Beautiful Terror (Burn It All Down Duet #2)

91. Apologists Anonymous

CHAPTER 91

APOLOGISTS ANONYMOUS

MARGAUX

T he next time Timmy disappears, he’s gone for six hours. I don’t panic right away, and use the time to catch up on my shows, write, and try to reclaim a small slice of normalcy.

Silver linings, right?

But as the hours stretch on, anxiety creeps in.

I know where he is—down on the beach, surrounded by people in various stages of intoxication. The crowd he gravitates toward doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

When I finally go to find him, I’m met with exactly what I feared—Timmy, drunk, sprawled among the usual suspects. He’s holding court with a five-dollar bottle of gut-churning vodka, laughing too loud, his face flushed from the cheap alcohol.

For someone who doesn’t do meth himself, he sure hangs out with a large number of people who do.

His companions—mostly people living in the tents—are surprisingly calm. One man, his face weathered but kind, glances at me and shakes his head. “He should’ve stopped drinking hours ago,” he mutters. “Man’s got a real problem.”

The words sting.

It’s surreal to hear this from people battling their own demons. If they see Timmy’s behavior as destructive, what does that say?

I glance at him—this attractive, physically capable man who should have so much going for him. Instead, here he is, squandering his potential in a haze of cheap vodka and bad decisions, surrounding himself with drug dealers and drug users.

I pull out my phone and call Phil, his father.

“Can you please talk some sense into him?” I plead. “He’s drunk, and this is dangerous. I’m afraid something bad will happen.”

“How did he even get the alcohol?” Phil asks, his tone accusatory.

“I got it for him,” I admit, biting back my anger. “He insisted. If I didn’t, you would have. And if you wouldn’t, he would’ve just stood outside the store and charmed someone else into buying it for him—or stolen the money. You know he’s taken our laundry quarters to buy booze before. You know how he is.”

Phil’s response is as unhelpful as ever. The same man who sent his thirty-nine-year-old son money for ‘soda’ just months earlier.

It’s easier for him to blame me than face the reality of his son’s behavior.

“You must have done something to upset him,” Phil says, his new go-to refrain.

My blood boils.

That’s me. The provocateur. The instigator.

“What could I possibly have done, Phil? I played a song he didn’t like once, and he fractured my skull. Dude, I breathed, and he got upset. But sure, tell me how I’m the problem.”

Phil offers no solutions, no support—just the same dismissive rhetoric I’ve now come to expect.

When Timmy finally staggers home, the cycle begins anew.

“You drink too,” he sneers. “And when you do, you’re a bitch!”

It’s an unfair, absurd comparison.

When I drink, I get silly, emotional, maybe even overly chatty.

Sometimes I cry.

But I don’t break things.

I don’t threaten lives.

When Timmy drinks, he becomes a different person entirely—angry, vindictive, destructive, violent, homicidal. He’s broken things, made death threats against me and others, and physically hurt me.

And yet, he acts like we’re the same.

“You’re such a bitch,” he tells me, “and then you wake up all cute, like nothing happened the night before.”

The hypocrisy is staggering.

He’s the one who wakes up as if the night before didn’t happen.

He’s the one who pretends his rage and cruelty are figments of my imagination.

If he didn’t constantly make digs at me, there wouldn’t be conflict.

If he got out of bed and worked, there wouldn’t be conflict.

If he kept his promises, there wouldn’t be conflict.

I’m not someone who picks fights for the sake of it.

I want peace.

I crave positivity.

But our relationship has become anything but.

What started as fun and carefree has devolved into something heavy, oppressive, and dangerous.

Timmy’s moods dictate everything .

His need for constant praise—even for the bare minimum—has become exhausting.

He wants accolades for doing the dishes while I work to keep us afloat.

He wants applause for taking out the trash.

He expects constant validation, and when he doesn’t get it, he spirals.

I feel like I’m trapped in a well, clawing desperately toward the light. Every time I think I’m making progress, he drags me back down.

He’s suffocating me.

As I sit in the quiet of our apartment, I feel the weight of it all pressing down on me.

I love Timmy—or at least, the version of him I thought I knew.

But this isn’t love anymore.

This is survival.

And I’m not sure how much longer I can keep climbing out of this well, only to be pulled back down.