The Fix

by Kristin Rouse

  No one, especially not a terrific woman like Juliana, should be exposed to someone as volatile and temperamental as a recovering alcoholic. It’s only by reminding myself that I’m literally putting her on a plane to another country this afternoon, and that I may never even see her again, that I’ve steeled myself to leave my apartment. Because seeing her, reminding myself that she is off-limits, and then seeing her off, is going to suck. Enough things in my life suck these days—she shouldn’t be one of them. In my car, a half-pack of cigarettes gone on the four-mile drive to Mama A’s, I try to convince myself that this really isn’t that big a deal. It’s just laundry and coffee and a ride to the airport. I’ve never been the greatest liar. Strange for an alcoholic, right? Yeah, I don’t get it either.

  I’ve had a key for months, but since Juliana is there, I ring the bell and wait for her to answer. I will my palms not to sweat as I wait for her to pull the door open. By the time she pulls the door open, though, they’re slick and I almost drop my laundry basket, full of two weeks’ worth of dirty underwear and scrubs, right at her feet. If she notices, she doesn’t say anything. She waves me in, a smile in her eyes and on her lips. After a night of dancing, am I supposed to hug her? Shake her hand and let her feel how clammy my palm is? I cling to the basket, which acts as a convenient barrier for both.

  I’m dressed predictably schlubby, as one should when doing laundry, and for some reason, I expected she might be as well. She is, after all, about to get on a ridiculously long flight—don’t people wear comfy clothes on long flights? She’s not exactly glammed out, but her jeans fit her hips like they were tailored for her, and her clingy shirt dips low into her cleavage. She’s polished and put together, and, in comparison, I look like I just ran a half-marathon. At least I don’t smell like it, although I am conscious of my still-damp hair from my shower and lingering cigarette smoke. And since I’m not made of stone, I’m grateful my pants are baggy, because she’s showing exactly enough skin that maintaining eye contact is more than a little tough.

  I wonder if we exhausted everything we had to say to one another at the wedding. Our greeting is stilted, and she feels compelled to show me to the laundry room. She lingers in the doorway for just a second more than is comfortable, then says she’ll leave me to it and disappears. Grateful, I start a load and sort through two more while I collect myself. I’d spent hours with this girl just the other day—what’s different now? Deciding nothing has to be, that I can be friendly without being overbearing or awkward, I head into the living room. She’s balancing a cup of coffee on her knee and a book in her other hand. She jerks her head toward the kitchen, a more placid smile on her face.

  “Coffee, as promised. There’s half-and-half and sugar out; milk’s in the fridge.”

  “Thanks,” I say. I doctor my cup how I like it and settle back in the living room with her, wishing I’d brought a book of my own. I scan the shelves around the TV, wondering if I could pluck one up so I’m not staring at her while she reads. I’m about to hoist myself up to grab the first title I find that I’ve already read when she shuts her book and takes a deep gulp from her cup.

  “The other night was a blast, by the way. I don’t think I said that when we said goodbye. You’re not as bad a dancer as you claimed to be.”

  “Flatterer,” I say. “You know I’m terrible. But, ah, yeah. It was a lot of fun.”

  There’s something poised on her lips, something she clearly wants to say but doesn’t. She tugs on a bit of chapped skin on her lips with her front teeth. Compelled to break the silence, I stammer out, “So, ah… what’s Brazil like?”

  “Hot, mostly. But beautiful. Sao Paolo is enormous and crowded, but I like it. I’m never bored. Although that might have something to do with my job and the variability of ten- and sixteen-hour days.”

  Anja had mentioned in passing that Juliana is an environmental engineer for some major international firm trying to save the planet. She’s working specifically with teams in Brazil trying to preserve the rainforest. She’s doing the sort of work that gets people straight into heaven when they die, while I’m giving backrubs. Even if this girl didn’t live on another continent, she’d be so ridiculously out of my league we wouldn’t even be playing the same sport.

  “How long have you been down there?”

  “Two years. I got lucky and landed an internship out of grad school and it turned permanent. Already speaking the language gave me a boost.”

  I’d heard her speaking in Portuguese to her mother and brothers. It’s a pretty language on its own. It’s downright gorgeous coming out of her mouth.

  “Hey, can I….” She leans forward and sets her coffee cup on the table between us. “Can I ask something? And you can tell me to fuck off if it’s personal and none of my business.”

  I’ve never heard this girl flustered. I lean forward similarly, propping my elbows on my knees and nod at her. “Shoot.”

  “I know about Anja. About her drinking.”

  I know exactly where this is going. More than ever I’m sure that Anja hasn’t sold me out to Juliana. I appreciate that of my sponsor, of course, but it doesn’t make this conversation promise to be any less crappy. Especially not with someone as terrific as she is.

  “I love Anja,” Juliana continues, “I think she’s fantastic and she makes Mat so, so happy. I don’t care about her drinking, or what she’s done in the past because it’s all the past, you know? The most important thing is that Mat is happy and, you know, that they’re happy together….”

  “Can I just point out you’re rambling a little?” I say. It’s a little cocky of me to say, sure. But her rambling is charming.

  She laughs at herself and studies her coffee cup. “I do that sometimes. I just wanted to clarify that because I’m not sure if I’m in the right here, and if I’m wrong then I’m so sorry and I’ll shut my trap and we can watch TV and pretend I’m not awkward. But… you and Anja. You have a lot in common, don’t you?”

  It’s an interesting way to think of it. I could simply tell her she’s right, but instead I pull out my wallet and turn it over in my hand until my chips fall into my palm.

  “Anja gave this to me on April 13th of this past year. It’s a 24-hour recovery chip,” I say. “And, every month since then, she’s given me all of these.” I place my chips one by one down in front of her. “We do have a lot in common. I’m a recovering alcoholic. And yeah, Anja is my sponsor.”

  “So offering to buy you a drink at the wedding and nattering on at you while I was downing shots was probably—shit, Ezra, I’m sorry. That was terrible and insensitive of me.”

  Vulnerable and contrite look good on her, too. As if she could possibly be more attractive.

  “You didn’t know. And I didn’t tell you, so how would you? Can I just ask—what tipped you off?”

  She smiles. “The toasts. The waiter handed you a glass of champagne, and you kept raising it but you never sipped it. And then you gave it back as soon as my mom was done blubbering into the mic.”

  That had been a nearly Herculean effort on my part. I should have given it back as soon as the waiter handed it out, but Mac always said toasting with water was bad luck. There wasn’t anything else available, so I held that glass and pretended it was full of warm piss to keep it away from my lips. It helped that we were in front of the entire throng of guests and Anja was about four feet from me. Every time a speech ended, I saw her staring me and my glass down. I kept thinking warm piss, and finally, Mama A finished her toast and I got rid of the glass. The music had started back up and Juliana, newly filled with champagne, wanted to dance again. Anja had looked at me like she approved of my willpower, but really, my hands shook for a good ten minutes after we started dancing again. I decide not to say the words “warm piss” to Juliana, even though I suspect they might make her laugh.

  Juliana runs the tip of her finger around the rim of her mug. If it were crystal, she’d set my skin on fire with the shrill noise. “Can I ask something else?
How you can be diagnosed as an alcoholic when you’re as young as you and Anja are?”

  I purse my lips. It’s not an entirely unfair question. I wonder, for a second, exactly how honest I can be here. They encourage honesty in AA, encourage you to share your story and let people know how far you’ve come. I hate opening my mouth in meetings as a general rule, and in this moment, I dread letting this amazing, perfect girl know how fucked up I am. But there’s a bit of freedom in knowing I’m putting her on a plane in a few hours, that even if she decides (rightly) that I’m a total loser, I won’t have to see her again if I don’t want to. It emboldens me.

  “Did your brothers ever tell you how they met me?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Maybe they mentioned it, but not really in great detail.”

  “You know Anja and I went to high school together? Mackenzie,” I say, holding my hand up, “and MacCullor. We usually got paired up in classes on account of our last names. Friends out of necessity, at first, you know? Then friends for real. I’ve known her longer than anyone I’m not related to.

  “Anyway. We kept in touch after graduation since we both still lived around here, and as it turned out, we liked drinking together. Around the time Anja started dating Mattias, we were probably hanging out a couple of times a week, bouncing between happy hours we knew were cheap and within easy walking distance of one another. Mattias started coming with us, and then Lukas so I wasn’t the third wheel. And we got to expand our haunts, because lo and behold, we suddenly had people we could count on to DD us.”

  The thing I don’t tell her is how, at first, Mattias wasn’t so much invited out with us to hang out—he was invited because Anja knew he wouldn’t drink. It wasn’t using him, in the strictest sense of the word, because she wanted to be with him anyway. She and I just wanted to get plastered way more.

  “I guess you can say the pair of them got kind of sick of it,” I tell her. “And one time, they got so sick of it, they bailed on us.”

  Her mouth turns into a little circle of acknowledgment, and I know that if nothing else, she’s likely heard the story of how we’d forced them out with us at one of our favorite places, and got so drunk we didn’t realize when they got up, paid their tabs, and left. When Anja tried calling Mattias, he didn’t answer. When I texted Lukas, I got the number for a cab company as a reply. We were both pretty pissed, because the money we were banking on paying our tabs with was suddenly going to have to go towards a cab halfway across town instead.

  “That was when Anja and Mat broke up for a while,” Juliana says, her voice low.

  That was two years ago. It wasn’t just for Mattias that Anja cleaned up—but being sober and stable enough to prove herself worthy of a second chance was a huge motivating factor. She stopped hanging out with me after that, because I wasn’t the sort of person she wanted to be around while she was trying to clean up. Not to mention that I wasn’t exactly Mattias and Lukas’s favorite person at the moment.

  I was pretty lucky when they took me back in six months ago, all told.

  “It probably sounds like something people do when they’re young and stupid,” I say. “And maybe it is. But normal people can blow off steam with a drink or two at Happy Hour, sober up, and get themselves home safely. Most people don’t drive home questionably fucked up, and then keep drinking when they do get home. And drink more to ward off the hangover the next morning. That’s not how you drink, I’ll bet.”

  She shakes her head.

  “That is how Anja and I drink. It’s how we would drink if we weren’t trying to do better. That’s how we know we’re alcoholics. It’s a disease, not a bad habit. And it really sucks to try to shake.

  “It’s been sort of an insane year for me,” I say with finality and pick my chips back up. “Anja’s been a big help. Your whole family has been, actually. I guess I’m a little surprised that you didn’t know about me being their charity case.”

  Her jaw drops. “They’d never consider you that, Ezra. My mother adopts every one of our friends into our family. She’s still in touch with more of my friends from high school than I am.”

  If I’m not careful, I could fall for this girl. Only a few more hours and she’ll be on a plane back to Brazil. Surely, I can go a few more hours.

  “Well, I’m really impressed by you and Anja. The first couple of times I met her, I worried, you know? I worried she was going to drag my brother down, and that thought killed me. I hate to say it, but I was glad they broke up, because watching her when she got really bad was killing him. But I see how much better she is now, I see how amazing she is, and I can’t imagine my family without her.

  “But what I really can’t imagine is how hard it must be for you guys. I have a lot of respect for you both.” The smile on her face shows that she’s honest, and not just saying something nice she thinks I’d want to hear. This girl is genuine through and through. Another thing I find irresistibly charming.

  “Thanks. It’s nice hearing that.” The three quick beeps of the washer indicate the end of its cycle, and I excuse myself to change loads. I look over my shoulder as I walk past her on the couch, and I see her smile at me. It’s a real smile, one of respect and acceptance. Then she wink-blinks at me.

  And here I thought I had a couple of hours left to not fall for her. My mistake.

  ***

  I’m both relieved and crushed when Juliana disappears into her old bedroom to grab her suitcase a couple of hours later. My last load of clothes is in the dryer and by the time I get back from dropping her at the airport, it’ll be ready to fold, and I’ll continue on about my day like I didn’t do something insanely stupid, like fall for my sponsor’s new sister-in-law. She comes back down with a suitcase in one hand and a garment bag slung over her shoulder. I offer to take something, but she shrugs me off.

  “The suitcase is crazy-light. That’s how much coffee I brought up. And I have to take the garment bag on the plane with me so I can change before we land, so I might as well get used to carrying it.”

  “Change?” I ask.

  We head out to my car and I get to at least open the back hatch and the passenger side door for her. After the embarrassment of to-go containers and empty cigarette packs littering the back seat of my car on the wedding day, I made a real effort to have it clean today.

  “I’m connecting through Dallas and then the flight to Sao Paolo runs overnight. I’ll have to go straight to work when I land.”

  “Sounds like a long couple of days.”

  “Oh, I’m gonna be a wreck. Thankfully my coworkers are pretty used to me failing at basic girliness—except for my shoes, of course,” she says with a smirk, holding up her heeled foot. “A rumpled suit and bags under my eyes will be the least of what they’ve seen from me.”

  As I start my car and steer us toward the airport highway, I try to shirk away the nagging in me that I should ask her when she’s coming back home next. I should offer to keep in touch. She’s witty and smart and has interesting opinions about interesting things. Forget the fact that she’s completely stunning; she’s one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met. Then I remind myself again and again that she lives thousands of miles away, and that even if she came home every couple of months, that wouldn’t be enough for me. And anyway, Juliana Almeida does not need a perennial fuck up like Ezra Mackenzie dragging her down.

  My jaw clenches with the sight of the airport looming in the distance, because how did we get out here so fast? Where was the traffic that always slows the drive into an interminable commute? Juliana is shuffling around, making sure she has her passport and cell phone charger, and I have no choice but to drive forward. I know as soon as I drop her at the terminal and say goodbye, that’s it. I’ll go home and’’’’’ try to forget this incredible girl that had me wrapped around her finger from the very first sight of her in rumpled, dishwater-soaked pajamas. It’s for the best, even though my heart feels like it’s sinking from my chest to my gut.

  “So, I’l
l be around for Christmas,” Juliana says, causal as can be, without even looking up from rummaging through her purse.

  In front of me, some asshole is trying to cut me off and I have to brake hard to avoid tearing off his bumper. I’m amazed I even noticed the car, given how her comment has infiltrated my ears and filled my head with foolish possibility. I square my shoulders to focus on the road, and just say a casual, “Oh?”

  “I assume Mama has already made you promise to come to the big Christmas blowout she hosts every year?”

  “Um. I, uh….” I stammer. Shit. Get it together, Mackenzie. She can’t really read your mind; it’s a coincidence. “Yeah, I’ll definitely be stopping by. I don’t get a ton of time off around the holidays, and I’ll need to spend some time with my fam—my mother.”

  “Good. I’m glad this isn’t the last I’ll be seeing you, then,” she says. I know without even looking at her she’s done that hybrid wink/batting eyelashes thing. But it’s all in my head. It has to be.

  At the departures terminal, I pull up to the curb and leave the engine idling while I get out with her. I get to her suitcase first and set it at her feet. She’s got something in her hand I think for a second might be gas money, probably at the insistence of Mama A. I’m ready to shrug her off until I see it’s much smaller.

  “It’s sort of cliché, but this is my card. My cell number is there, and my personal email address is on the back. I, ah….” She bites her lip, like she’s debating what to say.