32⎜The Airport

           “What do you mean your ‘home’, Eric?” demanded the woman who had given birth to me. In comparison to a minute ago, it seemed as though she was now in a quieter place with less noise. 

           “I found a flight. I just landed. I’m at JFK with Ari.”

           “Ari?”

           “My girlfriend.”

           “Oh. Her.”

           “You’ll like her,” I promised, praying that the assertion held true.

           Out of all my past girlfriends, my mom had by far liked Liz the best. But it wasn’t even Liz who she had liked—it was her mom. Liz’s mom was some hip lady involved in the shoe industry, and she just so happened to move into a house on our street. Which was how I had first met Liz. Even though Liz and I’s relationship hadn’t exactly worked out, my mom and Liz’s mom were still going strong. It was so weird. Anyways, my mom liked Liz (and Liz’s mom). She didn’t like Mackenzie, though. Never did, and never would. Her insight was spot-on, but I wasn’t willing to admit it until it was too late. Then there was Ari.

           She just didn’t know Ari. I had a hunch that at first she wouldn’t like Ari, but that wasn’t uncommon. Most people probably didn’t like Ari initially. She was distant and indifferent, thus creating a not so amiable atmosphere for most. Neither people nor talking was her strongest forte, which my mom wouldn’t like, either. My mom was a social woman. She enjoyed small talk and chatting about gardening and neighborhood gossip and Bravo shows. Ari wasn’t that type of girl. At first, they would probably clash, and then my mom would (hopefully) grow to like her. In the meantime, though, all I could pray for was the best.

           “We’ll see,” muttered my mom on the other line. “So, you’re at JFK?”

           “Yep.”

           “How do you plan on getting home?”

           “Well, I was hoping that you or dad could pick us up, or we’d just take a taxi.”

           She laughed. It was at my expense. I didn’t mind, though. It was nice to hear my mother’s comfortingly mocking laugh once again. I had missed it. “As I said before, I’m at a holiday party. I love you, Eric, but there is no way that I am coming all the way into the city to get you. And you can just forget about a cab. This late at night—on Christmas Eve? Not a chance.”

           “Whose house are you at?” I instinctively asked.

           “The Campbell’s…” she replied, her tone suggesting that she had formulated some type of an idea in her mind about what needed to be done. I hated that tone. It always somehow ended badly for me. “I have an idea,” I restricted myself from replying with something sarcastic, “so just sit tight, okay, Eric? I’m sending someone to pick you up.”

           “Okay, thanks, Mom,” I said.

           “But you can’t complain about your chauffer, okay?”

           “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

           “I’m glad you’re coming home, Eric.”

           “So am I, Mom. Thanks.”

           “You’re welcome.” She ended the call. I glanced down to Ari, whose frame was still attached to me. She hadn’t entirely zoned out, but her eyes were drooping, and she looked to be a bit dazed.

           “We’re getting picked up,” I told her, planting a light kiss on the top of her head.

           She nodded her head into my chest. “I heard. By whom?”

           “I don’t know.”

           Not fighting my vague and uninformed reply, she went with it, and nodded once more. We were both silent, and my eyes began to survey the familiar airport. I had been here before. Many times. As always, there were a bazillion people rushing everywhere. The floors were a marbled tile, and the ceilings a lengthy height. It was fluorescently lit, contrasting the darkness that the windows brought in. Though we had left California in the morning, due to the time difference between the two coasts, it was now well into the evening in New York. There were flurries cascading down from the sky, and the night was everything one would expect of Christmas Eve.

           Then, something rather important occurred to me. I glanced down at my feet: boat shoes. Then my legs: jeans. My torso: a T-shirt. I averted my gaze over to Ari. Her feet: flip-flops. Her legs: sweats. Her torso: a T-shirt. Between the two of us, we weren’t wearing anything even remotely equipped to face the great outdoors of the most wonderful place in existence (aka, New York). We were dressed for California. Not a mini blizzard.

           “Hey, Ari,” I said hesitantly, momentarily backing up from our embrace to look her over carefully. “Did you, um, bring a jacket or anything?” She shook her. It was a no.

           “Did you?” she returned the question.

           “Nope,” I said, realizing how thinking ahead and, well, actually packing clothes may have been useful in this particular instance. As I was leaving Ari Remon’s dorm room in a flash of dejection and self-loathing anger, I hadn’t exactly planned everything…or anything. I figured that I would find a flight (as I did), and just figure everything else out when I got home—to New York. All my winter clothes were in my closet at my house, anyways. The flimsy jackets I had brought to Stanford weren’t really going to help me now. At all. It was snowing.

           “It’s snowing,” Ari voiced my silent observation.

           “Indeed, it is,” I agreed.

           “We’re going to freeze.”

           “Indeed, we are.”

           I then dropped contact with Ari completely, and held up a single finger, indicating that I needed a second (or three hundred of them). She complied without an ounce of a complaint, and I went off to one of those cheesy kiosks in the distance, leaving Ari alone. But she liked being alone, and I had a hunch that she could fend for herself. After all, I would only be gone for five minutes (max).

           When I reached the stall with all the cheap tchotchkes that a tourist could ever dream of, I immediately saw the article of clothing that I had had in mind. They didn’t have the right size, so I settled for an XXL (they were the only ones left), and then joined the line of weary travellers who just wanted to buy their peanuts and bumper stickers and then move on with their lives. There were a few people in front of me, but not that many.

           I got to the cash register in the span of about three minutes, and then had the dull kiosk employee ring up my item. “That it?” he asked with a sigh.

           “Yeah,” I said, handing over a credit card and not even thinking about how overpriced the article was.

           He put it in a plastic bag, and then handed it to me. In the un-merriest tone I had ever heard, he wished me a brief, “Merry Christmas,” and then shouted, “Next!”

           With my bagged purchase in hand, I returned to Ari, who was just where I left her. She was occupied by her phone, and when she heard me, her head slowly snapped up, and she smiled. I smiled back, and then handed her the bag. Without a word, she took it, and then extracted what I had just bought for her. Her eyes grew clouded with confusion, and then she laughed, understanding that I was trying to be ironic.

           “Put it on,” I urged.

           Cautiously, she held the white monstrosity out in front of her and studied it. With a shake of her head, she slipped the classic “I ♥ NY” sweatshirt over her head, causing her figure to disappear entirely. Ari was little. Really little. It wasn’t that she was really that skinny or that short, but more that she was just little, in every sense of the word. And I had gotten her an extra, extra large sweatshirt. Evidently, it didn’t fit her. It covered her hands, went down to her knees, and made her look about three hundred pounds heavier than she actually was. But somehow, she still looked absolutely adorable in it.

           “It’s a little tight,” she joked, pulling at one of the sleeves, “didn’t they have any bigger sizes?”

           I beamed at her response, and then gestured over to an empty bench only a few yards away. Swimming in her giant sweatshirt that made her look like the dorkiest tourist around, she began to walk towards the bench, and I followed. When we reached it, we sat down, and I held her hand, but not for long, for she then felt the need to start tracing it. And I felt an overwhelming sense of joy, as I sat there being traced, in the middle of a New York airport, on a bench, with the girl I was falling for. It was the only place in the world I wanted to be, and I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. I was with Ari, and that was all that mattered. Well, until of course something popped into my mind that didn’t exactly make the most sense, and I decided to ask her about. I shouldn’t have asked, but my curiosity did always have a tendency to get the better of me, so why should this time have been any different?

           “Why was I in your dorm room this morning?” I gulped, “this morning” feeling like an entire lifetime ago. Thankfully, my body wasn’t really feeling any negative symptoms from the pills I had taken. I just couldn’t remember anything that happened after I took them until I woke up. My memory was blank for a span of about twelve hours, and it wasn’t a good thing.

           “What pills did you take?” Ari asked instead of answering. I didn’t say anything. Finally, she caved. “After you saw Scott and I, uh, ya know…”

           “Kissing?” I supplied bitterly.

           “Yeah, that,” she gulped. “Well, anyways, I ran after you.”

           “I know.”

           “And then I lost you, and just guessed that you would go to the frat house.”

           “Why?”

           “I don’t really know,” she yawned, leaning into me. Her back was pressed up against my chest, and my hand was still being outlined. “I saw Grant. Found out that you took pills. And went to that room. Then I found you. I didn’t know what to do, so I ran to go to Houston, and he helped me bring you to my room.” She paused, her movement coinciding with her words. Her breath hitched, and I was afraid of what was going to come next. “I was so scared, Eric. You weren’t dead, but it felt like you were. No matter what we did, we couldn’t wake you up. You were gone. I don’t want to lose you again, Eric. Ever.”

           “I’m sorry,” was all I could manage.

           “No, I’m the one who should be sor—”

           “You didn’t force me to swallow the pills, Ari. That was all me.”

           She was quiet, and her tracing resumed. Then, she reiterated what she had asked just moments before in a single gasp of air: “What pills did you take?”

           At the realization of the question and my answer to it, I had never felt more pitiful. I wasn’t this cool, suave guy who was in control of his life. I was an addict. Just because my face and body were as close to perfection as a single human being could get, didn’t mean that I was infallible. Addicts often used the defensively clichéd line of, “I can stop any time I want!” I sure as hell had used it. The thing was, though, the assertion was incorrect. I was addicted to drugs, meaning that I was dependent on them. Just because I wanted to stop didn’t mean that I necessarily could. The first time around, I had gone to rehab. I didn’t just take a few magical sips of a potion that made me stop being an addict—I had to work, and I worked hard at it. It wasn’t easy. And now I was back to where I started, though instead of pot, I had wrecked it all with pills. I didn’t want to be addicted anymore.

           “I—I don’t know,” I broke off, feeling something that I absolutely despised: vulnerable. I didn’t like having people see past this clever façade I had spent years building up. Even though I was no longer the star quarterback, there was still a layer of something holding me back from exposing whom I truly was inside to the world. I cared too much about how others perceived me. I shouldn’t have had to, but I did.

           “You could’ve died, Eric,” Ari exclaimed, apprehension more than “lacing” her tone.

           “Well, Ari, that’s what you get for dating an addict,” I snapped. I shouldn’t have. Ari didn’t deserve the frustration I was displacing on her that was meant for myself. I did have a right to be angry at her for kissing Scott, but right now, my ire was from a different spout entirely.

           “Sometimes I forget you’re an addict,” she admitted.

           “So do I,” I muttered.

           “We’re really screwed up, aren’t we?”

           “Yeah. Which is why we’re perfect for each other, I guess.”

           “An addict and a victim.”

           “A gorgeous addict and his equally as beautiful victim,” I amended, beginning to wonder where and who the hell our ride home was.

           Ari suddenly then backed away from me, straightening up. “I hate the word ‘victim,’” she told me. “It makes me feel weak.”

           “You’re not weak,” I said to her.

           “I know.”

           “You’re…you’re a survivor.”

           She shook her head somberly, and her dark curls fell over her shoulders as she noiselessly disagreed with me. “In order to be a survivor, I would have needed to actually survive something,” she began. “I didn’t survive the car crash that took the lives of my mom and brother. I wasn’t even near the car. I’m not a survivor—just a…a victim.”

           “But you’re so much more,” I mumbled.

           “So are you, Eric.”

           She was wrong. I wasn’t. I called her on it. “I’m not, Ari. You didn’t choose to suffer. With me, I could’ve said no to the drugs. But I didn’t. Then I became addicted, and now look where we are.”

           “How, um, bad was it?”

           “The drugs?”

           She nodded.

           “Bad,” I said, all the times I could remember deciding to emerge from the depths of my memory. I had done so much bad in the world. From all the football games I couldn’t remember because I was stoned, to the classes I somehow didn’t fail. There was one final that I could recall vaguely. It was sophomore year. I showed up high. The teachers didn’t notice, but I told them that I wasn’t feeling too well, so they sent me to the nurse. I never took that final, and I never went to the nurse. I just went behind the school and smoked more pot.

           The amazing (because of its connotation, maybe that wasn’t the best adjective in the world) part of it all was that I was never suspected. Normally, quarterbacks and athletes were the first ones to be pegged potheads. But throughout my entire high school career—until the very end when it all came crashing down—no one knew. I was never Eric Wilson comma druggie. Just the quarterback with the nice face who was in advanced classes and who was polite to almost everybody. I spent years smoking pot, and barely anybody—not even my best friend, Alex Campbell—knew.

           I used to smoke with these two guys. They played sports with me, dressed preppy, dated the right girls, and yet they were also closeted stoners. I could only assume that they still were, but I didn’t know. The three of us would spend almost every single afternoon after football practice (or in the spring just, well, school) smoking pot. We didn’t do it in public or at parties. Only at each other’s houses (basements, mostly), and other private places where we wouldn’t be caught. We generally did it behind this sketchy gas station, because it was the last place that anyone would ever look for guys like us. Well, that was until Liz Turner found us.

           In retrospect, it was a good thing that Liz had seen us. If she hadn’t, then I wouldn’t have been pressured into telling my parents and stopping. Once she saw me, deep down I knew that it was over. I still smoked a few times after that, but each time I would feel guiltier and guiltier afterwards. The guilt was good, though. Without it, I didn’t even want to think about where I would be now. I could’ve still been a stoner. Playing for the Stanford football team. I could’ve been someone else entirely.

           “How bad, Eric?” Ari pressed, her finger making its may along the edge of my jawline. Her words snapped me out of an unwanted reverie that was my past, and it felt as though a flesh wound that had finally healed was being cut open right in front of my eyes.

           “Did you ever hang out with stoners, Ari?” I sighed, not wanting to go into the gruesome details. Ari didn’t need that. I didn’t want her to associate those types of things with me, even if it was part of who I was.

           “No,” she replied.

           “Good,” I said. “They’re not fun people. Pretty depressing, actually.”

           “I know a thing or two about depression.” I tucked my chin by her shoulder, causing her to temporarily stop tracing it, and then I inhaled, sniffing the distinctly indistinct aroma that was Ari Remon.

           “All they do and want to do is smoke pot,” I let out a stream of breath. “As crazy as it sounds, it’s a recreational activity to them. They have no reason to it, they just do.”

           “You had a reason, though, didn’t you, Eric?”

           “A sucky one,” I laughed dryly. “I wanted to escape myself. I could’ve done so many freaking things, Ari, but instead…instead I became an addict.”

           “And a pretty epic boyfriend,” Ari added sweetly, turning her head up to kiss my cheek.

           Then, because fate was never on my side and this romantic moment couldn’t be prolonged any longer, my phone began to ring. Fishing it out, I managed to untangle myself from Ari. I glanced at the screen, and stared at the number that was flashing. I recognized it. The area code was the one from my hometown, but that wasn’t what was familiar. It was the entire number.

           Figuring that my mom or dad was probably just calling from a landline or something, I willingly picked it up, answering with a tentative, “Hello?”

           “Eric. Hey. Stop the PDA with the brunette, and turn around,” was the first and only thing the caller on the other end said before hanging up.

           I did as instructed, and turned around. Standing behind me was a boy I used to know far too well. It was Alex. Alex Campbell.