Page 232 of Tell Me I'm Enough

His jaw flexes, and he just nods, keeping his eyes on the road. “I did…”

I sit there, waiting for more from him.

“I’m sorry,” he says softly, glancing over at me. “I just…didn’t have any of the right things to say yet.”

I scoff. “That’s convenient.”

“I’m not trying to fight with you, Simone,” he says quietly.

I swallow my attitude down, because I’m not either. I don’t know why I’m being so hostile. I’m just annoyed and hurt. I just…miss him. And that’s the stupidest part.

We drive another block. Then, out of nowhere, he finally breaks the silence in the car. “I haven’t…drank in thirty-two days.”

I turn fully toward him, confused. “What?”

His eyes stay on the road. “Thirty-two days. No alcohol.”

I’m stunned for a moment, just stuck there staring at him. I don’t know what expression is on my face right now, but it makes him brace a little.

“I’m not saying it to get any points here,” he adds. “I just…I wanted you to know.”

My throat feels thick. “Why thirty-two?”

He looks over at me when he pulls up to one of the campus’s stop signs. “Because I couldn’t stop thinking about that Halloween party, about you, about my brothers…about everything I don’t want to lose. And winter break gave me the perfect opportunity to do something about that.”

It clicks in my brain. When he got close to me tonight, when he got in the car, I didn’t smell any alcohol like I normally do around him. I just…I just thought it was because it was game night. But there’s never been a night he hasn’t reeked of some kind of liquor.

I knew something was different. I just…didn’t expectthat.

He’s actually sober?

And partly for…me?

I stare at him as the streetlights flash over his profile. He looks so raw, nothing like what I’m used to seeing. He’s not wearing the masks he always keeps on around everyone. He just looks like the little boy inside him who’s always begged to be acknowledged.

“I didn’t stop because I was strong,” he says, his voice a little rougher now. “I stopped because I was starting to scare myself.”

I whisper, “How?”

“I was starting to reach the point where I knew I wouldn’t come back from, where everything I cared about was slowly slipping from my grasp. I knew I was going to lose everything if I didn’t stop.”

I stare at him, lost for words. So proud of him, yet so sad he didn’t reach out.

“The withdrawals were hell,” he continues. “My body was constantly crawling, the nightmares were awful, and I never felt like I could get settled, no matter what I tried.”

My heart hurts for him, and it’s so desperate to be what fixes him. “You did that alone?”

His fingers tighten on the wheel. “Yeah.”

A part of me wants to scream at him.You should’ve called me. You should’ve told me. You didn’t have to do it alone.But the other part of me is quiet, because I know. I know he didn’t because he didn’t want to be seen like that; he still doesn’t know how to let himself be helped or held.

“You were sober at home…all break…around your dad?” I ask softly. “How was that?”

He swallows. “Bad.”

“Bad how?”

He hesitates. “I found out something and kind of went off on him.” A small grin appears on his face, and it confuses me at first. “Then I took a bat to his office building.”