“But don’t you see? I am like them. I can fool myself, and say I’m like Debbie, and I’m good and pure because I like sandwiches and the beach, but those are the surface things that let me think I’m okay when I’m not. I’m an addict, Trey. I’m born from all the problems in the family. Fine, I’m a recovering addict, but I’m still an addict—and now there are two of us, and what’s going to happen to our baby?”
Through the water, Trey reaches for me. He tugs me gently so I’m deeper in with him, the warm waves hitting my chest now. “We break the cycle, Harley. Don’t you see? We end it here. With us. We make a choice to end it. We already made that choice when we stopped, and then went to SLAA, and then stayed in SLAA, and then fell in love. And we keep doing it, every single day. Every day we live differently from our parents, and every day we break the cycle. The ugly beautiful, remember? That’s what we have and what we are, and that’s what he or she will know,” he says, now palming my belly. “Our baby will know we can be different; we can be more than those things we left behind. Look at this. Look at us. We’re these two New Yorkers, raised on fumes and skyscrapers, boxed in by the noise and sirens and cigarettes in that city, and now we’re here, in the fucking ocean, under the sun beneath a clear blue sky. Because of you. Because you chose to keep looking. To find your family,” he says brushing the wet strands of hair off my cheek, keeping his green gaze locked with mine.
“But it’s not real,” I say, as I splash a spray of salty water away from us in frustration. “This is perfect, yes. This is beautiful, but we’re only here for a short time. We go back to New York in a few days. We go back to fumes and skyscrapers.”
“You have this now, though,” he says, in a strong, passionate voice. “You know this now. It’s a part of you, and it doesn’t go away even when we leave California. Just being here and coming here is another step in breaking the cycle every day. By living differently from your parents, you’re breaking their patterns. I’m trying to do the same, too. To be honest, and truthful, and not shut down. We are changing, and they never did.”
He pulls me in close for a warm hug, and I shut my eyes, letting myself enjoy the sun on my shoulders, the water rolling over my skin, his words echoing in my mind.
Changing.
But if I keep holding onto secrets, I’m not changing. That’s what scares the hell out of me. How far can I step into this new me until I shut down? What if I’m not strong enough, not good enough, or not different enough from the addicts who made me?
Or from the junkie I became?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Harley
The next day, we walk along the main street, passing Debbie’s favorite bakery that she says makes amazing cupcakes. “Let’s pop in there after I grab a book I’ve been meaning to give to one of my waitresses,” she says as she gestures to the bookstore next door. We head inside, and when she picks up the paperback she’s been eyeing, I stop in my tracks.
There it is: a full display of them. The book I labored over. My blood debt to Miranda, but really, to my mom, since I was blackmailed to protect her.
My stomach churns when I see the cover. A gorgeous young girl in a corset and fishnets lies on a bed, her legs crossed at the ankles as they rest against the wall, a hauntingly beautiful but immensely sad expression in her eyes. Then the title: Memoirs of a Teenage Sex Addict, and the author: Anonymous.
My shame slams into me without warning, like the truck barreling at you that you didn’t see coming.
All I want to do is cover my reddening face. Or, better yet—toss a sheet over the display, hide it, knock it over. Anything, so Debbie doesn’t see this and know it’s me. I stand in front of it, inching my body around it as she walks by and heads to the counter with the book she’s buying.
Debbie doesn’t know I was a call girl. She doesn’t know I serviced the fetishes of middle-aged men in Manhattan. That I became close to the father of her great-grandchild through Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. That I heard my mother fucking men all over town. She doesn’t know the things I did. She knows the sweet and fun six-year-old, and she knows the twenty-year-old who loves her guy, who is pregnant and staying in school, who came to see her, who likes sandwiches and sunshine.
She doesn’t know who I was in between.
I can’t let her know who I was. If I do, she won’t want to be my family anymore. Fear digs its sharp heel into my chest, and I’m sweating now from anxiety.
When she’s done with her purchase, she says, “Carla is going to love this. She reads all these crazy detective stories.” Then she stops talking, cocks her head to the side and lays the back of her hand on my forehead. “You okay? You seem out of sorts, all of a sudden. Seen a ghost?”
And I realize I don’t want to hide. I harbored secrets for far too long, and they nearly destroyed my very soul. They gnawed away at my heart, until I finally had the guts to stare them down so they’d stop haunting me. I have to start everything new, from honesty. To break the cycle.
“Debbie, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“What it is, sweetie?”
With my shoulders shaking as nerves ripple through my body, I remove one book from the display. I hold it up. “I wrote this book.”
“Well, that sounds like an interesting story,” she says and she guides me to a quiet section with a comfy leather couch where I tell her everything.
“Do you want me to leave now?” I ask when I’m done.
She shoots me a quizzical look. “Leave the store?”
“No. Leave your house. Leave San Diego. Go back to New York, so you don’t have to see me again?”
She laughs deeply, shaking her head. “Oh, you sweet thing. No, no, no. And just in case that wasn’t clear—NO. I want you to stay as long as you want. You are always welcome, and like I said, you drew the short straw. I’m just glad that’s all behind you. It is behind you, right?”
“Yes,” I say emphatically. “But it doesn’t bother you, who I was all those years when I didn’t see you?”
“We’ve all made mistakes. We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t. The goal is to learn, and to move on and try to live a life of no regrets. Here you are, living the life you intend. And even though I didn’t see you for fourteen years, you have to know I love you now, and I was loving you that whole time. And what you just told me doesn’t change my love one bit.”
I sit up straight, and look at her like that’s the strangest thing I’ve heard. “You loved me?”
“Of course I loved you. And of course I do still love you. Why would I do anything but love you?”
But … but … but … I want to backpedal and reel off a million reasons why. Because love comes with a price tag. Because love comes with expectations. Because love is bought and sold, and bargained for. Because love is on the surface.
But that’s the old me. That’s the me that came from Barb.
I’m not from her anymore. Not even close. I’m from myself, from the new me that I forged without her.
And this is love given freely. Love without chains, without agenda, love simply because it can’t be anything but. This is love that lasts, love that holds on through the years, through absence, through not knowing, not seeing, not hearing, but still it endures, because it is real and strong and everlasting.
It is family.
“I thought you might not love me when you found out what I’d done.”
“You’re a silly girl,” she says, patting my hand. “Now, let’s go next door and get a cupcake. The chocolate buttercream is divine, and your baby will have a riot in your belly when he or she tastes the sugar.”
The next few days race by and as the vacation nears its end, I can feel the unspooling like an insistent thrumming in my heart. New York is calling us back, and San Diego is letting us go.