I believed him. That was the part I kept landing on — not with relief, not with the fragile gratitude of someone waiting to be proven wrong, but with something quiet and solid sitting in the centre of my chest. I believed him because he'd earned it. Because he'd shown up every time it mattered, even when I'd made it difficult, even when I'd been too far gone to make it easy.
We sat back down on the log and I tucked myself under his arm and he pulled me in and we just looked at the stars for a while longer. The same stars we'd looked at when we were seventeen and broke and convinced that the best we could hope for was eventually getting out. They hadn't changed. We had.
“You know what I keep thinking about?” I said.
“What?”
“How we used to sit here and talk about the future like it was this terrifying thing happening somewhere far away.” I watched a plane track slowly across the dark. “And now it's just — this. Us. Here. And it's not terrifying at all.”
Rook was quiet for a moment. “No. It's not.”
I turned my face up to look at him, and he was already looking at me, and the expression on his face was going to live in my chest for the rest of my life.
overtime
ROOK
Two weeks later…
The community center smelled like industrial cleaner and burnt coffee, and the overhead lights had that harsh LED quality that made everyone look washed out and tired. I'd been here twice before with Soren, and both times I'd felt the same low-grade discomfort that came from sitting in a plastic chair that was definitely not designed for someone my size while listening to strangers talk about their worst moments.
But Soren had asked if I wanted to come tonight, and I'd said yes without hesitation.
We were early, which meant the room was still mostly empty except for a woman setting up the coffee station and a guy in a Leafs jersey who nodded at us when we walked in. The space was functional and plain — white walls, linoleum floor, a bulletin board covered in flyers for other support groups and communityresources. Soren grabbed two chairs near the middle and I sat down next to him, our knees almost touching.
He reached over and laced his fingers through mine, and I felt some of the tension ease out of his shoulders. “Thanks for coming. You didn't have to.”
“I wanted to.”
And that was the truth. I wasn't here because I thought Soren couldn't be trusted to show up without supervision, or because I was trying to fix him, or because I needed proof that he was taking recovery seriously.
People started filtering in as we sat there. A woman with gray hair and a kind face. A younger guy who looked like he hadn't slept in days. A man in a suit who kept checking his phone until the meeting started and he had to put it away. They all knew each other by name, greeted each other with the easy familiarity of people who'd been doing this long enough to stop feeling self-conscious about it.
Soren knew some of them too. He waved at the woman, said a quiet hello to the guy in the Leafs jersey, and when the meeting officially started he introduced himself the way he always did.
“I'm Soren. I'm an alcoholic.”
The words still made my chest tighten every time I heard them, not because they were shameful but because they were honest. Because Soren saying them out loud meant he wasn't hiding anymore, wasn't pretending he had it all under control, wasn't trying to carry the weight of it alone.
I listened to the meeting unfold — people sharing their stories, talking about relapses and hard weeks and small victories that probably seemed insignificant to anyone who hadn't been there. Soren didn't share tonight, just listened, and I kept my hand in his and tried to absorb what these people were saying without making it about me.
This wasn't my meeting. This was Soren's. I was just here to sit next to him and be present for whatever he needed.
When it ended, people stood around talking in the way people did when they didn't want to go home yet. Soren talked to the woman with the gray hair for a few minutes, and I hung back, giving them space. The guy in the Leafs jersey wandered over and grinned at me.
“You're Rowan Kincaid, right? Wolves captain?”
“Yeah.”
“Hell of a season you guys are having. Think you can take the conference finals?”
“That's the plan.”
We talked hockey for a minute, and it felt surreal in the best way — standing in a Toronto community center after an AA meeting, talking playoffs with a stranger who knew Soren from recovery. This was what Soren's life looked like now. Therapy twice a week with Dr. Lin, AA meetings on Wednesdays and sometimes Saturdays, medication he took every morning that helped level out the depression, a support system that included his siblings and the band and me but didn't rely on any single person to hold him together.
He was doing the work. And I got to be part of it without having to be the whole thing.
When Soren finished his conversation, we walked out together into the cool night air. He was quiet on the drive home, staring out the window with that thoughtful expression he got sometimes when he was processing.
