CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CONNECTICUT, AGE TWENTY-ONE
When I was twenty-one, Luke was twenty-four, and in most ways, that three-year gap had seemed to disappear entirely.
Except in the way that he looked like he'd lived decades longer than me.
And in the way that, a lot of the time, it was me who felt like the older brother.
More responsible. More put together.
Luke's skin wrinkled in ways that a lot of twenty-four-year-olds didn't; his voice sounded hoarser, throatier; and his eyes held more experience and street-smart wisdom. I'd known it was from the years of smoking, questionable socialization, and alcohol abuse, yet it never ceased to surprise me every now and then when I caught a glimpse of him across the dinner table or in the upstairs hallway, passing him on my way to the bathroom.
Sometimes, I'd wonder if it was because of me, as I had for years. If he'd still look like that if he hadn't had to look after me for as long as he had.
I had mentioned it to Dr. Sibilia during one session, the week before my twenty-first birthday.
“Charlie, why do you think you blame yourself so much for Luke's poor choices?” she asked, sliding her thick, black-framed glasses off her nose. She held them by one arm in her pinched fingers, tapping them against her bottom lip.
She had recently gotten a labret piercing, and I liked it. I thought it suited her, and I’d told her so. But I wasn’t thinking about that now as my legs began to bounce and my fingers began to scratch at the threads holding my jeans together.
“I don't know. I guess because …” I shrugged, lifting my hands. “Because he needed to cope somehow?”
I sounded unsure because I was. It just seemed like the right answer. What other reason was there?
Dr. Sibilia sucked in a deep breath and nodded, raising her gaze to the ceiling tiles.
“I'm not saying you're wrong,” she said even though it seemed an awful lot like she was, in fact, saying I was wrong. “But did you ever consider that Luke was already a legal adult when he took over as your guardian? A legal adult in control of making his own choices?”
My legs bounced quicker in short, erratic little movements as I looked away from her and argued, “He was barely an adult when Mom and Dad died.”
“No, I know that,” she reasoned, laying the glasses in her lap to scratch at the side of her neck. “But, Charlie, didn't Luke already drink and smoke before they died?”
“Yeah, but no more than the usual stupid teenager.”
“And was that by choice or because he was forced to”—she pursed her lips and clasped her hands together—“to cope with … what, being a stupid teenager?”
I knew she was testing me. I knew she was only helping me to navigate through my discombobulated brain and the shitty, tragic circumstances of my life. But her condescending tone pissed me off. That she would insult my brother like this and make him sound like the loser I hated to think he was pissed me off even more.
“Grown freakin' men become alcoholics because of their circumstances. Their kid dies, or they lose their job or whatever. So, I don't know why you think it's so damn impossible for him to have used booze as a—”
“Charlie, I'm not saying he didn’t turn to alcohol as a way to cope with his circumstances,” she interrupted, her tone a bit gentler as she leaned forward in her seat across from mine. “All I'm asking is, at what point do you stop blaming yourself for the choices he's made? At what point do you stop believing that it's your fault and start holding him accountable for his own actions?”
I’d been seeing Dr. Sibilia for years now. I knew I had been lucky to find a therapist I clicked with on the first shot, but that was all Melanie’s doing. I couldn’t take credit for that. But as good as I’d felt about my sessions with the doctor—and as much of a positive impact as she’d made on my mental health—she also had a way of pushing my buttons, of making me think. And I guessed that was the point, right? She made me think, recalculate, and look at things in a different way.
But this … believing that Luke was solely to blame for his poor choices … I was too stubborn—too guilty —to release my fault in that.
But it was fine now.
Because Luke had been sober for a year. He’d been attending his meetings, and he’d been at least somewhat present in the planning of his wedding.
So, whether he was solely to blame or not was moot at this point. Because he was better—we all were. And whatever had happened before no longer mattered.
***
“My little Charlie’s all grown up,” Melanie cooed in an overly dramatic, babyish tone as she pinched my chin in her grasp and pressed a wet kiss to my squished cheek.
I brushed her away and rubbed where she had squeezed. “I don’t wanna break it to you, but I’ve been grown up for a while.”
“You know what I mean.” She walked away from the table to head for the fridge in the kitchen. “Twenty-one is, like … there’s nothing else, you know? All restrictions are lifted now. You’re free to do anything.”
I grabbed the pepper shaker and dashed my scrambled eggs as I asked skeptically, “Like what?”
“Well, like …” She produced the bottle of orange juice from the fridge and pursed her lips as she shut the door. “Um … you could rent a car …”
Luke entered the room with the grandeur of a hungry and sleep-deprived toddler, his boots clomping loudly against the hardwood floor. He gripped my shoulders from behind and gave me a hearty shake.
“You can get legally wasted,” he chimed in, an air of wistful delight heavy in his tone.
As if on cue, Melanie and I both froze in place, and I held the breath within my aching lungs. Being around Luke in the year since he’d decided to get sober had been mostly great, but every now and then, especially during times like this, it felt like we were precariously walking over shattered glass. Afraid to take a step, afraid to slip, afraid of what jagged fragment might wedge itself into flesh, only to fester, infect, and eventually require antibiotics and amputation. Neither of us wanted to say the wrong thing. Neither of us knew exactly what the right thing was.
Melanie’s eyes dodged quickly to mine and narrowed.
Say something , they said.
No, you , mine said back.
Her brows lifted with a stern demand to man up and intervene, and Luke broke our silent, private conversation with a groan and a thwack of his palm against the side of my head. Hard enough to send a message, not hard enough to inflict pain.
“Will you guys knock it off?” he grumbled irritably in the same tone he always used when we questioned his strength and sobriety. “I didn’t say I was gonna get wasted.”
“Well, I’m not going to either,” I declared.
While it might have sounded like a noble gesture of camaraderie—and it was—Luke wasn’t my only reason why I had no intention of drinking. I hated the taste of alcohol. Hated the way it made me feel. I’d only ever been tipsy on one occasion—on New Year’s with Melanie and Luke when I was eighteen—and the lack of control I felt after only a few glasses of shitty wine had scared me enough to never want to do it again. Especially after witnessing firsthand how toxic it could be to your life and the relationships in it.
But Luke didn’t like my answer, and he proved as much later that night, when he came to pick me up from work at the cemetery.
Ever since I’d started driving a couple of years back, Luke and I had been sharing Dad’s old car. Luke had said on many occasions that he was going to take the money he got from the sale of his old truck and get himself a motorcycle, and once he did, he’d give the keys to the car to me for good. But he hadn’t yet saved the extra money he’d likely need for his dream Harley, and so, whenever his shift at Melanie’s dad’s shop aligned with mine, one of us picked the other up.
It had been a fine system, until that night, when instead of turning onto our street, he kept on driving.
“Where are we going?” I asked, not intending to sound as worried as I did.
But I was a creature of habit. I liked my days to go as planned. It felt safe, it felt comfortable, and if something was even remotely out of place, I worried.
“I’m buying you a drink,” he said matter-of-factly, not taking his eyes off the road.
That was when I realized he was driving in the direction of Tony’s, and I ran a hand through my hair and held my palm to the crown of my head.
“No. What ? No, come on. Melanie’s making dinner, right? And w-we’re having cake, and—”
“Relax, will you? Jesus.” He shook his head. “It’s one drink. Can’t I buy my little brother one drink on his twenty-first birthday, huh?”
It didn’t feel good. Nothing about it did, and I grimaced as I replied, “Shit … I don’t know. Let’s just—”
“Being in a bar isn’t gonna miraculously ruin everything I’ve done in the past year , okay? One drink. That’s all I’m asking. Just one. It’s what Dad would’ve done, right? So, just … just give this to me, okay? Please .”
He was begging, and it made me waver. It was cheap, using Dad like that. But he wasn’t wrong. I knew that was exactly what our father would’ve done—for both of us. He would’ve taken us down to Tony’s, bought us a beer, clapped us on the back, and told us how proud he was. And given that Luke had been the person to help me survive these past six years, I started to think that maybe it wouldn’t hurt to let him buy me that one drink. Never mind every warning I’d ever heard about letting an alcoholic walk within the vicinity of a bar.
I realized that what I wanted was to pretend that everything was fine for a couple of minutes. I wanted to pretend that we—all of us—were fine. That life was good. That Luke’s alcoholism wasn’t a giant fucking elephant sitting in the corner of every room, and my anxiety and penchant for premonitions weren’t a couple of shit-talking demons sitting on my shoulders.
So, I agreed.
I was going to let my brother buy me a beer. I wanted to. Because it was what Dad would’ve done, and right now, Luke was the closest I was going to get to our father.
***
The thing was, I had always considered myself a smart guy.
I’d flown through school, thanks to being taught at home and being allowed to work at my own pace. Mom and Dad had set up college funds for both Luke and me, and while Luke had spent his on bills and food, I’d spent mine on getting my GED and taking college classes online at sixteen. I’d graduated with my bachelor’s degree just a few months before my nineteenth birthday, and I could run circles around nearly anyone in a game of Trivial Pursuit.
My point is, academically, I was a pretty smart guy. Book smart. Intellectually intelligent. A fucking nerd, as Luke would call it.
But I was also naive, and although my intuition had always been strong to a fault, I wanted to believe so badly that I could knock back a beer beside my brother without the fear of him sliding face-first off of the wagon.
But of course, that wasn’t what happened. And anyone else would’ve seen that coming from three hundred miles away. Hell, I did, too, when I really thought about it. But hope had a way of making us do dangerous, stupid things sometimes. And stepping foot into Tony’s Bar was a dangerous, stupid, stupid, stupid thing.
It started with one beer. Just one, and it was mine.
Luke watched me take a pull in a way that looked serene and desperate at the same time.
“How is it?” he asked, and I grimaced, choked, and barely swallowed before croaking, “Horrible.”
We laughed, and, fuck, it felt so normal and good to laugh with him. His hand on my back, moisture collecting in both of our eyes as we fell into silly hysterics. And why the hell we were laughing so hard, I had no idea, but there we were, bellied up to Tony’s polished bar and unable to stop laughing until our stomachs hurt and the tears were flowing into our nearly identical beards.
“Ah fuck,” Luke muttered, running his palm over his mouth and chin. He sighed audibly and pushed his fingers into his hair. “What a crazy fuckin’ life it’s been, huh?”
The joy and laughter wilted like a dying flower as I nodded and quietly replied, “Yeah, it has been.”
“We did okay though,” he said with reassurance, and I wasn’t sure if that had been for him or me. “I mean, all things considered, we turned out all right. I’m getting fucking married, I have a good job, and you …” His hand clapped against my back once again. “You’re working, you’re fucking driving , and you’re not nearly as neurotic as you used to be.”
I chuckled with melancholy at that. Luke always had a harsh way of speaking the truth, but that didn’t make it any less true. I was doing better—Dr. Sibilia told me frequently. Panic still had a way of choking the life out of me sometimes, but it wasn’t nearly as debilitating as it had once been.
“So … yeah, man.” He nodded to himself, his fingertips tracing a knot in the mahogany wood. “All things considered, I’d say we did pretty fuckin’ good.”
“Mom and Dad would be proud,” I said, unsure why I had even spoken it out loud. I didn’t like to talk about them like that—and especially not with Luke.
He swallowed hard, the muscles in his throat shifting. “Yeah,” he replied in a whisper.
I realized too late that it’d been the wrong thing to do—mentioning Mom and Dad—because that was when Luke uttered a rasped curse and grabbed the neck of my beer bottle.
Then, without a second thought, he took a sip.
I watched in horror, like I’d just witnessed a homicide. He’d been sober for over a year—a whole fucking year —and it had taken my birthday and a stupid comment about our dead parents to tip him over the edge.
“What the hell, Luke?” I hissed with a gasp.
“Relax,” he said, then cleared his throat and sucked at his teeth.
He stared at that bottle, looking down its gaping mouth as he licked his lips. His eyes were glazed over, in a trance, gazing into the amber glass like a junkie who’d just gotten a sought-after fix—and, I guessed, that was technically what my brother was.
A junkie.
An addict.
And after a year of fighting to shake the hold his poison of choice had on him, he’d given in.
And it was all my fault. Always, always my fucking fault.
“Luke,” I said, already sliding off my barstool. “I think we should go. Melanie—”
“Hey!” he called the bartender. “Bring me another one of these, will ya?”
The bartender nodded, and I could only stare at my brother, horrified, as a turbulent wave of nausea barreled over me.
No, no, no .
“It’s one beer, Charlie,” he muttered, giving me the nastiest side-eye glare I’d ever seen.
“You shouldn’t have one beer ,” I murmured just as the bartender slid the bottle over.
Luke caught it like a seasoned pro and knocked it back without a second to spare.
“God, we never should’ve come here,” I said, shaking my head as he guzzled the whole damn thing down in three hearty gulps.
He sighed and smacked his lips, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. His eyes rolled toward mine, and I could see it already. Sober Luke was gone. Just like that. One stupid little fucking sip was all it had taken to wipe away every bit of his progress.
Why didn’t I drive the fucking car?
“Oh, shut up, Charlie. I’m fine, okay? Fucking relax .”
And, hell, you know what? Maybe it could’ve been fine. Maybe in some other dimension, we walked out of that bar with one celebratory beer under each of our belts without any lasting damage to my brother’s journey of an alcohol-free life. But that wasn’t what happened.
Tommy and Rob walked into Tony’s then. It had been years since I’d laid my eyes on either of them, and with just one glance, they reminded me instantly of my brother.
Only twenty-four, yet they bore the look of men ten years their senior. Tall, muscular, and I bet they each had their fair share of women. But their skin crinkled where mine didn’t, and they laughed with a throaty rasp, like people who’d spent the past ten years of their lives sucking on cigarettes and guzzling down booze. Because they had.
“Holy fuck! Is that little Lukey Corbin?!” Rob crowed from the door.
I suppressed my eye roll. Dealing with Dumb and Dumber had never ever been on my list of plans for my twenty-first birthday. But neither had been Tony's Bar to begin with.
Tommy whooped at Rob's side before quickly barreling in our direction. He wrapped his arms around my brother’s shoulders and gave him an enthusiastic shake.
“Zero! What the hell happened to you, man?! You fuckin’ disappeared!”
Luke laughed in a way he never did with Melanie or me, clapping his hand against Tommy's arm. His eyes twinkled with happiness and mirth, like he'd spent this past year hibernating and finally came back to life in the presence of his shitty friends.
Displeasure coiled tightly in my gut, and I palmed my phone in the pocket of my jeans, readying myself to call Melanie to tattle on her fiancé.
“Life, man,” Luke answered with a shrug and a plastered-on grin. “You know how it goes.”
Rob came to join the reunion at the bar when his eyes landed on me. He tipped his head, his lips curling upward in a smile that didn't quite meet his eyes.
“Charlie?” he asked as if he wasn't sure it was really me. Like he couldn't believe that, as he'd aged, so had I.
“Last time I checked,” I muttered, rolling my eyes away to stare at the half-empty bottle of beer in front of me. I was surprised Luke hadn’t finished it.
Tommy glanced in my direction, suddenly aware of my presence. “Whoa, is Charlie boy drinking ?”
Charlie boy . The nickname pierced my skin and hit a nerve that made me flinch. Memories of Tommy’s brother, Ritchie, and the fucked-up shit he'd done to keep me away, to keep me scared and quiet, came rushing in like a tidal wave I had no chance of escaping.
God, was he coming too? Would I have to face my mortal enemy after I'd managed to keep his shadow from falling over me for so many years?
“Charlie's twenty-one today,” Luke said, grinning with pride in my direction.
For just a second, he was back, my big brother. Not the guy who put on a persona for his friends. Not the alcoholic who'd depended so much on poison to get through his days and nights.
He was Luke, and for the faintest glimmer of a moment, I thought, God, he looks so much like Dad .
I could almost hear my father in his voice. The inflections I'd nearly lost in the worn, faded memories. The gruff, throaty tone I'd spent so many nights reminding myself I'd never hear again. They were there now, all of it, living inside my brother.
Then, it passed, that bright moment of comfort and clarity, and Zero was back with his stupid fucking nickname and his stupid fucking friends.
They ordered another round of drinks, and Luke never protested. He clinked the neck of his second bottle against those of his friends’ before glancing at me with a silent plea.
Don't tell Melanie , it said, as if she wouldn't figure it out herself when he came home, stinking of Budweiser.
Please , it said again and again when that second bottle turned into three, then four, and by the fifth, I was tired of meeting his gaze with mine. I was tired of this night. I was tired of checking the clock, watching the minutes and hours tick away, knowing damn well that Melanie was wondering and worrying and making herself sick while dinner grew cold.
He's such a piece of shit , I thought to myself as I left my barstool. But I am, too, for letting it go on for this long .
Luke grabbed my arm. His eyes weren't his anymore; they had lost all focus, lost their clarity. I shook him off.
“Where are you going?” he asked as his sixth bottle was placed in front of him.
“The bathroom,” I snapped louder than was maybe necessary.
God, I was so mad .
“Why?”
I scoffed with a roll of my eyes, shaking my head. “To piss, Luke. I need to fucking piss. Is that okay with you? Am I allowed to fucking piss?”
He narrowed his eyes, their hue darkening by the second. A storm was rolling in. I could feel it, I could see it in the clenching of his fists, and I didn't fucking care. He could come at me if he wanted. He could pummel my face into oblivion, and I didn't give a shit because suddenly, this entire thing—going to the bar, the drink, the celebration—it no longer felt like something he'd done for me . He'd used me as an excuse to get a fix, and, okay, maybe he hadn't planned on his buddies being here, but he'd known exactly what he was doing when he passed our street.
He'd ruined my birthday, and he didn't give a shit.
“What's with the fucking attitude?” he demanded as his friends sniggered beside him, guzzling down their own beers.
Losers. They were all losers—my brother included.
“I don't have an attitude,” I fired back. “I just need to fucking piss, and I want to fucking go home. So, I'm going to the bathroom, and when I get back, you're giving me the keys, and we're getting the fuck out of here.”
Tommy snorted and leaned toward Rob's ear as he said, “Looks like Charlie boy finally grew a pair.”
“Go to fucking hell, Tommy.”
I stomped away in the direction of the bathroom, wishing I could be the one to send him there myself.
I threw the door open, slammed it behind me, and jabbed at the lock with my thumb. The small room was grimy, reeking of shit, stale vomit, cheap cologne, and piss. Yet I welcomed the calm I'd found inside. The noise of the bar was muffled within these graffitied walls, and without much thought to the diseases I was almost definitely contracting, I gripped my hands on the discolored sink's edge and stared at my reflection in the mirror streaked with only God knew what.
This is your fault , a little voice in my head said. If you'd taken the car to work this morning, if you had been the one driving, if you had picked Luke up, we'd never be here .
My lips pressed in a thin line as my head shook slowly from side to side. Dr. Sibilia's voice came to me, insisting that, no, this wasn't my fault. This had nothing to do with me—not really—and all to do with an illness Luke had contracted somewhere along the line. He was struggling. I'd known it, and Melanie had too. We'd questioned his strength every single time he was late coming home and every time he made a joke about wanting a drink.
Maybe I should've seen this coming.
I released a shaky breath and smacked the automatic faucet. A weak stream of tepid water sputtered from the tap as I pumped soap into my hands and scrubbed them until they ached. Then, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed Melanie's number.
***
I had thought it’d feel more like tattling when I called my brother’s fiancée and confessed where we were when we should’ve been at home. I had thought it’d feel wrong. But instead, I felt like I’d finally done something right in a string of wrongs.
I hadn’t convinced my parents to stay home from that concert when I knew something bad was going to happen.
I hadn’t kept Luke away from Ritchie before the damage could be done.
But I had called Melanie—the one person I knew who could make him leave the bar—and that felt good despite the way he glared at me when she showed up at Tony’s and demanded he get into her fucking car. Like a mother to a child.
He didn’t protest though, and I took solace in that. Even when his friends glared at me as I snatched the keys from the spot at the bar where my brother had sat.
“You’ve always been a little shit—you know that?” Rob muttered, his words loose and on the brink of slurring.
I stopped from leaving and looked at Tommy, waiting for whatever bullshit he was about to spew at me. And why I waited, I didn’t even know. Maybe I just wanted to see if their words could still knock me down or make me cry.
Tommy shook his head, struggling to stand up straight. “Some babies don’t ever fuckin’ grow up.”
“Too bad Ritchie isn’t here. He’d kick his whiny little ass.”
That was the last thing I heard as I walked toward the door, surprised that I was able to. Surprised that their bullshit hadn’t left me curled up on the ground, wishing my big brother would come along to save me.
And it wasn’t that it hadn’t stung, and I knew their callous comments would swarm through my mind and leave me sleepless. But I was able to walk away, and that …
That felt like something.
Or maybe I just hadn’t had the time to care about what Luke’s friends thought about me when I couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen once we got home.
***
“It was a few fucking beers, Melanie! I’m not even drunk,” Luke shouted, his voice ringing from upstairs.
I sat at the table, alone, eating the reheated cottage pie I’d requested for dinner.
I doubted anyone would sing “Happy Birthday” to me.
There were bigger things to deal with. Like Melanie once again threatening to leave and Luke trying to convince her that what he’d done wasn’t a big deal.
I wished she’d go. I wished she’d get herself a new, better life.
I wished he’d get his head out of his ass. I wished he’d realize he had won the lottery when she agreed to stick around—over and over and over again.
I wish Mom and Dad were here .
I sighed and breathed through a wave of emotion that threatened to pour into my mashed potatoes and beef.
“God, you really don’t fucking get it, do you?” Melanie cried, desperate and exasperated.
“No! No, I don’t. So, why don’t you explain it to me, huh? Explain to me why it’s a big fucking deal that I had a drink with my brother on his—”
“You and I both know this has nothing to do with Charlie. So, keep him the hell out of it, okay? Don’t even go there. You used his birthday as a fucking excuse to get your drink on with your loser buddies, and you know it.”
“I had no fucking idea that Rob and Tommy would be there!”
“Luke! Oh my God!” Melanie exclaimed. “They’re there every single fucking night!”
God, she was right. I knew it, and I’d bet anything that Luke knew it, too, judging by the momentary pause in their heated fight right above my head.
I poked my fork around the plate, rolling a single pea around the edge. Just waiting for them to continue while praying Melanie didn’t leave, but also hoping she’d finally let this be the straw to break the proverbial camel’s back.
It was strange to be so simultaneously selfish and selfless. My heart and mind were in constant war, and I wished I could turn back the clock to this morning. Things hadn’t been perfect for the year Luke was sober, but it sure as hell had been better than this.
“I thought we were done with this shit,” Melanie finally said, her voice quiet but still loud enough for me to hear through the ceiling. “I thought … I thought you were doing better.”
“Babe, I am doing better,” Luke replied, gentler than before.
I at least had to give him credit for that. His anger was quicker to dissipate now, and that was somewhat of an improvement. Maybe he was growing up after all.
“Luke, you drank when you were supposed to stay sober.”
“I’m not drunk though. I stayed sober.” He paused, then said, “Well, kind of.”
“But you drank ! God, the definition of staying sober, Luke, is that you don’t drink . Period. End of conversation. Do you not understand that?”
“I just had a couple of beers, Melanie. That’s all.”
Six, but who’s counting?
“And you would’ve continued if your brother hadn’t called me.”
Right again .
I shook my head, finally done with the game of tag between the pea and my fork. I dropped the utensil to the side of my plate and held my head in my hands. A nauseating rush of trepidation speared my gut as that old feeling of knowing something bad was about to happen made itself at home, and all I wanted was to kick it out, knowing damn well that would be impossible.
She’s going to leave .
“I’ll go back to AA tomorrow,” Luke said, determination in his voice. “Okay? I’m done. No more.”
“I’ve heard that before, Luke.” God, she sounded so weak, so tired.
“No,” he nearly shouted as footsteps crossed the floor above. “Babe, I’m serious. I won’t ever have another drink. That’s it. I swear to fuckin’ God. I love you, okay? And if giving up booze is what it takes to keep you around, then …”
His voice drifted off and the conversation died. Before I could hurry and get my dish washed and put away, they began to fuck—and I was all too aware of it, thanks to the telltale signs of the mattress springs singing their favorite song. I guessed she’d forgiven him, and I was both happy and disappointed—as usual.
But we were both quick to learn that Luke’s promises—no matter who he swore to—were meant to be broken.
Because two weeks later, he got into a fight at Tony’s Bar.
It was with Ritchie. They were both drunk, and although Ritchie later decided not to press charges after Luke broke his nose— again —my brother had still spent an entire night in a cell.
And I wished I could say it was the only time he’d been arrested, but Luke was the liar in the family. Not me.