He sat on a barstool and pulled a couple of tacos over in front of himself. “It’s true, though.” At my bug-eyed expression, he laughed. “Ada, I was into so much bad shit back then. Drugs, partying, girls. I was a fucking mess. And then you showed up. I liked you immediately, so I went after you. I had no impulse control back then. I saw something I wanted, I took it. Or I did it. Or I snorted it. Whatever. But then you weren’t just this fling. You were serious. And you were good for the bar. And my siblings liked you. And before I could disentangle myself from the mess I’d made, I realized I liked you. Like actually liked you.” He cleared his throat. “And that was the kiss of death for me.”
I struggled to process everything he was saying. I knew he messed around with drugs, but I didn’t know he was doing a lot of them. I knew he didn’t have great impulse control, but I didn’t know... I didn’t know it had been that bad.
He let out a slow, measured breath. “When I was a younger man,” he said this with a slight twist of his mouth, “I thought I was cursed. Or the things I loved were cursed. Everything I seemed to want or like or pursue withered. Looking back, it was likely the substance abuse. But at the time, it felt like it was me. And there you were bright and shiny and so fucking perfect. I liked you, Ada. I mean, I really liked you. But you were so good for the bar. You were too good for me. I’d just lost my dad, and Will and Eliza were already so disappointed in me... I couldn’t be the reason you left. I couldn’t be the reason the bar failed. And things were so fragile at the beginning that it felt like if we lost you, we would lose the bar.”
My heart twisted into a knot. Now I was the one bursting with empathy. “Charlie, I didn’t know things were so bad for you back then.”
He shrugged. “I was stupid.”
“You were hurting.”
He gave me a look. “I was numbing.” I opened my mouth to push more empathy his way, but he continued. “I was in pain and uncomfortable, and I didn’t like feeling either, so I reached for the closest thing I could find that would make me forget. But it only made me a shittier person.”
“You weren’t a shitty person, Charlie. I never thought that about you. Not really. I was mad. My ego was bruised. But I’ve never thought you were a bad person.”
One side of his mouth attempted a smile but didn’t quite manage. “What I mean is, numbing only made the pain worse, only exasperated the trauma. You know? Whether it was drugs or girls or self-sabotage, the best I could ever manage was a temporary distraction. But the pain was still waiting for me.” He sucked in a deep breath. “Always waiting for me.”
We were quiet for a few moments as we thought about the past. For the first time ever, I realized Charlie and I weren’t so different. We just dealt with pain in opposite ways. Charlie pushed his away. Or had pushed his away. And I’d crashed into mine. He’d tried to delay feeling uncomfortable. And I’d wrapped my trauma so tightly around myself I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to trust anyone again. At least not fully. Both of us were doing it poorly. And both of us were doing it the best way we knew how.
I wished he didn’t have to go through what he did. But I also wished the same for myself. And maybe on paper, my way looked like the better way, but it still hurt. It still delayed healing. It still made me broken.
“So what changed?” I asked.
“How do you know anything has changed?” he asked, finally smiling. But it was sly, mischievous... dangerous.
“I don’t see you numbing anymore. I mean, I feel like you’ve been away from drugs for a while now. At least the harder ones. And I know you still drink, but... but not like you used to. And there have been girls, but not like, um, not since...”
“Not since the thing with Will. Yeah, that was a wake-up call.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean to hurt him. I just... I wasn’t thinking about him. Or even her. I was just thinking about me. That’s probably the first time I realized how selfish I’d gotten.” He laughed, but it was sad, pained. “A side effect of running away from all the real shit in your life is you stop being able to recognize real shit until it’s too late. I’d become this self-gratifying, greedy, entitled creature. I didn’t even notice my brother and sister were also in pain, also grieving. And if I did notice, I didn’t care. I was an asshole to my mom. To you. To the only people who ever cared about me.” He ran a hand through his hair, and for the first time, I noticed his eyes were glossy. There was a sudden lump in my throat I couldn’t push down.
“Charlie,” I whispered, wanting to weep for him.
“You know, I was a bottom-feeder for so long, I started to believe I belonged there. So I pushed everyone away who actually loved me until they believed it too. Then I was finally right. Everyone I loved believed I was a failure just like I wanted them to, and I was dumb enough to expect that to feel good. Imagine my surprise when I realized it didn’t. It somehow felt worse than all the other shit.”
“Is that when you started to change?” I brushed away the wayward tears. Crying by myself was one thing but showing emotions in front of Charlie was unforgivable.
He shook his head. “No. No, it was too late for me by then. I’d been doing things wrong for so long it was all I knew how to do. Also, when you teach yourself to be miserable, it’s hard to want to be anything else.” He shrugged and looked past me, as if he could see his former self behaving badly over my shoulder. “I believed the narrative that I didn’t deserve anything good and if I tried for something good or touched something good, it would turn to ash because I was nearby. I didn’t know how to trust anything differently. I didn’t know how to fix my mindset. I didn’t know how to move into a healthier headspace. That’s when I met Steve.”
“Oh, your friend.”
My tone must have revealed my suspicions about Steve because he laughed again. “He’s not who you think he is. He’s actually been mentoring me for a while now. We met at a support group. Kind of like AA, but it’s for people who aren’t necessarily addicts. I wasn’t addicted to anything but misery. And I needed help rewiring my brain. So it’s like a group thing. We met twice a week and shared our struggles and the false things we believed about ourselves. There was a facilitator. And then they offered a mentorship program.”
“Is it like group therapy?”
His cheeks flushed red, but he nodded. “Yeah, group therapy. The head guy is a therapist. He specializes in helping men be men.” He realized what he’d said and cleared his throat nervously. “I don’t mean to be chauvinistic or whatever. More like the opposite. He works with men specifically about male problems. Work stress, learning to communicate, uh, learning to shed a lot of the toxic masculinity we’ve been fed and just be comfortable in our own skin. Or whatever. Anyway, I signed up for the mentorship program because I wanted to deal with some deeper issues outside of group. And that’s when I met Steve.”
“Oh.”
“He’s really a great guy. He’s older than we are. I think older than my dad would have been. He’s in his mid-sixties. His family is grown and spread out all over. But he has a similar story to mine. Tough dad and a lot of bad mistakes in his twenties and thirties. Anyway, he has a lot of good advice. And he’s helped me pinpoint a lot of my problematic thinking. And especially coping mechanisms I reach for when I feel uncomfortable.” He fiddled with the nearest napkin, folding it into a football. “He’s been there in other ways too. He’s helped me figure out finances, for instance. And keep a budget. He showed me how to change the oil in my car. You know, stuff my dad should have done but didn’t think I was smart enough to figure out.”
I pressed my lips together, finding it harder and harder not to throw myself across the island and wrap my arms around him.
“Will likes to be the martyr when it comes to our dad, you know? And I’m not saying Will didn’t have it bad. My dad was a real piece of work. But he believed in Will in a way he didn’t with me. He, uh, he knew Will was capable, so he’d throw all kinds of shit at him because he knew Will would just fucking do it. But with me... well, I was always the fuck-up. The one he couldn’t trust because he knew I’d ruin it. Or break it. And then he’d have to pay to have it, whatever it was, fixed.” He cleared his throat again. “So yeah, somewhere along the way, I just started believing him. Anyway, Steve has helped me rethink some of those things.” He smiled and met my eyes for the first time in a long time. “You know, one of the first times we ever hung out, I told him I’d started an antidepressant, and I couldn’t remember to take it. Like I was always forgetting. And I felt so stupid because I knew it would help, but I just couldn’t remember to take it. And Steve goes, ‘Charlie, that’s ridiculous. Of course you can remember to take it. It’s just a pill. Set an alarm on your phone or something. But don’t quit for no reason.’” His smile widened. It was so bright. So real. So heartfelt. “It was the first time anyone had ever made doing something sound so simple. I was so used to people talking to me like I was dumb, I had never... I hadn’t realized... anyway, he was right. Taking a pill is pretty simple. I never even had to set an alarm. I just had to believe I could do it.”
“You’ve literally just blown my mind,” I told him. There was more. There was so much more that I wanted to say, but I didn’t know how to put everything into words. Because for as many words as I wanted to say, there were even more emotions.
I was one of those people who had been condescending. I was one of those people who was supposed to care about him but treated him like he couldn’t do anything. And God, I hated myself for it.
“It’s not anything to be impressed with,” he said simply. “It was a lot of work on my part. But it had to be done. I couldn’t stay that person. I owed it to the people I love. I owed it to myself.” He met my watery gaze. “I need me to be a better person for me, you know? I’m not saying being happy is the be-all and end-all. But I am saying it’s kind of up to us. Our circumstances can suck, the people supposed to love us can fail us, and we might be dealt a bad hand. But we have the ability to choose being and staying healthy in every situation. And when I’m healthy, I can also choose happy. Just like misery is a choice, so is happiness.”
