by Alyssa Kress
~~~
"And then she told me she could live with me taking over half the garage with my new table saw—so long as I remembered to put down the toilet seat every time I used it." Bob laughed at his own story about a minor dispute with his wife.
Brennan did his best to smile as the other members of his informal support group laughed along with Bob. They'd all met at AA and, being in similar places in their recovery, had decided a couple years ago to meet on their own once a month. Today the five of them were in Bob's living room.
Three weeks had passed since Brennan's idiotic marriage proposal to Erica, but his self-disgust had not abated one iota. He could find no way to escape it nor from a creeping sense of shame.
"Are you okay?"
The question came from Joan, a pretty woman in her late twenties, the youngest in the group. She gazed at Brennan with some concern.
Brennan opened his mouth to claim he was fine and then halted. If he couldn't be honest with his support group, he was in true trouble. "Not really."
Now he had the attention of the rest of them.
He spread his hands. "I've got a problem." When he saw the near panic on Joan's face, he added, "Not with alcohol. It's...a woman."
Brennan could see surprise on Bob's face and also on that of the older woman, Rachel. He'd never brought up relationships with the group—mostly because he hadn't had any.
"Yeah," he joked with a small smile. "Since when have you heard me mention a woman?"
"I don't believe you ever have," Joan agreed.
"Too right." Brennan shook his head. "I haven't been seriously involved with any for years. See, when I was first becoming sober, I was also breaking up with my fiancée. That was tough. Too tough. I never wanted to do that again. So I've made sure never to get too emotionally intimate, too close."
"You haven't fallen in love," Bob translated.
"Right." Brennan pressed his lips together. "But a couple months ago, I met someone. She's different. I don't even know why. Anyway, she tests my restraint." He paused and gave a brief laugh. "No, beyond tests it. I proposed marriage to her."
"Whoa," Bob murmured.
"Yeah, 'whoa' is right." Brennan looked down at his hands. "Fortunately, she said no." He sighed, feeling all the itchy, constricting pain again. "I made sure not to fall in love with her, but it still hurts. Hell, it's just as bad as what I'd been trying so hard to avoid. And now—I just don't know what to do. How to get away from...this."
He was done. A brief silence ensued while he imagined they all processed his dilemma.
"You say you're not in love with her," Joan began, speaking slowly, as if thinking it through. "Then...why did you propose marriage?"
Brennan lifted a shoulder. "There were extenuating circumstances. If she were married, a lot of family issues would have fallen into place for her. It would have been...convenient."
"So, you were simply trying to solve her family issues?" Rachel, the older woman, queried.
Brennan was about to agree when he had to stop. Had that truly been his motivation? He remembered how happy he'd felt when he'd got the brilliant idea to marry Erica. Had that happiness been solely regarding the idea of solving the problem of Liam's guardianship? "Okay, maybe I thought it would be good to be married to her." He frowned. "For my own sake."
"In what way?" Joan asked.
Bob and Merv, the two men, chuckled.
"Well, that, too," Brennan admitted, but he thought about Joan's question. What had been running through his mind when he'd devised the idea of marriage? He'd thought they could be a family together, he, Erica, and Liam. He'd thought they could...
...love each other?
Had he gone that far?
"I don't know," Brennan slowly claimed. He looked up to find Rachel regarding him with her dim, older eyes. Bob and Merv were still smirking, but Joan looked confused.
"Don't you know?" Rachel asked. She tilted her head, resembling a little bird. "I wonder who are you lying to? And why?"
Lying? Had he been lying? But the swell of recognition Brennan felt told him the accusation was true. No wonder he'd been feeling ashamed. Making a searching and fearless moral inventory of oneself was one of the twelve steps of AA. "Oh, man," he breathed.
He was in love with Erica. Of course he was in love with her.
"I'm in much further than I've been admitting." Just saying it out loud caused a shiver of deep fear to go through him. "That's bad, isn't it? I'm not ready for love. I'm not strong enough to deal with it."
"You're not strong enough for love?" Bob looked baffled. "Man, that's like saying you're not strong enough for life."
Joan nodded.
"But I thought I was being prudent. Safe." Brennan's voice petered into silence as he heard how he sounded. Like a coward.
"About as safe as the guy who won't eat because he doesn't want to gain weight. So he dies of starvation." Bob laughed.
Brennan shook his head, which felt like it was spinning. "I thought I was staying healthy."
"But you were avoiding a full recovery," Rachel supplied.
Brennan had never looked at it that way.
He gazed at Rachel, who looked back at him with a kind expression. But a pitying one.
Brennan had never looked at falling in love as being part of his recovery.
But maybe it was time he did.
