He lays his cheek in the valley of my hand and glances away, still troubled. “I’m an addict, Berlin.”
He says it like it’s some revelation to me, as if I’m not already intimately familiar with the fact. “I’m a rancher, Hiro, and you’re a vegetarian, and you’re still here with me.”
“That’s not the same,” he says unhappily.
I grab his free hand and squeeze. “Listen, I know you struggle. And I know how serious it is. But we all have obstacles to overcome.”
“I’m afraid something will set me off and I’ll start using again.”
I place his hand over my heart. “Life is long, Hiro. You’re stronger now than you’ve ever been. You have me. You have your mom and dad and your sister. You have your art. You’re doing so good. You just have to have faith.”
“In God?” he asks seriously.
“In yourself.”
He chews on his lower lip. I can tell there’s a battle going on in his head. Those two dragons on his chest aren’t just a pretty picture.
“Do you have faith in me?” he asks, eyes shining.
I squeeze his hand. “Of course I do. I always have.”
He looks serious for a moment, then nods. “Me too.”
He hunkers down with his head on my chest and I wrap my arms around him. “You know what this means?”
“Tell me,” he whispers.
“It means I got you.”
I never want to let him go.
Hiroku
I WAKE up the next morning before Berlin. The morning light casts sunbeams on his shoulders and chest, shining on the rusty hairs between his pecs where I like to burrow.
“Berlin Webber,” I whisper like an incantation. I’m tempted to get my camera and snap a few pictures, but I don’t want to disturb the moment, so I lie there on my side and admire him in the truest light of the day.
God’s creation, I think to myself as my eyes travel over the planes of Berlin’s body. I couldn’t have dreamed up a more stunning work of art. He’s beautiful, inside and out, and I think this must be what it’s like to feel blessed.
Then I get to thinking about God and wonder if He gave me Berlin to make up for all the shit I had to put up with from Seth. Some people might say God was testing me with my addiction and Seth and Trent to see if I was worthy of the likes of Berlin Webber. But it’s convenient to look back and say that now. I could have just as easily overdosed on pills or thrown myself off one of those cliffs.
And when you look at the world itself, there’s so much ugliness in it—murder, rape, child abuse, war, slavery, mass shootings. But there’s good things too—love and kindness, compassion, pleasure, which makes me think if there is a God, then He must have spun the wheel and walked away from his creation. Good luck with all that. And if that’s the case, then what’s the point in believing at all?
Then I think about the worlds we create ourselves. The world I had with Seth and the one I’ve begun with Berlin, how vastly different those two worlds are and how we as humans are constantly changing and evolving and bringing new people into our worlds and kicking some of the old ones out. So maybe, in that regard, we’re tiny gods ourselves, deeming who’s fit to enter our kingdom and who must stay outside the gates.
And as I study Berlin Webber naked as a teenage dream and sleeping soundly in my bed, a sense of gratitude fills me, that I have him in my life. Whatever brought us together to allow our separate worlds to become one, I know this is a world I want to hold on to for as long as I can. I take a moment to say a prayer of gratitude, not necessarily to any one god, but to the universe in general for not being such a bitch this time and cutting me some goddamned slack for once in my life.
Berlin stirs and opens his eyes to find me staring. He grins and pulls me to him. I breathe him in and rub my cheek against his chest.
“Whatcha thinking about?” he whispers in his rusty morning voice.
“You,” I say softly, gazing down at him and drawing my fingertip along his strong jaw and the stubble that lines his chin.
“What about me?”
“How much I love you, and how grateful I am that we found each other.”
He smiles bashfully and pulls me to him, kisses my forehead. “I love you too, Hiroku Hayashi.”
I shake my head and roll my eyes. God, how he murders my name. Every. Single. Time.
“Just Hiro, Berlin.”
He clears his throat and tries again with mischief in his eyes. “I love you too, Just Hiro.”
I kiss him and he wraps his big arms around me, bracing me up. I remember what Denise said to me back in that diner in Allister, Texas, how you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you think you deserve.
So for now I’ll tell myself I’m worthy of Berlin Webber, and maybe one day, through daily devotion and acts of kindness, I’ll believe it.
Acknowledgments
STORIES ARE like children—each one is unique and wonderful in their own way—but this one about a country mouse and a city mouse who overcome so much to be together has a special place in my heart.
Thank you to Angele McQuade, mistress of propaganda, for sharpening my prose and helping Berlin and Hiro grow as characters. Heather Whitaker, mistress of plot, for her never-ending fountain of knowledge and advice on all things of the three-act nature. Trinity 4eva.
Thank you to Dreamspinner Press and the community of DSP authors who are always quick to lend their expertise along with kind words and encouragement. Thanks also to AngstyG for another breathtaking cover—your art inspires me.
To the readers and fans of my work, thank you for traveling on this long, winding road with me. Your support allows me to do what I love best and share it with others.
And finally my darling husband and children, the light of my life, you three help me to be brave.
—Laura
Author’s Note
WHILE I was finishing the first draft of The Bravest Thing, my brother-in-law Billy died of a drug overdose. His mother found him in his truck in her driveway in the early morning hours of September 11. He was twenty-nine years old.
Billy had struggled with an addiction to opiates and opioids since high school. Like many addicts, he started with OxyContin, snorting it. Because of this type of rampant abuse, Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, changed the formula in 2010 so that the pills were more difficult to crush and/or cook. Crushable OxyContin became harder to find and more expensive, and many addicts turned to heroin, which was becoming cheaper and more widely available. Drug dealers then started cutting heroin with fentanyl, which is fifty to a hundred times more potent than heroin and can kill you with an amount the size of a few grains of salt.
As I write this, we are awaiting the toxicology report from the medical examiner, but we believe Billy was snorting heroin cut with fentanyl when he overdosed.
Death by drug overdose, specifically heroin, is a growing epidemic in America. As the Palm Beach Post stated in a November 2016 article, “Nationwide, the heroin body count rivals the number of young Americans who died at the height of the Vietnam War.” Because of the stigma surrounding drug abuse and addiction, this killing of a generation is happening quietly and without recourse.
At the same time, funding for drug rehabilitation and clean-needle programs is being cut by state legislatures (as is the case in Florida, where Billy died) causing a spike in the spread of HIV. The heroin epidemic is not only a national tragedy, it’s a threat to public health.
When he was sober, Billy had a great sense of humor. He used to sneak my daughter candy bars when I wasn’t looking and play video games and watch football with my son. We called him Billy Baby because he was the youngest of the family from our generation. He loved surfing, fast cars, and eating apple pie. True to the Florida beach bum that he was, Billy was more often found shirtless than not and had a fun-loving personality that charmed us all. He was a wonderful uncle who one day could have been a great father.
When Billy was using, or more
precisely, when he was coming down and out of money to buy drugs, he was a different person. He left threatening voice mails, stole and pawned his mother’s belongings for cash, and blamed everyone around him for his addiction.
We. Tried. Everything.
We as a family have learned a few things from watching Billy struggle with addiction:
There is no rock bottom. Over the decade of Billy’s drug use, we kept saying Surely this is the worst it can get. This is what it will take for him to turn it around. This time, he’ll understand his life is at stake. Each time, he went back to using.
You cannot argue, threaten, or love someone out of addiction. While you can help an addict by providing them a safe place to get clean, paying for their rehabilitation, giving them a job, etc., you cannot make a person stay sober. They have to want it themselves. And work at it every day. Every single fucking day.
Addiction is a disease. Prolonged drug use alters brain chemistry and makes it harder for addicts to stay sober. We as a society must get over the stigma of drug abuse if we are going to tackle this epidemic head-on and provide the help and support addicts need to get and stay clean. Ignoring the problem does not make it go away.
Watching someone suffer from addiction is heartbreaking. Billy broke our hearts. If you have a loved one who struggles with addiction, you know what I mean.
If you are an addict, here is my message to you: You are not a bad person. You are not your addiction. Your life is worth saving. You may think you’re alone or that you’ve burned all your bridges, but I can guarantee there are people who love you and want you back. Just like you, they are doing the best they can and dealing with their pain the only way they know how. I hope you see your life has value and you’re someone worth saving. Getting and staying sober is the hardest thing you’ll ever do, but I believe it’s worth it.
And to Billy Baby, wherever you are, we love you and we miss you.
Resources:
Alcoholics Anonymous: aa.org
Alcohol and Drug Abuse Hotline: 1-800-729-6686
Al-Anon for families of alcoholics: al-anon.org
IMAlive, an online crisis network: imalive.org
National Helpline for Substance Abuse: 1-800-262-2463
Suicide Prevention Lifeline: suicidepreventionlifeline.org | 1-800-273-8255
The National Domestic Violence Hotline: thehotline.org | 1-800-799-7233
More from Laura Lascarso
When up-and-coming Miami painter Martin Fonseca encounters youthful pretty boy Andre Bellamy washing dishes in the kitchen of La Candela, he swears he’s known him before, intimately. But Andre only arrived in Miami weeks ago, after running away from small-town Alabama and his abusive father. When Martin discovers Andre trading sexual favors for a place to stay, he offers him a room in his studio apartment. As roommates only.
What starts as a playful friendship turns into something more as Andre begins posing for Martin, whose true passion is painting fantastical portraits. Martin’s obsession with Andre grows until they are sharing more than just flirtatious conversation. But when an eccentric art collector buys one of Martin’s paintings, Martin’s past jealousies resurface and threaten to destroy what he and Andre have so lovingly built.
Readers love Andre in Flight by Laura Lascarso
“With a happy ending, interesting and multi-layered characters and a whole bunch of twisty plot, this is a good story that I feel should appeal to many readers.”
—Long and Short Reviews
“Andre in Flight by Laura Lascarso is a beautifully written story about soul mates and eternal love. The author has done an excellent job in capturing the emotions, longing, grief and creativity which will leave you wanting for more.”
—Gay Book Reviews
“…the writing is elegant and the characters well drawn and realistic, which is exactly what I expected.”
—Prism Book Alliance
LAURA LASCARSO lives in north Florida with her darling husband, two children, and a menagerie of animals. Her debut novel, Counting Backwards (Simon & Schuster 2012) won the Florida Book Award gold medal for young adult literature. She aims to inspire more questions than answers in her fiction and believes in the power of stories to heal and transform a society.
For social critiques, writer puns, and Parks and Rec gifs, follow her on Twitter @lauralascarso
Website: lauralascarso.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/lascarso
Twitter: @lauralascarso
By Laura Lascarso
Andre in Flight
The Bravest Thing
One Pulse (Dreamspinner Anthology)
Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS
www.dreamspinnerpress.com
Published by
DREAMSPINNER PRESS
5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA
www.dreamspinnerpress.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Bravest Thing
© 2017 Laura Lascarso.
Cover Art
© 2017 AngstyG.
www.angstyg.com
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dreamspinnerpress.com.
ISBN: 978-1-63533-635-1
Digital ISBN: 978-1-63533-636-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016963404
Published April 2017
v. 1.0
Printed in the United States of America
The Bravest Thing Page 24