I didn’t know what to say, because I thought about it all the time, too. At least the things I remembered.
“There was a long time when I didn’t even want to be in the same room as you.”
“I know,” I admitted.
“You’d come around drunk. Loud. Mean. Always picking a fight. Once you told Mom her lasagna tasted like regret and divorce.”
“Shit. I don’t even remember that.” I winced.
“Exactly. You don’t remember half of it. You got blackout wasted at Ben’s high school graduation dinner. Showed up two hours late, hammered. Slurring your words, stumbling around like you didn’t even know where you were. You gave some rambling speech about how much ‘family meant to you’ and then puked in the bushes. Ben cried after. Said he didn’t want you there if that’s who you were gonna be.”
“I didn’t know.” And that felt like a punch to the fucking chest.
“And Dad’s birthday? You punched a hole in the garage wall because Sean told you to slow down.”
“I remember that one,” I whispered.
“You drove drunk. A lot. Scared the hell out of Mom. You told me once you didn’t care if you wrapped your car around a pole.”
Hearing that again stung.Lilly almost died from a drunk driver.I think that’s why, in some twisted way, I felt so close to her. She was proof of what I could’ve done.
“You slept with people just to feel something. Lied to all of us. Said you were sober when you weren’t. Stopped showing up. Hell, you disappeared for a week and didn’t answer your phone.”
“I didn’t think anyone would notice,” I mumbled.
“I noticed. I noticed every single time.”
“I was a wreck.”
“Yeah. You were.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Hearing it all out loud made me want to crawl out of my skin.
“Because you’re not like that anymore.”
“You sure?”
“I wouldn’t be on the phone with you if I wasn’t. You worked your ass off to get here. You earned a better life. You show up now. You look people in the eye. You apologized. That guy back then? That wasn’t you.”
“I still feel like he’s in me,” I muttered. “Like I’m just one bad day away from being him again.”
“But you’re not. You’re fighting now.”
“I’m still scared,” I said. “That I’ll screw it all up. That I’ll relapse.”
“Then be scared,” he said. “But be scared and keep going. Fear means you give a damn now. That alone puts you miles ahead of who you used to be.”
I let his words settle. They didn’t fix anything. Didn’t erase the past. But they mattered. Because he meant them. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. And if you ever tell Mom her lasagna tastes like divorce again, I’m legally allowed to punch you.”
“I would deserve it.”
“Damn right, you do.” He laughed, and for once, it felt good.
I felt like a brother again.
* * *
