“Hey, I’m sorry about yesterday,” he says hoarsely as he flops back onto the sunlounger and groans. “I got a little carried away.”
My brows hit my hairline. “Carried away? Finn, that was a borderline hospital trip.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.” He waves a hand.
My nostrils flare in frustration. “Dramatic? You really don’t see what you’re doing to yourself. Do you?”
“It’s fine. Just a bit of drink.”
“Fine?” I repeat. “Finn, you and I both know that you’re not fine.”
“What do you want me to say?” His voice is harsh, but I don’t take it to heart.
I look up at the sky and exhale a long breath. “I want you to tell me the truth, to be honest with me. I’ve seen the way you’ve been deteriorating this summer, drinking any chance you can get. It’s not healthy and it’s not a way to cope with things.”
Finn tuts as if he’s heard this a thousand times before. He pushes himself up from the seat. “I don’t need to hear about this shit right now,” he grumbles and attempts to walk away.
I shoot up and lock my hand around his wrist, tugging him backwards. When he faces me, his eyes are full of sorrow. I’m sick of him feeling sorry for himself and pushing everyone around him away. Soon, he’ll have no one if he doesn’t attempt to open up.
“Youdoneed to hear about this shit.” I lower my voice but keep it stern. “You’re covering your problems with drinking. Don’t you think I saw how bad it was at university? Well, it’s a hundred times worse now. You were trying to go to work drunk, you were being rude to Ivy. This isn’t the Finn I know. Talk to me.”
He lowers his head as I move my hand to his shoulder, caging him in. “I—” He pauses. “Can’t.” His chest sounds like it’s about to give out any second.
Instead of pressuring him into speaking, I bundle him into a hug. He presses his forehead down onto my shoulder as I rub his back in soothing strokes. “Breathe,” I instruct him when he starts choking on air. “Inhale really deeply, hold it if you can. Then back out again.”
Finn takes a few moments to take in what I’m saying. I pull away and hold him at arm’s length as he hangs his head. His breathing slows, but I can still hear his pain. It’s destroying him from the inside out, and I wish I could somehow take this away from him, from Ivy, from this entire town.
“I feel like I’m losing sense of everything,” he says between breaths. “I-I don’t even know who I am anymore. All this guilt has eaten me alive, and I’m living a lie. A fucking lie.”
I dip down to see his face, but he closes his eyes. “Guilt about what?”
“About Ivy!” he shouts, taking a step back. “I hurt her. It’s all my fault. It’s always been my fucking fault.”
I don’t know much about their past, but all I know is it haunts them daily.
“I should never have let her get with him. My friend.Ever.”
His words slash through my heart, bleeding out of my chest. “But Ivy is still here. She’s getting on with her life. You should be doing the same. This guilt is eating you alive because you don’t talk about it with someone who could help. Have you ever thought about going to a therapist?”
Finn rolls his eyes and glances out at the grass. “No. Therapy doesn’t work.”
“You ever been?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know it won’t work?”
Finn bites down on his bottom lip and shakes his head. “Because sitting there an hour a week with someone who is getting paid to listen to my shitty struggles doesn’t sound like fun to me.”
“Therapy isn’t supposed to be fun, Finn. It’s meant to be painful, but it’s meant to get you out of your own head. It’s meant to make you get things off your chest, dig deeper into root causes. It’s not to punish you even more, it’s to take the load off, it’s to make you realise that what you’ve been thinking all along isn’t true.”
He sighs. “My head is too fucked up for a therapist to sort through.”
“There is no such thing.”
Finn closes his eyes and turns around before sitting back down again, drawing his knees up and resting his elbows over them. I join him. If he doesn’t want to talk right now, fine. At least he’s not down the pub drinking whatever he can get his hands on, even with this terrible hangover.
“I-I—” he starts and closes his mouth. I remain silent. “I hate how I feel when I’m hungover, it makes me feel fucking depressed. But that’s why I drink again, so I stop feeling like that.”
