The air in the car suddenly feels heavy enough to choke me. I try to answer, but nothing comes out. My sluggish thoughts slide away before my mouth can form them. I swallow hard, wringing my hands around the wheel.
“Fucking, look at you,” Mason snarls as he reaches my shattered driver’s side window. “Open the fucking door.” Hedoesn’t wait for me to obey his command. He yanks it wide, and his hands are immediately on me. There is nothing gentle about the way he fists my jacket and hauls me from my seat.
“Easy…” I mutter, my legs not cooperating when my feet hit the ground. The driveway shifts under my boots, and I stumble.
“Easy?” Mason catches me. “You’re fucking unbelievable. You could’ve killed someone.”
Anger radiates off him as he tightens his hold on me. He doesn’t ask if I can walk. He drags me—half-carrying, and half-pulling—through the gate and up the drive toward the house.
“You think this is what she’d want?” he snarls, shoving the front door hard enough that it bangs against the wall. “You think Rosie would want you drowning yourself in booze?”
“Don’t…” My voice sounds sour. “Don’t say her name.”
My warning does nothing to stop him. He doesn’t soften at all. If anything, it only enrages him further.
“Rosie would hate what you’re doing to yourself.” My feet tangle as the too-bright house blurs past. I barely register him hauling down the hall and into the bathroom until he shoves me into the shower and turns on the water. “Drinking like this… Driving your car like this…”
I hiss as the shocking blast rains over my chest and steals the breath from my lungs. I gasp, my body jerking violently as the ice-cold droplets bite down to the bone. “Fuck!” I futilely try to shove past him to get from under the frigid spray.
“Good,” Mason snaps over the roar of the water. “Wake the fuck up. You’re no better than the man who took her from you”—he shoves me back beneath the frigid water with enough force that I fall to the tile floor—“fromall of us.”
The chill is brutal and relentless. It soaks through my clothes and burns over my skin as my teeth chatter uncontrollably. My heart races, and clarity practically slaps me across the face. I try to form words, but they die in my throat. I can’t explain. I can’t apologize. I can’t even fight back, because he’s right.
“You don’t get to check out like this,” he shouts, climbing into the stall with me. Fisting the front of my shirt, he holds me steady under the spray. “You don’t get to drink and drive, pretendingyou’rethe only one who’d pay for it.”
“I… I get it,” I choke out through the cascade of water raining over my face.
“No, you don’t,” he fires back. “Because if you did, we wouldn’t be here.Youdon’t get to be the reason someone else losestheirfuture.”
The water keeps coming, cold and cruel. Mason exhales hard as he steps back. He lets the shower run a second longer before reaching past me to shut it off. Silence washes over the room, broken only by my sputtered breathing. I slump against the tile surround, soaked, shaking, and sober enough for unrelenting shame to hit me hard.
Mason slides down the wall and sits across from me in the shower stall. “East… You need to stop. You need to get help, man. You got lucky tonight. Lucky that you didn’t hurt yourself or worse, someone else.”
I stare back at him, the words floating past my understanding.Lucky?Nothing about my life since that fateful day feels lucky.
“You don’t get it, do you? You can’t keep spiraling like this. You need help.Realhelp. I’m here, and I’ll be with you, but you have to want it.”
“I…” I swallow so hard that my throat hurts. “I can’t… I?—”
“Yes, you can,” Mason interrupts. “You just have to decide you’re done letting grief run you over. Done letting that bottle be your out. Done letting the memory of Rosie”—he pauses to take a deep breath—“define your life. She’d want you to fight, East. She’d want you to live. She’d want you to be the man she fell in love with.”
I close my eyes, wrapping my arms around myself, as his words strike something inside me that’s been hidden under layers of numbness. “You’re right,” I whisper, almost to myself. “I… I just… don’t know how.”
“You don’t have to. You just have towant it.” Mason pushes to his feet and extends his hand toward me. “One step at a time. You can be like the man who ruined your life, or choose to live in a way she’d be proud of. Starting right now.”
I stare up at him and give an uncertain nod before slapping my hand into his. He pulls me to my feet and into an embrace. For the first time in months, I don’t feel numb as I cry on his shoulder. “I’m sorry…”
Mason doesn’t let me go, but he doesn’t say another word. He doesn’t need to. His presence is enough. Proof that I’m not alone, and I don’t have to carry this by myself.
October 16th
Dear Easton,
Five years, baby.
I say “I love you” plenty. You hear it every day, and sometimes I worry it’s just words floating into the air, easy to say but not enough to capture everything I feel. I’m not a lyricist like you, so this is my attempt to put what I feel for you into words, even though I know words will never be enough. I don’t think you’ll ever know how much you’ve changed my life.
I grew up bouncing from foster home to foster home. Always moving.Always trying to prove I was good enough before getting tossed to the next place, the next family, the next person who might want me to stay. I learned early that permanence was a myth. Love was conditional. Trust was fragile. Safety was temporary.
