It explains the feelings of intimate familiarity, the pull and the attraction, I felt when I turned around and locked eyes with Douglass. The disjointed flickers of phantom lips that trailed kisses across my chest, and the dark red-brown hair that spilled over my hands.
It also explains why Douglass acts like she hates my guts.Jesus.
I stumble back and slump against the door, dread at hearing more causing my legs to buckle. I’m pretty sure I know what he’s about to tell me, but I ask anyway. “Mike, what did I do?”
It’s not a question of lamentation. I have to hear the story first before I can start my self-flagellation. Add it to the mountain of regrets I carry around with me.
“You were drunk,” he says, confirming my suspicions with three little words.
I hate myself for the weakness I let control me for far too long. The two years I spent existing at the bottom of a beer bottle. The times more numerous than I care to admit where I drank so much, I blacked out. The mornings I would wake up in a strange woman’s bed and not remember how I got there or even who the woman was.
Douglass was one of those women.
“When?” I ask, needing Mike to help fill in the blanks my goddamn brain refuses to remember.
I can’t look him in the eye anymore, so I survey the ground instead. The toes of Mike’s sneakers come into view as he stops in front of me.
“Jordan, man, you’re in a good place now. Let all the past shit stay that way. In the past.”
Bile threatens to rise. “I need to know what I did. How can I make things right if I don’t know what I did to mess things up in the first place?”
He grabs my shoulders and lightly shakes me. “You’re not that person anymore. You were never that person to begin with. You were hurting from a ton of awful shit that got dumped on you all at once. Jack, your mom, Amelia and Chase.”
My heart plummets into my stomach. “And Douglass.”
His sigh is loud. “Yeah. And Douglass. You made mistakes, Jor. You were severely depressed and drank yourself stupid to cope. But you climbed out of that dark hole. You got better. Don’t let your past mistakes, mistakes you don’t even recall making, drag you back down into that hole.”
I look him dead in the eye. I hurt someone. I hurt Douglass. Sweet, shy, kind Douglass. There’s no sweeping that under the rug and pretending it didn’t happen. Making amends to those you hurt are steps eight, nine, and ten in AA:“Make a list of all persons we had harmed and become willing to make amends to them all; make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others; continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong, promptly admit it.”
“Tell me what I did.”
Mike drops his hands from my shoulders and flings them out wide. “Dammit, Jordan. Did you not hear a word I just said?”
“I heard you loud and clear.”
His jaw locks as he grits his teeth. “Stubborn goddamn son of a bitch,” he hisses under his breath. “Fine. You slept with her.”
“Already know that now. And?” I circle my hand in the space between us, telling him to get on with it.
“Five years ago.”
“And?”
“Here at the bar.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“In the storage closet.”
I had sex with Douglass in thestorage closet? I didn’t think it could get any worse.
“And?”
His nostrils flare when he takes in a deep inhale of air. “And I’m not saying another word. I promised Douglass I wouldn’t. You can hate me for that if you want, but I don’t break my damn promises. If you want to hear the rest of it, you need to talk to her.”
Mike pushes past me with a grunt and walks back inside. My best friend just blew my world apart and walked away, leaving me to sift through the rubble. Jagged, broken pieces of a night I can’t remember, no matter how desperately I want to. Only one person has answers to the questions about that night.
I need to talk to Douglass. Now.
