I didn’t answer. He knew the answer — I’d walked him all the way back to sixteen in the first hour.
He sat back. “One more thing. Get yourself a notebook between now and Thursday. Write in it. Doesn’t matter what — what you’re thinking, what you’re avoiding, what you reached for instead of dealing with something. Just put it on the page. Bring it with you Thursday.”
“A notebook?”
“A notebook. The kind a kid takes to school. Don’t overthink it.” He stood. The session was over.
I made the next two appointments with his receptionist on the way out — both at two, Tuesday and Thursday going forward — and stepped out into the afternoon.
I’d come in expecting to be talked at. Lectured. Told what to set down first. Some sentence I could carry out of the room and turn over in my hands. What I had instead was a list. An appointment with Pete twice a week. A grief group on Maple Street. A notebook to buy. And a conversation to have with Colt.
Instructions. Something I could follow. I could do that. A road captain followed a map. Planned a route from A to B. Builtcontingencies for the parts that went sideways. I’d been doing that job for the club for years. I could do it for this.
I stood on the sidewalk for a moment with my face tilted up. The sun was low and pale. I took a breath that went all the way down.
The clubhouse was quiet when I got back. A handful of brothers in the main room. Pool game in the corner. Country station on the radio behind the bar.
Colt was at the table near the office door, paperwork spread in front of him. He looked up when I came in. Watched me cross the room.
I stopped in front of him. He set the pen down.
“Larkin?”
“Larkin.”
He looked at me for a long moment. He’d been waiting for me to land somewhere. Hadn’t pushed. Hadn’t asked. Just held space and let me get here in my own time.
“I’m done drinking. As of today.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. I don’t think I’ll have a problem. But if I do—”
I let the sentence go. He picked it up where I left it.
“I’m here, brother. Whatever you need.”
He stood up. The chair scraped back. He came around the table and put a hand on my shoulder. Left it there longer than he needed to.
“Anything else?”
“No. That was it.”
“Okay.” He took the hand back. Sat down to his paperwork.
?
I started journaling.
It felt stupid at first — a grown man writing in a notebook like a teenager with a diary. But Pete had told me to, and I was willing to try anything.
The first few entries were garbage. Rambling, incoherent, more self-pity than self-reflection. But slowly, over days and weeks, patterns started to emerge. Connections I’d been too drunk to see.
Pete asked what I was afraid of. I said losing people. He asked if controlling everything had ever actually kept anyone safe.
I didn’t have an answer.
First Tuesday at the community center. Sat in the parking lot for fifteen minutes before I could make myself walk in. Said my name. Said Danny’s. Said it to a room of strangers, walked back out, went home, didn’t drink.
