Nash Brothers Box Set - Carrie Aarons Page 0,257

this is working me up so much.

I throw my cards down, more than done with this poker night. Fuck, I need a meeting so bad right now.

Without another word to my brothers, I march up the stairs and out of Forrest’s house. Their calls after me hit my ears, but I don’t stop.

I fume down the street, speed-walking away from the house toward Mom’s. It’s nearly nine o’clock, which means I won’t be able to get to an AA meeting until tomorrow morning. My throat is dry and my fingertips are cold, and this is the time I know I’m most vulnerable. When nothing I can think of in the world sounds like it will make me feel better.

That’s when alcohol, my old buddy, pops into my head. Alcohol always made me feel better. It picked me up when I felt worthless. It wrapped a warm arm around me when the girl I wanted went home with someone else. It kept me company when everyone else was moving on with their lives.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I’m jonesing, and I know it. So I pull out my cell phone, tapping on the first number on my favorites screen.

“Fletch, how’s your night?”

Cookie’s warm, raspy voice fills my ear, and instantly, I can feel my anxiety level lower.

“Not great.” I blow out a breath of air, stopping as I turn the corner onto an unlit street.

I take a seat on the curb and rest my elbows on my knees, almost needing to take a pause and regroup.

“Tell me about it,” my sponsor says, knowing that I both need a moment, but need to vent.

The first time I went to an AA meeting, after I left rehab, I was so freaked out; I didn’t talk the entire time. I sat there listening to stories of people who were twenty years sober, of others who had stolen money from their family or gotten so drunk that they’d ended up face down in a pond, gasping for air when their nervous system finally woke them up. One guy had smashed into a family of five on their way home from church, injuring all and almost killing one of them. He’d gone to prison for seven years and had been sober for fifteen.

What struck me most about the meeting though, was how not alone I felt. I’d never, in my life, encountered people who spoke about alcohol the way I thought about it. Like it was inevitable to consume, an old lover whom you both hated and desperately needed. For years, I thought my relationship with drinking was just more severe than those of my imbibing, partying counterparts.

Being in that meeting had shown me, truly, that I had a problem … but I wasn’t the only one.

Cookie had approached me when I’d shown up for the third time and asked if I had a sponsor yet. I remember thinking that forty years ago, she was probably a knockout. With dark brown hair, that she still dyes well into her mid-sixties, a full face of makeup, bangle bracelets up her arms and a love for recalling her Woodstock days … I was instantly drawn to her. The quiet calm she had, paired with a no-nonsense attitude, was exactly what I needed in a sponsor.

We’ve been meeting once a week, every week, for four-and-a-half years.

I run my free hand through my hair, exasperated but relieved that she’s here to listen. “It’s my brothers, again. We had poker night tonight, and I asked them if they knew of any home listings in town that were cheap. Like you and I have talked about, I think it might be time for me to move out on my own. Of course, they just started shooting holes in the plan before they even listened to what I was saying. Said a house was a lot of upkeep, that I didn’t want to deal with that shit … but I knew they were just doing that polite thing people do when they want to talk you out of something. It pisses me off that they don’t have my back.”

“Why does it piss you off?” Cookie asks, and I know she’s playing the therapist part of the sponsor role.

“Because I’ve worked really fucking hard to get to where I am. I feel like I’ve proven myself in the past couple of years, and I’ve done it all while maintaining my sobriety. When is it going to be enough for them to forget about the mistakes I’ve