Jessica was a bit more on edge than usual after the meeting. While pacing the room she'd talked about how, after a nightmare, she'd found herself looking for a bottle and didn't even realize she was doing it until she couldn't find one. She'd been coming to the meetings long enough to know that talking about it would help, eventually, but reliving it had felt a bit like exposing a nerve.
She didn't really want to go home just yet, so she lingered by the coffee, helping herself to her third since arriving there while she wasted some time. Once she had her cup in hand she leaned back against the table and just watched the rest of the group start to break up a dissipate.
She'd noticed the new guy right away, it wasn't all that often there were new people in their group and, while she might not have much work to do here, she still had a tendency to watch the network and things enough to know when someone new arrived. His presence had made talking about herself harder, and she'd avoided saying what the nightmare had been about, but that was a whole other issue she was trying to work on too. She'd met enough decent men by know that her first reaction didn't need to be fear or hatred or both. She figured she'd never really be able to trust implicitly, not at first meeting, but she did want to get over that gut reaction. The not-AA seemed to be helping that a little too, even if only by mistake.