Chapter 54 Charlie
CHARLIE
Charlie shakes as he pours a generous glug of whiskey into a cut-glass tumbler, mesmerized by how the amber-colored liquid flows like lava over the ice cubes.
He hasn’t had a single drink since that night—staying true to his word, and the pact he made with Freya—believing that facing her demons together would be easier than her doing it on her own.
And if that meant he’d never drink again, then so be it.
But she couldn’t go without, for even a year—the photos of her passed out on the hotel bed pay testament to that.
He lifts the glass to his lips, its pungent aroma permeating his nostrils with its smoky, woody notes.
Its alluring pull is still there and he hates that it has that power over him.
Though knowing the sweet release it will give him in just a few short moments far exceeds any feelings of weakness.
This will break months of promises, but now he knows it’s only to himself, it’s easier to bear.
The spirit hits the back of his throat, making itself felt, and he shudders as disappointment shrouds his whole being. Not only for himself, but for the failure of his marriage.
He’d tried so hard to love her, to forgive her fatal mistake, but he can’t do it anymore.
And for all the emotions that are crowding his brain, it is the overwhelming sense of release that takes up the most space.
He doesn’t have to try to second-guess her every move, wondering if she’ll find a way to have a drink.
He doesn’t have to worry about whom she chooses to talk to.
He can, once again, be himself, without the fear of her detonating a bomb under his world.
“I thought I might find you here,” comes a voice.
He knows it’s Anita, without needing to look up. “Here she comes,” he says, ice cubes clinking as he knocks back another glug of whiskey. “Ever ready to hover over the kill and pick the meat from the bones.…”
She sits heavily on the barstool next to him. “We both know that you’re not going to find what you’re looking for in the bottom of a bottle,” she says.
He laughs caustically. “If I had half a clue what it was I was looking for, then I might be inclined to agree, but this’ll do me just fine while I’m finding it.”
“I’m not here looking for a fight,” she says.
He nods to his glass. “So what are you here for, Anita?”
“I want to put a stop to all this,” she says, reaching over the bar for a tumbler and filling it from the whiskey bottle. “I don’t want to go on living like this, and I would hazard a guess that you don’t either.”
“I’m done,” says Charlie, holding his hands up in surrender. “So go do your worse. If you want to call the police and tell them what you think happened that night, then be my guest, because I have nothing to lose anymore.”
Anita blanches as she takes a sip.
“But I promise you, you’ll get more than you bargained for because you have no idea…”
He looks at her, his jaw spasming.
“I think you underestimate me, Charlie. I think you always have, and that’s been your undoing.…”
He laughs. “I’m painfully aware of what you’re capable of, Anita. You’ve never liked me. You’ve never thought I was good enough. You’ve made that perfectly clear.…”
Anita looks at him with raised eyebrows
“But you will rue the day you pushed me out of Freya’s life—because I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to her.”
Anita slams her glass down on the bar top.
“You think I don’t know that?” she barks.
“I knew from the moment you walked into her life that you’d taken on more than you could handle.
You had no idea what you were dealing with, and if you did, you were na?ve enough to believe that you could manage it, or even change the parts of her that were rotten. …”
Charlie’s brow furrows as he tries to make sense of what she’s saying.
“But nobody can,” she goes on. “Not you. Not me. Not her father. We all tried and look where that’s got us.”
Charlie shakes his head, dumbfounded by the turn of events. All this time, he’d thought Anita was trying to save Freya from their toxic relationship. The revelation that she was doing it to save him sends a shiver down his spine.
“She’s an alcoholic,” he says, his need to defend her still so deeply ingrained that it’s second nature.
Anita shakes her head. “You can make all the excuses you like, but alcohol didn’t make her a bad person. She was born that way.”