Chapter 23: Smart Girls Get Job Offers

The song is a cover of  By Your Side, by Sade. I liked an acoustic cover for this but couldn't really find one that blows me away. Still, I think this one by Jackie Lopez is sweet and vulnerable, maybe like Marley would sing it.

Marley

Riley's  judgement is oppressive as he glares at Bodie.

Bodie doesn't care at all.

He's standing over me in a casual cool stance, a look of lazy lust on his face.

He's a wasted god, and I'm a mere mortal at his feet.

"Whatchya doing down there?" he grins. "You don't belong down there, baby. You belong up here with me."

Bodie is surprisingly strong, despite his skinny frame, as he hauls me up and into his arms. We sway slightly from his unsteadiness.

Warmth floods to every inch of my skin, at the same time I think, This is ridiculous.

I'm a grown-ass woman--a psychologist, for goodness sakes.

I know better than this--to let my feelings rule this situation.

I know the last thing Bodie needs is a distracting romance. In fact, I know that Bodie should be  an object of detached concern for me. And maybe even slightly gross at this point. But the way we are looking at each other's mouths, the way his hands feel on me and the way mine feel on him...

I haven't felt this way in almost fourteen years.

My high, hurting, troubled drummer boy?

He makes me feel young again.

I think he's going to kiss me, but as he draws nearer, he turns my head to the side, and places a series of rapid kisses to my temple and hair. "You look real sexy, biting your lip like that, but you don't want to kiss me right now. Believe me. I'm in serious need of a shower and a toothbrush."

I laugh and blush at the same time, as I release him slowly, making sure he's steady. "Boy, you trippin'. I don't kiss any old rock star. I have standards."

"Hmmm. Still holdin' out for Adam, huh? You gonna have to give up the dream, girl. Something tells me he'll be saving all his side kisses for his new Baby Girl."

"Right. I'll be in the car," Riley says tersely and turns abruptly.

"Don't worry about him," Bodie says automatically. "He gets like that."

"He's upset that I dosed you," I tell Bodie.

"I know.  Riley sees in black and white," Bodie sounds frustrated. "Which is a big problem, since I'm...neither."

I cut my eyes to him, not sure if he's making a joke or not. He collars me with a heavy arm. "Jesus,--laugh girl. We ain't gon' get through all this without the laughter."

I give him a chuckle. "Okay that was funny, but really Bodie...I don't like that you are high right now, anymore than Riley."

"I know, but I am, so I might as well make it count. Let's go see Madam and their baby before I'm on the floor again."

I'm worried about him going down the stairs, but I shouldn't be. He's all smooth grace where I would probably tumble to my death if I were that altered.

Before we get in the car, he turns me toward him on the tarmac and says, "I know you're gonna say you can't do this, but I'm gonna ask you something that's gonna scare you and upset you and make you doubt me, okay?"

"What?"

"I need you to keep those oxy.. It's gonna take days to get to Europe and find a rehab. If you don't keep those, I'm gonna have to get something else. Just tell Kade you left them on the plane, okay? Will you do that for me? Because I swear to you, it's the last time I will ever ask you to help me use, okay? I swear."

Before I can even think of how to respond, he opens the door and ushers me into the car.

He asks the limo driver to stop at a famous Nashville chicken restaurant on the way to the hospital, and when Riley protests that the line is too long, and it will take too much time. Bodie ignores him, saying he'll find a fan and cut the line. He winks at me and asks me how hot I like my hot chicken.

I gape at him. Half an hour ago he was agony, and now he wants to schmooze fans while he stops for take-out?

"Never mind, I'll get a sampler." He leaps out and strolls past the line formed on the sidewalk and into the restaurant, high-fiving a guy on the way in.

"Marley," Riley says calmly. "I realize you are on a roller-coaster right now. I understand you're processing...how everything changes, with Bodie in your life. In your son's life. But you can not begin this way. You can not enable him one day more."

"I'm not. I'm going to help him get clean. This is my job, I know what I'm doing."

"Your professionalism is compromised right now. You are so affected by his pain that you just traded on the feelings your boyfriend--ex-boyfriend?-- has for you, in order to feel okay about helping Bodie snort drugs. You can't be Bodie's lover and his addiction therapist."

"I'm not his lover," I say indignantly.

An eyebrow raises over the top of his glasses. "Perhaps not at the moment. But obviously, you were. Forgive the boldness, but it's easy to see, it's only a matter of time. Probably a very short matter of time."

"You are too bold, Riley. You are over the line. This is none of your business."

"That's quite untrue, actually. Every member of Soundcrush is my business, but that's not why I'm telling you this." Riley looks angry as he leans across the seat and reaches his hands out like a plea. "I'm telling you this because I know what happens when you try to bargain with a drug addict you love for their own life. You fail and they die."

Riley's truth hits me.

Hard. But it doesn't matter.

I couldn't walk away from Bodie if I wanted to at this point.

"What am I supposed to do, Riley? Fourteen years, and I've never forgotten him.  He's still...the boy of my dreams. And now he's here and I found out that he's actually...most likely...Darius' father? I can't walk away. I have to help him."

Riley throws himself back in his seat in frustration. He looks out the window, watching the tourists in line for their famous chicken.

"Consider this. What if you...erect a boundary that you can safely store your feelings behind, so that you can actually be what Bodie needs right now? What if I help you do that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Come on board at The Emsworth Agency as our staff clinician. Your top priority? Functioning as Bodie's  live-in sobriety companion for...a year, perhaps? Of course you could continue your counseling arrangement with Trace as well. No moonlighting though. You'd need to give up your current position and all the volunteer group therapy you do, in order to focus on a daily routine with Bodie."

"Quit my job? Work for you?"

"Formal employment would give you the professional boundaries you need with him. It would also give you a...structure...to allow Bodie and Darius to interact without having to rush into hasty explanations with Darius. Your son could even live there, or share time at Bodie's residence and his current home. I wouldn't have a problem with that, if Bodie was amenable, of course..."

"And you think living with him is a way to keep it professional with Bodie?"

"Well, let me be blunt. If you begin fucking him, you'll be out of a job, and I'll add another sobriety companion to the household, which I'm sure would be...awkward, to say the least. And if you enable his drug habit beyond a medically supervised methadone treatment, I would file a professional grievance against you."

"What an attractive employment scenario you are painting," I spit at him.

He smiles bitterly as he doodles on a piece of paper. "Well, I'm trying to give you an accurate picture of the potential pitfalls of the work environment. In that spirit, let me continue. The truth is, you don't know Bodie. You knew a fifteen year old boy, and you have had a few highly charged, but brief interactions with him in the last months.

"Sober, Bodie is the best-hearted bloke I know. But on drugs? On drugs, he's a beautiful liar. He's extremely manipulative."

"That's true of all addicts."

"Not all addicts have his incredible appeal and charm. And money and resources and ability to dazzle."

I say nothing. Riley isn't wrong. I'm already starting to fall under Bodie's very attractive spell.

Riley presses on. "Has he asked you yet? To keep that bottle of oxy? To go along with some scheme to delay entering rehab for just another day? I guarantee you he's been telling himself for a week now, he'll start rehab tomorrow. If you keep enabling him to self-medicate with opiates, for this reason or that, it's always going to be tomorrow, Marley."

I'm silent, because now I'm the one swallowing pills.

The bitter pills of truth.

"I'm afraid if you let him take the lead in a romantic relationship before he's truly on track to longterm sobriety, you will lose what influence you have to manage him. You will lose yourself to a powerful, all-consuming experience with a very powerful man. Your son, too. You will all go down in flames."

"If you truly think that, why are you even proposing this—that we become part of his life? Why aren't you telling me to walk away?"

Riley leans forward and looks at his hands, folded together between his knees. "Because I'm not just the Soundcrush manager. Because I want every good thing for every one of them. Happiness, love, family. I can't tell you to walk away anymore than you can do it."

"But I need you to help him, Marley. In the hard ways. From all that I can see, you are a very smart, very strong, very disciplined woman--and from all the reports I can gather, you're an excellent therapist. If you go my route, you can give him the daily routine he needs. If you enforce his boundaries like a therapist, instead of indulging his desires like a lover, you can become his security, his place of trust. At least for a little while, he needs you to be strong for him, not the other way around.  He needs a love tough enough to force him to be the man he wants to be."

It's hard to look someone as right as Riley in the face.

"I...I need to think about it."

"Hmmm. Not too long, I hope. We need to act soon. Here's the offer, then. Plus a generous employee benefits package, and the rock star perks." He hands me his doodle paper.

It has a number on it four times the salary I make.

"That's too much."

He laughs at me. "Tell me that again after a month of living with sober Bodie, keeping up with his rather frenetic pace. When he's not high, he's a tornado of energy."

Bodie drops back into the car and dumps a bag of food onto the floor. The happy, high rock star of half an hour ago has vanished. He's trembling slightly and sweating.

I sigh. The bump of inhaled oxy has faded.

"Do you want to eat?" I ask picking the bag of food up.

"Can't. Nauseous again. I need something to drink," he mumbles as the car pulls away.

I rummage in the mini-bar and offer him a water. He eyes the bottles of liquor in their holsters and swipes the water resentfully out of my hand.

He holds out a hand to show me how he's trembling. "This water would go down a lot better with a pill."

"That wasn't your best joke," I say lightly.

"I wasn't joking," he snaps. "Kade was too conservative in his dose."

"The dose of oxy you took seems like enough to manage your withdrawal pain because you are moving around, functioning, snatching water bottles resentfully and eye-rolling," I smile at him. He rolls his eyes again.

"See?" I keep my smile."But I know it's not enough to stop your anxiety and irritability. You're going to have to cope with that until you get assessed and start a medicated protocol you really need--"

"Methadone, you mean. I'm not doing that. I want a full detox," he says. "Methadone is just more drugs."

It's kind of ironic that Bodie keeps saying he wants to detox but keeps asking for pills, at the same time he's resistant to the one opiate substitute that does not get you high, only zeroes out withdrawal symptoms.

"You can live normally on a methadone program, tapering down at intervals. Whereas eighty percent of opiate addicts who try to quit cold turkey relapse," I say quietly.

"That's what you think? That I'm gonna fail? Thanks for the vote of confidence."

I am much too experienced with the mood swings of withdrawal to take his snappish attitude personally.

"No, I believe you are committed, but I know how hard it is in the beginning. Look, let's talk about a treatment plan after you visit Madam, maybe after you can tolerate some food," I say evenly.

"Yeah, okay. I already told you, you can talk all you want, but I'm not doing that," he says flatly. I take his hand to soothe the trembling but he pulls away from me and looks out the window.

At the hospital, Bodie goes into Mac's suite with Riley. I lean against the wall, trying to catch my breath. Mostly I don't. It comes in jagged sobs.

I recognize Kade's presence beside me.

"Hi," he says with a somber sweep of my expression.

"Hi."

"You've been crying..."

I shrug. "Addiction in someone you care about is tough."

He nods. He waits. I turn away, looking down the corridor.

"Marley. The pills."

"Shit. I think maybe I left them—"

"Marley."

"Kade, he's not where he needs to be right now, to start a detox. He needs to make some decisions. This is not his home base...traveling in withdrawals is horrific...he needs a little more time and breathing room..."

"Marley, he's never going to be where needs to be, until he's out of drugs and people that will help him get them. You know what happens to wealthy, insulated, addicts that no one will say no to. The list of dead celebrities is endless."

I start to cry again. "Riley wants to hire me to be his sobriety companion. I don't think I'm strong enough to do this."

Very quietly, Kade says, "Maybe you should think of it more like...are you strong enough to survive losing him?"

Of all the things Riley said, none of them hit home like Kade's statement.

An image of my son flashes in my brain. Darius deserves a chance to know his father. His real father. Fate and my denial have robbed him for thirteen years, but if I can help Bodie get clean, I can give him that opportunity.

I can't afford to fail Bodie, because that would be failing Darius.

"Good point, Dr. Thomas," I say quietly, drying my tears and reaching in my purse, handing him the pills.

Bodie is just exiting Mac's room. He sees me handing the pills over, and his eyes narrow in displeasure. He walks right up to me and grabs me in a tight hug. I flop like a rag doll against him.

"You held some back, right?"

"No, Bodie," I say. "I...I can't do that."

He pulls me aside. "What about Switzerland? How am I supposed to suffer through a trans-Atlantic flight?"

"That Switzerland idea...is not a good one, Bodie. We need stay here and dig in to your sobriety, not run off without a plan."

"We can't stay here and be together...a family with Darius...Daemon and TJ will retaliate against me."

"It's way too soon to be worried about...a family dynamic between you and me and Darius. All we need to worry about is getting you sober right now..."

"Okay, okay, I know I'm not in a good place for the kid," he hisses. "So let's...let's get a hotel room and you can put me through a detox. Five days, it will be over and we can pick up the kid and get back to the original plan—an extended vacation in Switzerland..."

"Your drug problem is not a five day fix. And the last thing you need is a new environment, a new culture right now."

"Marley, please, let's just go. You and me and hotel room of hell for five days. Are you actually saying you won't detox me? You won't help me?"

"I can't detox you," I tell him. "First, it's not medically safe. Second, I can't stand to see you suffer. And third, I won't let you relapse, which is the likely outcome of a cold-turkey detox. What you need is a methadone regimen. The stepdown increments are much more gentle, and you can live normally, without drug cravings. I can and will monitor that for you. I will never leave your side."

"Taking methadone every day? How is that any different than being an addict?" he hisses.

"Because you aren't craving. You aren't incapacitated. You aren't high. You aren't letting the drug you take control all your decisions."

"It's synthetic heroin. I know what heroin feels like. They say you can never get off it."

"It's not the same as heroin and you can get it off it. You will taper off, just like people step down an anti-depressant."

"Look, if you can't stand to see me detox, I'll detox myself," he says, putting me away from him firmly. "I'll prove to you, I'm stronger than you think I am."

"I don't think you're weak, Bodie," I am grappling for a hold on him but he's already swinging away from me.

I fight not to chase after him. Riley is right, if I'm going to help him, I can't let him drive all the interactions we have about his sobriety.

I let him go. He and Riley exchange heated words. The others ask what our argument was about. I don't tell them he wants to abandon Soundcrush and escape to Switzerland. I just tell them about his final request, that I detox him medically unsupervised. Kade backs up my refusal. Bodie sends me a text telling me he's not angry. Adam and Mac express faith in Bodie.

Riley simply says. "I ask you to reconsider my earlier proposal."

Mac and Adam move back into the room with their baby, I grab Riley by the arm.

"I have. I'll take the job." I say grimly.

"Excellent. I'll have something drawn up by morning. So...how do we wrangle Bodie into a methadone clinic?"

"We don't wrangle him anywhere." I say. "He has to go willingly. Don't worry. He will," I say, with more confidence than I feel.

I scroll far back into my social media and choose a picture of Darius on his first birthday.

I send it with no text. Just the hotel name where Riley says we will stay.

In the grey dawn, I'm lying on top of the covers of my hotel bed.

Waiting.

Praying.

A complicated rhythm breaks the silence.

I smile at the same time tears spill and race down my temples

Only a drummer boy would knock like that.

I knuckle my eyes, trying to gain control of my emotions.

This is going to be a long hard day.

Oh my. I don't think Bodie is going to like the idea of professional boundaries between him and Marley. Do you?