. Her face was always perfectly made up. Even when she was at her worst, she always wore so much makeup sometimes I wondered if I’d ever seen her real face. I didn’t know why she was in here apart from the alcoholism. I didn’t know if she had a deep seated secret that led her to drinking, if something in her life, a memory had made it worse. She was like me, she didn’t like to share, and I think that was why we found ourselves making a connection. We never spoke about what we were in here for. I only knew her addiction was alcohol, like mine. She nodded at me as I caught her eye. We would speak about banalities, about things that didn’t matter, and it made us both happier.
I sat down in my chair and stared at the floor. There was a piece of dirt almost exactly in the center of one of the tiles, and I willed it to move an inch to the left to be in perfect symmetry with the rest of the floor. I had always been a little bit crazy like that. Time to zone out for an hour. I never participated in these group therapy sessions. Why bother? I was broken, I didn’t want to heal. What was the point? I was vaguely aware of a slow procession of more people, another half dozen or so coming in. Chairs screeched against the linoleum floor as the residents of the Charles Madison Center for Sobriety all took their seats, ready for the biweekly session of sharing their lives with strangers.
Doctor Emma said nothing, flipping through the notes on her lap as people entered, absentmindedly playing with a strand of her straight, long black hair, until all of the chairs had been filled. Then she looked around the room, cleared her throat and began to speak.
“Welcome, everyone. Thank you for coming.” Right. She said this every week, as though we had any choice in the matter.
“Before we begin, I’d like to introduce you all to the newest member of our group. Daniel, we would all appreciate it if you told us a few words about yourself.”
I dragged my eyes away from the speck of dirt on the floor to see who the new guy was. I looked up and noticed everyone looking to my left. He was three seats away from me, and as soon as I saw him, my breath caught in my throat.
Daniel was hands down the sexiest man I’d ever seen in my life. I was pretty sure I just stared at him for a while, my jaw hanging wide open. His eyes were dark, deep pools of mystery. His hair was of the same color, scruffy, but not overly so. It gave him that perfect just-got-out-of-bed look. His jaw had a hint of stubble, but his cheekbones, as perfect as if they’d been carved from marble, were still noticeable underneath.
A shiver shot down my spine, a shiver unlike any I’d felt in a long, long time. My eyes moved away from his perfect face down to his body. The tight, long sleeved sports shirt he wore showed off the fact that he was incredibly muscular. I could see the ripples and bulges in all the right places, and although I couldn’t tell for sure, I wouldn’t have been surprised if there was a six pack under that fabric. Despite the athletic top he wore jeans and sneakers to finish off his outfit, and as he shifted in his chair to start speaking, my mouth went dry.
“Hey, I’m Daniel. I, um, I’m here because I’m addicted to pain meds, and because my boss says I can’t go back to work until I’m over it.” He smiled when he said that last bit, and I thought I was going to melt right there in my chair and ooze down to the floor. What the hell was wrong with me?
“Hi Daniel” came the monotonous chant from everyone except me; I was busy trying to figure out why my heart rate had suddenly shot through the roof and why my blood felt like it was simmering inside of me. This wasn’t the sort of reaction I was used to having when new people were introduced. Hell, this wasn’t the sort of reaction I was used to having, at all. For months now I had only felt pain, guilt and sadness. Feelings like this, feeling like something inside of me was tingling, feeling like my entire body was on fire, this sort of thing wasn’t what I was used to.
“Excellent. We welcome Daniel to our group, and we hope to share in his journey of healing” Doctor Emma continued, before she began to flip through her notes.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Daniel. I have no idea what Doctor Emma said next, all I could think about was that man sitting only a few feet away. I didn’t understand what these feelings running through my body were. I had never felt anything like this before. What was my body doing? Why was I staring at this guy? I began to squirm in my seat, feeling the heat building up inside of me. Suddenly, I heard my name called.