Page 87 of A False Start
Fucking pathetic.
I’m not an angry drunk. I’m just a sad one. I save the anger for when I’m sober, for when I really have to face the turns my life has taken.
I try not to lean too hard on my mom as she leads me out of the bar. I stare down at her petite face as she does. The pink stain on her cheeks—she’s really mortified. I’ve humiliated my mother in her hometown, the woman I love more than pretty much anyone else in the world.
Shame hits me again. How could I do this to her? How could I rise so high only to fall so far? One hit to the head and my life is in shambles. It’s all so unfair.
She pushes me into the back seat of the waiting car, door already open and ready for me. My dad doesn’t even turn to look at me. Instead, he stares at me through the rear-view mirror. I wish he were angry. But even in my current state, I can tell he’s disappointed.
Which is way fucking worse.
My mom gets in, and they drive. Neither of them spares me a glance or talks to me. They just let me stew in the back seat. I’m hammered enough that I feel like I’m watching it play out from above us all somehow, like I’m watching my own life happen to me. I look like a chastised little kid in the back seat of his parents’ SUV.
They don’t acknowledge me until we pull up to their house in town. Then they both turn back to me. And I’m not too drunk to recognize the gavel is about to come down. I may be a football star. I may have a pile of money sitting in my bank, but I’m not above recognizing when the jig is up.
“This shit ends now, son.” My dad’s voice is cool and level, but my mom’s lip wobbles, and her eyes glitter with unshed tears.
“You’ve been dealt an unfair hand. But drowning your sorrows like this ends now. You have the resources to access all the help in the world and starting tomorrow, that’s what you’re going to do. Rehab. Therapy. A fucking remote cabin in the mountains. I don’t care. But drinking yourself to oblivion? The bartender calling your parents to pick you up as a thirty-year-old man? That ends now.”
The car spins around me. I’m strong. I’m a fucking athlete. The idea of asking for that kind of help is just counterintuitive.
A cabin in the woods though. The image of it spins in my head, and my stomach lurches. Maybe I could do that. I think.
And then I hurl all over the back seat.
A knock on the door pulls me out of the memory. I shake my head, still cringing over that night. My parents left the car a mess and told me to clean it in the morning when I got up sober.
I bought them a new car instead.
And if that isn’t a metaphor for how I’ve dealt with my life, then I don’t know what is. No responsibility. And now, taking it back feels downright daunting.
The knocking sounds again, but this time it registers. No one knocks on my door up here. No one visits me up here. What the fuck is going on?
I eye the hunting rifle and length of rope I leave mounted by the front door, just in case, but decide against grabbing it. That’s for cougars and wolves, or if a horse gets loose, neither of which knocks at the door. As I inch my way across the room, I peek out a window and recognize the pearl white car in the driveway.
Nadia.
I pull the door open and there she is. Looking a little ticked off. I can’t help smiling down at her. I love the little ragey streak in her. Firecracker that she is.
“Hi, Wildflower.”
“What are you smiling at?”
“You.”
“Well, knock it off. I went to see you and couldn’t find you. I called your phone, and you didn’t answer.” Her hands find her hips, like that might make her look tougher.
“I came back up here for the weekend.” I stretch one arm up the door frame and clamp my fingers there to keep from touching her.
“Didn’t think to mention that to me?”
“Well, I didn’t think—”
“Exactly.” She points at me, cutting me off. “You didn’t think. You didn’t think that I might be worried about you? You didn’t think that telling me you love me would change anything? Sometimes you make it really fucking hard to love you back.”
I stare at her. “I know I do.”
“You’re a real dick sometimes,” she huffs out, looking away. Wildflowers blow in the breeze over her right shoulder.
