Heroes...And The Rest Of Us.

Adam's plan worked. We slept through the rain. I say to myself mentally on monday morning. The sun is shining brightly though the cracks in the blinds. I roll over to face Adam and see that he's gone. I prop myself up on my elbow and look around the room. Mabel and Simba are curled up on his side of the bed and the bedroom door is cracked open slightly. I get out of bed and put on one of Adam's white t-shirts thats too big for me and my black lace underwear, and go out to look for him. Today is the first group session with Jack at the rehab center, so I wonder if he's somewhere thinking about that.

He's in the kitchen trying to make the esspresso machine work, wearing black running shorts, a white v-neck t-shirt, and a black beanie covering most of his hair when I find him. He smiles at me but doesn't say anything when I come in the room. I walk around the bar and wrap my arms around his waist. He leans down and kisses the top of my head.

"Did I wake you up?" He asks me.

"No." I reach around him and push a couple of buttons on the coffee machine. It beeps twice and seconds later, starts brewing coffee. He laughs to himself a little.

"I've been out here for ten minutes trying to make it work." He says. I laugh and sit up on the edge of the counter. Mabel and Simba finally come wandering out of the bedroom sleepily and look out the windows in the living room. Adam lets them outside and then comes and stands between my legs at the counter, kissing my lips and neck until the coffee machine beeps signaling that it's done making its two perfect cups of esspresso.

We take our coffee to the dining room table and sit down. Both of us sit with one foot up on the seat part of the chair, with our knees tucked into our chests. We're both silent for a minute. I assume we're both thinking the same thing. How is today going to go?

"You look like you lost ten years in the last day and a half." He finally says to me. I laugh a little.

"I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders." I say. He nods and we both look out the back doors at the woods and the lake.

"How do you think he's doing?" I ask. He shrugs a little.

"He was probably detoxing saturday night and some of yesterday, so that was shitty. Probably better today."

"How bad is detox?"

"Bad. Really bad. Not pretty at all. It's probably the worst part of the whole thing, right after seeing your family and how bad you've hurt the people you love and that love you."

"The session starts at two, right?"

"Yeah. I have to go to a meeting with the rest of the guys at the record executive's office, and then we can go over there." I nod and we continue to drink our coffee until it's time to start getting ready to go, and I get in the shower.

While I'm in the shower, I notice Mabel sitting right outside staring at me through the clear shower curtain. Adam is standing at the bathroom sink shaving or something.

"Mabel, you're staring at me is starting to feel weird. Go kennel up or something." I say to her. I notice Adam look up at me in the mirror. Mabel stays where she is.

"Mabel, go kennel up!" I say a little bit sharply. She continues to stare at me.

"Oh my God, why aren't you listening to me?" Adam laughs from where he's standing.

"She just want's to be with you all the time, mom." He says.

"She hangs around me too much as it is. Mabel, go lay down, now!" I yell. She perks her ears up but stays where she is.

"Mabel, kennel up, now!" Adam says loudly. Mabel quickly gets up and high-tails it out of the room. I glare at Adam through the shower curtain and he just laughs.

"Ass."

A couple of hours later, I'm sitting beside Adam in the waiting room at the rehab. There are a couple of other people waiting with us. After a few minutes, the door opens and the counsler comes out to see us.

"Thank you all for coming today. Our live in patients are inside waiting for us, so if you would follow me, please, we can begin." He says. We all get up and follow him in.

It's a pretty big room with a whole wall of windows on one side that look out at an alley and another building similar to this one. There's a group of chairs in the middle of the room set up in a circle. I see Jack sitting in one of the chairs, with two chairs seperating him from the next person sitting down. He gives Adam and I the tiniest hint of a smile when we walk in. We walk over to him and he pulls me to him and hugs me tightly. I can feel him gripping my t-shirt in his fingers.

"Hey, mama." He says to me. I feel Adam pat him on the shoulder. I give him a light kiss on the cheek and we all sit down. Me in the middle, Adam and Jack on either side of me. Me and my heathens. I smile to myself and take each of them by one of their hands, holding them in my lap.

The meeting lasts about forty-five minutes, and afterwards the counsler tells the three of us that he wants to have a meeting with each of us seprately. He chooses Adam to go first, so Jack and I wait together.

"I was in rehab once, did you know that?" I say after a few moments of silence. We're seated in some metal folding chairs in the hallway outside of the counslers office. He looks at me stunned.

"What? Why, what for?" He asks.

"When I was sixteen. I was drinking a lot and my mother sent me to rehab for thirty days to get my act together."

"Why were you drinking so much? I mean, sixteen is young?"

"That's how old I was when my mother came back into my life for the first time since I was three months old." He nods.

"She came back and expected everything to be fucking peachy between us, and I was having none of that. So, I started partying and drinking a lot to defy her, I guess. One night, I went out with my brother, Brayden, and we got wasted and had to walk home. On our way there, we walked by her house in the suburbs, and I passed out in the front yard. Brayden had no way to get me out of there, so he left me. The next morning, she sent me to rehab."

"Wow. I never knew that about you."

"Not a lot of people do."

"But, you still drink sometimes."

"I'm not an alcoholic, but that was the road I was going down and it took me coming to a place like this, and seeing people with real problems to realize that my life wasn't that bad, and that defying my mother wasn't worth it, you know?"

"Yeah. Alcohol never really did anything for me. I never drank when I was high, if ever. I only drank at parties sometimes."

"Adam says the same thing, but we've had issues with that in the past. It's better now, though."

"What do you mean? Adam drank a lot in the past?"

"We were having a personaly issue that was almost the death of us as a couple, and yeah, Adam relied a lot on booze to deal with it." I get a pit in my stomach just thinking of all of this. I haven't even thought about any of it in so long.

"I can't think of anything that could break you two up. You're two of the most solid people I know." He says, bringing me back down to earth.

"Yeah. It was hard, but we got through it." I say with a shaky breath, trying to keep from crying. Jack looks at me with concern.

"It's OK to talk about whats upsetting you, Sophie. You need to get it out."

"I know. It's just been a really long time, and I don't want to dredge up old feelings. I haven't even thought about this shit in forever." I take another shaky breath.

"I need a cigarette. Do you want a cigarette?" I ask him, trying to change the subject.

"We can only smoke in our rooms, and they won't let me take you back there because there's a no sex rule, which means no co-ed cohabitating in the rooms."

"That's stupid. I need a cigarette." I say, starting to get up. Jack grabs my wrist and pulls me back down in my chair.

"No, you don't. You're just trying to push me away so you don't have to talk about whats upsetting you." I sigh.

"If I tell you what happened, you have to promise that you won't tell anyone."

"I promise." I take another shaky deep breath.

"It was before Adam and I got married...." I start, trailing off. He nods at me to keep going.

"I got pregnant. It wasn't planned, it just happened. We didn't know what we were going to do, so we didn't tell anyone. Two days before Thanksgiving, Adam was at his sister's place for the holiday, so I went over to his old house that he lived in with Barry and we were going to play cards with Neil and Janin. I was about two months pregnant, so I wasn't showing yet. Barry and I were waiting for the others, and I went to the bathroom." I take a deep breath before continuing. My hands are shaking, so I clasp them together and put them in my lap.

"Keep going." Jack says gently.

"I felt this pain in my stomach, and it hurt so bad. I knew there was something wrong with the baby, so I called for Barry. By the time we got to the hospital, the baby was gone."

"Oh my God, Sophie."

"I dealt with it as best I could, but I just wanted to be alone. Adam, I guess, didn't know how to deal with it by himself so he went out to bars and drank a lot. He came over to my place once drunk, and we got into a fight. He left and we didn't talk or see each other for a while. We finally just decided that we needed to do something because, we loved each other and we were commited to each other, but we needed to work together to get back to the way we were before all the craziness." I wipe a few tears from my eyes and put my head between my knees. I feel Jack rub my back lightly.

"It feels good to talk to someone about it, because we didn't tell anyone. Not even my family, or Neil and Brad. They don't even know I was pregnant. Barry was the only one. And Mike, Austin, and Mark, I guess but that was only because they were there when I took the test."

"Why didn't you tell anyone?"

"I didn't want to go through it. I didn't want them to feel what Adam and I were feeling."

"Well, I'm glad you told me." I nod my head quickly.

"Me too. I could really use that cigarette though." He grins. I lean back in my chair and stretch my long legs out in front of me.

"The worst part of it all, was feeling so helpless and not feeling like I had any control over what was happening. The doctor's told me that I had done nothing to cause the miscarraige. I didn't smoke or drink while I was pregnant. I was healthy, the baby was healty, there was no reason why I shouldn't have had a perfect pregnancy."

"What did they say caused it?"

"Nothing. They said it just wasn't meant to be or some shit that they tell you when that happens and it's supposed to make you feel better, but it doesn't. God didn't think we were ready to be parents, which we weren't. We still aren't, but I hated it. I hated that I couldn't save the baby, that I couldn't take Adam's pain away, that I couldn't take my pain away, you know? I had absolutely no control over what happened in my life. It wasn't up to me anymore."

"I'm sorry you had to go through that."

"It made me stronger, I think. That, or it made me more vunerable. After all the bad stuff, it made Adam and I stronger as a couple. You know, like if we could get through that, we can get through anything. We don't have to walk away from each other, or drink, or take pills when things get tough." He nods again.

The office door opens and Adam comes out and looks at me.

"They want you next, Babe."

Later that night, we're laying in our bed together. Adam is actually sitting up, with his eyes shut and his head tilted to the side a little. I'm laying beside him. I smile up and him and wrap my arm around his waist, cuddling into him closer and shut my eyes. I feel him stir a little and put his hand on the middle of my back gently.

"I love you." He says, not thinking that I can hear him, since I look like I'm sleeping.

"I love you, too."