Chapter 9 Asher
ASHER
I sat in the back of the town car staring at the little fridge full of alcohol my body was craving.
My mouth tasted like metal and I could almost feel the bottle sweat on my palms even though there was nothing in my hand.
Clayton’s voice kept looping—mismanagement, embarrassment, Dad rolling in his grave—and every time it hit the word Dad, my stomach flipped like I was going to throw up.
I was forty-eight years old and my brother still made me feel like I was twelve and useless.
My head hurt from holding everything in all day. My eyes burned.
I kept thinking about the Macallan on the bar at home, how one pour would stop the shaking that was crawling under my skin right now. It was wretched and angry, burrowing into my soul like it wanted to eat me alive, and I might just let it.
The car stopped at a light, and I watched some guy on the sidewalk light a cigarette, and the flare of the lighter made me flinch.
I needed a drink so badly, my teeth hurt.
It had been four days since I cut back, and now almost twenty-four hours without a drink. I didn't know if I was brave or stupid, but I was determined to make this change.
As much as I wanted to tell her, Veda was the reason, but it felt wrong putting that weight on her shoulders. We'd only just met. She owed me nothing. But here I was, preparing to get sober for a woman who might only want a fling and nothing more.
My hands shook. I picked up my phone just to have something to do and noticed an email from Robert Lang had come into my inbox.
I didn't open it. Just remembering his face at that last meeting when I tore into my own brother who sat there laughing at me was humiliating.
I canceled the thing and kicked everyone out, then never ended up rescheduling it properly.
I owed my entire board an apology, but in real sincerity, I owed Robert one first.
Of all the men at that table, he'd been around the longest. He'd watched my father handle this company with such care and precision, and I had been floundering for months.
Since Emma's death, I hadn't taken anything as seriously as I should have, and my drinking had gotten out of control. Robert, of all people, knew what that was like.
He'd had his own battle years ago and he was successful today despite it all.
Without thinking, I pressed his contact in my phone and it started ringing as I brought it to my ear.
Clayton was dead set on my failure and I was fighting to make sure I could succeed.
I was a prideful man, though, and I found it difficult to depend on other people.
It was the main reason things had gotten as bad as they had.
After Emma died, I fell into a hole of self-loathing and never came out.
But Veda had opened my eyes and I couldn’t close them again. I knew I needed to get help, no matter what it cost me, and my gut told me Robert was the man who could help.
"Asher?" I heard, and I snapped out of my thoughts and back to the phone call I was starting.
"Yeah, Bob?"
"What's going on? Is everything okay?" he asked with a calm tone.
"You know what? No." Being blunt was my strength.
Being vulnerable was not. So it felt horribly awkward, but I forced myself to continue.
"I'm trying hard not to drink, and I'm really wanting a drink right now.
" I swallowed more of my pride as I said, "And I'm really sorry for blowing up at that meeting. I didn't mean to—"
"Say nothing of it," he interrupted. "Listen, I'm on my way to a meeting. It's sort of the type of thing that might help you."
An uneasiness twisted in my chest uncomfortably as I asked, "What sort of meeting?" Asking him for help was one thing. Getting sucked into something bigger didn't feel right.
"It's AA, Asher. I've been a member for thirty years now, and I think it might help you too.
" He paused as I mulled it over. The idea was terrifying, though I'd never admit it aloud.
Exposing my weakness to the eyes of others so they could judge me felt like the scariest thing in the world that I could do.
"I don't know, Bob."
"Just meet me. I'll text you the address. If you don’t like it, you can leave. But I think it may help you."
His request seemed friendly enough, and with the offer of being able to step out if I was too uncomfortable, it was hard to pass up. I agreed, and he sent me the address.
Twenty minutes later, right at the top of the hour, I was parked outside, climbing out of my car at a small episcopal church where Robert stood waiting to greet me.
I sat in the very back row with my coat still on and my shoulders pulled up so high, my neck ached the whole time.
I’d chosen the seat right by the door because my stomach kept flipping with the idea that I could still leave, that no one would blame me if I just stood up and walked out before anything got real.
Robert sat one seat away and didn’t crowd me, didn’t even look over after we got seated.
I kept my hands buried in my pockets because they were shaking again and I hated how obvious it felt.
And I stared at my shoes mostly and listened to every word like it might be the one thing that finally made sense of the mess in my head.
Story after story, the men and women in this meeting spoke about how their lives were affected by alcohol, some of them losing children or spouses.
All of them had a story to tell, and all of them had been crushed by their own addiction.
It was powerful to me, sobering almost, until a man named Mike stood.
Mike was a big guy, but his voice was so small as he spoke.
"Hi, I'm Mike and I'm an alcoholic." The group echoed their hellos and he continued.
"Twelve years ago, I had eight, maybe nine beers one night while out to dinner. Told my wife I was fine to drive the ten miles home, but I clearly wasn’t.
I wrapped the truck around a tree on Route Nine that night.
She died on impact. I walked away with a busted collarbone and enough guilt to eat me alive…
And I'm here today, twelve years sober, still wishing I could trade places with her. "
Emma's face flashed before my eyes and my heart felt like someone drove a knife through it.
He kept telling his story, but I lost track of everything at that point.
Emma wasn't killed because of my negligence or drinking, but losing her was the trigger that had instigated all of this.
And my drinking would be the thing that killed my career, one way or another, unless I stopped it.
Hearing these stories really opened my eyes, especially when Robert moved over to the chair right beside me and squeezed my shoulder, just before it was my turn to speak. I passed.
I couldn't even conjure a single sentence, let alone a story, but Bob knew.
He'd been there and watched me walk through it. He knew what it would take for me to be able to open up.
When the meeting was over, Robert pulled me to the side and asked me to join him for a cup of coffee.
And twenty minutes later, we were seated in a small diner out of the way, ordering eggs and coffee.
I kept picking at the edge of my napkin until it turned into wet shreds.
He took a sip of coffee and looked at me straight. “How you holding up after that?”
I shrugged, but it came out jerky. “I don’t know. Mike’s story… it’s in my head on repeat.”
“Yeah. It’ll do that.” He set the mug down. “You don’t have to pretend you’re fine, Asher. Everybody in that room already knows you’re not. Hell, half the board knows it too.”
I swallowed hard. My voice came out small. “I don’t even recognize myself anymore. The guy I’ve been since Emma died… that’s not me. I look in the mirror and I hate who’s looking back.”
Robert nodded like he’d heard it a thousand times and it still mattered. “Then stop protecting him. That guy you hate? He stays in charge as long as you keep lying for him.”
I rubbed my face. My eyes still felt raw. “I don’t know how to stop.”
“Start with one honest conversation,” he said.
“Pick somebody who wasn’t around for the old version of you that existed before Emma.
Somebody who has zero stake in the old story.
Tell them the truth—the blackouts, the mornings you couldn’t remember, the nights you prayed you wouldn’t wake up.
All of it. Say it out loud to one person who can’t weaponize it.
That’s the only way the bottle ever loses its power. ”
My stomach flipped again, harder this time. Veda’s face popped into my head clear as day.
She didn’t know the golden boy I used to be. She only knew the wreck who showed up half-drunk to the office and snapped at everyone.
Saying any of this to her felt impossible and necessary at the same time.
Robert watched me think it through. “Scary?”
“Terrifying,” I admitted.
“Good. Means it’s the right thing.”
He waved the waitress over for the check, already pulling out cash. “Call me if the walls start closing in tonight. Or tomorrow. Or next week. Doesn’t matter the hour. You call.”
I opened my mouth to argue about the bill and he just gave me that look—the one that said don’t waste both our time—so I shut up.
He dropped the money, stood, and squeezed my shoulder once. “You did the hard part tonight. Don’t undo it before breakfast.”
Then he was gone, door swinging shut behind him, leaving me alone with cold coffee and the first real breath I’d taken in months.
I sat there and ate the cold eggs and toast before going home. It was the only way I could manage the shaking hands, knowing I still needed more help than Robert was able to give.
And when I finally got home, the first thing I did was walk straight to the bottle of whiskey I had stashed, and I opened it up and poured it down the drain.
The smell was so intoxicating, I almost drank some.
The demon inside me fought for it, craved it, almost licked the whole sink out just to taste a drop of it, but I won the instant I turned on the water and rinsed the sink and the bottle.
Then I turned to my phone, still muted after the meeting, and felt ready to call Veda to confess everything to her. But she'd already sent me a message.
Veda 8:17PM: Just making sure you got home alright, Mr. Locke. Here if you need me…
Her words felt like the light at the end of a very long tunnel.
Veda Porter was my magic elixir. She'd come into my life ready to learn from me, and I was the one learning from her.
That life was more than just my suffering, and that I could and would move on if I took the right steps.
I typed up a huge response, a "truth" that Robert told me to share with someone, but I deleted it all without responding.
Some things were better said in person, and that was how I wanted to share my truth with her.
Because of her, I was ready to kick my past to the curb and start over. And that meant a new path forward in my personal life, hopefully with her, and a new trajectory for my company.
Without her, I didn't think I'd have had the self-awareness to change anything. But because of her, I felt like I could conquer the world.
And now I planned to act on that feeling before it passed me by and Veda saw what a truly weak and wretched individual I was.