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.”
I shake my head. “That’s not what my sponsor would say.”
Wyatt sighs. “Listen. I like NA as much as the next addict. It does great things for a lot of people. But in my opinion, that’s one thing twelve-step programs get wrong. You don’t have to be defined by your addiction, and you don’t have to go back to square one just because you messed up. You still have all the tools and skills you’ve developed this whole time you’ve been clean, and you can use those to stay clean. One mistake doesn’t mean you have to turn in your chip.” He shrugs one shoulder. “But hey, that’s just my opinion.”
The smile that tugs at my mouth feels fragile, but at least it’s real. “I like your opinion.”
“Me too. Generally speaking, I think my opinions are pretty good.”
The three-legged black cat takes that opportunity to reappear and try to walk across what’s left of my pancake breakfast.
“Oops! Hi, little buddy,” I say, gently picking it up and redirecting it onto my lap. “Sorry, that food’s not for cats.”
Wyatt laughs and tilts forward, scratching the cat behind one fuzzy ear. Wyatt’s abrupt proximity makes my stomach lurch, even if his attention is focused exclusively on those of the feline persuasion.
“This is Haze,” he says. “I’ve had him for three years. He’s the most annoying cat on earth.”
“Isn’t every cat the most annoying cat on earth?”
“Yeah, but mine actually wins.”
Haze rubs the side of his face against my palm, thrumming out a low purr. “I can’t believe he’s really sitting here, doing this. Most cats I know stay as far away from strange humans as they can get.”
“Haze might be the most annoying cat on earth, but he’s also the best.” Wyatt’s giving him this big soppy grin, like he’s an absolute idiot for little void cats, and I love him so much more for it.
Wait. Love?
Nope don’t go there nope nope nope. Especially not right now.
I turn my attention back to my plate. The pancakes have gone cold and slightly mushy now, but it’s for the best; my stomach is still uneasy from last night. I take a tentative bite of sausage instead. “Okay,” I say after I’ve swallowed. “Okay. I’m telling this to you, Haze, so you can hold me to it. Last night was…a blip. That’s all. I’m not starting over. I’m continuing.”
“I like that. A blip.”
I do too. Although a part of me worries, as I keep one hand moving at a slow and steady pace down Haze’s lavishly undulating spine, that this is still the wrong way to think about it. Am I making excuses if I let myself believe that one slipup does not make a relapse? Is that just giving myself permission to slip up again—and again—and again?
I can’t afford to keep doing this. I can’t go back to how I was. Never.
But the idea of starting over…it makes me feel like something’s been carved out of me. It makes me feel hopeless. And that feels even more dangerous.
“I was gonna go to a meeting today,” Wyatt says after a while, once I’ve made nibbling progress through half my sausage. “Maybe you’d like to come with me?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.”
And it is. As much as a part of me resents the idea of being back there, sitting in one of those hard folding chairs in a church basement, picking away at stale doughnuts, it’s where I need to be right now.
I just wish I could reach inside myself and excise the shame that has taken root in my gut, growing like a tumor.
Haze mraows loudly and smashes his face against the underside of my chin, a gesture of pure adoration that I do not deserve, not even from a three-legged black cat.
I wish I could see myself the way Wyatt sees me.
But I can’t.