33
à la carte: Separately priced items from a menu, not a meal set.
2016
“Nothing doing.”
Regina took the apron Gale had been about to put on the next morning, in the hopes of pretending last night hadn’t happened. Idiot.
“I’m all ready for breakfast.
You, go.
You have some people to see.”
Jenara.
Mom.
Marco.
Even Kyle. They all knew by now. He’d told them as much by not telling them anything at all. While they all covered for him, excited and happy for this mad opportunity, he’d let them all down.
They love you, man.
You owe them.
He couldn’t face his mother.
Not yet.
He called, not texted, Jenara first.
That she was breaking up with him was a given; better to get it over with.
“Diner.
Fifteen minutes.”
That’s all she’d said.
Obedient as a chastised dog, he was there in ten, waiting.
“I got you coffee,”
he said when she slid into the booth.
“I didn’t know if you’d want anything else.”
“Good call.”
She sipped hers black.
“This coffee really does suck.”
He couldn’t laugh.
Apparently, neither could she.
“I won’t make excuses,”
Gale told her.
“I messed up.
Over two years sober, and I messed up on one of the best days of my life.”
Now Jenara smiled.
“You won?”
He managed one too.
“Don’t tell anyone.
I could get disqualified.”
“Gale, that’s fabulous!”
“Shh.”
How could she be so cool? So amazing.
His smile faded.
“I’m sorry, Jenara.
If you want to break up with me, I totally—”
Jenara took his hand across the table.
“I’m not breaking up with you.
I love you, but I have my own form of PTSD when it comes to this kind of thing.
I need a few days to process.”
“It’s never going to happen again.”
“I know you mean that.
I hope it’s true, but .
.
. just give me a few days. I’ll call you.”
“Okay.”
“I needed to see you with my own eyes.
Now I have.”
Sliding her hand from his, she got up from the table, coffee untouched but for that first, gross sip.
“One slip can either be just that, or the excuse you use to slip again,”
she said.
“Don’t let it be the second one.”
Yeah, what she said.
“I can’t be your watchdog,”
she said, more gently than he deserved.
“Been there.
Done that.
It never works. This is up to you, Gale. Okay?”
“Okay. Yeah.”
Eloquent, man.
That’s sure to instill confidence.
Jenara traced the line of his jaw, smiling sadly, but smiling.
She bent and touched a kiss to his cheek.
“Congratulations,”
she said and left without a backward glance.
Gale’s heart kept time with the mass of curls bouncing down her back.
Life had been too good to be true.
All of it.
“That’s the last I’ll see of her.”
Not if you don’t fuck up again.
“I can’t put her through it.”
You won’t if you don’t fuck up again.
“And Alicia.”
Gale put his head in his hands.
“I don’t deserve either of them.”
Come on, man.
You know where this leads.
“Can I get you anything else?”
A waitress Gale didn’t recognize stood over him, pen in hand.
“No, just the check.”
She tore it from her pad, slapped it onto the table.
“Have a good day!”
Far too cheery for his mood.
Gale nodded, put a five on the table, and left the warm diner for the cold street.
Breath fogging, fingers freezing, he started texting his mother and stopped.
He should go see her. She deserved that much. Anxiety rushed through his body, pooled in his cheeks. He couldn’t face her. Couldn’t see that look in her eyes. The terror. The disappointment. The sorrow. Gale called instead.
Chickenshit.
“Fuck y—”
“Hey, buddy!”
A little shrill.
Lucy Carmichael had seen it all, heard it all, and couldn’t be, wouldn’t be fooled ever again.
“Big day yesterday! How are you this morning?”
“I know Regina called you, Mom.”
“Oh.”
His heart hammered way too fast.
Gale could barely breathe.
“I went to a bar,”
rushed out of his mouth.
“I got shit-faced after the show.
I’m sorry.”
Dead silence, then, “Oh, thank god.”
“Huh?”
“I was afraid it was worse.
I knew Regina wasn’t telling me everything, and I thought .
.
. I thought . . .”
“It wasn’t that,”
he told her.
“But it was bad enough.
I have no excuse.
It was stupid. I’m sorry I let you down.”
Again.
“I’m sorry you let yourself down.”
She sighed.
“But you know what they say.
Get back on the horse.
Or . . . off? I don’t know. You know what I mean.”
Too shrill again.
False cheer.
Panic he knew was doing terrible things to her wonky heart.
Everything welled up again. Every thought, fear, impulse. Gale held his breath. Willed it all back down. He could promise her never again, but she wouldn’t believe him any more than Jenara could. He’d promised so many times before.
It’s different this time, man.
Make it different.
How could it be any different? The cycle he only ever saw in hindsight was the same.
Success after failure after failure after success.
The rush of thoughts and sensations overwhelming him was never going away, and neither would that need for oblivion.
Gale didn’t know how to change it. If he could change it.
“Gale? Honey? You still there?”
He put one foot in front of the other, partly so he wouldn’t freeze, partly, simply, to move.
“I’m so sorry, Mom.
I love you so much.”
“I love you too, buddy.
Always and forever.
No matter what.”
You got a good mom, you lucky dog.
“I’ll be better. I swear.”
She didn’t answer, and Gale knew it was because she couldn’t.
He imagined her silent tears, the relief and the sorrow and the fear all mixing together in a confusion she could never parcel out.
Tell her, man.
Give her something.
“There’s something else I have to tell you,”
he said.
“Don’t worry.
It’s nothing bad.”
She sniffed. “Okay.”
“I won.”
“You .
.
. you won?”
And now Gale imagined her smile, that instant proud-mama moment lifting at least a little of the burden.
“Every round.
I don’t know when the next set of rounds is, exactly, but I get to compete for the fifty grand . . .”
Gale talked to his mother the whole walk home.
Maybe it didn’t do all that much to allay her fears, but it made him feel a hell of a lot better.
She promised not to tell anyone, not even his dad, about the win, and maybe that meant she wasn’t telling him about the bar either.
Gale felt bad, but he hadn’t asked her not to tell.
Lucy Carmichael was good at keeping secrets; she’d been doing it for him a long time.
And if his father, after all, knew too, he never let on, so he had to be good at keeping secrets, too.
At work that night, Marco didn’t say a word.
About anything.
He didn’t watch Gale more closely or pretend nothing happened; he just acted the way he always did with nothing more than a grim sort of nod when Gale entered the kitchen.
Likewise, the next day, Regina had returned to her normal self, all signs of the motherly woman who gave him a bath, food, and a place to sleep it off gone. Four days later, life was kind of back to the way it had been before his greatest achievement collided with his most recent failure.
And Jenara hadn’t called.
Sitting at his kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal, Gale watched an old cartoon he, Sean, and Kyle had been obsessed with when they were teens.
The picture quality on the communal laptop was awful to begin with, and the cartoon itself had to be fifteen years old.
Was the animation always that bad? Gale laughed anyway.
Funny was funny, even if his stomach still felt kind of hollow.
“Dude, where’ve you been?”
Kyle pulled a kitchen chair up beside Gale’s.
“You don’t answer your phone anymore?”
“Sorry.
Work.
Regina’s.
It’s been a crazy few days since . . . you know.”
“Yeah.”
Kyle leaned over to see the computer screen.
“Shit.
I don’t think I’ve watched this show since we were in high school.”
“It’s still on.”
“Seriously? I wonder if it’s still funny.”
“I don’t think I want to know.”
Gale pointed his spoon at the screen.
“Better to remember it fondly.”
“True.
Pass the milk and cereal, will you?”
Gale passed him both.
Kyle got himself a bowl and spoon.
They sat side by side, crunching their sugary breakfast and watching old cartoons, not speaking.
Just like the old days.
Not like the old days, man.
Come clean.
You know he knows, anyway.
Just like everyone else.
Pushing his bowl away, Gale heaved a huge, fortifying sigh that didn’t really help much.
“I fucked up.
After the taping.
Fucked up bad.”
Kyle swallowed.
Milk flecked the corners of his mouth.
“I figured.”
“How?”
“Your mom called in a panic that night.”
“Before or after Regina called her?”
“After, apparently.
She .
.
. uh . . . asked me to search your room.”
“Did you?”
Stirring the colorful milk, Kyle nodded.
“I had to, dude.
She was, you know, freaking out.
I was, too.”
“It’s okay.”
“If it helps any,”
Kyle said, “it made us both feel better when I came up with nothing.”
“It was alcohol, not drugs.”
“Alcohol is drugs, dude.
Just the legal kind.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Another fortifying sigh that didn’t do jack shit.
“I don’t know how it happened.”
Fercrissake, this is Kyle, man. Kyle!
Gale hung his head.
Four days pretending he could just go back to life as it had been.
Pretending nothing had changed.
But everything had, and it wasn’t just his fuckup. It was winning. It was setting foot on a new path when he had absolutely no idea where it led. Deep breaths were just not going to cut it.
The truth shall set you free, my man.
“I’m lying.”
He exhaled the words.
Oh, how they stung.
“I went to that bar knowing it was a mistake.
What was going to happen. I went anyway.”
The bar.
The other contestants.
The producers and the camera crew and the interns.
All buying rounds, celebrating his win.
“I never even pretended I wasn’t going to drink every shot that got put in my hand.”
“Sometimes the demons win.”
Kyle heaved a deep breath.
“Put it behind you.
It’s all you can do, right?”
Gale tried hard not to cry.
It hurt to cry.
It hurt not to.
“Two years, down the shitter.”
“That’s not true.”
“No? I’m back to square one in the trust department.
My mom, Jenara, Regina, Marco. You.”
“Not square one.”
Kyle nudged him with his shoulder.
“Maybe square five.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means you fucked up, but you kept it cool for two years.
And, it wasn’t, you know .
.
. the other stuff.”
“You can say heroin.”
Kyle shuddered theatrically.
“It feels like saying Voldemort.”
Gale snorted, laughter tumbling from his lips.
He got you, man.
“I’m sorry, Kyle.
I swear, it’s not going to get there again.
Shit-faced as I was, I swear it wasn’t even a consideration.”
Kyle smiled sadly.
Maybe it was hopefully.
Gale didn’t trust himself to decipher which, but it sure as hell wasn’t confidently.
“Don’t apologize to me, dude.
I’m here for you.
No matter what.”
He always has been.
If not for him, you’d probably be dead too.
Gale had thought talking to Mom would be the worst.
Or Jenara.
They weren’t.
Because he’d been avoiding Kyle for days without acknowledging—
“Why?”
“Huh?”
“Why, Kyle? After everything, why have you stuck it out when no one else but my mother has? Even my dad and brother checked out.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame them, but . . .”
Gale pressed fingers to his eyes, smooshing away the tears.
“I killed Sean.
My best friend.
Our best friend. I let you down a million times, a million ways. Why are you still here?”
Kyle put an arm around Gale’s shoulders in that gruff and tender way of old friends not completely comfortable with displays of affection.
“Where else am I going to be, dude? It’s you and me.
Been that way since we were kids.
It’s never going to change.”
Letting him go, Kyle shoved him in that same gruff and tender way.
“And you didn’t kill Sean.
Sean killed Sean.
That you didn’t die too doesn’t make you a murderer.”
And here it came, that thing that would break them if anything could.
Don’t do it, man.
“Finding a vein for him does though.”
Kyle pulled away.
A needle hitting a nerve would have hurt less.
Spectral rage burned in his periphery.
You know why you’re doing this.
You know what you’re planning.
Go ahead.
Use this. Fucking use me! You’re an asshole.
“Is that what you remember?”
Kyle asked.
“For real? Because, that’s bad shit, dude.
I mean, really bad shit.”
“I wish . . .”
Gale sputtered, choked on the pain of his own words.
He wailed, “I don’t know if he bought the stuff and talked me into it or the other way around.
I don’t know if I helped him find a spot or he helped me.
It’s all fucked-up in my head, Kyle. I don’t know what happened or how or in what order. I’m never going to. But he’s dead. He’s fucking dead. And I’m sure as hell not innocent.”
Pushing his chair away from the table, Kyle got up, fingers tugging at his hair.
A pit opened up underneath Gale, one promising the kind of oblivion drinking himself blind hadn’t provided, could never provide.
Then Kyle’s arms were around him, hugging him close from behind.
Gale grabbed those arms with both hands, holding so tight it had to hurt.
“Sean made his choice, same as you,”
Kyle said.
“He died, you didn’t.
End of story.”
Kyle held him until the choking eased; Gale had no idea how long.
Sean stayed surprisingly quiet through it all, though Gale could feel him there. Waiting.
“I’m sorry, Kyle.
I shouldn’t lay all this on you.”
He let go of Kyle, or Kyle let go of him.
Either way, his friend was in his chair again, forcing him to meet his eyes.
“I’m probably talking out of my ass, but maybe that’s part of the problem, Gale.
You don’t talk about it. You never did. You’re not the kind of guy who can bottle it all up and hope to survive the boom.”
Gale ripped a paper towel from the roll they kept on the table.
Mopped his face.
Blew his nose.
“It’s a lot to expect someone else to carry.”
“Not carry, dude.
And there are professionals who get paid for that shit.”
Another paper towel. No words.
“I’ve never seen you happier than you’ve been since .
.
.
I was going to say Jenara, but really, it’s since we went to the soup kitchen that first time. Things started happening for you then, dude. Regina, getting the sous job. The competition and Jenara. The Grand Redemption Championship and the chance to win fifty-fucking-grand! You got to let yourself be happy.”
“But you just said I was happy.”
Kyle broke eye contact.
“You won, didn’t you?”
Gale blew his nose. “Yeah.”
A smile.
The ghost of one.
“I’ll leave you to work that out for yourself.”
Rising, Kyle kissed the top of Gale’s head.
“I love you, dude.”
I love you too, man.
“I love you,”
Gale told both of them.
Kyle gathered their bowls, set them into the sink.
“You going to Regina’s?”
And there they were.
Back to normal.
As only with Kyle it could ever be.
“In a bit.
You working?”
“Nope.”
“Want to come help out?”
Gale managed a smile, watery as it was.
“I think she’s starting to like you.”
Kyle’s big doofy grin flicked on a light inside Gale.
If he could grab it with both hands and hold it tight, he would have.
Instead, he settled for letting it warm him from the inside.
“I’ll drive,”
Kyle said, already halfway down the hall.
“I have time to hop in the shower, right?”
“Go for it.”
The water turned on, that white-noise hush.
Gale blew his nose again, tossed the wadded-up paper towel into the trash.
He put away the milk, the cereal, wiped down the table, feeling better than he had since the day of his win.
Less hollow. Slightly stronger. Maybe even a little wiser.
You know what he was getting at, right?
Afraid.
To be happy.
For it to all be taken away.
That he didn’t deserve it, to begin with. “I’ve always been this way.”
What happened made it worse.
I’m sorry about that.
“Me too.”
Sean sighed.
Or it was the shower’s white noise turning off.
He’s better than both of us.
“Yeah,”
Gale said, even though Kyle, stepping into the hallway wrapped in a towel, could probably hear him.
“He’s the best friend we ever had.”
Even if he pretended he didn’t.