Have no self-control.
“It’s not a race to the bottom,” Wyatt says, as if he can read my mind. His fingers loop through my hair, and I wish he would keep touching me like this forever. Even if I don’t deserve it.
But instead he pulls away, carrying my half-empty water glass to the kitchen counter and refilling it. I take advantage of his absence to scrub my face against my sleeves and try to pull myself together. Not that it works. The room is still spinning far too wildly for me to even pretend I’m not a goddamn mess.
“Come on,” he says when he’s back, offering me his free hand. “Get some rest. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
“I doubt that.”
“Well, let’s test it and see.”
I sniffle and take his hand, letting him pull me upright. The change in position makes me dizzy all over again and I stumble; Wyatt catches me, an arm sliding around my waist, fingertips pressing in at my ribs. He helps me, just like that, the pair of us picking our way across his apartment to the bedroom. He doesn’t turn on the light, so I can’t catalog the room—it’s all dark shapes and edges as Wyatt settles me onto the bed and places my water glass on the nightstand.
“I’ll be in the other room if you need anything,” he says. “Bathroom is through that door…. Try to get some sleep, okay?”
He closes the door softly behind himself, and I curl up in the middle of Wyatt’s bed, burying my face against the pillow that smells like him, and try to pretend I am someone else, anyone else in the entire world.
22
When you go four years without a single hangover, you start to forget how god-awful they are.
Or maybe the hangovers just get worse with age.
Either way, waking up the next morning is awful. The sunlight streaming in through the windows falls directly on my face, I have the headache from hell, and my tongue feels like a slab of dryer lint. I fumble on the nightstand for my phone before remembering that—right—I’m not at home. I’m at Wyatt’s.
My hand hits the sweaty side of a glass of ice water. I crack my eyes open just enough to see; Wyatt’s left the water and a bottle of aspirin next to the bed. Bless this man.
Also, there is a black cat sitting on my chest.
“Hey, buddy,” I mumble. Opening my mouth feels like a gamble, but you can’t meet a void cat and not say hi. It’s extremely rude. “Sup?”
I manage a clumsy scratch behind its ears, which only sends it leaping off me and tottering off into another room on three legs. Great. Even the cat hates me.
I down two of the aspirin and then embark on the slow, agonizing process of getting out of bed.
By the time I make it out to the main part of the apartment, the pounding in my head has escalated to a constant throb right between my eyes. Worse is the humiliation that coils in the pit of my stomach, hot and nauseating.
Wyatt is in the kitchen pouring pancake batter into a skillet. The smell of frying butter makes my gut curdle; I try to breathe through my mouth.
I wish that I were here under literally any other circumstances. There are so many versions of this morning I could have spent watching Wyatt’s strong muscles shift under his white T-shirt as he flipped pancakes. In another world I could have come up behind him and slid my arms around that firm stomach and kissed the nape of his neck. And he’d have been happy to see me. He would have shifted in my arms to catch my mouth with his, still smiling.
Why did I have to call him? Of all the people on planet Earth. Fuck you, past Ely.
“Hi,” he says, setting the spatula down on a spoon rest as he turns to face me. “You’re up. Did you sleep okay?”
He looks so cautious, so…sympathetic. I wish he wouldn’t. The kindness is worse than disappointment or even anger would have been.
“Yeah.” I slide onto one of the leather-padded barstools at Wyatt’s kitchen island, both hands still gripping the water glass he brought me. “Thanks for letting me stay here last night. Really.”
He nods. “I didn’t want to just take you home. I was worried you might…well. You know.”
I do know. It would have been only too easy to spiral further—to think, Well, I’ve fucked it up now; might as well fuck it up worse, and go out and find something that would well and truly wipe my mind blank.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “For putting this all on you. You aren’t— This isn’t your responsibility. I can get out of your hair….”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m glad you called. You reached out for help. You did exactly what you were supposed to do.”
He’s not wrong, technically. But I should have called Shannon instead. Or Ophelia. Or Michal. Calling Wyatt was the equivalent of drunk dialing an ex. My memory of last night is blurry, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t throw myself at him. He wouldn’t be acting this normal if I had, right?
“You’re such a good friend,” I say, and if I wish I could use a different word from “friend,” that isn’t our current reality, so. “Seriously. Thank you.”
Wyatt offers me a small smile, then turns to plate the pancakes and sausages he’d been preparing. The pancakes look too sunny, too happy, with their little pats of butter swimming on top—like they’re mocking me. A liberal dose of raspberry sauce takes care of that problem; now they look rather more like a crime scene.
“So I guess I’m fucked, huh?” I say after we’re both a couple of bites in, Wyatt standing on the opposite side of the island with one elbow perched on the counter. I wonder if he always eats breakfast standing, coffee mug in hand, like he’s ready to rush out the door at a moment’s notice.
“What do you mean?”
I drag the tines of my fork through the remains of my half-demolished pancake. “I mean, I relapsed. I have to start over now. Day zero. Four and a half years, all for…for fucking nothing.”
“Not for nothing,” Wyatt says, cutting in so firmly that I glance up. “That was four and a half years of your life when you weren’t actively trying to kill yourself. You built an entire future in that four and a half years. You grew as an artist. You became independent. You moved out here. None of that would have been possible if you weren’t clean.”
“I guess…. But still. I threw it all away. One night. That’s all it takes.” It’s so goddamn easy for me to destroy everything.
“No. Stop saying that. You don’t have to start over. You slipped up, that’s all. It happens. And now you get back on the horse, and you keep doing what you’ve been doing for four and a half years.”