by Lizzy Mason
“You’re just becoming such a grown-up,” she said, sniffling.
“Oh, that,” I said bitterly. “It turns out it’s not as fun as it seems.”
She laughed and wiped her eyes. “Yeah, I recommend making a quick U-turn while you still can.”
I smiled and said, “Don’t push it, woman. I’m growing up, like it or not.”
“Don’t remind me,” she groaned. “We were supposed to do a college tour this summer. I promise, we’ll do it this fall, when Audrey is settled at home.”
“It’s okay,” I said. And it was. I hadn’t even thought about it. Not lately. “I think I’ll probably stay closer to home than I’d originally planned anyway.”
Mom pulled me in for a final hug. “Thank you, baby duck. You’re a good daughter.”
“I know. But, um, Mom?” I said. “Do you think you could ask Aunt Tilly for a recommendation of a therapist for me?”
She pushed back to look at me, nodding. “Of course,” she said simply. She surprised me again by not asking questions or asking if I wanted her to go with me. I guess we were both changing.
That night, I woke up to a voice calling my name outside my window. My phone beeped, alerting me to a text. And then again. And again. I picked it up, squinting at the bright screen in the dark. I had seven texts from Raf.
Wake up, read the first.
Srsly, come hang out.
WKAE UP! WAKEPU!
IMOUTSDE
They continued like that, getting less and less coherent. I stood and opened the curtain, dreading what I would see. Raf was swaying back and forth on the front lawn, his hands cupped around his mouth, about to yell again. I waved my arms at him and he grinned. He motioned for me to come outside, nearly toppling backward with the effort.
My stomach lurched. Oh, God, no. He was drunk. Raf had relapsed.
I opened the window. “Shhhh,” I called down to him. “You’re going to wake up the entire neighborhood. Stay there. I’m coming down.”
Raf cheered loudly, and I shut the window to drown him out. I sighed as I pulled on the clothes I’d worn that day and slipped my feet into flip-flops. I checked my hair in the mirror on my way out and decided to pull it into a ponytail.
He was sitting slumped on the front steps when I got downstairs, so my first task was to get him back into his own house without waking up either of our parents. I sat down next to him on the stairs.
“Hey, Harley Quinn,” he said. My mind suddenly flashed to Mike, and rage flared in my chest.
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped.
I draped Raf’s long arm around my shoulders and nudged him to his feet. He was heavy and unwieldy as he took unsteady steps toward his house. The basement door was unlocked and I pushed him inside in front of me. He tumbled to the floor. I had to step over him, pushing his legs out of the way to close the door.
I pulled him up off the floor and into his bedroom. There was torn paper all over the carpet, and as I deposited him heavily onto his bed, I glanced around and noticed that the Wall of Fame was torn down. Shredded, actually.
I sat down next to Raf on his bed, and he looked up at me with bloodshot eyes.
“You came outside,” he said. “I didn’t think you were gonna.”
“What’s going on, Raf?” I asked as gently as I could. “What made you drink tonight?”
“I’m lonely,” he whispered. “I don’t have any friends left. I tried to call my best friend tonight and he blew me off. I’m boring now.”
I wanted to argue with him, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want him to hang out with his old friends anyway. And now I wasn’t even sure we could hang out. Rage was simmering in my veins, but my heart ached for him. I understood loneliness.
Audrey had always been there, in the bedroom next to me, tapping secret messages on the wall that were unintelligible because we never agreed on a code. She’d been there every morning chattering over cereal while I mourned the fact that I had to be awake. She was the lightness in the room when things were tense, always a positive force for the family. We’d been unraveling without her.
But at least now I understood the shredded Wall of Fame.
“I’m not Cheech anymore,” he mumbled sleepily.
I didn’t know how to respond. But I didn’t have to. He wasn’t done.
Raf shook his head, his face pinched. “I’m mad at you, too, you know. And I don’t like it.”
It was going to be nearly impossible to have a coherent conversation with him. I needed to try, though. “Why are you mad at me?” I asked.
“Because!” he slurred, pointing an accusing finger in my general direction before letting his arm flop back to the bed. “You kiss me and then you tell me you can’t kiss me anymore. And then you kiss me again and then you act like nothing happened!”
“Well, that’s an oversimplification,” I said. “You’re the one who kissed me the first time . . .”
But Raf wasn’t listening. He was already talking over me. “I tried to be your friend,” he said. His raspy voice caught. “But being around you and not being able to touch you, not being able to kiss you, it hurts. I can feel it in my chest.” He pounded heavily on his chest with one fist.
I didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t wrong that I’d been confusing him. I’d been confusing myself. I reached out to push his hair off his forehead, and he caught my hand, pulling it to his cheek.
But before I could say anything, his eyes closed.
“Raf?”
Nothing. He’d passed out. Maybe that was for the best. I took a deep breath and swallowed back my anger. His chest began to rise and fall, his breathing loud and labored. I covered him with a blanket and removed his shoes. Then I took the half-empty bottle of vodka I found under his bed and set it by the door. I’d take it with me when I left. Even though I knew it was wrong, I didn’t want his parents to know about this. I didn’t want him to be sent back to rehab. Or to undo all the trust he had regained with them. Like he just had with me.
Raf had been my shelter these last few weeks. He pushed me to be stronger. His honesty had made me honest. I’d trusted him and he’d betrayed that trust. I didn’t want to deal with him if he was going to be drinking again. I didn’t have the patience for it anymore. Not after Mike.
Before I left, I looked for a trash can in case Raf threw up. I located one under his desk and moved to pick it up, but the sketchbook on his desk caught my eye. It was open to a page that was dated on the first night I’d seen him again—the night after Audrey’s accident.
In the sketch, I was sitting on the garden wall, my face in profile as I stared into the distance. My eyes were unfocused. A cigarette burned, forgotten, between my fingers. Raf drew me as I was, with round curves, folds in my stomach, and chubby thighs—but through his eyes I was beautiful. Because those features were just small parts of the picture. My face, which undoubtedly was blotchy from crying that night, was clear and angled. Even my messy bun was more of a purposeful updo, with soft tendrils that framed my face. The shirt that I’d been wearing that I’d worried was too tight instead hugged my curves purposefully and exposed a little cleavage. Or at least, that’s how Raf had drawn it.
My breath caught in my throat. Raf had drawn this weeks ago and had brought it out tonight. While he’d gotten drunk. Because he was mad at me. Because I’d broken his heart.
I left the drawing on his desk, set his trash can on the floor next to him, and ran from the basement with the bottle in my hand.
The next morning, I waited for Raf to text me. I checked the backyard a few times to see if he was out there smoking, but he wasn’t. It was almost noon when I finally caved and sent him a message asking if he was okay. It was possible, I realized, that he didn’t even remember what he had done.
I’m okay, he wrote back a few minutes later. Sorry about last night.
; So he did remember. The anger that had burned in my veins last night now froze to ice.
Can we talk? I asked. I didn’t want to do this over a text message.
He didn’t respond for a full fifteen minutes while I stared at my phone like it was an egg getting ready to hatch. But I could have waited longer to hear what he said.
No, he wrote. And then a minute later: I think I need to not see you for a while. I need to just focus on my recovery. I guess that’s pretty obvious after last night.
I was almost relieved that he couldn’t see me, because I didn’t know how to react. I’d been trying not to ruin our friendship with romance, and then he screwed it up by getting drunk. So now I didn’t get to have the friendship. Plus, I never even got to enjoy the physical part.
My throat burned, and my hands were trembling. I wanted to call him or storm over to his house, but that would be directly defying what he had just asked of me.
With shaking fingers, I wrote just two letters: OK. And I hated myself when I hit send. Because I should have stood up to him. I should have told him how angry I was. How betrayed I felt by his drinking. And how wrong it felt that he’d come to me, of all people, when he knew what I’d been through with Mike. And with Audrey.
I had relied on him so much for the last few weeks. More than I had realized. And now that trust was shattered, and I didn’t think we could put it back together. Apparently, he didn’t want to, anyway.
Three Years Ago
The highway streaked by outside the car as I stared at my reflection in the window. There wasn’t much to see outside anyway; everything was dark beyond the dim light the lampposts cast on the shoulder. Mom and Dad had been singing along to one of the four playlists Dad had on his phone. We’d basically been listening to the same fifty songs for the last ten years.
Audrey was watching a TV show on Dad’s iPad, and Mom was using hers. My phone wasn’t getting enough service to do anything that required data, and Cassidy wasn’t responding to my text messages.
I couldn’t stand the sound of Mom’s and Dad’s slightly off-key voices for one minute longer.
I poked Audrey in the side and she pulled out one earbud.
“What?” she said.
“Can I watch that with you?”
She frowned. “No,” she said. Whined, really. “I don’t want to listen with one ear. Mom and Dad are singing too loud. Read a book or something. Isn’t that, like, your favorite thing to do?”
“It’s dark, genius,” I spat back. “Just let me watch with you.”
She stuck the earbud back in her ear. “No.”
So I ripped the tablet from her fingers, yanking her earbuds out in the process. It didn’t hurt, but she wailed like a baby anyway.
“Goddammit!” Dad yelled from the driver’s seat. “Stop fighting! You’re sisters; you should try harder to get along. I’m tired of this shit.”
“Henry,” Mom said, admonishing him. For the cursing, not for yelling at us.
It didn’t take much to set Dad off in those days. We were high-energy kids—or Audrey was, anyway—and he’d been driving for almost six hours. I would have yelled at us, too. But his solution was to take the iPad from both of us, leaving us in the dark back seat seething as we tried to ignore each other.
When he and Mom started singing again, though, I couldn’t help glancing at Audrey. There was a point in one song where Dad always tried to hit the high note. Always. And he sounded like Beaker from The Muppets. We hadn’t ever made it through that song without at least a shared eye roll. So when it came on, I had to look at her. And she had to look at me. And we had to laugh.
We didn’t get the iPad back after we stopped fighting, but Audrey and I eventually started singing along with Mom and Dad. Not too loudly, though. We couldn’t let them know we were enjoying it. But we made it to Charleston a couple of hours later without fighting again, at least.
Chapter Sixteen
The therapist’s office was in a residential neighborhood, in a two-story Tudor home with a separate entrance around the side. I couldn’t help thinking how nice it must be to have your commute consist of a walk down some stairs and I added it to my short list of career goals.
The inside was as quaint as the outside. There was a tiny reception area, without a receptionist. Just a light switch that I flicked on to say I’d arrived. Dr. Talia opened the door almost immediately, as if she had been waiting for me. She ushered me into her office and pointed at a chair to sit in.
She was young, maybe midthirties, but with enough small worry lines and stray gray hairs to make me believe she’d been doing this a while. She gave me a soft smile and picked up a legal pad and a pen.
“So, Harley, what brings you to me today?” she asked.
I physically slumped at the weight of what I’d have to tell her. There was so much, I wasn’t sure where to begin. And I wasn’t exactly excited about discussing all my issues. But Raf was right: I’d been avoiding talking for too long.
“I guess the biggest reason is my sister,” I said. “She’s recovering from a traumatic brain injury because my boyfriend drove drunk and got into a car accident. And Audrey was in the car with him.” I shrugged uncomfortably. “So there’s that.”
Dr. Talia nodded while she jotted notes and then glanced up at me. “That’s quite a lot to deal with,” she said.
“You could say that.” I shifted in my chair. “But that night of the accident, they were both drinking. And my boyfriend cheated on me with her.”
“With your sister?” Dr. Talia said. Her dark eyebrows were raised in surprise.
“Yep, my little sister.”
“That must have really hurt,” she said.
I snorted. “Yeah, to put it mildly.”
She was quiet for a minute, waiting for me to continue.
“I think I’ve forgiven Audrey,” I said. “She doesn’t even remember doing it.”
Dr. Talia’s eyebrows raised again. “Interesting.”
“But a lot of guilt has built up. And I can’t seem to stop being mad at Mike. He’s the one who cheated on me, and he’s the one who drove drunk, but I can’t stop feeling like I have to shoulder some of the blame. If I had just broken up with him, or if I had taken Audrey home with me even though I was mad, she would be fine.”
My throat ached with the building tears.
“It sounds like you’re feeling pulled in a lot of different directions, emotionally speaking,” Dr. Talia said.
I nodded, but all of that wasn’t what was really bugging me right at that moment.
“But, um, there’s something else,” I said.
“More than all that?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, slowly. “See, I’ve been hanging out with my next-door neighbor, Rafael, a lot lately. We were friends as kids, but we only recently reconnected.”
“Okay,” she said, drawing the word out so it sounded like a question.
“He’s a recovering addict or alcoholic, or maybe both,” I said. “And then last night, he got drunk after six months of sobriety.”
“How did that make you feel?” she asked.
“I feel betrayed. I can’t believe he would drink again after seeing what Audrey has been through. What I’ve been through,” I added, my voice quieter.
“That’s understandable,” she said.
I sighed. “I know it’s not my fault or anything. But he was, like, proof that people can change. That things can get better. And now . . .” I paused. “I don’t know what happens now.”
Dr. Talia nodded and jotted more notes, as if realizing something about me. “You can’t control what other people do, Harley. That’s something you should learn as early as possible.”
“No, I know that,” I said. “But Raf blamed me. For being ambivalent about what I want, I guess. About whether I want to date him or not.”
“He’s feeling confused because you’re confused,” she said.
I nodded. “I do really like him,” I continued. “But how can I date an alcoholic when my boyfriend’s drinking is the reason my sister is lying in a hospital bed?”
She spread her hands on her desk. “I can’t answer that question for you,” she said.
“I feel like an idiot for trusting him,” I said, “and for believing that he wouldn’t drink again.”
“So you’re angry?”
I thought about that for a few seconds. “Yes. I understand why he would want to drink. I get why he’s lonely and why he’s sad. But yeah. I’m pissed.”
“And have you told him that?”
I shook my head. “No. I have this tendency to compartmentalize things. Like, with Raf, I was more concerned with making sure he was safely home and that he didn’t get in trouble. Then once I knew he was safe, I got mad, but I didn’t tell him I was.” I didn’t want to admit the next part, but I figured therapy was about figuring out your patterns and I just had a lightbulb moment. “I used to do that with Mike, too. I’d be so pissed at him for drinking or doing something stupid, but I’d just fume about it internally and rarely would actually say anything to him. Not until it built up, and then it would seem like I was overreacting because my anger wasn’t about one situation; it was about all of them.”
My chest hurt with the realization. This wasn’t me. Or not the me I thought I was. Or wanted to be.
“Why are you getting upset?” Dr. Talia asked.
I brought my fingers to my cheeks, brushing away the tears. “Because I don’t like that about myself.”
She nodded. “So do you think maybe you can change that? Start standing up for yourself?”
I twisted my lips to one side while I considered that. “I think so, yes. I stood up to Mike finally, but only after he cheated on me, almost killing Audrey in the process.” I took a shaky breath in. “I used to be way more confident. Raf reminds me of that all the time.”
“Interesting,” she said again. “We like to say that people don’t change, but that’s not true; they do. They grow up and they mature, their interests change, and they learn. Rafael has a lot more growing to do at this age and so do you. You’re still figuring out who you are and how to handle yourself in tough situations. So take it a little easier on both him and on yourself, okay?”