Chapter 24 #2
“I know, and I know you hate yourself right now.” I looked at her in surprise, shocked she could tell despite our years of silence. “I have a feeling everything you do is riddled with guilt. You don’t think you’re worth our love… or Sarah’s love.”
I swallowed, knowing she was right.
“I don’t hate you,” she continued. “I was temporarily angry and called you some mean names.”
I laughed lightly. “Like what?”
“Dick-knuckle, ass-face, and an idiot more times than I could count,” she explained with a smirk.
I laughed again, shaking my head. She had always been a spitfire. “I deserved every single one.”
She nodded. “That you did, Fai… that you did. But I got over my anger and I watched you. I’ve watched you for years.
I knew the minute you were sober again and took it seriously.
Hell, I’ve been at nearly every major AA meeting for you.
I watched you get your one-month chip all the way up to that six-month one.
” I reached into my pocket and ran my thumb over the blue chip in question.
I pulled it out and showed it to her. She smirked ever so slightly.
“I’ve watched you work your ass off to be a better person…
but I have also seen how hard you’ve been on yourself. ”
I sighed. “I don’t know how to forgive myself. I don’t think I can.”
Jackie nodded in understanding. “Let’s switch positions.
Say it was me, all those years ago, who relapsed.
Say I pushed you and everyone around me away and kept them away.
Say I blew up my life and my relationships to feed my addiction.
Would you forgive me if I tried to make it right? If I got my act together?”
“It’s not the same,” I began, but Jackie shook her head and interrupted.
“It is… it’s exactly the same. Why can’t you give yourself the same grace you would give me? I know you would let Sarah stab you—even kill you—and you wouldn’t even be mad. Why must you be perfect in your own eyes?” Jackie asked, her voice rising slightly.
“Jackie…”
“No. No excuses. What makes you think you must be better than everyone else? Why do you hold yourself to higher standards than you hold anyone else?”
“Because if I wasn’t perfect, I was scared I would be alone again. I’m still scared… every day,” I burst out, the words escaping me.
Jackie looked at me in surprise. “What do you mean?”
I swallowed and looked down at my hands.
“I was alone until I found Sarah. I had no one… not one person. Every time I made a mistake growing up, I would get moved to different foster homes, get passed up for adoption, or be straight-up ignored by the people who were supposed to care for me. I had no one for so long.”
“Fai…” she mumbled, but I kept talking.
“I had no one. I was alone in this cruel world… then I had her.” I smiled sadly, thinking about Sarah. “I didn’t need anyone else when I had her.”
“Then why push us away?” Jackie asked quietly.
I looked at her to see her eyes wet with unshed tears, but with an openness I hadn’t seen in years. “I thought you would all leave anyway. It felt safer to push you away and have it be on my terms than to be abandoned… again.”
Jackie took a steadying breath and reached her hand out to me. I took it gently. “I’m sorry, Fai.”
I laughed without humor. “I think that’s my line.”
She smiled. “Yeah, but at the end of the day, I let you push me away. I should have fought harder to see what was going on with you.”
“I was being a dick-knuckle,” I mused.
She laughed hard, tears spilling at the same time. “You were. You definitely were. But maybe… maybe we can make it right. Fix our friendship, be family again?”
“I’d like that,” I murmured.
She smiled again. “Good… so now that we’re friends again.” She let go of my hand and whacked me on the shoulder. “Did you really have to sleep with Sarah in the middle of the woods?”
“Hey!” I protested. “I’m an injured man.”
Jackie rolled her eyes. “Your feet are, you idiot.”
I laughed. “Look, I’m not going to talk about Sarah and me until I talk to her about it. I don’t even know what’s going on between the two of us.”
“Well, figure it out,” she mused and stood, offering her hand. I took it, and she pulled me up. We started back the way we came, but this time she looped her arm through the crook of my elbow.
Our steps were slow and steady, and the tension between us felt lighter.
It was still present—it always would be.
Our friendship had been born in flames and left in the cold to wither; it would take a lifetime to fix.
I was grateful just knowing we could fix it, especially since I’d thought she despised me this entire time.
Now, I saw her for the grieving, angry, terrified woman she had been.
She hadn’t despised me, but she hadn’t been ready to forgive me, either.
While I hadn’t seen it, she had been there for me in the only ways she could.
The flash of blonde in my AA meetings? The awards she had nominated me for?
It was her way of not giving up on me—not yet.
I didn’t know how she ever could, but I would be grateful for the rest of my life that she was willing to give me another chance.
“Can I ask you something?”
She glanced at me curiously and nodded. “Shoot.”
“That award… you nominated me for it?”
Her cheeks pinkened. “Maybe…” She trailed off, her gaze falling to her feet for a moment. “You won, by the way.”
I stopped in surprise. “What?”
She took a deep breath and faced me. “You won. I got the letter while you were out. And the award—it’s in my office right now.”
I raised a knowing brow. “Were you planning on keeping it?”
She shrugged. “You throw away every award, anyway. It deserved to be displayed.”
“Why did you nominate me?”
“Because you deserved it.” Her answer was simple, and her tone left no room for argument. “You haven’t always been perfect, but you’re a good person who deserves good things. I nominated you because I wanted to prove that very fact to you.”
I had spent most of my life thinking I didn't deserve anything. I was undeserving of love, of care, of sacrifice. But I had been blind—so fucking blind—to all the love around me. It was the love I had once deserved, and that I was now working my ass off to deserve again.