by C. Desir
Tears press against my eyes and I can’t speak. I can’t have this. I’ve been resigned to it. I gave it up, let it go. All the signs told me no, it wasn’t for me. I dig deep and bury the hope her words spark in me. Then I wrap the towel around my neck and leave her standing in the basement alone.
Chapter
Eighteen
It’s two o’clock in the morning and I’m woken by thumps on my window. I peek out and of course it’s Brent with a handful of rocks from the rock garden at the end of our driveway. Rocks, not pebbles. What an idiot.
I pull open the window and hiss down to him, “Stop. You’ll wake my parents. I’m coming down.”
There’s no point trying to get him to go away. He’s obviously drunk and on some sort of mission. I pull the front door open and he’s leaning against the side of my house.
“Two a.m. Really? This is the house you come to after boozing all night?”
He grins, but his gaze is glassy. Definitely drunk. “I wanted to talk to you. School starts again in two days, and I want to clear some stuff up. You’ve been avoiding it long enough.”
I sigh. “And you couldn’t stop by tomorrow?”
He tilts to the side when he shakes his head. “No. Now.”
I roll my eyes, but pull him inside, whispering, “You have to be quiet. My parents have their white noise machine on, but they’ll hear stumbling and loud voices.”
He nods and grabs for my hand. I let him keep it in his grasp, if only to make sure he stays steady as he follows me to my room. When we get there, I shut the door and fold my arms, leaning against the wall as he stumbles toward the bed and lies down with a moan.
“Your bed is so soft,” he says.
“Mom put a feather bed on top.”
He rolls to his side and smiles at me. “Your mom takes care of you.”
I shrug.
“That’s good. Someone should take care of you.”
My arms tighten across my body. “Did you want to tell me something? Because I’d like to get this over with so I can go back to sleep like normal people.”
He reaches out and waves me closer to him. I take a few steps, but stop before I get too close. “You used to be awake at this time,” he says. “You used to party later than any of us. I’ve never seen someone get by on so little sleep.”
“I slept. Just mostly during the day on weekends.”
He grins. “Yeah.”
“So?”
“Do you remember that night?” he says, and suddenly he sounds a lot more sober than he did a few minutes ago. “The night you drove me home and got your DUI.”
Every part of me is tensing. I’ve been avoiding this for weeks, and even now with Brent in front of me, my brain is starting to fuzz out and push my thoughts away. “Of course I remember that night. You were wasted. I got a DUI. The end.”
He shakes his head and rolls onto his back, staring at my ceiling. The silence between us lasts long enough for me to wonder if he’s maybe fallen asleep, which would be fricking perfect. But then he releases a long sigh.
“Do you remember what you told me at the beginning of the party? After you’d already had a few shots?”
He’s going at it head-on. There’s going to be no way out of this, but still I try. “No. It was months ago.”
“You want to know why I got so drunk after?”
“No. I don’t. I don’t want to talk about this. You need to get out of here. My parents—”
“Are you just going to pretend, Nattie? Be all breezy about it, same as you were that night?”
“Oh, fuck off, Brent. There’s nothing to pretend. It’s irrelevant. I can’t even believe you’re bringing it up.”
He sits up and holds himself steady for a second, like maybe the room is spinning. “I can’t believe you won’t talk about it. I keep trying. And you keep shutting me down.”
“Get out. For real. Get the fuck out of here before I scream and my parents call the cops.”
Brent rises and shakes his head. “So this is it? You’re not going to let me—”
I flap my arms at him. “Stop. Get out. Now. I’m serious.”
He heaves a sigh and stumbles to the door. I follow him downstairs and realize I’m probably going to have to drive him home. But when he exits the front door, he starts walking down the street. No car. Thank God for that at least. It’s freezing and I should probably offer him a ride, but I don’t want to continue this conversation. I don’t want to answer his questions. I don’t want to think about that night or what I told him. I thought I might be ready for it, but I’m not. I’m nowhere near ready. I want it all to pour out of my head like it never happened, but my brain isn’t working in my favor now. It’s like a cat with a mouse. Which means there’s really only one choice for me.
* * *
“Where did you get the vodka, Natalie?”
Mom’s harsh voice breaks through the fracture in my brain. I crack open an eye and immediately shut it. I’m slightly buzzed still and it’s too bright.
“Answer your mother.” Dad. Great.
“Twenty-four-hour Walgreens.”
“Do you have a fake ID? Let me have it.”
I roll onto my back but keep my eyes shut. “No. No fake ID. There’s just a really friendly cashier guy who works nights there.”
“Thank Christ I put that Breathalyzer on her car. I can only imagine the type of scene she’d have made if she got pulled over for another DUI. The neighbors would never stop talking about it.” Dad again. Part of me wonders if I should care that the neighbors’ gossip is really the only important thing to him, but my brain hurts too much to think about it. He’s Dad. That’s how he rolls.
“I think you should call your sponsor,” Mom says now. “Tell her about your slip. Get back on the program.”
My slip. Yes. That’s how Mom would see it. Like all I need to do is dust myself off and start working the steps again, when really all I can think about is having an orange-juice-and-gin breakfast drink to take the edge off the pounding in my head. To forget my mom’s mention of Jerry. To forget Brent’s visit. To forget that this is my life.
“I’ll call her later. I need a few more hours of sleep,” I say.
Dad huffs. “Clean her up, Sarah. We’re not going through all this again.” Then I hear his footsteps and my door shutting. It sounds like a slam, but it could be my head.
I slit my eyes open again and glance at Mom’s face. Tearstains on her cheeks and red eyes. I’m horrible, but I don’t have the energy to make this right. Instead I say, “I’ll call Kathy as soon as I get up. Promise. I just need a few more hours . . .”
“You have thirty minutes,” she says, tilting her chin slightly so I know she’s going to be firm on this. “Then I’m coming back in here to wake you up and get you in the shower.”
I wave at her and she turns away, tiptoeing toward the door and opening and shutting it softly behind her. It’s considerate. I know she is trying to give me a break. I also know, as my eyes flutter closed again, that neither of my parents asked why I was drinking in the first place.
Chapter
Nineteen
Kathy’s waiting for me at the Starbucks. Her eyes narrow as she gazes at my face.
“You missed your sponsor meeting this morning. And community service. Left Joe in the lurch for the pancake breakfast.”
I raise a shoulder. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Do you want to be?”
Well, that is a legit question. Much better than anything Mom has said to me so far today.
“I don’t know,” I answer.
“Fair enough. Wanna tell me what happened?”
I shake my head. “Not really.”
“Natalie, no one expects you to be perfect. Mistakes, relapses, slip-ups, they come with the territory. I don’t know anyone who quit drinking that ever cold turkeyed it without making one mistake. But there’s a big difference between fucking up and knowing you’re an alcoholic and need to try again, and
fucking up because you don’t think you have a problem. So which is it?”
I pull out my cigarettes with shaky hands. I can’t smoke inside, but I need the feel of the box, as much as I need to ignore the six texts from Joe waiting on my phone.
“I have a problem,” I whisper.
Kathy nods. “Yeah, you do. Now. You want to tell me what happened?”
This is part of the Fifth Step. I know if I start to tell her everything, it’s all going to tumble out of me and spill into the space between us. And part of me isn’t ready for that. Not with Kathy. Not when . . .
Her phone pings and she glances down. A flash of anger and something else crosses her face. Maybe hope?
“Your ex?” I ask.
She nods. “I told him I needed time to think. He’s respected that, but he calls or texts every day. I think he wants me to know he’s committed. I’m stupid for even hesitating. I’m the one who hurt him. I’m the alcoholic. This should be a dream come true, him wanting me back.”
“But . . . it’s not?”
“Like I said, it’s complicated. That’s all. It’s hard to live with someone who has seen the shittiest part of you. It’s hard to live with someone you hurt so much, because you’re constantly reminded of your past mistakes. You know more people break up after they get sober than before. The rate of divorce in recovering alcoholics is really high. Part of it might be resentment, but I think part of it is the difficulty of being with someone who has seen you at your worst.”
Which sort of decides it for me. Kathy can’t be the person I spill everything to. She’s not the “other human being” in my Fifth Step: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. My stuff is ridiculous in comparison. Even I’m rolling my eyes at how stupid it would all sound to her.
“Yeah, that’s hard,” I agree. “Well, look, I don’t mean to bail on you, but I sort of owe Joe an apology and I thought I’d go do that.”
She blinks and I can see she’s still distracted, which is maybe why she says, “Okay. But show up next week. Call me tomorrow. Relapses don’t have to be the end of it. You can shake this off.”
I nod and get up, grabbing my box of cigarettes. “Yeah. I know. Call your ex. He seems like a good guy.”
I don’t actually know. He could be a douche, but the smile she gives me makes me think probably not. She’s looking for permission with him and if I can give her that, then that’s a good thing, I guess.
* * *
“Why didn’t you call?” Joe asks as he pours me a cup of coffee and slides it in front of me.
This is the first time I’ve been to his place, which is actually a small trailer, only like no other trailer I’ve ever seen. It’s clean and sort of eco-fancy. Like I’m probably leaning on a counter made of recycled materials and the coffee was probably made using energy from the solar paneling on the roof.
My hand slides along the counter and up to the cast iron pots hanging on the wall. “You don’t have a lot of stuff,” I say, noting how perfectly everything fits into this small space. There’s a section that’s walled off at the end of the trailer, which I assume is where his bed is.
“No. I don’t need much.”
“Did you build this place?”
“Mostly. I had a guy help me with the electrics and some of the carpentry. But, yeah, I built it. I got the idea from an architect I know. She was trying to get out from under a mountain of messy divorce debt. She didn’t want a house payment anymore. So she got a flatbed trailer and built herself a house for less than twelve grand. Sort of amazing, really.”
“It’s small,” I say, twisting my hands in front of me. The space between Joe and me seems almost nonexistent. I’m hyperaware of every move he’s making and I’m sure he’s equally aware of me. I can almost feel his breath on my cheek.
“It’s just me living here,” he says.
Silence sits between us, but it’s not the usual comfortable silence of being with Joe. It’s his waiting silence.
“I didn’t call because I wanted to drink,” I finally say. “So I powered off my phone and got some vodka instead.”
“Yeah, I got that part.” He steps even closer to me and steers me toward the tiny table at the end of the counter. I sit and he slips into the chair opposite.
“I can’t do my Fifth Step with Kathy.”
His brow furrows. “Why not?”
I shake my head. He doesn’t know about his brother. Still. And telling him is going way past oversharing into crossing boundaries I don’t want to get involved with. “It’s not my place to say. But she’s not in a good spot to help me with it.”
“I talked to her this morning when you didn’t show up. She seems fine.”
“Look. You need to let it go. I don’t want to tell her all my shit. Whether that’s because of her or me is irrelevant. The point is, I’m not getting into it all with her.”
“You have to do it with someone,” he says.
I nod and look at him, searching his face for permission, for some sort of sign he understands what I’m feeling. “I can’t do it with Kathy. I can’t,” I say again.
He reaches across the table and takes my hand. “I won’t be that person for you, Natalie. It’s too . . . loaded. You know that.”
I do, but it doesn’t change how I feel. “You’re the only one I could tell,” I blurt out. “You’re the only one who I think could know my whole truth and not judge me for it.”
He shakes his head. “We can’t . . .”
“I’m not looking for epic love, Joe. All I want, all I really need, is someone who gives a shit about my story. Someone who cares enough to listen.”
The words are like pieces of me being pried from my body. I can’t believe I’ve even said them. I have no idea how I got to this place from where I was last night. All I know is that I need him with a strange desperation. I need him. To listen and say it’s okay and hold my hand and tell me that I’m going to make it and that maybe I’m not the worst person in the world.
“Please,” I whisper. “I won’t get through it without you.”
The whole atmosphere in the room has changed. And I’m almost one hundred percent certain he’s going to turn me away, send me home, back to the darkness.
“Okay,” he says at last. “Okay.”
Chapter
Twenty
Joe stands to get an ashtray. It’s one of those smokeless kinds, which is maybe why his tiny eco-trailer doesn’t smell like cigarettes. I pull my pack from my purse and light one before I say anything.
“So how does it work?”
“Well,” he says, lighting his own cigarette, “there’s no specific way. You can tell me how it was going through your moral inventory, what you figured out about yourself. Or you can tell me your story, weaving your moral inventory into it.”
“Kathy told me it’s mostly about sex.”
Joe doesn’t flinch but his hand shakes the tiniest bit as he flicks an ash. “Depends. It can be. It isn’t for everyone.”
“Was it for you?”
He stares at me for a second and I’m worried I’ve already pushed too hard. Finally he says, “Yes and no. But this isn’t my Fifth Step, it’s yours. I’ll answer your questions, but you and I both know that’s just you stalling. So. Why don’t you tell me what happened last night?”
I take a full drag. “No. I need to back up to before then.”
He nods.
“It’s not like I didn’t know about my addictive personality. I mean, I’ve always sort of been an all-or-nothing kind of girl. But I didn’t really think it would happen with drinking. I mean, everyone in high school drinks, right?”
“Not everyone.”
I wave the hand holding my cigarette. “I’m not talking about the athletes in training or the losers who never go to parties. I’m talking about most people. And it’s not just my circle. I bet at least three-quarters of my class have had a drink. Most of them probably had one by freshman year.
Before I had loadie friends, I had regular friends and they all drank some, even the ones on the honors track. It’s how things are these days.”
Joe blinks. “These days?”
“Fuck off. I’m not calling you old. I’m just saying that most people at my high school have had a drink. And probably most people in any high school. It’s what teenagers do. And access is pretty easy.”
“Okay. So, you’ve been drinking since . . . ?”
I inhale deeply on my cigarette and end up coughing. “I had my first drink in sixth grade. It was at one of my parents’ parties. But it wasn’t a big deal. And that was the year I first started boxing.”
Joe smiles and part of me melts a little, but I shore up my defenses.
“So I didn’t drink much because I boxed. And you know how I told you I got good after a few years, like really good, but my parents didn’t want me to do it.”
He nods. “And?”
“And I gave it up for a while—the boxing—and started drinking a lot more. Because if I didn’t, I think I probably would’ve ended up beating the crap out of everyone. The thing about boxing isn’t just that I was good. It was that it belonged to me, you know? No one else does it. I mean, yeah, girls do it, but no one from my school, no one my parents know. It was all mine.”
“But you gave it up.”
I look up for a second. “Yeah. Because my parents told me to. They kept on me about it, telling me it could only be a hobby. Complaining about my bruises and how I didn’t look like other girls. Making it hard for me to keep going. And I always fucking give up things that are too hard. But I missed it so much that after a while, I figured, fuck my parents, I’m going to get sober and do it anyway. But it was like everything was stacked against me, you know? It wasn’t just having to quit drinking, which at that point, I figured I probably could. It was . . .”
I can’t finish. There’s a roadblock in the back of my throat that won’t let me finish that line of thought, so I change direction. “By the beginning of last year I was drinking every day. My friends and I would take water bottles of powdered orange drink and vodka to school every morning. I think they added water too. I did at first, but by May it was just the vodka and the orange powder.”
