as it turned out, I did. Mostly because after I got off the phone with Ben, after Justin came in and then left, Esther cornered me—easy enough, considering I was lying in bed, pantsless, and wasn’t about to get up—and asked me how I was feeling.
“Fine,” I said for what felt like the fifty-millionth time that day. “Honestly. I just want to go home.”
Esther made a face. Her you’re-not-going-to-like-this-but-I’m-saying-it-anyway face. I narrowed my eyes in suspicion.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Esther began. “I know you say everything’s fine. And that you weren’t trying to do anything yesterday. But Adam, I’m worried. What you took, what you drank… that’s dangerous. I think maybe you should go somewhere. A clinic or something.”
I felt a hot flash of shame in my stomach.
“I don’t need to do that,” I said, trying to sound calmer than I felt. “Not rehab. Es, I don’t even really drink much or anything, except before shows. Just to help with nerves and stuff.”
“That’s still problematic.”
“Okay, so I won’t do that anymore. I’m not going to be playing any shows anytime soon anyway.”
After the disaster and public embarrassment of last night, I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to handle that again. I hated the feeling of people looking at me, of being dissected, on display.
“Fine,” Esther said. “But clearly something happened. Even if drinking isn’t the main thing, it’s like, a symptom, right? Of something bigger? I just feel like something’s going on that you’re not telling me, and that’s fine, you don’t have to, but you have to talk to someone.”
“So what,” I asked petulantly. “You’re going to make me see a shrink or something? I’m not going to spill my troubles out to one of your psychiatrist friends.”
Esther gave me a withering glance. “No. That would be ethically gray in the first place, since they know you already, and know me. But Adam, this is serious. I can’t like, be around 24/7 but at this point, I’m afraid to leave you alone.”
“Jesus, Es, I’m not five, I can handle—”
“There’s this place in West Redding, the Peachtree Center.”
“What, you’re going to have me committed or something?”
“No, it’s not like that. It’s more like, a retreat. I don’t know. Celebrities go there all the time for like, exhaustion and stuff. They have therapists, counselors. And they’re really discreet. If you just went for like, a month, no one would know. And I know you’re an adult, I know I can’t make you do anything but I just… Adam, I’m freaking out. I just want to know you’re gonna be okay.”
Esther’s voice broke on those last words and I looked at her and wished I hadn’t. Dammit, her eyes were full of tears and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to say no. The thought of having to pour my feelings out to strangers made me cringe. But Esther had always been there for me, even when our parents had been conspicuously absent. She’d taken care of me when I’d needed it, no matter how hard I fought.
I couldn’t say no to her.
And on top of that, she was probably right. I was a mess. Anyone could see that. Maybe it was finally time to admit it.
So that’s how I ended up spending the next 30 days at the Peachtree Wellness Center, a holistic health retreat where they had horses and yoga and hiking and private rooms with high-thread count sheets—in addition to enough psychiatrists and clinical social workers to fill a Greyhound bus.
I figured it was going to be mostly kumbaya sharing circles and talking about my childhood with a bunch of spoiled rich 20-somethings and there was a lot of that. But they didn’t make you talk and mostly I just hiked and wrote and read. I was pretty sure I pissed the hell out of the shrink assigned to my case—excuse me, the psychiatrist assigned to guide me on my personal journey towards wellness—but the month didn’t suck entirely, and that was mostly due to Nick.
Nick was a divinity student volunteering at Peachtree three nights a week as one of his pastoral care externships. I hadn’t been inside a church since I was eight but when I ran into Nick in the kitchen one night when I couldn’t sleep, he was making tea, offered me a cup, and I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no.
Turned out, Nick—bi, 26, Mets fan—had almost zero advice to offer me, which ended up making him the