Page 12 of For All It's Worth
Will let the conversation go, talking about other things for a minute before he rejoined his boyfriend. Mom had served all non-alcoholic drinks at the meal and I felt ashamed at the relief of not being tempted. While I’d been resistant to rehab to begin with, the longer I went without a drink, the more it burned and itched at me.
Lurking in the kitchen away from the others and the pressure of socializing, I could admit that I turned to alcohol a lot after a stressful day. I ran three clubs, so there were always drinks at meetings with suppliers or on training days. With everything as it stood, I didn’t know how I could go back to being hands-on with the clubs. How could an alcoholic in recovery be a good fit to run nightclubs or bars?
My staff didn’t know what happened to me to the best of my knowledge, though I’m sure there were rumors about it. Part of the reason I’d been drinking more was the stress of the clubs. I’d been keeping it from them, but one club wasn’t in the best shape. Financially, it was doing okay, but there was a ton of work that was needed to get the building up to the new codes that were coming in. They were going to be costly and difficult to implement, possibly causing us to close briefly to get the work done. A developer had been on my case about buying the building and one of my other clubs. He was unwilling to take just the one and I was torn over it.
If I gave in and sold them, it would still leave me with my best performing club. It was the one where the manager had quit but had come back after Alex had bargained with him. It was also the one that didn’t need me there. What would I do with my days if I didn’t have them to oversee? What would happen to my staff if I agreed to the sale?
I’d been holding out, partly because the stubborn part of me wanted to keep them even if they were going to cost me a fortune to renovate. The real reason though was the people that I’d hired. Most, if not all, of the staff were handpicked for my clubs. While I wasn’t the best at dealing with the general public, years of sitting back and observing had taught me a lot about what made people tick. Human behavior was easy to predict. After working for me a while, I knew these people well and didn’t want them to lose their jobs just after Christmas. I could be a dick, but I wasn’t a bastard.
Aside from that one manager who I’d made the mistake of sleeping with, all of my employees seemed to enjoy working for me. We didn’t hire often, so I must have been doing something right.
As the party started to wind down, with Alex putting Joe to bed and Abby and Josh taking their leave, Mom noticed that I was flagging and said her goodbyes, pushing me and Matty out of the door.
I hurt all over, my body still healing from the beating it’d received. While I’d put on weight, I was still far too skinny. For so long I’d been caught up in running away from my problems, and I’d neglected to look after myself. Eating and sleeping were regularly forgotten. Passing out drunk and having a liquid dinner didn’t count for much, it seemed.
The house was warm and scented with vanilla when we returned, Matty having driven us in her new car. Next Christmas she would be in college, so Mom justified spoiling her with something practical but safe, not that any of us minded.
“I’m just going to call Max and then probably go to sleep,” I told Mom, giving her a brief hug and saying goodnight. I still felt sleepy and full from the feast we’d eaten.
“Okay honey, wish him a Merry Christmas from me and a thank you for the gift. It was beautiful.”
“Sure thing.”
Upstairs, in the safety of my room, I took a breath, toed off my shoes, and sat at my desk, pulling my phone out of my pocket.
I was grateful that I had always automatically backed everything on my phone up to the cloud because I had a ton of pictures of me and Max just hanging out that I would have been gutted to lose. I could deal with losing numbers and random things, but I wanted those photos.
Putting off the call a little longer, feeling guilty at how I knew Max had spent his day, I scrolled through the recovered photos, smiling at happier times and wondering where it had all gone wrong for us.
On my desk, there was a framed photo of the two of us from college. We were both smiling up at the camera with my arm around his shoulders. It’d been a gift from Max early on in our friendship when we still didn’t quite know each other’s likes and dislikes as well as we did now. Or at least, as well as I thought we did.
Unpacking my camera bag carefully, I got the memory card out, ready to back up the pictures and pick the best ones out for a photo book for Mom. It would be a great gift for her. I’d bought her a spa experience, which was a cop-out gift if I was honest. I’d lost touch with stuff that my family liked and saw the brief flicker of disappointment in her eyes when she’d opened it. After so many Christmases apart, I really should have done better.
My laptop fired up quickly. Clicking on the memory card, I waited as the contents loaded. After a minute, I was stunned at discovering photos from my university days with Max. I couldn’t believe that I’d set these aside and forgotten them. There were maybe hundreds of Max. Him sitting in fall leaves, laughing up at me without a care in the world. Max cooking, on one of the many vacations we took, or just hanging out.
If I did my rehab and we figured things out, would Max let me take photos of him again? He used to love posing for me. Often it was just silly poses, but I’d get him to pretend he was a proper model. He was pretty enough for it, and he’d strut around while I took tons of shots. He’d stare into the lens moodily and then we’d crack up with laughter. We would wander the city looking for great backgrounds for him, the park, museums, old buildings, anywhere that caught my eye. He was crazy photogenic, the light always hitting him just right, turning his white-blond hair silver so he looked otherworldly. He hadn’t lost any of that now we were older, if anything he was more beautiful.
I was aware I was running out of excuses to put the call off, but I couldn’t help feeling nostalgic and guilty. The argument with Max was my fault. I’d messed up with him royally and it’d taken days for me to figure out where I’d gone wrong. I’d gotten careless with him. It niggled at me that it might be something more than that. It wasn’t like Max to react so strongly, so maybe it was something else? I scoured my memories of the last few weeks and couldn’t come up with anything, leaving me frustrated.
When we were out partying, I always had to keep half an eye on him. He was like catnip to a lot of creeps. They mistook his smaller stature for weakness. They saw him as vulnerable because he looked so angelic and though he could hold his own, it never hurt to have back up.
A few months ago we’d been out and I’d lost track of him. I’d left him alone in a club and went to a new bar looking for a hookup. Stress had been piling on and I was drinking more and more to take the edge off and I’d just…left him. I was lucky that Will had found him and made sure he’d gotten home safely. My brother was a far better man than I’d given him credit for.
Max was the best friend that I could hope for. While he hadn’t condoned my actions with Ethan, I’d suffered many of his lectures, he stood by me when others hadn’t. I think that he’d been relieved when Ethan and I fell apart quickly after it all came out. There had been no chance that we would stay together since Ethan and Max didn’t get along.
Pulling up the contact for Max, I hesitated before pressing the call symbol. It rang a couple of times before he picked up.
“Merry Christmas, Charlie.”
“Merry Christmas, Max.”
