The Fix

by Kristin Rouse

  “Was… was that your brother, babe?” Jules asks, her voice dulcet.

  I’d forgotten she was even there. I wish she wasn’t. That wasn’t something I wanted her—or anyone else for that matter—to have seen.

  “Yeah. That was Dylan,” I say. I hope she won’t ask what happened, why he stormed off. I don’t want her to know this story.

  I’m not that lucky, though. “What happened?” she asks.

  “It’s a long story, Jules.” Now I’m desperate to not have this conversation. And desperate for a cigarette. I really, really need a cigarette.

  She plucks a can of tomato paste off the shelf and tosses it in our cart. “Okay,” is all she says, but I know that isn’t going to be the end of it. She’s humming, but it’s not casual, easy humming. It’s determined-to-figure-something-out humming.

  She waits until we’re back at her place, the groceries strewn over the counter and a pot of water coming to a boil on the stove. She’s sweating onions and garlic in a pan and I’m chopping vegetables and opening cans before she turns to me and pins me with her eyes. Damn her eyes. I can’t hide from them.

  “Are you going to tell me why you and your brother aren’t on speaking terms, or do I have to play Twenty Questions to get it out of you?”

  I swear under my breath. “I really, really don’t want to talk about it, Jules.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it was a long time ago.” That’s a lie, but I’m not eager for her to know it. “It’s not a story I’m proud of.” That is putting it fucking mildly. “And there’s a very real chance that if I tell you, you’ll wind up hating my guts.”

  “Well, now I have to know.”

  “Christ, Juliana,” I say, and storm over to the door that leads into the tiny backyard off her kitchen. There’s no snow today, but the wind is cold and unforgiving. It takes me six flicks to get anything more than a spark out of my lighter and light my cigarette. She doesn’t follow me outside. In fact, she’s still stirring the contents of the saucepan when I come back inside, two cigarettes and wind-burned cheeks later.

  “You both have the storming-off thing down pretty good. Even if you didn’t look exactly like one another, I’d be able to tell you’re brothers just from that.” Her tone is different. It matches the strange cock of her hip and her tense shoulders. She hasn’t looked at me like this since that day before the Christmas party when I was, admittedly, being kind of a dick to her. I hate her looking at me like she is, but instead of making me feel like an asshole, it riles something in me that’s equally indignant and frustrated.

  “Look, not every set of siblings are crazy-close best friends like you and your brothers,” I snap at her without even thinking. “Most siblings don’t get along. Some even outright hate one another, even if they’re civil to each other when they’re together. And then there are some of us who can’t be in the same place as one another without fists flying.”

  She slams the spoon she’d been using down on the counter. “First of all, that’s not fair. I don’t know who you’ve been watching, but Mat and Luk and I bicker and fight just like anyone else. They drive me crazy, especially when they’re trying to be protective, but they’ve been that way ever since our dad died, so I deal with it. I don’t hate them when they drive me nuts, I love them because they’re my family. And second of all, I have plenty of friends who get along just fine with their brothers and sisters. Older, younger, step, twin, whatever. So don’t give me shit about something that clearly chaps your ass when all I did was ask a simple question. I’m your girlfriend. Don’t I get to ask questions like that?”

  “You can ask, but it doesn’t mean I have to answer.”

  “Nice, Ezra. That is super-mature.”

  My blood begins to boil. Why can’t she just let this go? Her persistence matches my inner embarrassment, and I’m desperate to end the conversation anyway I can. I think that’s the only reason why the words come out of my mouth. “You want to know what happened, Jules? Do you really?”

  “Jesus Christ, yes, or I wouldn’t have asked!”

  “Fine. The last time Dylan saw me, he punched me in the nose. The snoring you tease me about? He deviated my septum. Your mother shoved gauze up my nostrils the first night I met her to keep my fucking brains from leaking out. There, are you happy?”

  She stands stock still and blinks rapidly. “Why would he do that?”

  “Because that’s what some guys do when their drunken, screwed-up asshole of a brother fucks their girlfriend.”

  I could knock her over with a feather. I wish I’d lied instead, although no more than I wish I didn’t need to lie about this. I want to be honest with her, but this is the worst thing I’ve ever done. This is the thing that was the final straw before I figured out what a massive, drunken fuck-head I was and realized I had to do something about it. This was rock bottom.

  “Oh, Ezra,” she says. It’s the disappointment in her voice that kills me. But now that I’ve told her, I have to say more or else she’ll think I’m still that guy. And more than anything in the world, I’m desperate to not be that guy anymore.

  “She wasn’t… She wasn’t exactly his girlfriend. They were dating but… I was at a strange bar I didn’t really know because I’d been invited there for some old co-worker’s birthday. I was there later than the party went, and I saw this girl across the bar I thought was good-looking, so I went over and talked to her. I didn’t recognize her, even though I’d just met her at our dad’s funeral the month before, but I didn’t recognize her because, surprise surprise, I was drunk then, too. I had no idea it was her until way later. I guess she had some guilty conscience when she realized later I was too much of a dipshit to wear a condom, and told him what happened. I got home a couple of days later and Dylan and his fists were there waiting for me. He socked me, told me to go to hell, and that was the last time I saw him until tonight. There’s more bad blood between me and my family than you could possibly imagine, Jules, and I didn’t want to tell you this sort of shit because that’s the guy I used to be—he was a real loser and I hate the shit out of him. Can you blame me for wanting that guy to be no part of your life?”

  “You didn’t use a condom. So, does that mean…?”

  “I didn’t knock her up or anything, fuck, but is that really the point? Does he need any other reason than me fucking her to hate my guts?”

  She snaps the burners off with a couple of flicks of her wrist and leans against the counter with her arms folded. Finally, she says, “I don’t get it. I don’t understand the draw of drinking like that.”

  My mind reels. “Of course you don’t. You’re not an alcoholic.”

  “I know I’m not. But I’m trying to put myself into a frame of mind where drinking like that, drinking that much and getting that blitzed seems like a good idea, and I’m sorry, I just can’t do it. My father died when I was fifteen. Did you know that?”

  “Mattias mentioned it once.”

  “I acted out after he died. I was Daddy’s Little Princess so I took it hard. I took it harder than both Mat and Luk combined. Maybe if I’d been older, I’d have gone a little crazier but… I don’t know, I still just don’t get it. And I’m trying, Ezra, I really am, but I can’t wrap my brain around it. Why did you do it? Why did you drink like that? Did you even feel bad about it?”

  “I didn’t know who the hell she was! She was gone the next fucking morning. I barely remembered what happened. Because I’m an alcoholic.” I must sound like a broken record, and a frustrated one at that, but it’s all I can come up with. “My brain doesn’t work the way yours does. You have a couple of drinks, get a good buzz on, and then stop because you don’t want to feel like shit the next morning or you need to drive yourself home safely. It’s rationality, but my brain doesn’t have that trigger. I stop drinking when I lose consciousness and not a second before. I don’t just stop when the bottle is empty; I open another one. I puke, then I rally. That’s what being an alcoholic is for me, Jules
. You can’t understand it because you aren’t one.”

  “But you did stop, eventually. You’re sober now. You have been, what, ten months now, right?”

  “And do you not realize these ten months have been the hardest months of my life? Don’t you get that I’ve wanted a drink every single day since my first day of detox, and every day I have to talk myself out of it? Christ, that’s why I’m with Anja half the damn time, because I usually don’t trust myself to not buckle and go to the liquor store when she’s not around to keep me in check. Mattias and Lukas? They watch my ass like hawks in case I might have snuck a drink past Anja without her noticing. My brain doesn’t work right, Jules. What more is there to get than that?”

  She curls in on herself. I wonder if I’ve been purposely wheeling on her, getting into her face and yelling at her, or if it’s a defense mechanism. I take a step back because a tiny, rational part of my brain knows I’m getting out of control. It’s not the sort of lack of control from when I drank—it’s the sort of lack of control I imagine Dylan felt when he balled up his fist the day he confronted me. And no matter how much of a fuck-up I am, I refuse to be the sort of fuck-up who’d ever get violent, especially with his girlfriend.

  “I’m gonna go.” I grab my cigarettes, wallet, and phone. I’ve got my coat half on when she smacks her hand against the door and blocks my path.

  “If you leave right now, are you going to drink?” The way she says it really isn’t a question. She’s accusing me, not asking.

  “No, I’m going to think about why I’m being such an asshole to my girlfriend. I’m going to get away from you before I say something I regret. Let me by.”

  “No. Please, Ezra, don’t leave.”

  “Jules, I need to.” She grabs my wrist when I reach for the handle, and it’s everything I can do to not pry her fingers off me and throw her aside like a ragdoll. I’m scaring myself. This isn’t me now… This is me a year ago. I’m not supposed to be like this, not anymore. Especially not around her.

  “No,” she says again as I yank my hand away from her. She makes to grab it again but I’m afraid if she touches me, I might burn us both to the ground.

  “I don’t trust myself around you right now, all right? Let me go before I do something stupid.”

  “If you leave, you’ll drink, won’t you? Ezra, please, I can’t let you do that,” she says, her voice wavering like she’s close to tears.

  “Let me go, Juliana.”

  She staggers backwards and I slam the door behind me as I retreat down the sidewalk to my car. Tears are burning behind my eyes—I can’t let her see this part of me. I hate it too much.

  It takes all the willpower I have left to call Anja. I whimper something half-human into the phone, and she tells me which meeting I should head to so she can meet me there. Our cars pull in one after the other, and I fall into her arms. Like a mother with a fretful newborn, she holds me and tells me that I’m all right, that I’m going to be okay, and I try like hell to believe her.

  ***

  I smell about as good as I look after spending a night on Mattias and Anja’s couch. I leave their place with only a note saying I’m going home and thanking them for what they did for me last night before either of them wakes up. Not only did they have the dubious honor of pulling my ass back together last night, they’d also been the ones to calm Juliana when she’d called Mattias in hysterics, claiming she’d pushed me into a relapse. I’m sure I’m going to get a call from Anja soon enough when she gets up and finds me gone, but I’m also sure she’ll understand that I need some time to decompress before Juliana comes over.

  It was Anja who suggested I have Juliana come to me, and show her I didn’t self-destruct last night. She’ll be over in the afternoon, and in the meantime I call out of work and go ape on my apartment. I scrub anything and everything, I vacuum up all of the cat hair that’s settled on every surface, and air out the smoky, stale air with wide-open windows. Early March weather is always unpredictable, but today is thankfully mild so I don’t freeze to death. I take a scalding-hot shower and make coffee as the sun starts to set, then curl up on the futon with a pack of cigarettes, deciding that the open windows will carry away most of the smoke before it can sink into the furniture. I’ve nearly finished the pack when I hear a gentle tap at the door. My heart gallops, and I will myself to not screw this up.

  Jules’ eyes are dark-rimmed and sleepy, and a ratty ponytail at the top of her head and rumpled clothes clearly state that she’s had about as pleasant a day as I’ve had. I stand aside and let her in. The cat dive-bombs her ankles and laces between them, purring like a motorboat. The damn thing still barely comes near me, but she loves Jules. Maybe if she dumps me today, I’ll give the cat to her—she’d probably take better care of it, like Mac did.

  “You clean on bad days too, huh?” Jules says before settling down on my futon. The place smells heavily of bleach and white vinegar, laced with tobacco.

  “Yeah.” I ought to, but don’t, apologize about the cigarette smoke.

  I sit down on the coffee table so I can face her straight on. She shrinks her legs back against the couch so I’m not touching her. So much for hoping she might fall into my arms. I stew for a second before I launch into the speech I’d been rehearsing as I’d scrubbed the tiles of my shower.

  “Look, I’m sorry about last night. I can tell you that until I’m blue in the face, but what I can’t do is take back any of the bullshit things I did when I was fucked up. All I can tell you is that I’m trying to be better than who I was back then. I don’t want to be that person anymore—that’s why I got sober. I realize that I don’t really have a lot of credibility with you right now, and I don’t know what to do about that. I’m hoping you’ll tell me so I can try and do it. And if you can’t, if that’s not an option… Then I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasted your time and hurt you.”

  She unfolds her arms and rubs at her face. “You don’t waste my time, Ez. What I said about not understanding… That was true, but I shouldn’t have said it. I shouldn’t have gone at you like that. You probably thought I was judging you even after telling you all the time how much I admire you and Anja for straightening up. That was terrible. I’m sorry I did that.”

  “I’m not that guy anymore. I promise,” I say, trying not to sound meek or unsure. I need her to know that I mean that.

  “I know you aren’t. I wouldn’t be with you if I thought you were.” She uncurls a little, and our knees almost touch.

  “Makes sense why my brother hates my guts now, doesn’t it?”

  “Would you still have done what you did if you had realized who she was?”

  It’s a fair question, and one she deserves an answer to. “I don’t know. I’d like to think I wouldn’t.”

  She’s worrying the Cupid’s bow of her lip, turning it bright red and blotchy. It looks like that after I kiss her sometimes.

  “But it’s not ever something you’d do now,” she says. It’s not a question.

  “I wouldn’t put myself in that position at all. I told you, I don’t—”

  “Want to be that guy anymore, I know,” she interrupts. “That girl isn’t entirely blameless in all this, either.”

  I tried telling Dylan that. I don’t know why he wasn’t with her that night, or remember why she flirted back and came home with me. For all I know, Dylan might have been with someone else that night, too, and that’s why she was out by herself. Until he speaks to me again, sometime between now and the eventual heat death of the universe, I won’t know for sure whether or not that punch landed solely because I had sex with that girl, or if that was merely the last straw for Dylan concerning me and my drinking.

  “All right,” Jules says, snapping me out of my thoughts. “But don’t storm out on me like that again. You scared the shit out of me.”

  This is the part I’ve really been dreading.

  “I can’t promise that. There are gonna be times I need to duck out and pull myself together. I… I do
n’t want you to see me when I’m shitty and craving and mean. It’s the worst part of me. I don’t even want to see myself when I’m like that.”

  “That’s what a relationship is, Ezra,” she says. “It’s seeing each other at their worst. It’s not negotiable stuff.”

  “I don’t want to scare you off.”

  She bumps my knee with hers. It’s the first time she’s touched me since she came in, and it sends a jolt of electricity through me.

  “You won’t. I’m tough enough to take a fight or two.”

  “I’m probably more of a fight than I’m worth, honestly.”

  This time she doesn’t bump my knee—she swats it with her hand. “Don’t say that.”

  “I figured you noticed that last night.”

  “Stop. Don’t try giving me an out. I don’t want one. I’m in this if you’re in this,” she says. Her eyes challenge me to question her on it. I don’t, and I don’t want to.

  I lean towards her and seize her hands. The connection is electric. She does that gorgeous wink/bat thing. Then something else hits me.

  “You, uh… You’ve never called this a relationship before. And last night we… we used words we’ve never used before. Like girlfriend.”

  Her cheeks flush, which makes her tired-looking face that much more lovely. “Oh, I… I guess I thought that was obvious by now.”

  “I hoped it was. I’ve hoped that’s what we are for a long time. I didn’t want to….”

  “Stop thinking you’re going to scare me off.”

  I nod. “I loved hearing that word, though. Say it again?”

  She leans forward and nudges my nose with hers. Our mouths hover near enough that it’d take just a little pivot to push them together, but she pins me with her eyes and holds me steady. “This is what a relationship is, Ez. I think ours is strong enough to get through some of this crap, don’t you?”