“We’ve all done things we regret,” he says. “But you don’t have to let your past define your future. I know it’s a little trite, but when they say, ‘One day at a time,’ that means something. Every day you can make different choices. Every day is another step away from that person you used to be. Eventually you’ll look back and see how far you’ve really come. And those who love you will be there waiting for you, no matter what. There’s always a way back.”
I don’t know if I believe him—or if it takes ten years to get to that point—but I’m still glad he said it. I wrap those words up and keep them safe in the corner of my heart, where they might take root and maybe—one day—have a chance of becoming true.
* * *
■
In a perfect world, I wouldn’t live in a house that had alcohol in it at all. I’d have my own apartment, completely scrubbed clean of everything that might tempt me off the straight and narrow. I’d go to NA every night. I’d keep in touch with my sponsor. In a perfect, perfect world, I might have even checked myself into rehab after this last slip.
But this isn’t a perfect world, and I’m not a perfect person. So I go to NA the night after my slip, and when I get home I bake Ophelia and Diego a really nice quiche, and over what essentially amounts to egg pie, I tell them the truth. I tell them I’m an addict and an alcoholic, and I cannot be trusted, and that if they ever see me sneaking swigs of bourbon in the bathroom, they should probably knock me out with the bottle before I do anything worse.
Ophelia knows already, of course, but she does a good job faking otherwise, and Diego takes it surprisingly well. It turns out Diego’s brother has substance abuse issues too, and Diego is pretty empathetic for someone who had his college savings stolen to fund someone else’s drug habit. He pulls me into a hug, the kind of bone-crushing embrace that makes you feel like the other person is trying to smoosh their affection into your visceral organs.
Sometimes I realize that I am the luckiest person in the world.
Wyatt texts me every few hours over the next couple days, always the same thing: All good? And I text back, All good. It’s a small ritual but it feels important. Like if I can just keep texting back that “all good,” then it’ll be true. It’ll stay true.
24
WYATT
Ely: Can you come over?
The text appears on my phone when I’m midway through washing dishes—another gourmet meal of boxed mac and cheese—and I pretty much immediately give up on cleaning. (Not that I wasn’t already looking for an excuse.)
Of course, I start typing, but this doesn’t feel like a texting sort of situation. So I hit Call instead and listen to the phone ring twice, three times, before Ely picks up.
“Hey,” she says. Her voice is a little shaky. Maybe someone else wouldn’t notice, but I’m listening for it, and I know her. I know the sound of someone trying to sound cool, sound normal, even when they’re falling the fuck apart inside.
“Hey there,” I say back. “What’s going on?”
Her exhale is low and somewhat ragged. “I just…Rough night. I feel like my mind keeps circling the drain and I can’t shut it off. I don’t…I can’t be alone right now.”
I check my watch. It’s 9:00 p.m.—late but not middle of the night. Haze will be fine parkouring off the furniture without me.
Not that I think the time of night would have actually made a difference in the end. I knew what I was going to say before I even picked up the phone.
“I can be there in an hour,” I say. “Are you going to be okay until then?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be fine. I can…watch Schitt’s Creek or something. I’ll be okay.”
“Okay. If you’re sure. I’ll head out right now. Text me if you need to talk while I’m on the way.”
The commute from Bushwick to Astoria is terrible, and I find myself furiously staring at my phone every time we pull into a subway station, waiting for the little signal bars to pop up, bracing myself for a text from Ely. I should have taken a cab. An hour is an hour, but it’s also a long damn time when you’re fresh out of a relapse. Anything can happen in an hour.
You can’t be a helicopter parent. Or a helicopter…whatever Ely and I are.
This is kind of a thing of mine, though. A couple of weeks after I adopted Haze, he got sick with some kind of respiratory virus. I could hear him wheezing with every breath. The vet seemed okay about it, but I stayed up all night for two nights in a row just watching that cat breathe. Making sure he was still alive.
I want to stare at Ely all night and make sure she’s still breathing too.
The bus drops me off, and I ring the bell at Ely’s building and stand there for the world’s longest twenty seconds waiting for her to buzz me in. But even after she does, as I stride up the stairs to her floor two at a time, my shoulders still don’t descend from their tense posture up by my ears.
I know better than anyone that alive isn’t always the same thing as okay.
But then Ely opens the door, and my gaze reflexively skips down her whole body, looking for signs of—of I don’t even know what. But whatever I’m looking for, it isn’t there. She looks normal, her dark hair drawn up in a messy bun, the bluish smudges under her eyes no more pronounced than usual.
“Sorry it took me so long,” I say.
She musters half a smile, at least. “You literally came from Brooklyn. I’m impressed you got here on the same calendar date.”
I’ve never been inside Ely’s apartment before. And maybe this isn’t the time for it, but I can’t help a quick, surreptitious glance around…even if the pink velvet sofa and baby-blue credenza probably speak more to her roommates’ tastes than to her own.
“Back here,” she says, and leads me through a door across the living room.
Ely’s bedroom is tiny, about the size of a moderate-to-large suburban bathroom. The bed itself takes up most of the space, with a rickety desk crammed into what remains, its chair facing the window that peers out over the street below.
She kicks the door shut behind me and drops down onto the edge of the bed. I choose the desk chair, even if it—frankly—looks like it may not hold my weight.
Being here, shut in a bedroom with Ely, feels illicit. I can’t quite figure out where to rest my gaze; it ends up settled on Ely’s hands, watching her fingers clench and flex against the duvet fabric.
I remember how she gripped the sheets as I drove into her that first night. Our only night. The perfect shape her mouth made as she moaned. The line of her arched throat, her thighs tightening around my hips.