Nothing More Beautiful (26 page)

Inside, we found a cramped hall with chairs
arranged in a circle, and a table with coffee and snacks. The two
men sat down on the far side while another man spoke, though I
couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying with the rattle of the
metal chairs. The man’s tone softened, as though he were ending his
speech, and the hall quieted. “So if you’ve had the same trouble
with step ten, please feel free to share now, or if you’ve had any
other problems, you can share those, too.”

I could hear the clear tenor of Vince’s
familiar voice. “Hi, my name is Vince, and I’m an addict.”

There was a pause, followed by a collective,
“Hi, Vince.”

“Vince?” I called out, unable to control my
reaction.

I could see his soft curls in front of me as
he spun in his seat. Our eyes locked and there was definite panic
in his. He jumped up. Terrance jumped beside him. “Maci.” Vince put
up his hand at his bodyguard, darting to where Danielle and I stood
by the door. “What are you doing here?” he whispered.

“Wha—what are
you
doing here? What is
this, AA?”

“Let’s talk about it outside.” He grabbed
hold of my elbow and pushed me toward the door. I squirmed out of
his strong grip, turning around.

Danielle opened the door and exited first,
holding it for us. “I’ll let you two talk things over. I’ll be in
the car, Maci.”

I nodded at her, quickly turning back to
Vince, in utter shock.

“It’s NA—Narcotics Anonymous. I’m a drug
addict, Maci. Recovering, but still an addict.”

“What do you mean—what does that mean?” I
was shaking my head, my mouth involuntarily open.

“It means I used to do a lot of drugs. Hard
drugs. Terrible, nasty, hard drugs.”

Disbelief flooded my head, and suddenly the
world felt foggy and distant.

“I think we should go somewhere else to talk
about this.” His face was pleading with me.

About to lash into him, I saw the reasoning
behind his suggestion. “Where?”

“There’s a café not far. Is that all right?”
I had never seen such worried eyes before. He was afraid, I could
tell—afraid of losing me.

I wanted to be reasonable, and not let my
anger and confusion get the best of me. I simply nodded.

“I’ll go let Terrance know.” He rushed back
inside.

I plucked my phone from my pocket, hands
shaking, and typed out a message to Danielle, asking her to wait 30
minutes since she had her book, then to leave if I didn’t come back
by then. If things couldn’t be worked out, taxis existed. Walking
around the building and pool, I waited by Vince’s car. He came
running up from around the building, out of breath.

“I thought—I thought you’d left,” he gasped.
“I’m glad you didn’t.” He unlocked the Mustang. Pulling out, we
ended up crossing 99 on Commercial, then parking in front of a
chiropractic office on Main Street in Tigard. Neither of us spoke
during the short car ride. I was trying to collect my thoughts and
keep some composure.

“It’s across the street. That red
old-fashioned general store.” He pointed to a cute two-story
building. We jaywalked across the dead road, found a four-person
table by a street-side window, and calmly sat in the vacant café. I
didn’t know what to do, fidgeting for a while before folding my
arms across my chest, clutching my arms as tightly as I could.

He scratched the back of his head, looking
at the table, unsure how to proceed. “So, you’re a drug
addict?”

“
Recovering
drug addict,” he inserted
quickly.

I brushed aside the comment. “For how
long?”

“I’ve been in NA since late May 2011,” he
answered, his elbows on the table, his eyes looking out the window.
“I was in rehab for a few weeks before that . . .”
He was struggling to get the words out.

After a long pause, I said, “I guess my
biggest question is
why
? You don’t seem like a partyer, so
how did you get into drugs?” He finally looked me in the eye. His
lips were shaking as he held back tears.

A waiter came by with two glasses of water
and asked if we wanted anything else to drink. After a decisive
no
from me, he said he’d be back in a minute to take our
order. He moved too quickly for me to tell him I wasn’t interested
in food.

Vince was on the edge of a rainstorm. He
held his breathing in check, stifling the flow of tears that could
come at any moment. “My—” he started, but his throat grinded from
dryness. He took a sip of water and cleared his throat. “After my
adoptive parents died, my childhood wasn’t a fun one, being tossed
from one foster home to the next. I never really got to know
anyone, transferring to different schools. I never really had a
constant in my life, you know, until my senior year of high school.
Then I went off to Stanford. That’s where I met Skye, during my
freshman year. I’d never met a girl like her. She was so caring and
generous, and . . . 

“And we fell in love,
hard
. We moved
in together our sophomore year, then I proposed our senior year, in
September. We were planning on getting married after we
graduated—you know, have a nice summer wedding outdoors. But in
May, she and her sister were heading down to New Zealand for a
weekend. Her brother-in-law was part of a film crew, and he had
been down there shooting a movie for a few weeks. Anyway,” he
choked. I could see his will weakening as streams steadily dribbled
down his cheeks. “The plane—it crashed over the Pacific. There were
no survivors.”

He swallowed a dry, hard swallow. I put my
hands out and reached for him, but the table was too big, and his
face was buried in his hands, veiling his tears.

I had no words: no way to comfort him.

Vince was breathing through the pain, slowly
collecting himself. Minutes later, he went on: “Skye was my life,
my constant, and after her death . . .” He brought
his red-rimmed eyes level with mine. “I fell apart. I couldn’t eat
or sleep at all. That’s when I started taking sleeping pills, but
they didn’t do the trick, and then I found an old bottle of Vicodin
in my medicine cabinet. They numbed the pain and put me to sleep. I
spent a lot of time sleeping then. I scraped by until graduation,
already admitted into the mechanical engineering program for grad
school, but then I found myself utterly alone that summer and
things just seemed to get worse and worse.

“In August, I remember being at a party, and
this shady dude asked me if I wanted some ‘pearl,’ which I later
found out was cocaine. I tried it . . . and
after that, everything got worse. By May, I hit rock bottom. This
was in 2011 now, and I had gone through a slew of drugs by that
time, until Alma rescued me. She was the one who took me to
rehab.

“It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve bounced back,
barely getting by during those long, long months. School of course
didn’t go well, but I was good, and Alma, she was even better.
Because of her, I graduated; because of her, I found life
again . . . 

“Anyway, I’ve been going to NA every week
since then, and every Thursday since moving to Portland. I’ve been
clean since May of 2011, and I still see a therapist to deal with
Skye’s death.”

There was another long pause. “Why—” I found
I had no voice. I gulped down half my glass, trying to piece it all
out. “Why couldn’t you tell me all this before?”

“I’ve been trying to for weeks,” he said,
his voice hoarse and nasally, his nose clogged. “I wanted to after
the night we made the list, but the words never seemed right—they
never came to me when I was about to broach the subject. I wanted
to tell you all about it. And after you asked about Alma, I wanted
to tell you even more, but I—I just couldn’t.” He winced, as if
attacked by a sharp pain in his gut.

“Skye was the reason you couldn’t sleep with
Alma?” I asked, evaluating how hard a blow her death had been to
him.

He nodded. “After Alma helped me get cleaned
up, we grew even closer, but we took it slow, remaining friends for
almost a year before we decided to give a real relationship a
chance. Months went by and I still couldn’t do it, still couldn’t
get over the obstacle of seeing Skye’s face the moment Alma would
try to get intimate.”

Then it dawned on me and everything became
clear. “So that’s why you were so distant the first two times we
had sex?”

He nodded again. “After you sent me that
text, I knew I had screwed things up just like before, and I also
knew I couldn’t lose you like that. I liked you too much to let
ghosts from my past get in the way. But
still . . . even though I got over what had
been keeping me back for so many years, I couldn’t tell you, I
couldn’t—”

“It’s okay, Vince.” I got up and sat beside
him in the empty chair. Wrapping my arms around him, I squeezed
tight. He returned the embrace. “It’s okay. I understand. I get
it.”

He went silent. Tears were streaming down
both our faces by then. I didn’t know how long they lasted, but it
was a while. The waiter was smart enough to give us space; he never
returned.

“So, I didn’t scare you off?” he asked,
smiling, snot on his upper lip. I handed him a napkin and he
blew.

“No,” I answered. “I just wish I wouldn’t
have found out this way. I thought you were cheating on me, and
then Danielle had convinced me you had a secret family living at
that apartment complex.”

He laughed. “A secret family. Is that
right?” He blew again.

“Walking in on an NA meeting was just as
great a shock, though. Neither of us ever guessed drugs.”

“Should you tell Danielle you’re okay?” he
asked, looking his wristwatch. “It’s been over an hour.”

“I’ll text her, yeah,” I said. “I told her
to go home after 30 minutes.”

“Do you want me to take you home?”

I shook my head. “I’d like to stay with you
tonight, if that’s all right.”

He leaned in and kissed me.

“There’s just one
thing . . .” I started as we were leaving.

“Yeah?” he prompted.

I stopped on the sidewalk in front of the
café. “How come your stint in rehab isn’t in the news, or on your
Wikipedia page or whatever? I mean, as soon as a celebrity goes to
rehab, it’s everywhere—in your face for days.”

He gave me a small chuckle. “Well, I’m no
celebrity, and I haven’t been wealthy that long,” he replied. “I’m
sure given enough time, it will be. There probably won’t be any
major digging into my past for a few years, though, with some luck.
Right now, I’ve paid off the right people, which sounds bad, but so
does ‘former druggie owns major alternative energy company,’” he
air quoted.

I laughed. “Yeah, that does sound bad.”

We drove back to his place. In the solarium,
I grabbed his arms, and turned him to face me, leaning in. We held
each other without talking for a while. It was weird how much
closer I felt to him now. I rose on my tiptoes and kissed him
gently. The soft touch sent a shiver up my spine as we parted.

Vince’s eyes locked with mine. “I know we
haven’t known each other long, Maci, but I’m pretty sure I’m
falling for you.”

I leaned in for a second, harder kiss that
lasted twice as long. After we separated, I felt like a motor had
just been turned on, alive with desire. I stripped off his jacket,
and lifted off his shirt so that he stood there in only his pants
and shoes. His skin was so warm, and his muscles so hard. I glided
over his abs and rubbed his growing erection through his pants.

He stopped me. “I have a surprise for you,”
he said breathily. He grabbed my hand and led me upstairs to the
largest spare bedroom on the far end. Inside, he whipped around the
corner into the bathroom, where we almost came to a crashing halt.
“I had it installed a few days ago.”

I gazed up and spotted the huge waterfall
showerhead hanging from the ceiling where a light had been. My
heartbeat picked up, excited. “Do both showerheads work?”

“I guess we’ll have to find out.” He turned
both handles and water spouted out of both. “Shall we cross another
fantasy off the list?”

I couldn’t help but bite my lip, eager.
Stripping off the rest of our clothes, we stepped into the
extravagant shower. One and a half sides were huge glass panes,
while the other two and a half were expensive tile, with a corner
bench on the half-wall.

The water was hot and relieving. Our bodies
collided under the soft pellets of the waterfall, slick and sexy.
His tongue explored my mouth before swirling with mine. His cock
had stiffened to its full length, and I squeezed it like he had
showed me. “God, it’s so hard,” I gasped. “And thick.”

His hand reached for my clit and he smiled,
circling under the endless cascade. With dexterous fingers, he
gently pinched my inner lips and stroked them. I could feel them
parting as my veins burst afire. He slid a finger in, shallow at
first, then deeper and deeper. “You’re so tight,” he said into my
ear. He circled as he went in and out, slow and intentional. It was
hard to see with the waterfall above, which added a different
sensual element and increased my tactile sensitivity.

“I have an idea,” he said abruptly,
withdrawing his sweet fingers.

I brushed the water from my eyes and saw him
grab the detachable wall-mounted showerhead, bringing it down to my
pussy. Tenderly, he massaged my clit with the showerhead. I let out
a hard breath. The pressure of the water shot pulses of pleasure
straight up my back to my neck. Stopping his hand after a moment, I
replaced the showerhead, and pulled him directly under the
waterfall.

Then I knelt on the tile. The water slicked
his cock and made it easy to pump up and down. My left hand ran up
his thigh and around to his butt, keeping me stabilized. He was
groaning as I raised his hard-on above his waist and probed his
balls with my tongue. I slipped one in my mouth and sucked as I
continued to pump his shaft. His breath hitched and he leaned back
on the wall, his arms supporting him. “Jesus, what are you doing?”
he cried out, his head tilted back.