5. Gage
5
GAGE
F irst week and I’m already gearing up to lie to my sponsor. I don’t even know why.
Like, ‘Hey, your son told me he was gay, and I suddenly wanted to bend him over my window seat.’ Or, ‘No, I’m not jonesing for anything except your son’s lips.’
Yeah, no. I can’t tell him that. I don’t even know if I want Alexei like that or if it’s just a compulsive thought. That’s the real bitch—I can’t even trust my own thoughts anymore. I don’t know if they’re mine or if they belong to my addictions.
“Hey,” Nathan says when I walk inside the bay door of his shop. “Woah. Everything okay? Are you okay? Alex?”
“Fine. Do you have a number I can call for that other person?”
He knows what other person I mean, and his face hardens at the timing of my question. Yeah, I just had breakfast with Alexei, showed him my room like we were thirteen, and then thought filthy, filthy things about him. So what?
“I called Kristen,” he says, thankfully not calling me out on the timing of this. “She texted you the contact information, and apparently, she already booked you an appointment.”
“Appointment?” I fuck with the pack of smokes in my pocket. “I thought it was another sponsor?”
“It’s a therapist, actually. Someone who specializes in addictions that aren’t… that you don’t quit cold turkey.”
Like sex. Jesus. I check my phone, seeing a voicemail, a text, and an email from Kristen, but I also see the blue heart beside Alexei’s name, and I soften emotionally but harden below the belt simultaneously.
“Did my son do something?” Nathan asks. “I figured he’d be a good friend because of his neurosis.”
“No, he didn’t do anything. He’s… I like him. I just need something right now.” I pace, wishing I could smoke in his shop. “Any midday meetings around here?” Not likely in a city this small.
“No, but you can hand me that,” Nathan says, pointing at a tool of some kind on the workbench next to me. I hand it to him, and then he snugs it up to something. “Hold it for me while I adjust this.”
I’m not stupid. I know this is a distraction method, but I’m weak enough to accept it. Maybe strong enough? I don’t even know anymore. Nathan works in silence, only giving me the odd command every now and then. After a while, the music in the shop settles me enough to start talking.
“It’s weird being back here,” I tell him, so he doesn’t think this is all about Alexei. “This is where it all started, you know? Like I’m living in a town full of all my own ghosts, and everywhere I go and everywhere I look, I’m remembering shit I’ve done or mistakes I’ve made.”
Nathan hands me a tool and I swap it out for the one he needs. “So, conquer them. They’re the old you. You know better now.”
“Do I?”
“You said you were determined, didn’t you?”
Yeah, but my mind is focused on the dark parts of my past, not the bright parts of my future. I’m agitated and too alert, and a bump of coke would be so fucking perfect right now. But a bump of coke won’t last, and I know that! So why the fuck do I want it so badly?
“Everywhere you go, you’ll have demons, Gage. Hell, my entire heroin career took place in one city, yet I battle those demons everywhere I look. Bars, hotels, random houses, bathrooms in general, kid’s parks, schools, everywhere. But you know what keeps me going?”
“Alexei,” I guess.
“Yeah, but my need to prove to myself that I’m worthy of being his father. He’s twenty-five, and it’s far too late for that now, but I’ve been trying since he was seventeen. I missed a lot while I was high. Important things. Things I regret, and my new motto in life is that I don’t want to live with regrets. You should find one.”
“A motto?”
“Yeah.”
“Lucky number eight,” I say with some snark. “That’s my motto.” Weirdly, I feel better after admitting that.
Lucky number eight.
“What’s for dinner?” Cole asks Mom as soon as he charges into the house with no grace.
“Uhm, cookies?” she says, glancing around to double-check that she didn’t make anything else.
I hit up an early evening meeting with Nathan and just got home myself. Mom might be familiar with feeding two teen boys, but she’s always been terrible at time management. Now there are three of us, and I’m not a teen, so I really should help out.
Just as I’m opening the fridge to check what I can make, a head pops up in the window above the kitchen sink. “Hello, neighbours! We have leftovers!” A lady with a thick accent stands there, her head barely reaching the window.
“Hi!” I gasp, laughing.
“I told you, Gage!” Mom says. What’d she tell me?
Mom starts speaking in a terrible attempt at Spanish, and I’m not sure I have the heart to tell her they speak Portuguese in Portugal. Either way, I’m introduced to Benedita, and despite being a twenty-seven-year-old loser who moved back home with his mom, I don’t feel too weird about it.
Nick kicks my knees out from behind, and before I fully buckle over, I reach around and grab him by the neck.
“Gage!” he shouts, laughing. “I forgot how easy you are to fuck with.”
I get him in a headlock, glancing at Cole to see if he’s going to come rescue his twin. He’s eating cookies straight from four boxes. “Easy? I’m winning.”
He gut punches me and I let go. “Some people were asking about you at school today.”
My stomach gets queasy. “Yeah?”
“Mr. Brenner. Remember him? English teacher,” Nick asks through a full mouth.
I remember pissing him off and skipping his class. “He’s still there?” Mom lets Benedita in the patio door, and I grab the dish of leftovers and put it in the oven.
“Yeah. He asked—” Whatever else Cole says is cut off by Marian’s hog going down the street. His mouth is still moving, and I catch Alexei’s name at the end.
“What? What about Alexei?”
“Oh, so you do know him?” Nick smirks.
“I met him today. His dad is my sponsor. Why?”
“Mr. Brenner said Alexei Kopacek is his nephew and something about being around our street and seeing you.”
Oh, I don’t really give a shit about that. I’m more curious about Alexei. Mom’s still speaking bad languages with the neighbour, but she seems to be mixing in some Portuguese words now as Benedita gives her a vocab lesson at the kitchen table. I only know that because one of Paul’s coworker’s wives was Portuguese, and she would rant and ramble and be all loud and adorable in her language whenever her husband annoyed her. They were the only work couple Paul ever introduced me to, and I have no idea why that’s just hitting me now. He always hid me.
“You guys got that?” I ask, nodding at the oven. “I’m gonna smoke.”
Nick stays quiet, watching me, but Cole is the loudmouth, so he asks the typical question. “You okay?”
They’re seventeen and way too young to have to worry about me and my state of mind. So, I smile and smack Cole in the stomach. “Fine. Just a smoker.”
I head out front for a cigarette, pulling my phone from my pocket as I go. Sitting on the front step, I triple-check my calendar app, making sure my appointment with that therapist is still in there for tomorrow. I’m not even sure what kind of therapist she is, but I trust Kristen, and she’s the one who hooked me up with her.
Gage: Hey
Alexei 3: Hey
Why am I grinning at my phone like a tween? Jesus. I leave my cigarette between my lips to type.
Gage: Did you hear Marian’s hog go by?
Alexei 3: Yes. And no one calls them hogs. This isn’t the 80s.
Gage: My mom does haha what’re you doing?
Cole and Nick are bickering over something, and my mom is letting the neighbour yell at them, nodding along with hand gestures. While Alexei types, something falls off the van. A windshield wiper just slides down the hood, all cool and casual, and I seriously wonder how that thing is still running.
Alexei 3: If you must know, I’m washing my whites.
Gage: You have whites?
Alexei 3: A few. Mostly wear them under my blacks.
I glance behind me, peering in the window. Everyone, including the neighbour, is sitting at the kitchen table eating dinner. It smells good, whatever it is, but I’m not really hungry anymore. Cigarettes are an appetite suppressant for me, and I should have eaten something before having one. But the scene through the window looks so wholesome and humble, and there’s this fear inside me that I’m going to taint it as soon as I walk in there.
I’m not sure if that’s me overthinking, the addict in me coming out, the ADHD surfacing, or if it’s true, but whatever the reason, I feel it. I’m dark sometimes, and I never used to give a shit because there wasn’t anyone in my life I cared about tainting. My brothers don’t fall within that category, and my mom has already seen enough of my darkness. It fucking hurts to think of myself at the twins’ age. By that time, I’d already been an addict for two or three years; my life was out of control, and I was out of control even more. My mom worried about me constantly, and I spent so much time giving her that grey hair she has now.
Maybe coming back here was a mistake.
Maybe I’m too damaged to live with Nick and Cole without dragging them down or scaring them.
Gage: Wanna go for a walk?
Alexei 3: Okay. Come get me.
“Mom! I’m going for a walk. I’m fine, I just need air.”
“Kayyy, honey.”