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I shake my head and pour a cup of my own and sit on the ottoman at his feet.
“How do you feel?” I ask.
“Meh,” Carter says.
“So, what do we do now? Do we call your sponsor? Do you have one here? I’m not sure what the protocol is for this.” I reach over and run a hand along his leg.
Carter grins slightly. “Well, first of all, we don’t do anything. I call my sponsor, get to a meeting…go back to day one.”
“That doesn’t seem right?”
“That’s how this works.”
“So, you’re clean and sober for 397 days and one slip and everything you’ve accomplished, all your work, it’s erased, you’re given no credit for it. You have to pretend it didn’t even happen. Now it’s all a failure?”
Carter gives me a stunned look. “How did you know that?”
“Know what?”
“The count. You knew it was 397 days. How did you know that?”
“You mentioned it. I paid attention.” I exhale and meet his eyes. “I haven’t had a drink in ten days.”
His eyes grow wide. He looks away and swallows. Then he looks back at me and blinks, before looking away again.
“What? Was that the wrong thing? I just wanted to show my support…”
He reaches for the hand that had come to a stop on his ankle and looks at me again. He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. He tries again.
“That’s the most right thing I think anyone has ever done for me.” Then he breaks into a smile. “You’re ahead of me now.”
“You aren’t bothered about going back to day one?” Which, well, clearly, he isn’t.
“Relapses happen. In fact, they are sort of expected. It isn’t that the relapse is seen as a failure, it is simply seen as, well, a relapse. The count is defined as days sober. I wasn’t sober yesterday, so I start over today.” Carter just nods his head, not nearly as bothered by this as I am.
“D, I appreciate the concern, but this is the deal. I’ve got it.”
“Do you have a therapist here?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I have a sponsor. I’ve been to a few meetings. I know there are a lot of issues being here with you has created. A therapist is probably a good idea. Do you have one?”
I nod and tilt my head to the side.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I have one. I’ve just been a little lax in my attendance recently.”
“What’s recently?”
“I haven’t been in a year.”
Carter’s eyes widen and then he grows somber. “My being here, us being together… has that made things better or worse, do you think?”
I shake my head. “Honestly, I don’t really know. Better?”
“Oh, that was super convincing.”
“Carter, I have some issues,” I laugh at my own understatement of the century. But it’s true. I buried a lot. I blamed other people for things that weren’t their fault. I blamed myself for things that weren’t my fault. I convinced myself I didn’t deserve love or happiness. Carter has blown all that to bits, and I’m already terrified of screwing it up.
