by Eden Finley
“I don’t need you to babysit me,” I called out from the couch where I’d settled in to watch TV for the night. Not that I cared what was actually on it.
“Bull-fucking-shit.” That’s all he replied with.
Deep down, I knew he was right. I hadn’t called Reece yet to explain. I hadn’t called Paige to apologise. It was mainly because I wasn’t entirely sure I wouldn’t do it again, but also partly because I knew how those conversations were going to end. Reece was going to take Cody away from me, and Paige was going to tell me she never wanted to see me again.
I’ve lost everything.
Hearing the actual words would only make me want to drink more, and if Hunter hadn’t been watching over me like some sort of prison guard, I was fairly confident I’d be drunk right now.
A knock at the door startled both of us.
Hunter opened the door, and I froze at Paige’s voice. “Hey, can I come in?”
Please say no, please say no, please say no. I didn’t want to do this now.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Hunter said.
I let out the breath I was holding.
“Sorry, let me rephrase. I’m coming in.”
“Paige,” Hunter said in warning.
“Move, Hunter.” She matched his tone.
I definitely don’t want to do this now.
Hunter retreated.
Dammit.
“How’s the head?” she asked me, stepping into the apartment. I couldn’t decipher her tone. It wasn’t playful, but she didn’t seem pissed off.
“Uh … not as bad as the stomach,” I replied.
She nodded once and came into the living room, sitting on the recliner that was far away from the couch where I was. That wasn’t a good sign.
Hunter moved to give us privacy, but she stopped him. “You can be here for what I have to say.”
Bile began to rise in my throat again.
“All right,” Hunter said warily, taking a seat on the other recliner.
She reached into her purse and pulled out a manila folder stuffed with papers. “Okay, first things first. I haven’t been able to get a lot of information together on such short notice, but I’ve been at it all day and I think it’ll be enough.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked while she shuffled her papers about, trying to get it in some kind of order.
She leaned forward, handing me a piece of paper and started to explain what was on it. “In Australia, signing away parental rights doesn’t mean you give up your rights for visitation.”
“Huh?” I asked.
“You’re still obligated to pay child support, which I assume you do, but basically that form you signed a couple of years ago just means you can’t make medical, schooling, or any of those types of decisions for Cody. If Reece wants to take Cody away from you, she needs to get a court order and prove you’re an unfit parent.”
“Why did you do this?” I asked. My heart started trying to leap out of my Goddamn chest. Was there still hope for us? Even though it wasn’t the thing I should’ve been focused on in that moment, it was the only thing my hungover brain seemed to care about. She was looking for a way I could still be with my son and, hopefully, with her.
“Because I’m not going to let you lose Cody just because you and I had a fling.”
A fling? All hope dissipated.
“I have to take responsibility that what happened last night was partly my fault, so instead of giving up like you were so ready to do, I’m providing you with options. You can do whatever you want with them, but it won’t be on my conscience anymore.”
Anger burned in my chest, but I wasn’t entirely sure who I was angry at. Her or me. She was in no way responsible for what I did last night, but she was acting as if I meant nothing to her. Is that really how it’s going to be?
“Last night was not in any way your fault, Paige,” Hunter said.
The idea of escaping the rest of this conversation and drowning myself in a bottle was starting to sound really good to me. “I don’t need your help,” I said, practically throwing the paper back at her.
All she did in response was to raise an eyebrow. A very pissed-off eyebrow.
Hunter shook his head at me. “Stop being self-destructive. Granted, Paige isn’t exactly handling this the right way—”
“What?” Paige snapped at him.
Hunter sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “Why the fuck am I playing mediator now?” His words were mumbled, as if it was more to him than us. “Coming in here and telling Cole that you were only a fling and you’re only helping him because you don’t want it on your conscience is bullshit, and you know it. If neither of you are willing to admit how you feel about each other, fine, but behaving like you mean nothing is ridiculous, and I’m calling bullshit.”
Thank you, Hunter.
Paige nodded. “I’m just trying to make this easier on him.” She refused to face me, talking as if I wasn’t even in the room.
“Trust me, that won’t make anything easier,” I answered her anyway.
She pulled the next sheet of paper out, hesitantly deciding whether to give it to me. “Well, this is just going to piss you off, so I may as well get it out of the way.”
I reached for the paper and found it was research into alcoholism. “Holy hell,” I muttered. “I don’t have a prob—”
“Yes, you do.”
Hunter nodded in agreement.
Well, fuck.
“You fit basically every attribute of the young adult subtype of alcoholics. They usually become an alcoholic at a young age, around twenty. They don’t believe they have a problem because they’re able to go long periods without drinking with relative ease. Therefore, they don’t seek treatment for their problem. When they do drink, they binge.”
I sucked in a loud breath.
“And because of what you did last night,” she continued, “Reece has perfect reason to go get that court order to keep you away from Cody. But”—she reached for another set of papers—“if you can prove that you’re doing something to right your problems, that your plan is to stay sober and healthy, they won’t have a reason to take him away. You’ve done the work before, you can do it again. But you have to want to do it.”
She handed me a bunch of information on AA programmes and support groups, online and in person.
“And what about us?” I asked, still looking at the papers. I couldn’t bring myself to give her eye contact.
“There’s too many factors right now. You need to decide what you want to do. If you want to fight for Cody, I’ll be your number-one supporter, and I’ll be there for you. As your friend. There’s fear inside me that last night was just the beginning, and I can’t go through that, I refuse to.”
“I’ll get help.” I was adamant I’d do whatever it took.
“You need to do it for you, not for me. No matter how much we want it, we won’t work. Being together will still cause drama with our family. Dad went out of his mind last night when he found out about us. I keep hoping for some sort of divine intervention that will solve all of our problems, but I think that’s unrealistic and just a wish for a fairy-tale ending.”
“Uh …” Hunter said, standing, “I think it’s time for me to … uh … not sit here awkwardly and listen to this.” He quickly disappeared down the hall.
“He’s totally forgetting the walls are paper thin, isn’t he?” she said with a small laugh.
“He probably didn’t want to leave at all, he just thought he should be polite.” I matched her minuscule smile.
“I’ll be there for you no matter what, Cole, but nothing’s changed. Our main fear before was Cody, but now Reece is pregnant, just adding to the fucked-up factor.” She shuddered. “How sucky is it that we’re both tied to the same woman for the rest of our lives? She’s going to be my brother or sister’s mother.”
She was right about one thing. This was really sucky.
“One last thing before I leave,” she sa
id, handing me the last stack of papers. “The guilt you carry around regarding Reece’s miscarriage is bullshit.”
The papers in front of me were pages of statistics.
“She showed me the doctor’s report, and she was less than six weeks pregnant when it happened. Statistically, there’s more of a chance that it was a chromosomal abnormality than anything else. Thirty percent of all pregnancies fail. There’s no way to ever know if what you did contributed—maybe you did, maybe you didn’t—but chances are it had nothing to do with you and everything to do with statistics.”
My mouth opened to talk, but nothing came out. I was speechless. All those years of being told I was the cause, of believing that it was my fault …
“I’ll leave you to it,” she said, standing.
As she went to walk by me to get to the door, I grabbed hold of her hand and looked up at her. “Thank you.”
She nodded and made her way out, leaving me absolutely astounded.
****
There was too much to organise, too much to look into, before I could call Reece and explain my actions. She hadn’t tried to call to find out what was going on, so I figured I’d wait until she either contacted me or I turned up on her doorstep in two weeks when it was my weekend with Cody again, seeing as we’d swapped weekends and she had him this weekend and next. We could talk it all out then.
Until then, I had counselling sessions, AA meetings, and work to focus on. I knew I needed to get my shit together, but if I was completely honest, the meetings were a bore and my psychologist just rehashed all of my old issues. I was determined to get straight, though. Not just for me, not just for Cody, but for Paige as well.
Even though she said there was no hope, I heard the crack in her voice, the lack of conviction in her words. I was holding out for my fairy-tale ending. Not that I would’ve admitted that to anyone aloud.
I needed to prove to everyone—including myself—that the old Cole didn’t exist. I had a minor fall, a slipup. Dwelling on it wouldn’t help. Learning from my mistake and moving on was my only option. I couldn’t go back to my destructive ways, as much as my head and body screamed for it sometimes.
They say admitting you have a problem is the first and hardest step. While I found that to be somewhat true, I found breaking old habits was harder.
The more I read about my addiction, the more I understood it. Even though it was easy for me to remain sober during times of normalcy, my addiction to alcohol stemmed from the need to feel numb during times of stress. Add that to the fact I also belonged to a second subtype of alcoholic—the type with an intermediate familial connection—and I was beginning to become more educated and knowledgeable about my disease. It was a compulsion. Whether it was genetic or situational, it didn’t matter. It was a problem.
While talking over my demons with my therapist, she came to the conclusion that there was one major issue I’d refused to deal with over the years that couldn’t wait anymore if I truly wanted to move on with my life.
So because of that, I was standing outside Mum’s house, willing myself to go in. My feet were refusing to take even the smallest step in the direction of my childhood home.
I never understood why Mum stayed in the house, even ten years after Dad was gone. I got the hell out of there as soon as I could. Even though I used to visit Mum often, and I’d been in the house countless times since moving out, it still made me anxious. It was too much of a reminder of what he did, what I had to endure.
“Cole?” my mother’s voice came from the open doorway.
I was too busy staring at the second-storey left window at my old room to notice she’d opened the front door. My room was my sanctuary growing up—where I used to hide when things got bad.
My hand itched to do something. Anything. It tightened into a fist, then loosened, and then repeated it.
“Hi, Mum,” I said, finally forcing my feet to move.
“That was a loaded hi,” she said as I reached her and kissed her on the cheek.
As much as I had resentment towards my mum, I couldn’t deny she was a great mother and grandmother. She was great with Cody, and she helped out a lot in the beginning when he was first born. Over the years, I tried to understand the cowardice behind her inability to remove me from a horrible situation growing up, but who was I to judge her now when I was the one who became the monster I wanted salvation from?
I shook my head free of the self-deprecation and repeated in my head what my psychologist told me to whenever I thought like that. I am not my father, I am not my father.
“Is this a cup of tea kind of visit or a Jack Daniels kind of visit?”
I stiffened at her words. Did she used to ask Dad the same thing when he was having a bad day? “Just tea.”
She nodded, dropping her head to stare at her feet as she led me to the kitchen.
Walking past the stairs, I had to fight back the memories of trying to run up them before Dad could catch me. They surfaced every time I visited home which was also why I hardly ever came by anymore. When I was with Reece and we had Cody and everything was going well, it was easier to push the memories from my mind. But not now, while I had nothing.
I sat at the kitchen table while Mum made the tea in silence. No noise surrounded us but the boiling of the kettle, the ticking of the clock on the wall, and the slight humming of the refrigerator.
“So what happened this time?” she asked, taking a seat across from me and sliding my tea across the table.
“This time?”
“Last time you looked like that, you told me Reece left you because you … well, yeah.”
“So it wouldn’t surprise you to find out I was drinking again?”
She let out a sigh. “No.” Her voice was clipped, but disappointment radiated from her face.
“In the last few months, I’ve drank twice, both times it was because I didn’t want to play the cards life was dealing me. Nothing’s happened like the incident with Reece, but I’ve finally come to realise I have a problem. Just like Dad.”
Her shoulders slouched and if I thought she was disappointed before, it was nothing compared to now. “Oh, honey. You’re nothing like your father.”
I huffed a laugh and shook my head. “How can you say that?”
“Because what he used to do and what you have done are completely different. He was a coward, he—”
I scoffed. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you ever leave him? Why couldn’t you protect me?” There. I said it.
“I knew this conversation would happen one day.” Her eyes were bleary and her voice was cracking. “And even though I’ve had years to come up with something to say, all I’ve ever been able to convince myself of is that I did all I could. Well … that’s a lie. I did everything that I thought I was capable of doing. I realise it wasn’t enough, that I wasn’t strong enough. The beatings wore down my self-esteem to a point I believed I deserved them. I—”
“Did you believe I deserved them, too?”
“No. God, no.” The tears were flowing freely now.
I took a sip of my tea to prevent myself from reaching over and consoling her. I had the feeling she needed to have this conversation just as much as I did.
“I always thought he was taking my punishment out on you so I’d have to watch and suffer. He knew I wanted to protect you, and that you were a weakness for me. When you got big enough to fight back, he laid off you a bit, and I could see it in his eyes—he started to become scared of you. He was getting weaker with his heart condition, and you were a growing teenager. He thought you might’ve started fighting back. But you never did.”
“I didn’t realise it was an option,” I mumbled.
“I didn’t realise there was an option to escape. I took the beatings to try and prevent him from doing it to you. I thought if he got all his anger out on me, he wouldn’t go after you. When he did, the thought of escape always flooded my mind. But I ha
d nowhere to go, no one to help. My parents were long gone and his parents … well, they wouldn’t have helped. I honestly thought he’d kill me if I left him. You see stories on the news all the time about women who are killed by their partners because they try to leave. With no support network …”—she sucked in a loud breath—“I thought about doing it for him—just ending my life, but that would’ve meant leaving you with him. While I could continue to take what he was dishing out, you would’ve been okay. That was my logic anyway.”
“You know that logic is fucked up, right?”
“Cole Preston Turner!”
“Really, Mum? We’re talking about the man who ruined our lives, and you think I can do it without swearing?”
She hesitated. “Okay, yeah, fair point. But what I’m saying is, you’re nothing like your father. You may have inherited his desire to drown himself in a bottle, you may have his temper, and put those things together and you’re bound to be a disaster like him, but you recognised your problem in the very beginning and immediately wanted to change. With one incident, you turned your life around. You didn’t make empty promises to get help like he did. I know for a while after Reece first left you, you turned to the drink, but you never put anyone else in danger apart from yourself. You’re different to your father because he only cared about himself, you’ve only ever cared about others. And that’s why I know you can turn it around this time, too.”
Her words made my chest ache. As determined as I was to set things right and be the person she wanted me to be, doubt didn’t just disappear overnight. The pressure of doing the right thing was so much, it made me want to reach for a bottle just thinking of it.
“You’re not him,” Mum said, reaching for my hand. “You’re twice the man he was and that’s without even trying to be.” As if reading my mind, she consoled me. “You may have your doubts, but I don’t.”
I stood to give her a hug and she met me half-way.
“Thanks, Mum.”
“Now, don’t think you can get away without talking about the new girl.”
I pulled back. “How do you—”
She rolled her eyes. “Please. I haven’t seen you this cut up since Reece. So sit back down and tell me all about her.”