“So it’s like the old man is trying to kill his alcoholism, but in the end he loses, because that’s how life works?”
He starts to lift his head, but she goes back to humming, her fingers strong on his heel, and her tone is super casual, so he burrows a bit into the pillow instead. “I mean. Sort of?”
“Oh?” she asks, distractedly, almost like the conversation they’re having isn’t as important as whatever else she’s thinking of.
“Well. It’s just...it never stops, you know?” The pleasure in his foot doesn’t stop either, but it does retreat from his attention for a moment. He’s never really admitted it to himself out loud, but on some level, he’s always known. This struggle against alcohol is going to last the rest of his life. It’s not a battle that has a clear end point. It’s a war. It’s a war of a hundred years, and he’s never going to be able to put his weapons down and rest. There’s no going back, no peace. And yeah, okay, maybe it’s depressing as fuck to think of it that way, and maybe it’s a hard idea to wrap his brain around, but it feels true, anyway. He sighs. “I get tired, I guess. That’s all.”
“Tired of what?”
“Not knowing, I guess. That my sobriety is mine. That I get to be sure of it, that I get to keep it. It’s really hard to not know what you’ll wake up to in the morning. Whether that’s the day you’ll lose.”
She makes a soft humming sound. “Other foot.”
He obeys quickly, and his brain goes liquid again. He hadn’t known it was possible for one foot to be jealous of the other, but apparently it is.
“No other ending’s possible?” she asks, when he’s settled and practically moaning into his pillow again.
“Huh?” he asks.
“To the story on the album, I mean. The story about the drinking. You can’t think of another way for it to end?”
“But that’s how it does end.” He’s not sure what she wants, and he starts to open his eyes. But she pulls on his toes, and holy cow, that’s a wonderful thing, how is that such a wonderful thing? He melts again.
“You’re the writer of the story, though,” she says softly. “The end can be whatever you want. Can’t it?”
He makes a grumbling noise, because his rising tension is threatening to interrupt his foot rub. She laughs a little, and that makes him relax again. She’s not mad or frustrated with him, even though he doesn’t know how to give her a different answer.
“I don’t know,” he says eventually.
“They say life imitates art. Maybe that’s a thing you could use.”
“I don’t—I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re talking about.” He’s on the verge of either falling asleep or getting upset, and he’s not sure which it’ll be until he feels something soft and heavy settle on him. He blearily opens his eyes and Zac’s standing over him, draping a blanket over him. The living room light is off, and Anya’s hands steal the rigidity out of him. He closes his eyes, only opening them again when she slides out from under his feet long minutes later.
She leans over and kisses his cheek, two, three times, extraordinarily gentle, breathing warm against his temple. “Maybe your story’s not over yet,” she suggests softly, and the words settle into his brain with a weight that resonates, even as he drifts off.
* * *
He wakes up with a crick in his neck and a sore back because even though the couch is excellent, it’s still a couch, and he’s thirty-eight years old. Most of the soreness vanishes during his run, and he doesn’t think about the conversation he had with Anya the night before until he’s sitting at the table in his grungy workout sweats while she puts his daily shot in front of him.
Maybe your story’s not over yet. It would be that simple for her, maybe. She and Zac are the kind of people who will the world into compliance. They usually get what they want. And when they don’t, they know how to shrug and say I never really wanted that anyway and to move on and find something better. It’s a resilience Cal doesn’t have. He’s static in a way they aren’t—if he finds something he wants, he craves it forever, whether that’s music or alcohol or people. He’s been in love with Zac for almost twenty years. And now he’s added Anya to the mix, and losing both of them, losing PJ, losing this family—he can’t even wrap his brain around it.
She settles next to him with PJ in her arms. “Sleep okay?”
He gives her a half-sincere dirty look in response. “You’re underhanded and tricky and I know what you did last night.” Awake and aware, he knows he never would’ve given up half the details he had if she hadn’t undermined his defenses with that foot rub.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she says, every bit as innocent as a nun, and he sighs and gets up. He pours the shot down the sink.
“Herradura,” she moans, doing an admirable impression of Zac, and Cal grins even as he kisses her temple. He turns her face up to his for a kiss on the mouth, only then realizing that she looks tired. Actually, judging from the shadows under her eyes, she’s exhausted.
“Hey, you okay?”
“Fine.”
“You look—”
“Never tell a woman she looks tired, dummy. It’s a great way to lose a testicle.”
He smiles wryly. “Fair enough. But you’re okay?”
She hesitates for a split second. “Had to get up with PJ a few times. It’s all good.”
“Huh. I didn’t hear him.”
“You were downstairs.”
“Right.” He studies her. She submits to it for only a few seconds before she waves a hand in his face to make him back off. He laughs. “All right, okay, I’ll leave you alone. I’m gonna go take a shower.”
“Good, you stink,” she says, making him laugh again, and then she starts talking to the baby about having peachy mush for breakfast.
Upstairs, he can hear the shower running. Zac’s singing to himself, only barely audible over the pounding of the water. He’s left the door half open, an old habit.
It was a thing while they were roommates. Cal, irritated by the temptation of that skinny, mouthy bastard soaping up only feet away behind a thin curtain, complaining about the open door. Zac, irritated by the mugginess of a closed-up bathroom, complaining about Cal’s complaining. Cal learned to avoid that part of the house entirely at that time of day so he wouldn’t go nuts.
But this time, he hovers in the doorway.
It’s not creepy, he tells himself. He’s seen Zac naked loads of times by now, his long, lean body stretched taut under or behind or on top of Anya. Or slumped in the chair by the bed while Cal’s under or behind or on top of Anya. Zac lets him touch all the time when they’re having sex with Anya together. Zac doesn’t mind.