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I turn my head, meeting the gaze of a young woman a few seats down. Her eyes are blue and bloodshot. Heavy bags sink beneath her eyes. Long, stringy blonde hair falls over her shoulders, nearly reaching her lap.
I open my mouth, close it, unsure what I can even say.
Eyes bore into me from all sides, pleading and desperate. Somehow, though, it’s the kid’s eyes across the room that I notice above all else. It takes an insurmountable effort not to look his way and lash out.
His gaze doesn’t feel desperate. It feels nosy. And that pisses me the fuck off.
Wetting my lips, I consider my next words carefully. “I’m an alcoholic. An addict. Have been since before I was even eighteen, and will be ’til the day I die.”
The girl’s eyes well up with tears. I can’t decipher her age. She’s definitely in her twenties, but addiction has a way of stacking years on you, making it hard to place where in her twenties. She looks bone-tired. Beat down.
It’s how I imagine I looked once.
Clearing my throat, I shrug. “I relapsed about six months ago. I was five years and some change sober at the time. I…slipped…”
My voice fades as memories surge forward.
Laughter.
Twinkling multi-colored lights.
The scent of pine lingering in my nostrils.
Snow falling gently outside.
Abby smiling that gummy grin up at me from her spot on the floor as she banged around some blocks she just got from Santa.
I’m smiling.
I’m happy.
I’m at peace.
My brother-in-law steps out to take a piss. Mel’s with her sisters in the other room, giggling, tipsy off the eggnog they’ve been scooping out of a punchbowl all night. The bowl sitting unattended on the sofa table next to the tree only a few feet away.
One glass can’t hurt…
I’m better now.
I can control it.
It’s Christmas…
The A/Ckicks on with a thud and a whine, snapping me from the past.
The woman watching me…her eyes crease with her small smile and she nods like she gets it. But she doesn’t yet. She will though, and some part of her knows it.
It’ll never end.
Working my jaw, I lift a hand, cracking my neck. “It’s not about how long it takes,” I tell her. “Sooner you accept that, the easier it’ll be.” I swallow thickly. “Day by day. Moment by moment, really. All we can do is…keep trying. Get back up. Don’t let the fuck-ups from yesterday determine your tomorrow.”
Christ, I sound like an after-school special. How the hell did I become the spokesperson for addiction? I’ve never even sponsored anyone.
I blow out a breath and look around the room. Like two magnets finding each other, my gaze almost instantly latches on his.
I’m not sure what I expected to find this time around. Maybe more of that haughty, I’m-too-good-for-you attitude. More of that dodgy nervousness.
But instead I find a…stillness of sorts.
