Edge of Recovery (Love on the Edge) by Molly Lee Page A

grounded.”
    I nodded, glancing over at Charlie where she walked toward us with a couple of life vests.
    “Seriously?” I asked her when she’d made it to us.
    “Facility policy.” She shrugged, handing me a damp vest that smelled like mud and lake water. “They won’t let us take the jet skis out unless we wear these.”
    “Ugh.” I slipped one arm after the other inside the wet vest.
    Charlie grinned and snapped the two stained latches together. “Act like you aren’t pumped this is what I chose for today.”
    I tried not to smile down at her, but it was useless. “It’s better than knitting.”
    “My life’s ambition. To be better than knitting.” She shook her head and glanced at Conner. “How are you doing?”
    He blew smoke out of his mouth before answering, his knee bouncing up and down repeatedly without him really noticing. “All right. Think it’s going to stick this time, Charlie.”
    She gripped his shoulder and he patted her hand before standing up. “That’s real good, Conner. You heard from Connell lately?”
    Something dark flashed across his eyes. “Not for a few months.”
    “He’ll come around. He’s more stubborn than you are.”
    “Truth.” He crushed his cigarette on the metal ashtray next to the table. “All right, you two. Have a good time.” He focused his eyes on me, his hands over the center of his chest. “Make sure to share all your feelings, Justin.” He smirked as I flipped him off.
    “You ready?” I asked Charlie after she’d gone quiet, watching Conner’s back as he walked away with his hands shoved in his pockets.
    She blinked a few times before looking at me. “He’s not doing good.”
    “What?” I puckered my eyebrows. “Sure he is. He just said he was.”
    “Can you really not see it? His struggle?”
    I thought about his twitching movements in group recently, his need to speak faster than usual, and his general irritability at any given time of the day. “I thought that was just part of the process?”
    “You should talk to him.”
    “About what?”
    “I don’t know. Whatever he needs. There is something bothering him. He may tell you. You two are close.”
    “He’s my neighbor and has an endless supply of smokes.”
    “He’s more than that, and you know it.” She situated the vest around her small frame, the massive thing nearly swallowing her.
    “What are you suggesting?”
    “That he’s the first real friend you’ve had in a very long time.” She never hesitated, never stopped to formulate a response. She simply spouted out whatever was there and usually, I’d come to find, she was right.
    My old friends from when Blake and I were together, Mark and Andy, had bolted the second I started drinking more than playing video games. They never bothered to check on me either. Looking back, I couldn’t really understand the draw they’d held. We didn’t have much in common other than Call of Duty, which lost its luster the second I’d had my awakening. How I had ever spent days absorbed in the game was beyond me. Just another way to disconnect from myself, I guess.
    Doc would be proud, sorting shit out all on my own.
    “I’ll talk to him tonight,” I finally said.
    “Thank you.” She motioned her head toward the jet skis floating on the other side of the dock. “You ever done this before?” She shook a set of keys attached to a foam bobber at me.
    I snatched them from her outstretched hand. “I used to all the time,” I said, visions of summers before I’d been kicked out of my aunt’s house flashing in my head. My uncle had a lake house an hour outside of town, and we’d spend weeks at a time there. Blake had been with me twice.
    “Oh, God, do you hate it?” She asked, stepping toward me and placing her hand on my tight forearm.
    “No, why?”
    “You looked—never mind. Let’s roll!” She shot off toward the skis and threw a perfectly bare leg over the center. Heat pulsed in my blood at the sight of her skin. I was