Page 34 of Chaos

Finn holds an ice pack wrapped in a dish towel to the swollen joint that’s been giving me hell all week, and he doesn’t say a single thing while doing it.

I don’t say anything either. I just stare, dumbfounded, mouth quite literally agape, until his head starts to turn my way and I abruptly snap my jaw shut and look away. And then he’s the one staring for a minute. And then he looks away.

And then… nothing happens.

Another episode starts. Finn watches it. Beside me. Silently. Eating one grilled cheese while offering me the other, and I don’t even joke about it being poisoned or something, I don’t have it in me, I have nothing but shock and confusion and a lump in my throat because I can’t remember the last time anyone… took care of me? Is that what this is? Fuck, I don’t even know. I don’t know what’s happening.

I don’t know why, even after the ice pack melts and Finn tosses it onto the coffee table, he doesn’t move. He slouches. Tosses an arm over the back of the sofa. One set of fingers still loosely, lazily bracketing my ankle.

I don’t know why it affects me so much.

I don’t know why, when three more episodes pass and Finn finally moves, I feel so fucking deflated when he goes to bed and I’m alone again.

9

She leaves the house in big shoes and a tiny dress.

The curve of her ass teases the hemline.

He drops a cushion on his lap.

And wonders where the hell she’s going.

At the dentistgetting a root canal.

At the gynecologist getting a pap smear.

At Ricky’s place getting what sometimes felt like a combination of both.

Those are all places I’d rather be instead of idling outside Ponderosa Falls Community Center.

A tan hand pats me on the knee in what I know is meant to be a comforting gesture, but only makes me feel worse. “Don’t be nervous.”

I brush Jackson’s hand away. “I’m not.”

I’m tired because my brain missed the whole concept of a day off and woke me up at the crack of dawn anyway. I’m nauseated because my body thoughtyup, this is the perfect time to get your period. I’m pissed off that I have to be here, and I’m pissed offthat I have to be here with cramps, and I’m pissed off that after, I have to be somewhere else I don’t want to be.

But I’m not nervous. It’s just a meeting. I’ve been to what feels like hundreds of them. I was just on a three-a-damn-day dosage of them, ranging from group to private to anger fucking management. The one-a-week regiment Lux has forced onto me will be a walk in the park. I can handle it.

I just don’t want to go. That’s why I linger in my brother’s truck for five minutes longer than necessary, fingers curled around the door handle, but my ass firmly glued to the seat.

“Hey.” Jackson pats me again. “You want me to walk you in?”

And just like that, the thought of my brother escorting me to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting like a father dropping their kid off at their first day of school motivates me to move. “Nope.”

“Hey,” Jackson says again after I climb out of his truck, making me pause before I shut the door behind me. “I’m proud of you for going.”

I smile, but there’s nothing happy about it. “Yeah, well. Don’t really have a choice, do I?”

That face that maybe, sometimes, in some lightings when you squint from a distance, looks a whole lot like mine crumples thoughtfully.

I eye the overexaggerated divot between his brows cautiously. “What?”

“I’m just trying to remember the last time you did something you didn’t wanna do.”

I slam the car door.

With a huffed exhale, I turn on my platform heel and stride towards the gray, single-story building with my chin high, my shoulders back, my face blank. I don’t falter when I push through a set of double doors and every eye in the drab, echoey room falls on me.

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