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“The pills helped my knee. Thing was, with the pain in my knee managed, I realized they helped me with other kinds of pain too. They let me run away. Hide in the way it felt to not have to be me. Lots of people can do that and back away from it just fine after. I couldn’t. Shit luck.”
He stared at the neat pile of pierogis in front of him like he didn’t remember how they’d gotten there.
“What happened?”
“I liked how it felt too much, not being me. Liked it too much to stop. I was injured, so it wasn’t a secret I was taking them. Took a while before it was any kind of problem. Thing was, I’d never intended to play ball after college. It wasn’t my dream, just a way out of Virginia. But I’d spent so much time practicing that I hadn’t given much thought to what I’d do after. Senior year, it was clear I had a problem. Coach kicked me off the team. I lost my scholarship. I only had one more semester, but I was out of it. I could’ve applied for loans, talked to someone. But I didn’t. Just drifted.”
He looked at me for the first time since he’d begun speaking.
“I drifted for a long time.”
The Dane standing in front of me was the opposite of drifting. He was so grounded, so regimented, I couldn’t imagine him any other way. But I guessed that had been the work.
“Drifting turned into needing. Needing the escape. Couldn’t bear the world without it. With me in it the way I was. And needing something like that was…”
He blinked, eyes unfocused, like he was seeing himself back then. He didn’t finish the sentence.
“Was it hard to stop?” I found myself asking, then cringed. “I mean, of course it was. Sorry, I don’t know quite what to ask,” I rambled.
“Yes. It was hard.”
And the fact that he didn’t elaborate made me think it had been harder than he’d ever admit. The more time I spent with Dane, the more it seemed clear that when he spoke, he told the truth. It was just that you had to understand how much he downplayed everything to calibrate the words on their own scale.
He heated butter in a pan and began to cook the pierogis. The smell of onion and butter made my mouth water. I was watching a man who was so capable, so in control, that he’d told me about the worst time in his life while making pierogis from scratch.
He was taking deep, measured breaths as he cooked for a while longer, shoulders tight.
“Did you ever read Dune?” he asked, eyes still on the pan of pierogis.
“No.”
“I read it in high school and liked it, but I didn’t remember it that well. One night about six months after I started going to NA meetings, I was having a real rough time and I wanted a distraction. Found the book on my shelf, so I started to reread it. There was this line…I read it over and over: ‘I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.’?”
“Wow,” I said.
“I was scared,” Dane said softly. “So fucking scared all the time, only I hadn’t admitted it to myself. Scared to keep using once I realized what it did to me. What it had done to me. Scared to stop because then I’d have to be me again. Scared to make decisions because I couldn’t trust myself anymore to make good ones. Couldn’t trust myself to take care of myself. When I started my routine—the gym, the grocery store, meetings, walks—it helped me feel less afraid. Decided on it with Reggie, so I knew it was okay. As long as I stuck to it, I couldn’t mess up. That was the goal, anyway. Because the fear, man. The fucking fear.” He shook his head. “Couldn’t live like that.”
“And you did it,” I said. “You faced your fear and now you help other people face theirs. I think that’s amazing.”
I slid off the counter, intending to hug him, but he caught me by the shoulders, eyes intense and wild.
“Want to know a secret?”
I nodded.
“Some days I’m still so fucking scared.” It was nearly a whisper, it was so soft and choked.
He wouldn’t quite meet my eyes. He expected superhuman things of himself, even as he was empathetic toward everyone else’s weaknesses, and it melted me.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and squeezed him tight. I could feel tremors running through the thick muscles of his back. He lifted me up and I wrapped my legs around him, trying to make him feel as comforted and safe as he made me feel.
