Chapter 32
chapter thirty-two
Kathleen was hell-bent on getting me to figure out all of my triggers for drinking. She wanted me to pick specifics, which seemed impossible.
“Everything makes me wanna drink.” I sighed.
She tilted her head from side to side, looking up at the ceiling for a second.
When her eyes came back to mine, I knew to brace.
We hadn’t known each other long, but I was already picking up on when she was going to say some shit.
“Does everything make you want to drink, or do you already want to drink, and these situations give you an excuse to?”
Fuck. I knew it. “I don’t know. I mean, guilt often stops me from drinking.”
“Guilt is a powerful emotion. If you can excuse the guilt away…”
“Then I can give myself permission. And with that permission, I can cave, and it won’t feel as bad because, well, that thing made me drink. Like shifting the blame.”
She nodded, her eyebrows pinched together. “How does that feel for you? Does it make sense, or do you think it’s something else?”
“No. No, that makes sense. Thinking about it like that, I think…” I bit down on my lip, trailing off as I tried to process how it was making me feel. “Maybe it’ll give me…I don’t know.”
She gave me another minute to try to figure out what I was trying to say before jumping in herself. “Could it feel empowering, maybe?”
“Yeah. Empowering. Like it gives me control. Nothing can make me drink. I’m who decides whether I do or not, and it isn’t just because of guilt but because I don’t want to.”
“And what are you, Tobi? What do we know about you as a person?”
We’d talked about this at length, too. Finding my core self—the values I’d kept through my entire life, through every phase. The things that made me, me. “I’m strong. I’m determined.”
Kathleen fist-pumped the air. “Yes! Yes, yes, yes. I’m so fucking proud of you for recognizing that and connecting it.
I’m glad this way of thinking can be helpful for you.
You’ve spent a long time feeling out of control or having control taken from you.
You can take control of this, Tobi. You can call the shots.
Control what’s within your ability to, and don’t try to control what you can’t. That’s how we spiral.”
I found myself smiling. Her excitement for me was fucking contagious, and I couldn’t help but feel excited, too. Maybe even proud of myself. I was so close to my thirty-day mark, and every day was giving me new challenges, but I could do it. I could get through them.
I believed in myself, just as she did. Just as Callum did. I could kick alcoholism in its ass and take back my power. Nothing was going to control me like that anymore. I wouldn’t let it.
My therapy session had ended on such a high note that it was almost pathetic how horrible my day had gone. I thought a good start to the day at therapy meant I’d have a good rest of the day.
Oh, how fucking wrong I was.
I’d started to question myself thirty minutes into my shift, wondering how I’d ever handled an environment like this before. I used to thrive on it by keeping to myself and completely zoning in on my tasks.
Now, even as a makeshift inventory checker and assistant, I remembered what kind of hell restaurant work was.
We’d been busy back then, sure, but never this busy.
Callum wasn’t kidding when he said they’d not had a slow night.
Our busiest nights were nothing compared to the pace we’d had all day, and I wasn’t the one in the middle of it.
There were so many people and so much to do every single second and every single minute. I thought maybe it would be good for me. Like, it’d keep my mind off shit for a while, but it did the absolute opposite.
All the noise was too loud. The lights were too bright.
There were a million people talking all at once, and task after task kept piling up, and there were so many new faces and so many old ones who hadn’t gotten a chance to properly speak to me.
Like Jesse, who was as golden and preppy as ever, who talked my ear off and gave me a huge hug the moment I walked through the back door with Callum.
Jesse had meant well, and I’d missed him just as I’d missed the others, but it was a lot. Especially when it was followed up by awkwardly silent bro hugs from Isaac and Liam. It seemed the only person I was truly okay with touching me was Callum.
I found myself sweating through my brand-new chef’s jacket, despite me not even being a chef. I’d forgotten how goddamn hot the kitchen could get. I’d forgotten how cramped everything could feel. I’d forgotten.
I’d forgotten that I’d missed this.
Not being on the outside, but in it. And I was on the fucking outside because I couldn’t be trusted anywhere else.
Of course, the cravings hit the moment I started to feel inadequate and was unable to keep up. We had bottles of expensive wine stocked. It’d be so fucking easy to just walk on over, take one from the top shelf, pop the cork, and down it all in one sitting.
So easy.
But I was supposed to be strong. I was supposed to be determined. I was supposed to kick alcoholism in its ass and show it who was boss.
By the end of the night, I was wiped. Physically and mentally, from persevering through the cravings.
Usually, they’d come and go, only staying for maybe ten minutes at a time.
I could breathe through them, like Kathleen had shown me.
I could think about the life I wanted to live, and it’d kick them out of my mind completely. I had willpower. Most of the time.
Somehow, Crew still had a smile on his face as he told me how good of a job I’d done.
Price had done the same, patting me on the shoulder and telling me how good it’d felt to have me back.
I’d cringed and flinched away at the touch, and thank god he’d backed off with an apology, or I would’ve panicked right then and there.
Instead, I’d nodded along, smiled when appropriate, and laughed when they’d laughed.
All I could think about, though, was how sweet a swig would be of the fancy aged merlot they kept stocked.
These were lasting far longer than ten minutes.
I couldn’t breathe through them. I couldn’t seem to escape them.
I didn’t even like wine, but I knew it’d taste delicious after so long without a single drop. Like being starved and shown an entire table full of food, waiting to be devoured. Like dying of thirst, only to drink until my stomach hurt when offered water.
When I got in the car to go home with Callum, I was sad.
Genuinely sad, bordering on regretful because I hadn’t grabbed a bottle.
I hadn’t given in to my want. My thirst. My need for something to burn down my throat and light a fire under my heart because then that fire would be what I felt and not the panic running circles in my mind over and over and over.
It wouldn’t be the memories that’d found their way back.
The memories of before. The memories of during. The memories of after.
The memories of every man who’d ever craved me, just as I craved vodka.
The memories of their touch that matched the burn shortly turned into a light tingle because after a while—after enough hits—it no longer hurt. It couldn’t hurt if I pretended like the body being hurt wasn’t even mine and I was just watching it happen instead of it happening to me.
How pathetic.
“You doing okay, baby?” Callum was standing on his side of the bed, his eyebrows drawn together in concern.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Just tired.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.” The promises of an alcoholic were usually as empty as their bottle.
Lying was easy. Too easy. So easy, it made me wonder if I’d ever meant it when I said I wanted to get sober.
Right then, I didn’t. I didn’t want to be sober.
I didn’t want to feel my skin on my bones.
I didn’t want to feel the hair on my head and neck.
I didn’t want to feel the pounding in my skull, or the way my heart was so close to shattering, or how disoriented I felt because I was fine.
I was fine.
I had been fine during my session.
I had been fine last night.
I had been fine, and suddenly I wasn’t, and this was the true test. Of how badly I wanted to be sober, and so far, I felt like I was failing. Fucking failing. A goddamn failure.
And I said nothing. I kept quiet as I slipped into bed right beside Callum, giving him a kiss on the lips before closing my eyes so he’d close his and leave me alone while still being right in front of me. I wanted to be alone. To fight this alone.
The thought scared me. Terrified me. I was so easily reverting to the way I’d thought before, taking the loneliness in my heart and transforming it into truth in my mind.
I want to drink.
God, did I want to. It would make everything better.
It’d make it all okay. It’d make it all numb, and there’d be no issues, and I’d wake up in the morning, take another sip, and life would be great because I’d be regulated.
Easy to deal with. Life would be easy beneath the haze of a drink no less great than my first.
When had I become like this? Addicted and dependent on poison to match what was in my veins. Had Thompson put it there?
I lay awake as Callum slept, my mind and body at war with each other. The solutions were simple. Two opposing sides. Drink, or don’t drink. Suffer, or don’t suffer. Commit or don’t.
I grabbed my phone and pulled up the app Kathleen had told me about.
I hadn’t gone to a single meeting. Not because I thought I was better than others, but because I didn’t know if I could handle the shame.
How could I admit to complete strangers what I’d done?
Of how I’d abandoned my life only to seek out a life far worse than I’d had.