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My brother, the somewhat functioning alcoholic, was speaking to me, his seventeen-year-old sister who was following in his footsteps.
His slur matched mine. He’d caught me in his liquor cabinet again. And it was likely he’d catch me in it again and again until I was old enough to buy my own. I didn’t want to be better than Tim. I wanted to be the broken and sullen teen. I wanted to hurt anyone who’d put their faith in me.
I knew pain.
It was easier to dish out what I felt.
“Whatever,” I said as I pushed past him. But my mind was fuzzy, and my body couldn’t quite follow commands. So instead I fell, narrowly missing bashing my head against the edge of the wall. I lay there, content not to do anything.
I was a mess. I’d probably die sooner than any of my classmates. But it was fitting. Trash taken out before the stench of it ruined the rest of the world.
That was my final thought before the blackness I craved started to take over, just as bile began to fill my esophagus. I felt my throat seize and heard Tim stumbling around, trying—and failing—to help me, and I knew I wasn’t going to make it.
This was it. And despite it all, I tried to fight it.
I wanted to live.
Noa
I unlockedthe front door and walked over to the kitchen, setting everything I had in my hands on the table.
My kitchen table was a mess—always.
It was my sanctuary. All things I walked into my house with ended up on that table.
I looked around. My space was different now that I had an eighteen-month-old baby.
I hated that I couldn’t just say he was a year and a half. I used to roll my eyes at the women who spoke the way I did now.
Still, I had less time to clean and more people to clean up after. I missed being alone, sure. But I loved Dylan with pieces of myself I never knew I had. Pieces that soothed the spots of my heart that Dexter had burned. Dylan brought those pieces back to life. It still hurt. But it was bearable with that little boy.
“Sweetheart?”
I turned at the sound of someone coming down the steps.
Theo. The man I was in a relationship with, who lived in my house and added to my mess. Sure, half the bills were taken care of. And he was a doctor—a surgeon. But he called mesweetheartand, despite myself, I knew I was just trying to find the calm after the Dexter storm.
Theo was that calm. He was predictable and reliable. He wasn’t too much. I was the only one who tended to be a little much from time to time, which he took with grace. It was strange.
“Did you put the clothes in the dryer?” I asked, as I watched him start putting away the things I’d set on the kitchen table.
Okay. Maybe he didn’t add to the mess.
MaybeIwas the mess.
“Mhm.” He leaned close and kissed my lips.
Don’t do it. A kiss is a kiss.
I was lying. A kiss wasn’t just a kiss. It was a reminder of everything I was doing wrong. And I did it anyway—but I thought of Dexter every time. I couldn’t help it; Dexter was what I knew. He was my baseline, and man, did he set the standard pretty fucking high.
It didn’t matter that I’d been with Theo for over a year now and that he’d moved in a few months ago. It didn’t matter that I had sex with him regularly and actually enjoyed it.
It didn’t matter. I was the world’s biggest liar.
I could fool everyone except myself.
I wondered if our relationship would have a better chance if Dexter weren’t around, but the mere thought of not seeing him made my stomach sink. I couldn’t fathom a world without him in it, even if he was no good for my sanity.
