Ricochet (19 page)

I try to relax by her statement. While powerful, the full
force of it breezes through me and then drifts away. I imagine Rose saying
something similar. I hear them. I see the strength in the words. I feel it, but
I can’t hold onto it and
believe
it
the way they can. I don’t know why that is.

“Everything is going to be okay,” she emphasizes. “I know it
may not feel like that right now, but in time, everything will be okay. You
have to start believing you can make it there.”

“I know.”

“Okay, good. Can you give the phone back to your friend?”

Ryke peels the phone from my ear and presses it to his own.
I watch his face as he listens to Dr. Banning. I can sit up now. Even if
everything still hurts, I try to numb the pain with her encouragement.
Be strong, Lil
, Lo would tell me.
When I come back, I’ll be strong with you.
I
wipe the rest of my tears, imagining those last words. Praying that’s what his
response would be and not the awful
your
problems are too much for me right now.
God, please, let him come back to
me.

“Yeah, I can do that,” Ryke nods, his eyes falling to the
tiled floor. “He’ll answer. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. You have no
idea.” He hangs up the phone.

“I’m sorry,” I say in a small, tired voice.

Ryke raises his hand. “I’m going to call Lo. You
cannot
start crying and have a breakdown
over the phone. He can’t do anything to help you right now, and you know how
much that’ll kill him.”

I nod wildly, my heart lifting at the very idea of speaking
to him. “I promise.”

He hesitates before dialing.

I lean my arms against the bathtub rim, nearly falling over
to be closer to the receiver—to hear his voice.

After a couple rings, Ryke says, “Hey, did I wake you?” He
rolls his eyes. “You’re such a fucking smartass…yeah, well, I have someone here
who wants to talk to you.” He pauses and then glares at the ceiling. “No, she’s
fine. She just finished talking to her therapist.” He rubs his jaw and then
nods to himself before holding out the phone to me.

I grab it quickly, but once I have it against my ear, my
thoughts start to sink somewhere foreign. I forget what I planned to say. Maybe
I had nothing to tell him. Maybe, I just wanted to hear his voice.
 
I whisper, “Hi.”

“Hey,” Lo replies back. Out of the corner of my eye, I see
Ryke kicking my comforter back into the living room. He avoids the vibrator and
doesn’t ask questions about it, but my cheeks flush, mortified all the same. I
sink lower in the tub.

“It’s Daisy’s birthday,” I tell him. “I’m in Mexico.”

“Ryke told me already.”

Oh.

Ryke props the door open against the wall and nods to me.
“Don’t close this.” He heads to his chaise, plopping down with an exhausted
sigh.

Long, silent tension pools over the phone, and I lose track
of what I should say. I’d rather not bring up the fact that I’m sitting in an
empty bathtub after an emotional meltdown. I don’t want to give him another
reason to avoid me when he returns home. Because who in their right mind would
want to take care of this?

I’m about to mention how we’re all going ziplining tomorrow
at Daisy’s request, but he beats me.

“So what happened tonight?”

Shit.

“Nothing really, and I don’t think we should talk about it.
You’re all the way over there.” Wherever
there
is. No one will tell me his exact location. He could be in Canada for all I
know.

“If Ryke handed you the fucking phone—someone who definitely
disapproves of our relationship—then I know it had to be bad. I want to know,
Lil.” This is not how I imagined our conversation. I thought we’d avoid the
topic like we’ve always done in the past. He briefly mentions alcohol. I’ll say
a little bit about sex, but when things become messy and truly focus on our
addictions, we abort.

“It wasn’t bad,” I mumble under my breath. “Ryke told me not
to bring it up. I think we should talk about something else. You need to concentrate
on your recovery, not worry about me.” I hesitate from going further. Dr.
Banning invades my mind, and I can almost hear her saying that Ryke is wrong.
That separating from Lo isn’t the answer. Finding a healthy way to be together
is.

But does he still want me? I’m not so sure. I wipe my eyes.

He lets out a short, bitter laugh. “If you don’t tell me,
I’m going to be worrying about it all fucking month, Lil. And Ryke hasn’t fully
comprehended the fact that I’m going to eventually come home. And when I do,
I’m going to be with you again. We’re going to have to start talking and
reforming a better relationship. If I can’t handle this shit over the phone
when I’m sober
in
rehab, then I
shouldn’t be returning home anytime soon.”

All I hear is:
I’m
going to be with you again.
I bring the receiver away from my mouth and
wipe uncontrollable, silent tears that stream down in an avalanche. A huge
pressure rises off my chest. I feel like I can breathe again.

“Lily?” he says in a frantic voice. “Lily, you there? Lily,
dammit…”

I put the speaker back. “I’m here.”

I hear him exhale and breathe heavily. “Don’t do that. And
don’t make me fucking guess what happened.”

I rest my back against the tub. “It’s embarrassing,” I
admit.

“So?”

“So you really want to do this? To talk and stuff…”

“If we want to stay together, like
really
stay together and not go back to enabling each other, then
yes, we’re going to have to talk. I need to know when you’re freaking out, and
you need to know when I am so that we can stop each other from doing stupid
shit.”

“Like the opposite of what we’ve been doing.” Dr. Banning
said as much.

“Basically. Look, we’ve spent so much energy hiding each
other’s addictions from our families. If we put that into helping one another,
we just might be able to make this work.”

I like the game plan. It starts clearing that haze that has
been clouding my future for so long. A picture begins to form of
us
when he returns. And I’m more
overwhelmed by the fact that there will be
an
us
after a three-month separation.

I finger the hem of my shirt. “We divorced,” I mutter. “I
thought you weren’t going to want me back.”

His voice lowers to a pained whisper. “Why would you think
that?”

I lick my dry, chapped lips again. “Couples who divorce
usually don’t get remarried.” Of course, we’re not actually married. But he’ll
understand the metaphor. He’s used it before when we were teenagers. We played
house most of our lives. It’s kind of fucked up, but I guess that’s just
us.
 

“I’m remarrying you, Lil. Fuck, I’d remarry you a hundred
times until it stuck.”

I pinch my eyes again. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Even if I make you miserable?”

There’s a long pause before he murmurs, “You don’t make me
miserable. You make me want to live. And I want to live with you.”

My throat closes for words. I sniff and rub my nose and wipe
the last of my tears.

“Okay?” he breathes. “So about tonight, you need to tell me
what happened.”

I nod to myself. Right. “These past couple of months, I’ve
just been masturbating a ton. And this boat trip was supposed to be better than
last time. I wasn’t supposed to turn into this compulsive monster.” I fucked
up. But telling him this is easier than I thought it would be. Probably because
we were always best friends before we ever became a real and true couple.

“Compulsive how?”

“I couldn’t stop. I was using my vibrator and then Ryke
bulldozed into my room because he was scared he was about to get raped by a
sixteen-year-old girl.”

“Seriously?” he says in disbelief. I’m not sure what he’s
referring to, and so my nerves jostle.

“What? Which part?” I scratch my arm.

“The part where Ryke is scared of a high school girl. What a
pussy,” he says with a laugh.

I relax. “That’s mean to say about your brother.”

“Half-brother,” Lo snaps back.
Okaaay.
Obviously there’s some issue going on that I’m not aware
of.

“I thought you guys were cool.”

“Oh yeah,” Lo says sarcastically, “I just love being the
bastard.”

I guess before Ryke showed up, Lo thought he was a child caught
in a nasty divorce between his parents. Come to find out, he was the
cause
of their separation: a product of
infidelity.

He sighs heavily. “Look, I can forgive him for lying to me
because he’s been supportive of my recovery, and besides you, he’s the only
person who knows what it’s like to be around my father. But he can be so
fucking abrasive.”

I smile, glad we agree on something. “I know. He bugs me all
the time, but I kind of have to put up with him.” Because he means well. And
he’s one of the reasons we’ve reached this place. If Ryke hadn’t injected himself
in our lives, I’m afraid we would have continued to enable each other.

“About that…” Lo trails off, trying to pick his words
carefully. “I’m not feeling particularly loving towards him when I’m stuck here
and he’s over there…” He refrains from adding
with you
, but I hear it anyway. “It’s just not an ideal situation.”

“You wouldn’t want to be here anyway,” I tell him. “Daisy’s
friends talk nonstop. Your ears would start bleeding.”

“But I would still be with you,” he says and then lets out a
frustrated groan. “I just want to hold you right now. It’s killing me.”

“Not as much as me,” I breathe.

Lo pauses. “What happened after Ryke walked in on you? He
didn’t see you naked, did he?”

I blush. “No, no…” I quickly explain my comforter snafu and
waddling to the bathroom. “I should have stopped, you know. That was the point
where I should have ended my self-love for the night.”

“But you didn’t.”

I bite my fingernail to the bed. “Afterwards, I got sad. I
broke down. Ryke came in and called my therapist. I talked to her and managed
to stop crying. That’s it. That was my glorious night.”

“I thought you got rid of all your toys,” he says, confused.
I imagine his brows furrowing and his forehead wrinkling in a bit of
disapproval.

Shit.
I did tell
him that the first time we talked. Along with trashing my porn (which was the
truth), I told a lie about ditching my sex toys.

“I lied,” I blurt out the truth. “But I really did throw out
my porn.”

“No more lying,” Lo says roughly. “Not with each other and
not with our friends. We have to do better.”

“Yeah, I know. I will. That was…that was all before I met my
therapist.”

I hear him shift a little, the chair creaking.

“Are you on that ugly orange chair?” I ask.

“No, I’m in my room at my desk.”

“Oh...” I try to picture his room, and just when I’m about
to ask, he pipes in.

“What did your therapist say tonight?”

I cringe. “No more self-love for me.” I press my forehead to
my knees. “I think it’s going to be impossible though until you get back. It’s
been so long; I can’t even imagine…” Not touching myself? Not reaching that
high just once….it seems infeasible.

“How old were you when you started touching yourself?”

I kiss my kneecaps, knowing the first moment well because
Dr. Banning made me dig through my memories and give it to her. “Nine, but I
started doing it to porn at eleven after I found that magazine at your Dad’s
place.”

“Okay, that’s disgusting,” he snaps. “Please never mention
how you
masturbated
to my father’s
porn ever again.”

“It was yours, you jackass,” I say lightly, not as offended
as I should be I think.

“How do you know?”

“It was in
your
shoebox
of porn on
your
shelf and in
your
closet.”

“Oh. Never mind then.”

I smile. I miss talking to him, even if our conversations
aren’t normal on any standards. I don’t think we’ve ever been normal. Maybe
that’s why it works.

“Well, that sounds like a solid plan,” I say. “I’ll try to
minimize now, but completely eliminate self-love when you return home.”

“That’s the shittiest plan I’ve ever heard.”

“What?” I frown.
This
is
not normal. He usually agrees with me.

“It doesn’t matter if I’m there or not. If your therapist
doesn’t think it’s a good idea, then it’s probably not one.”

“But that means…I won’t be able to have any kind of sex
until you come home…” My pulse speeds up in sudden fear. I know Lo is cutting
alcohol completely from his life, but my therapist said that recovering sex
addicts
shouldn’t
strive towards
celibacy forever. It’s an impossible standard to maintain. Sex is a part of
human nature.

“Unless it’s with me,” Lo adds.

Now I’m really confused. “I don’t understand. You’re not
here. Unless you’re going to mail me a dildo of your dick,” I say hopefully.

“Uh, no. I’m not letting anyone mold my cock for your
pleasure. You can have the real thing at the end of March.”

“Then how am I supposed to have sex?”

“What about phone sex?”
Ohhhh.
Wait…

“Isn’t that the same thing as me masturbating?”

“Not if you’re doing it to my voice and only my voice. That
way, you know when to stop, and it’ll set up a system for you. The hardest part
about recovering from sex addiction—for you, I think—is going to be
establishing limits, right?”

It sounds like a really good idea, and I’m kind of surprised
he came up with this on his own. “Yeah, how do you know so much about it?”

“I’ve been talking to some counselors who know a lot about
addictions, some have worked with sex addicts before. They’ve been giving me
some advice.”

I smile. “So can we have phone sex now?”