Chapter Eleven
Nine Months Ago
On the second weekend of October, Luke and I started having our meetings at 13th Avenue Coffee House. Now that we had become friendlier, I thought we could move somewhere that was less business and cozier.
The coffee shop was full, so we took our coffees to the patio outside to enjoy the unseasonably warm afternoon. We had to keep our jackets on, but the sun was glorious. We sat at the wooden tables, nodding to the few other folks who were taking advantage of the weather, knowing that soon it would be so cold our faces would hurt.
“I’ve never been here.” Luke sipped his coffee from the cardboard take-away cup. “It’s really nice. I love that it’s an old house.”
“This is where Kate and I always go, or used to go anyways. It’s the best,” I said as I dug into my white-chocolate brownie with a disposable bamboo fork.
One thing a lot of people don’t know about recovering alcoholics is that many of them not only crave the booze they are no longer consuming, but they also crave the sugar. Alcohol, especially wine, contains a lot of sugar. And wine was almost always my drink of choice.
I craved the sugar so hard that there were still some days when I would get the shakes. The difference between constantly craving booze and constantly craving sugar, though, was that I was allowed to have sugar. So, I could justify stuffing my face with it. It was my reward for staying away from what I wanted the most.
Luke sat back and sighed contentedly. “I love the Cathedral area, it’s so artsy. I was admiring the murals painted on the sides of some of the shops while I was walking here. The benches even look like art! I would love to buy one of the old character houses and fix it up.”
“That’s ambitious of you.” I smiled. “Some of them are in pretty rough shape.”
“All the better to put my own mark on one.” He sipped his latte with enthusiasm. “Yum! This is delicious.”
“Are you always this excited about everything you do?”
“Mostly, yeah.” He nodded. “Like I said before, why not try to make the most of everything?”
I shrugged in response.
“You seem to be the exact opposite,” he said.
I shrugged again and he laughed.
“What do you like to do for fun? You never answered me before; you seemed more interested in ensuring I knew you didn’t want to date me.” He winked and reached forward, stealing a chunk of my brownie.
I gasped in mock anger. “No. My brownie. I asked you if you wanted one.”
“I didn’t, but yours looks really good.”
“It is good. And it’s mine.” I put the brownie on a napkin on my lap.
“Fine.” He sat back in good-willed defeat. “So?”
“Well….” I thought about it. “I used to drink for fun. Now I don’t know what I do. Watch TV, I guess.”
“TV doesn’t count,” he said.
“Buy things online?”
“Nope.”
“Nothing then. I mean, I guess I used to date. Sort of.”
“What do you mean sort of?” he asked, eyebrow raised.
“I didn’t actually go on dates; I just had a lot of…sleepovers.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t have a perky retort for that?” I raised my own eyebrow in response, wondering if I had found the limit of Luke’s seemingly endless amount of non-judgmental composure.
I hadn’t.
“I don’t,” he said. “There’s a huge double standard for men and women. It sucks that women are looked at differently when they behave the same way that men are lauded for.”
“I’ve never met someone as genuinely open-minded as you.” I sat back and brushed the brownie crumbs off my lap. “Are you a real person, Luke Hudson?” I teased.
“I am happy to inform you that everything in this larger-than-life package,” he said as he opened his arms wide, narrowly missing his coffee cup, “is fully and completely the real deal.”
I laughed, moving his coffee cup closer to the centre of the table. “Good to know.”
“Why did you stop? Dating, I mean,” he asked, his expression genuinely curious.
I slipped a strand of hair behind my ear and laughed again, this time with less humour. “It got a bit out of control.”
“How so?”
I sighed. “It just got to be too much.” I sipped my coffee. Normally, this would be where I ended the conversation, but with Luke, I inexplicably couldn’t make myself shut up. He was just so easy to talk to.
“I stopped because it wasn’t healthy,” I said, eyes on my lap. “It was part of the addiction. And it had gotten to the point where I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. I was just going through the motions. Poking at a bruise to see if it still hurt.”
He nodded, his eyes soft. “Do you think you’ll try again now that you’re back on track?”
I shook my head. “Not right now. The one thing I took away from AA is the idea that you shouldn’t date anyone until you’re a year sober. I need to work on me for a while without having anyone else in the picture. I still have a lot of work to do.”
He closed his mouth, seemingly satisfied. “Hey, I have an idea.”
“Oh God. What? I’m not starting a gratitude journal with you.”
He leaned forward, eyes sparkling. “Let’s do something fun next weekend.”
“And what would that look like?”
“Instead of meeting here to talk about wedding plans, let’s do some kind of activity; shake it up a bit. Maybe try out one of Ben and Kate’s Stag and Doe ideas. It could be fun. At the very least, it could take your mind off wanting a drink.”
“How is doing an activity conducive to wedding planning?” I was not sold on this idea. Planning this wedding was important to me. I didn’t want to get sidetracked by “fun.” “Where would you put all of your spreadsheets?” I asked.
“My spreadsheets are all up here.” He tapped his head. “And, besides,” he spoke slowly as if speaking to a child, “there’s this really cool invention, it’s amazing. You can download something called an ‘app’ and see everything on your phone.”
“Are you making fun of me?” I tried hard to scowl but failed miserably.
He put his fists to the sides of his head and opened them, driving home the point by demonstrating that his mind was blown.
“Hmm,” I mused. It wasn’t like I had anything better to do. If we had to hang out together, we might as well try to do something fun. Plus, if it was even half as fun as Luke clearly thought it was going to be, it would at least be better than sitting on my couch feeling sorry for myself.
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s do it. As long as we still do wedding stuff,” I added.
“Yes!” He raised his hand for a high five.
“No.”
“Fine then.” His bottom lip poked out in a fake pout. “I got some sweet invite design options from my friend yesterday; did you want to see?”
I was amazed to realize that I really did.
One of the things I learned after I first stopped drinking was that alcohol affects women differently than it does men because it takes us longer to metabolize it. Which is why, I learned after the engagement party, women should really pay attention to what their bodies are saying to them when they drink. I was thinking about this one night after Group as I helped Corie fold up the plastic chairs and put them away.
“That was a good session,” I said.
“Thanks.” She grabbed a chair from me and added it to the stack. “I often don’t know if anyone gets anything out of them, so it’s nice to hear when one goes well.”
“How long have you been a therapist?”
“I’m not a therapist.” She smiled. “This group is self-sustaining. It’s mostly just a place to talk. My job is to mediate; to encourage conversation and to get the conversation back on track if it gets out of hand. Is it okay that I’m not a therapist?”
“Fine by me,” I said as I passed her another chair. “I tried therapy and didn’t love it. This group is helping more than anything I’ve tried in the past.”
She smiled. “Good. I’m glad you keep coming back.”
“It’s honestly pretty surprising,” I said.
“Why surprising?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I just thought….” I trailed off.
“You thought what?” She unfolded the chair she was holding and sat down, gesturing for me to do the same. “You can be honest with me; I won’t judge.”
“I guess I just thought it wasn’t for me. The idea of a group. I mean, I did it without a group the first time. Why couldn’t I do it this time?” I sat heavily on the unfolded chair beside her. “Seriously, why couldn’t I?” My eyes unexpectedly welled up with tears and I swiped at them impatiently.
“I’m curious to know how you managed to do it by yourself the first time,” she said. “That’s an amazing accomplishment.”
I paused, trying to get my emotions in check. “Well, I wasn’t by myself.” I ran my hands through my hair and twisted it around so it fell over my right shoulder. “I had a lot of support. My best friend Kate and brother Ben were there for me every step of the way.”
“The ones who are getting married?” she asked.
I nodded.
“So, what do you think happened? What’s different now?” she asked.
Good question. “I don’t know. I guess Ben and Kate are more involved with their own stuff. They don’t have as much time for me. I guess I didn’t know how much I depended on them for support.” I swallowed the lump in my throat.
It’s amazing how sometimes you don’t know what you’re feeling or why you’re feeling it until you say it out loud. How you can still surprise yourself. I really hadn’t realized how much I had depended on Ben and Kate after I quit drinking the first time. I hadn’t realized how much they had always been there, ready to hold me upright when I couldn’t do it for myself. Ready to pick me up off the floor on my bad days and help me celebrate my good ones. I hadn’t known how much I needed someone else to help me shoulder the burden.
“Everyone needs support,” she said, “especially during challenging times.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to open my mouth. Not wanting more tears to fall.
“Can I ask you something?” Her voice was hesitant.
I nodded again.
“Do you think maybe—and don’t get upset—but do you think you might have, subconsciously, decided to have the glass of champagne at their engagement party because you knew you couldn’t handle it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
She continued, “Maybe, because you were feeling left out, because you were missing the support, maybe you subconsciously decided that the only way to get that support back was to show them how much you needed it.”
The shock of what she was saying, and the anger the shock turned into, hit me like a punch to the stomach. I cleared my throat, trying not to choke on the fire rising in my chest. “So,” I began as I struggled to control my breathing, “what you’re suggesting is that I deliberately got super shit-faced at my brother and best friend’s engagement party, completely embarrassing myself and deeply disappointing all my friends and family, erasing an incredibly hard-earned seven months of sobriety, just so I could get more attention?”
As I was speaking, her face blanched. “I’m sorry I offended you,” she almost whispered. “That wasn’t my intent.”
“I’m sorry too.” I stood up and yanked my coat off the coat rack, causing the wire hanger to fly across the room. “I’m sorry because this group was helping me. I was actually starting to get my life together. And now I’m going to have to find another one.”
“You don’t have to find another one.” She stood up and followed as I stomped towards the door. “You can still come back. You should still come back.”
I ignored her and opened the door, closing it behind me. There was no way I was coming back to this place. After what she’d accused me of? The idea that I would deliberately sabotage such an important event for the two people I loved most in the entire world just so I could get more attention. Just because I’d been feeling lonely.
I jammed my key in the lock and pulled the car door open so forcefully I almost dislocated my shoulder. Rubbing my arm, I slid into the driver’s seat and threw my purse on the floor.
How dare she?I thought. And then, What if she was right?