43. Dial Drunk – Riggins
The red and blue lights flash as I sit on the curb, an officer standing over me as I hit send on the phone.
I only have one number memorized, but it’s fine. It’s the only one I need.
When I picked up the first beer I bought at the small liquor store next to the grocery store, I knew I did something wrong. Deep in my gut, I knew I made the wrong choice, those bright, sunny sunflowers in my passenger seat staring at me as I sat in the driveway of my childhood home and drank it down in one gulp.
I fucked up.
What were the chances that Rhonda Hart, who has hated me for as long as I can remember, was telling the whole truth?
Probably low.
But there I sat, digging myself deep in the same way my father did, drinking to mask the heartbreak and grief.
And now I’m on the curb waiting for my car to get towed for driving intoxicated.,
It rings and rings and rings before the answering machine picks up. I fumble the phone, hitting end and quickly redialing, hoping the officer who let me make a call from his phone won’t mind.
It rings and rings again, and the dread curls in my gut before the ringing stops.
“Hello?” she asks. Her voice sounds distorted and strange down the line, but I don’t care.
I can’t care: she answered. She answered and everything is going to be okay now. I hear my voice crack as I speak.
“Stella. Stella. I need help.” I mean it more than just in this moment. I need help with getting my life together. I needed help when I was convinced I could get sober and healthy alone. I need help before I become my father. “I fucked up,” I say into the phone, and then spill it all.
“I need help. I’m a drunk, and I need to go to rehab, and Stella, I’m so fucking scared of losing you for good. You are my other half, and I want to get better for you. I don’t care if you’re with that asshole; you were always meant to be mine. It was always you for me, Stell. I want to be everything you need me to be, but I need to get sober first. I don’t know if I can do it without you. I don’t know if I want to do it without you. You’re my person. My best friend, the love of my life. I fucked up today, and I shouldn’t have been drinking, but I know I need to do something to get better. I’m begging you to give me the chance to prove I’m what you need. I just…” I swallow back a sob. I should be embarrassed, my words slurring and in cohesive, but I don’t know if there’s room for embarrassment at rock bottom. “I just need you, Stella. I love you.”
Silence fills the line before there’s a sigh.
“Riggins?”
“Stella, I?—”
A cold creeps over me as she speaks, her words firm and irritated, with no room for arguing. “Riggins, move on. I’m done.” The words ring in the silence, my mind silencing all of the background noise as they swirl in my mind.
Move on, I’m done.
Move on, I’m done.
Move on, I’m done.
We’re supposed to meet to talk about us and she’s done? I’m calling her at my darkest moment, and she’s done.
With me? With this? With us?
I don’t know.
The phone is silent at my ear and I have a feeling when I look at the screen, I’ll see it’s blank, no one on the other line.
She hung up.
Because she’s done.
A hand touches my shoulder, and I waver, the liquor in my system making me off balance, and the world comes slamming back in, the noise filling my ears and overwhelming me, the blue and red flashing of the lights nearly blinding me, the rain I don’t remember starting soaking through my shirt, and I barely maintain my grasp on the phone.
“Son, everything okay?”
Nothing is okay.
Nothing at all.
Because Stella is dating some asshole, and now she’s telling me to move on as if I’ll ever be able to move on from her, and I’m being moved into the back of a cop car, and I need another drink, and Stella is done with me.
“She hung up on me,” I murmur as the police officer steps back once I’m settled in the back seat, hesitating as he prepares to shut the door.
“What?”
“She hung up on me. I told her I needed her, and she hung up on me.” The older man’s face gets soft for the first time all night, and he moves to squat, bringing him face to face with me. I see the sincerity on his face despite the swirling of the world.
“Sorry, kid. That’s fucked.” He looks over his shoulder, probably at his partner or someone else, before looking back at me. “Let this be a wake-up call, though. You’re at rock bottom, already lost your girl, it seems. Don’t let this shit,” He lifts a glass bottle I didn’t realize I had been carrying up, shaking the small amount of its contents. “Take anything else.”
And when he closes the door, my mind can’t stop reeling on that.
Don’t let it take anything else.
And I don’t.