One Month Sober, Five Years Earlier
ONE MONTH SOBER, FIVE YEARS EARLIER
BONNIE
The one-month chip in my hand seems to burn my palm as I stare at it.
It’s my second one-month chip, and this time… this time I think I’m doing this for the right reasons.
I’m doing it for me, not because I’m scared of someone else or because of a promise I knew I had no intention of keeping.
This time, it’s for my own survival.
A salty wind brushes my hair off my face. I’m standing in the dirt driveway of my dad’s old mobile home, staring with a soft smile at the plants collected on the porch banisters, the decorative Christmas clings still on the windows despite it being months past the holiday.
Shame swells inside me like a parasite eating through my insides. I should have been here. He should never have had to go through this alone.
Darcy, my new sponsor, comes to stand beside me.
We met at my first meeting back after my relapse, and god, I’m so fucking grateful for them. Having Darcy there, someone who gets it, who’s been there themselves, was invaluable this time around.
I don’t know that I’d be thirty days sober without their help.
“Is he home?” Darcy asks.
I nod toward the light in the kitchen window. “Yeah, he’s home. Board’s here, too,” I say, pointing to his surfboard.
The door opens, and my dad walks out in board shorts and a t-shirt, his long, grey-blond hair shaggy around his face. A smile grows on his lips beneath his scruffy beard, and he beams when he looks my way.
“Hey, kiddo,” he says as if it’s any normal day.
“Hey, Dad.”
He’s still smiling when he comes down the steps in bare feet, yet, he hesitates as he opens his arms wide.
And I hug him harder than I’ve hugged him in what feels like years.
“Who’s this?” he asks when we part.
“Ah, this is my sponsor, Darcy,” I say.
His brows raise. “Sponsor?” he asks.
“AA,” I say. “They’re keeping my head on straight this time.”
He smiles Darcy’s way. “Well, that makes you family,” he says to them. “Come on.” He nods to the door, “Let’s see if I have anything for you to eat.”
The trailer still smells like apple cinnamon, even now that Mom’s gone. Her blankets are still draped over the old couch that looks like no one has sat on it since she went into the hospital the last time. Photos and trinkets line the wood-paneled walls, along with a few plants—most half dead. My gaze moves to the hole in the kitchen ceiling exposing the wood slats, and I frown at Dad.
“Are you remodeling?” I ask about the hole.
“Oh, that? I have a guy coming to fix it next month.”
I drag my finger over the string on the fridge that seems to be keeping it from swinging open. “And… this?” I ask.
“Oh yeah, you have to—” He unwinds the tie to show me how he keeps it rigged shut, and I smile. “See, easy,” he says.
“If you say so,” I reply.
“So, tell me how you are, Bon. You look good,” he says.
“You mean I don’t look like death?” I ask, brow lifting.
His eyes soften. “I don’t see as many demons running around behind your eyes,” he says.
“They’re still there. Believe me,” I mutter.
“I do,” he says. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s changed.”
I sit down at the kitchen table as he passes me a lemonade, and I talk.
Darcy simply observes from the couch, only there for emotional support. And my dad… he listens. He’s always been a great listener—always been there when I needed to talk something out.
I tell him about the band, the tour, about the family I’ve met and made with Young Decay. He asks about the cities we’ve traveled to and if I’ve met anyone—a question I avoid at all costs.
His most curious questions come, though, when he asks about my sobriety. I knew he would never judge me, never push me. Especially now that I’ve actually sought help, now that the band knows and realizes how bad things became for me.
And when the tears drip down my cheeks as I’m apologizing to him, he comes around the table and hugs me.
“What do we say we take our boards out?” he asks once he releases me. “Darcy, do you surf?”
Darcy chuckles. “I was raised with one foot in the ocean,” they reply. “Count me in.”
I smile at him. “I have the perfect place for us to go, too.”
“What’s wrong with our usual?” he asks.
“I think you’ll like this place better.”
My dad still drives his old station wagon. How it’s still running, I have no fucking clue. However, he keeps it tuned, keeps it clean. I don’t think he’d know who he was without the damn thing.
I pull up the GPS app on my phone and type in the address where I want him to go. The entire way, he plays the old grunge mixtape that I made for him when I was ten, and Darcy laughs as we both sing along.
“Where are you taking us?” he asks as we pull off onto a beachfront side road.
“You’ll see. It’s just down here,” I say, sitting up.
The GPS tells us to go another eight-hundred feet, and when we pull up to the modern, black and brown beachfront bungalow, my dad whistles.
“Fancy pants,” he teases me. “Is this your place?”
Yet, I simply smile and open my door.
Darcy gives me the key, and I open the door for my dad.
“Wow. This is nice, Bonnie,” he says, taking a look around the place. “Right on the beach, too? The water is fifty feet out from the back deck.”
I chuckle. “High tide, yeah,” I say.
“Band is doing well, then,” he assumes.
I nod. “With the tour, the album sales… yeah. It’s… comfortable. Nothing wild, but steady.”
“Steady is good,” he says. “Steady keeps your head on straight.”
Another laugh leaves me as I take the keys from my pocket and slap them into his hand.
“What’s this?” he asks.
“It’s yours.”
He balks slightly, brows narrowing. “What? No, I thought this was your new house.”
I scoff and take a step back, hands going into the pockets of my jacket. “I was a piece of shit, Dad,” I say, blinking back tears. “I’ll never forgive myself for what I did, for not coming home, for never even speaking to her. I can’t begin to apologize for the way I treated you. And getting you out of that trailer isn’t… it’ll never make up for it. This, though… this place…” I pause, peering around the open room. “You deserve this place.”
“Bonnie, I can’t—”
“Your dream was always to get us out of the trailer park and into a beachfront house, and you worked your ass off trying. I know when Mom got sick, every ounce of savings went into her medical bills.”
“Bonnie, these aren’t things you should be worrying about,” he insists. “I’m fine where I am. You keep this place.”
I almost laugh. “Dad, the ceiling was falling in over the stove,” I say. “You told me a very specific way that I had to close the fridge, including tying it off with string to make sure it stayed closed.”
“I have a system,” he argues.
I give him a flat look. “Dad.”
“Bon.”
A huff of amusement leaves me. “Dad, the place is yours. It comes with new appliances, all the furniture. I’m taking care of it. And whatever’s left of her medical debt, I’ll take care of that, too.”
Tears line his eyes. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You don’t have to,” I reply. “I can’t begin to make up for the ways I hurt you or the pain I caused her. But you’ve taken care of everything I ever needed, given me the grace and space that I never deserved. So, let me take care of this.”
His jaw tenses, dark blue eyes glistening. He crosses the space between us, and I turn into a little girl when he hugs me.
I don’t deserve this hug.
I don’t even deserve his smile.
But I’ll fight like hell to make up for it.
“She’d call you a stubborn ass for arguing with me, you know,” I say, and he chokes on a laugh.
“Yeah, yeah,” he says, pulling back. “You know what she’d tell you?”
“What?” I ask.
“She’d tell you to stop beating yourself up about the things you can’t change,” he says. “And to sit down and eat a muffin.”
I bark a laugh. “She always had muffins.”
“Endless muffins,” he chuckles. “No recipe to be found.”
“ What?! Nowhere? Maybe we can find it while we’re packing the house this week,” I tell him.
His smile softens. “Yeah. I’d like that.”