Beautiful Illusions by Annie Jocoby Page B

and I was only thinking of myself.
    But that wasn’t really true. My heart went out to him, as well. I was not yet in love with him, although I knew that I would get there if I let my guard down. However, at this point, with all the drama and the secrets, it was impossible to trust him completely .
    Staring at his glass of iced tea- it was an actual glass this time, I am proud to say - Ryan began with “I’ve known Alexis for a l ong time. Since middle school. We dated off and on in college. She was at Yale when I was at Harvard.” That surprised me. She didn’t really look like the academic type.
    “Go on.”
    “She and I…” He took a deep breath. “Well, let’s just say that I’ve not always been as, as, as….clean as I am now.” I furrowed my brow. The message was somewhat cryptic, and could mean any number of things. He was shaking. The ice was rattling in his glass. He also was playing with his thick hair, his dominant left hand running through his mane, again and again. He was not making eye contact at all.
    He took an enormous breath and went on. “Well, you know, there’s a lot of money in prep sch ools, and a lot of bored kids. Most of us were less supervised than we should have been. I was no exception.”
    Another deep breath. He went on, not looking at me. Then, he did look at me. “Um, Iris, I feel that I could have something really special with you. That’s why I’m here. I feel that I need to come clean with a few things about my past. If I didn’t see a future with you, I wouldn’t be here right now. It would just be so much easier just to pretend that last night didn’t happen, and it would be so much easier for me to walk away from you, as opposed to having to tell you these things.”
    Things? There’s more than one issue?
    “Um, Alexis and I…we were very much into…Oh, Christ, I need to just come out and say it. It’s a part of my past, it isn’t me now, it isn’t a big deal.” Huge breath. His visibly shaking hand once again smoothed his thick dark hair.
    Huge breath. “We were heroin addicts. There, I said it.”
    I nodded. “When?”
    “From age 17 until age 25 . I kicked it with methadone. She still struggles.”
    So, he was a heroin addict until just 8 years ago . And he was an addict for 8 years.
    \ He looked at me, trying to gauge my reaction. Surprisingly, I had very little reaction. I guess because I felt that I had seen it all in my lifetime, and this really wasn’t a big deal.
    “You haven’t done this since you were 25?”
    He looked pained. “I, I, I, I….” Now he was shaking again. “I hhhadd a relapse, uh, last week.”
    I looked at him, not saying a word . He went on. Another huge breath. “I went to see her last week. She called me last Sunday, as you remember, before you woke up. Well, she called back, the next day, and told me that she had taken pills and she was waiting to die. So, I went straight over to her house.” He shook his head and continued. “I don’t know why I allow her to still manipulate me like that. Anyhow, she was actually fine.”
    I raised my eyebrow. This was getting interesting.
    “I was pissed. But she had some high grade stuff, laying out on her coffee table. She, she threatened me. She told me that she was going to go ahead with taking all the pills she had in her house if I left her that day. And she threatened me that she was going to do this if I didn’t shoot up with her.”
    “So you-“
    “I’m not proud of it.” He sighed. “The good news is, I seem to be well past the addiction. I had no desire to continue after that.”
    I chose to believe him about this .
    He went on. “Trust me, after all Alexis and I have been through, it has been tough on both of us to stay clean. She’s done it, just barely. She white-knuckles it, so she relapses all the time. I’ve completely kicked it, and I know now, more than ever, that I’ve no desire to go back to the way I was.”
    I made a face. “You still love this