“You do all the work?”
“Yes!” Zac’s voice cuts sharp through the afternoon. He glances at the house with a guilty flinch, then subsides into a furious whisper. “I tell you everything. I don’t have any damn secrets from you. You think that doesn’t count as work?”
“Apart from the secret where you and Anya have sex with other people, you mean,” Cal says conversationally.
Zac ignores that part, of course. “The fact that you made it through a car wreck and detoxing and eight years of AA without realizing that I knew you were an alcoholic is the problem. You’re so...you’re so locked up. You can say you’re going to a meeting or something, fuckface. Just stop freezing me out and bailing, it’s driving me nuts.”
“I was scared! This—this whole thing...” Cal gestures between the two of them and then to the house to mean Anya. “It’s so much bigger and more complicated than anything I’ve ever done, and it scares me. And being scared makes me want to drink. And that scares me more. All right? Is that enough? Do I have your permission to make mistakes now?”
Zac laughs, something bitter and judgmental. “I’m not the one who holds grudges about your mistakes.”
“Anya doesn’t.”
Zac rolls his eyes so hard they almost fall out of his head. “And I’m the one who’s stupid.”
“You’re not stupid.”
“I could punch you. I really could. You cut me slack all the time. Jesus, the excuses you make for me. You’ve done like five irresponsible things in the whole time I’ve known you, and yeah, they were doozies, but the rest of the time you’ve been a fucking oak, man, you took me in when I had no place else to go, I wouldn’t have a career if it wasn’t for you, you’ve been solid for eight years without a hiccup, not that you’d know based on the way you talk about yourself.”
“You said I scared the shit out of you.”
“My kid scares the shit out of me every time he tries to stick things in his mouth that don’t belong there. Fear is part of loving someone.”
“I drove a car into my sister’s house—”
“Which would explain why your sister hates your guts. But you only have to apologize to me about the shit you’ve done to me. And Jesus, Cal, it was eight years ago. All of this was eight years ago. I forgave you back then. When are you going to let yourself off the hook?”
“I thought you were mad at me for taking off last night! Isn’t the point that I’m supposed to be on the hook?”
“You’re on the hook for bailing and not letting us in, not for being an alcoholic!”
“I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry. I’ll do better.”
“If you say you’re sorry one more time, I’m gonna lose my shit.” But Zac takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly. He sounds calmer when he continues. “Christ. Can you—I just—Fuck, let me in a little. Foot in the door, that’s all I’m asking. Don’t you know I’ll say yes if you ask for help?”
“I know you’ll help.” Cal didn’t doubt it for second.
Zac searches his face, sharp-eyed and a little mean before subsiding. “Well, that’s something, at least.”
“So you didn’t tell Anya anything last night?”
“What’s to tell? Until five minutes ago, I thought this was old news. I thought you were pulling the same bullshit you did two weeks ago where you freaked out and couldn’t say what your problem was.” He breaks off, eyes Cal warily. “Are you drinking again?”
“No.”
“Then why is there a broken bottle of tequila on your floor?”
“I have a routine.” Cal can’t think of good words to explain. “I get up and I go for a run and I eat, and then I have this—this thing I do. I pour a glass of tequila and force myself to stare at it for three minutes before I pour it down the drain. I have a special shot glass. Take it on tour and everything. It’s risky. Tracy—my sponsor—she says I’m an idiot. Maybe she’s right. I don’t know. But even if the fact that I’m an addict is something outside of my control, my sobriety isn’t, and the routine reminds me of that. I’ve done it for five years, every day for five years, and I couldn’t stay over and sleep in today because I had to do it.”
Zac’s squinting a little, like he’s trying to remember a morning in the last five years when they’d met up early. Cal already knows he won’t find anything. The routine is sacrosanct.
“I had to do it, but this morning I couldn’t. I was close, Zac. God, that’s the closest I’ve been since the first year I quit. I—I broke the bottle instead of drinking, but it was so close. I’ve been feeling the strain for weeks now, and I didn’t want to take the chance that messing up my routine would be the thing that tipped me over. I had to go home.”
“You couldn’t have said this last night?”
Cal grimaced. “I can barely say it now.”
Zac sighs and turns to stare out over the yard. “Okay. Fine. But you’re staying tonight.”
Cal groans. “Zac—I thought you understood—”
“You can do your routine here, you know.” Zac flaps a hand in the air, brushing away Cal’s protest. “We’re serious, remember? This is what it’s like to be serious. You can stare at your stupid tequila here, and that way if you freak out, we can help.”
Cal’s hand moves of its own accord, finding Zac’s biceps and hanging on. Zac reaches up and presses his fingers to the back of Cal’s hand, holding him in place. The touch seems to burn right through his skin, and Cal’s heart stumbles in his chest.
Zac stares out at the yard. “We can go to the liquor store after we hit your place. What are we buying, anyway?”
Cal pulls his hand back, clearing his throat. “Herradura Selección Suprema.”
“You’re pouring two-hundred-dollar tequila down the drain, you fucking psycho?” Zac yells. “Why don’t you buy some five-dollar shit or something?”
“The whole point is to remind myself that I’m strong enough to resist temptation. No one in their right mind is tempted by dirt-cheap tequila,” Cal points out, and he might laugh at Zac’s outrage on any other day, but this topic is really not helping. “Can we go back to talking about me fucking up? This isn’t...”
“Sure, yeah. Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
Zac’s quiet for a moment. “We should go clean it up now, shouldn’t we? The longer it sits, the harder it’s going to be to get the smell out.”