“Rose is right,” I say softly. “Lo wouldn’t want you both to argue about this.” He’d blame himself if he woke up and heard Connor and Ryke going at it.
They all asked me if the allegations were true. We heard about them around the same time the doctors began pumping his stomach. I said no. I can’t even, for a second, believe they’re true. Lo would’ve told me.
Rose and Ryke seemed doubtful. And it hurt me to think that our own friends, his brother, may never believe the truth. We’re both known liars. It’s hard to accept anything we say as fact. So I understand, but it doesn’t hurt any less.
Everyone stays in the room, taking the day off of work while I skip all my college assignments. I don’t join them on the couch. I just hold Lo’s hand while he sleeps.
An hour passes before he finally stirs. His eyelids slowly open, and he blinks a few times to orient himself. Connor, Rose, and Ryke leave the room before he even wakes fully, afraid their presences will overwhelm him.
It’s just Lo and me.
When he finally turns his head to see me, there is something so vitally heartbreaking about those amber swirls. We’ve been in this place before. Him on a hospital bed. Me on the chair. I do what I did when we were teenagers. I pass him a glass of water.
He shakes his head slowly and says, “Lie next to me.”
I set the water on the small tray table and climb onto the wide bed. His arms wrap around me before mine tuck around his chest, tangled up in a few wires. Our legs intertwine, sufficiently embraced and connected together.
It’s quiet, and we listen to each other’s breaths for a few minutes.
“Lo,” I whisper, my fingers making circles on his black shirt. “I just want you to know that if you leave this world, I won’t be in it for much longer.” He’s a piece of me. You cut it off, and it’s like going through life with no lungs.
That is how deep our love really goes.
“Lil…I didn’t…” He cups my face, our lips inches apart. “That wasn’t my intention. I would never do that to you.”
I wipe his tears before they fall far down his cheek. “How much did I drink?” His face contorts. He didn’t think he drank past his limit, I realize. Initially, I didn’t either.
“Most of the bottle,” I say.
“I should’ve just passed out,” he says in confusion.
“You drank too fast, and you haven’t had alcohol in years, Lo. That matters.” The doctor said that his tolerance is different. He can’t function drinking the same extreme amount that he used to consume.
He shuts his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
I hold him tighter. “I would’ve been upset too,” I whisper, “but it’s going to be easier than you think.”
“Yeah?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
His eyes open but look faraway, lost to the rumors that have been spreading like wildfire. “They’re not true, you know.”
“I know.” I kiss his lips, and he pulls me even closer and kisses me back more forcefully, full of eager desperation that tears at my soul. My legs clench around his waist. I break apart first. “Lo…”
He breathes heavily. “Maybe you shouldn’t…be near me for a while.”
“No,” I say. “You can’t enable me.”
“Why is that?” he asks, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Because I can withstand your charm, Loren Hale.” Unless he layers it on, in which case, I will have to turn away to collect myself.
He laughs into a weak, pained smile, and then he shakes his head, his features just shattering. “I don’t want to be the weak one.”
It’s one of the most human things he’s ever said.
I kiss his forehead, and he kisses my nose just as quickly. I smile a smile that is filled with tears and hopes and unspoken promises. “You won’t be. Not for long.”
47
1 year : 11 months
July
LOREN HALE
June 16th passed. I remember Lily picking out the date for our wedding like a dream. I’d think it wasn’t real if Lily hadn’t marked the day on our calendar with stars. Before I drank, we briefly talked about a location, somewhere on the coast, but after I broke my sobriety, we just forgot about it.
Our energy has been focused other places. I wish I could say that I haven’t tasted alcohol after that one night, but it’s so much easier to break my sobriety again now that I’ve done it once.
I haven’t been right for a while, not since March. Some days I can barely stomach the thought of starting a morning without something to get me through it. I can’t force myself to take Antabuse. The only thing keeping me here is Lily. I try to make every day count for something. For her. When I f**k up, she doesn’t act like it’s the end of the world. She tells me that the next day will be better.
But sometimes I think that my dad was right. I was never going to be anything more than a bastard.
48
2 years : 01 month
September
LOREN HALE
I run after my brother, down the suburban street in Princeton, New Jersey. He never even tries to slow. Not when my tendons scream to stop. To take a single break. My chest blazes like an animal wants to crawl out of me. And he just glances back, as though to say, move your ass.
I can’t run as fast as him. I can’t keep up, not even when my calves burn. Not even when I force my foot in front of the other, each one heavy like lead.
He reaches the oak tree at the end of the street first—of course. I slow to a halt and rest my hands on my head, my jaw locking as I glare at him, pissed. At me, mostly. For not being able to run right by his side. I want to.
God, I want to.
“You can’t go easy on me just once?” I ask, pushing damp strands of hair off my forehead.
“If I slowed down, we would have been walking,” Ryke retorts, not even winded. He stretches his arm over his shoulder. If I told him to do a hundred push-ups right now, I doubt he’d even break a sweat.
I roll my eyes and scowl. I want to let go of everything, to just move on from the allegations—the stupid shit online, the way people look at me when I walk down a street—but I can’t. I don’t know how to release this tension in my body. It never goes away. Not with anything but alcohol.
I squat to try to breathe right. And then I rub my eyes.
“What do you need?” he asks me.
“A f**king glass of whiskey. One ice cube. Think you can do that for me, big bro?”
He glowers back. “You want a glass of whiskey? Why don’t I just push you in the front of a f**king freight train? It’s about the same.”
I stand up and let out a short laugh. “Do you even know what this feels like?” I extend my arms, my eyes on fire like I’m halfway between crying and rage. “I feel like I’m going out of my goddamn mind, Ryke. Tell me what I should do? Huh? Nothing takes this pain away, not running, not f**king the girl I love, not anything.”
I wish to God that I could find an easy out. An easy fix. Anything except alcohol. I’d take it in a heartbeat. But there’s nothing that I can do except deal with this shit. Try and move on, to let go. It’s just taking a lot longer than I ever thought it would.
“You relapsed a few times,” he says. “But you can get back to where you were.”
I shake my head, a knee-jerk reaction.