Other Broken Things (7 page)

He looks up at me. “You're serious?”

I nod. “Zip up, B. I'll catch you at school.”

His dark eyes blink at me in shock. I don't know why he's so surprised. We're hardly the hang-around-and-chat-after-sex types. He pulls himself together and shakes his head, opening and closing his mouth a bunch of times like he wants to lay into me but can't find the words. Whatever. He's the only one who's come, so I'm not sure what he's got to complain about.

Resigned, he drops a kiss on my head, tucking my curly hair behind both my ears, and says, “I get that you're avoiding this, but we really do need to talk at some point.”

I shake my head. “B. Stop aiming so high. We're not going to be a thing. Move on.” I kiss him though, because I'm buzzing enough that I want to. “Thanks for the vodka.”

He leaves and I collapse on my bed, staring at the ceiling as the buzz courses through me. It's not full-on drunk. I could've had at least two more water bottles, even though the vodka made up more than half the concoction. Still. It's been enough time that it feels good and it's better than Tylenol with codeine.

I end up texting Brent again an hour later when I see the hole in the wall of my closet.

Sorry. Come back?

What for?

Truth?

Please.

More fortification. Bring condoms.

His pause is way long and I think he's going to bail, despite my added incentive, but finally he answers,
Fine
.

When he gets to my room—past my mom, who doesn't offer anything but a polite “It's nice to see you, Brent” in her worried voice—I drop to my knees as soon as he shuts the door.

“Nat,” he says, but then he shuts up real quick as I unbutton his pants.

I'm still buzzed enough that it's not a big deal, pulling out his dick and shoving down his boxers so they're cutting across the tops of his thighs. I'm also sober enough and motivated enough for more vodka not to be sloppy and make Brent realize I'm not that into this.

I used to hate the whole business of blowjobs, worrying if it'd be rude to spit or pull off before he got too close to coming. Then one time when I was too wasted to do more than just let Brent shove himself in and out of my mouth, he came and it turned out swallowing it all really fast like a shot of shitty Jäger was much easier than stressing about spitting or dealing with him wanting to go longer.

“Nat,” he says again as I work my tongue around him in circles. I hold his hip with one hand so he doesn't start trying to control the situation, and grip the base of him with the other hand so I barely have to do more than pay attention to the top inch of his junk.

“Enough,” he says after a minute of my half-assed licking. “You're not even into it.”

Shit. “I am,” I lie.

“Give me a break,” he says, pulling me onto my feet. “Talk.”

“No.” I try to drop down again, but he holds my elbows and looks at me hard.

“Nat.”

“Where's my vodka-cran?”

He sighs and pulls two bottles from the inside of his Mark Jacobs down coat. I snag them and shimmy out of my jeans as I down the first bottle. I turn and am ready to pound the second bottle before we really get to things, but he's standing at my door, rebuttoning his pants. He has the saddest look on his face. Too many questions, too many answers, too many things we're supposed to say but I don't fucking want to.

“You're a dick,” I say, my voice cracking.

“Yeah. So you say.”

“Thought you said you wanted to have sex?” I wiggle, trying to distract him. Trying to do something to wipe the look off his face.

He shakes his head and opens the door. “Let me know when you're ready to talk.”

He slips out of my room and it's the worst kind of sucker punch. I throw the empty bottle at the door and quickly uncap the second one, slamming it down even faster. This night needs to fade away.

I wear my Prada sunglasses
to my sponsor meeting with Kathy. She's already got a full cup of coffee and a half-eaten scone beside her when I get there. Plus the
Big Book
right in the middle of the table. I quickly glance around to see if anyone I recognize is here, since apparently my sponsor is as subtle as a car crash. No one is and I ease into the chair opposite her.

I point to the book. “Isn't there a pocket-sized version of that so we don't have to be so obvious?”

She rifles through her big pleather bag. Same one she had at the meeting. I almost feel guilty about the number of Coach and Kate Spade purses in my closet, but whatever, I can't help my parents being rich.

“As a matter of fact, there is.” She hands me a mini
Big Book
and I drop it in my lap. “Are you ashamed of someone seeing you?”

“Yes. Duh. I mean, my friends know I went to rehab, but the whole town doesn't. And my dad sort of wants to keep it on the down low.”

Her face pinches. “Huh.” She grabs the book and shoves it into her bag—yes, the bag is
that
big—and pulls out another mini. Which, okay, so she was testing me? And apparently carries an entire library in her bag.

“Lose the glasses,” she says. I push them off my face and up to hold my hair back. My hair is loose and crazy, untamed curls because I woke up too late to shower.

“Yes, ma'am,” I mumble.

She tips her head to the side. “You're hungover? Jesus.”

“What? No, I'm not.”

“Of course you are. I've seen that look in my own mirror more than once. It's not a bad hangover, but it's still a hangover.”

She's right, but I don't say anything. Silence normally makes people think they're wrong or being judgmental. Unfortunately not with Kathy.

“That's strike one. Two more and I'm dropping you as a spons. I don't need the hassle, and if you're just playing, I'd prefer to have my Sunday mornings to myself, thank you very much.”

“Why are you even doing this?”

She takes a sip of coffee and shrugs. “
My
sponsor told me it was time I get a spons of my own. It's the Twelfth Step, helping bring the message to others, practicing it in all aspects of our lives.”

I smirk. “So? You need me as much as I need you.”

“Hardly. There are always people looking for sponsors. Way more demand than supply at SFC. You're lucky I agreed to take you on.”

I probably am, but I'm not about to admit it. Especially with my head pounding as much as it is. “So you said there were rules?”

She nods and pushes the plate of scone toward me. I shake my head because, gross, I'm not eating half of someone else's food, and also, I need grease right now.

“You need to call me every day you're not going to a meeting. I need you to meet me here once a week. I need you to call me if you're thinking of drinking again. I need you to shut up and listen.”

“That all?”

“Yeah. It's not that hard.”

She's basically just mandated that we're to be best girlfriends for an undetermined length of time. Sure, not that hard.

“I'm already at the Eleventh Step,” I say.

She laughs. Not even shy. More like a horse laugh. The barista looks over at us and I slump a little in my chair. “You're not at the Eleventh Step. You don't even believe in God. I saw you mouthing ‘watermelon' during the Lord's Prayer on Friday night.”

Oh. Well, seriously. I'm sure half those women in there do the same thing. At least I'm not being hypocritical.

“Your first assignment is to read the chapter for the agnostics in the
Big Book
. It's called ‘We Agnostics.' ”

“I have a crap ton of homework to make up, Kathy. And I'm starting my community service today.”

“Yeah. Joe told me about that. It'll be good for you. Meet some of the other guys at SFC. Get to know people in the program. But still. Read the chapter. Before next Sunday. It's not that long.”

I've read it before. In rehab. My therapist suggested it when I first started arguing that God didn't exist. But if I'm being completely honest, I don't really remember much of it. Pretty much the only two things I remember about rehab were the itching need to either get drunk or get out. Most of the time both those things at once.

“Fine.”

“You still have my number?” she asks, and I nod. “Good. Call me before school every morning you're not going to a meeting. What time is your first class?”

“Eight.”

“Okay. I'm up by six. So call anytime after that. What days are you going to meetings?”

I shrug. “Haven't really locked in my schedule yet.”

“Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Sundays with me, then pancake breakfast.”

“Are you handling me?”

She shakes her head. “Not my job. I'm just trying to make it as easy as possible for you to stay sober. Let's go outside and smoke.”

Yes. Okay. This is good. This, I can deal with. Only as soon as we go outside and light up, she starts asking a bunch of personal questions about my family, my life, my DUI. And I'm wondering if this whole sponsor idea is not such a good one after all.

“Look, Natalie. I don't give a shit if you've got an attitude. Life can be crap sometimes and it's best you know that early. Then you won't be surprised when things go to hell. If you recognize nothing's perfect, you won't drink to make it go away, because you realize it never goes away. There's constant suffering. It's good you understand that.”

“So today's lesson is: get used to suckiness? Bang-up job on the sponsoring, Kath. You're reeling me right into the program.”

She snorts. “I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.”

I blow a ring of smoke. “So how about you do that? Tell me something different. Give me some wisdom here, so peeling my eyes open this morning feels worth it.”

“How about this one: everyone alcoholic, including you, princess, is a liar.”

“I'm not . . . ,” I start, but she waves her cigarette around.

“You are. And your attitude comes from the fact that you think everyone else is lying too. Not just the alcoholics. Everyone. And the reason you think that is because you lie all the time. That's what alcoholics do. And once you get real with the fact that more than likely you're the only liar in the room, you'll save yourself a ton of grief. And you'll start to trust people.”

I want to snark back. I want to call her out on drinking the AA Kool-Aid without thinking critically about what a huge crock it all is, trusting some higher power to get yourself clean. Like some invisible dude in the sky is going to be able to make you say no when your friend is standing in front of you with a pitcher of margaritas or is going to swoop in when everything gets snatched away from you.

But I say nothing and take another drag of my cigarette. Kathy smiles.

“Good. You're already learning. Shut up and listen. You'll get out of the hole eventually.”

The pancake breakfast
is hopping. Which means a bunch of super-old guys who reek of cigarettes and pee are waiting in a line for someone to hand them a Styrofoam plate containing two sausages and three pancakes drowned in syrup. Joe's standing behind the tub of sausages, tonging two onto a plate, then passing the plate to a younger woman who adds pancakes and a soup ladle of syrup. She offers a big smile to every one of the dudes she passes a plate to.

Kathy joins the back of the line and points me to Joe.

“Unless you want to eat first?” she adds.

“Um, no. Gross.” I'm about to ask her if maybe our little coffee chat this morning counted as a reason to sign my court card, but I don't want to push it after she called me out for being hungover.

I walk over to Joe with my head up and my shoulders back. I splashed some water on my face at Starbucks so I'm feeling much better. He sees me and shakes his head.

“You're going to need a hairnet for that hair. And if you show up again hungover, I'm sending you home.”

Jesus. Do these people have some sort of built-in sobriety chip?

“You're not the boss of me.” Okay, I'm five. But whatever. A hello would've been nice.

“No. She is. Natalie, this is Kara. Kara, this is Natalie. Nat's got community service hours. She can help you out for probably the next five or six months.”

Kara beams at the same time I sputter, “Six months?”

He looks at me, gaze darting over my face, then down the rest of me in a quick perusal. “How many hours do you have?”

“A hundred.”

He lifts a shoulder. “Well, there you go. Five hours once a week. Twenty weeks. You'll be here the next five months, give or take, depending on holidays and your schedule. I thought you were good at math?”

“Fuck off.”

He laughs. Kara is still smiling wide and handing plates to the guys in line. She's put so much syrup on each plate the sausages look as if they're floating in a moat.

“You probably could ease up on the syrup,” I suggest.

“Oh. You know syrup? Great. You can do that. I'll hand the plates to you, you add the syrup, and give them to the guys. Our regular syrup guy is in Florida.”

“Lucky,” I mumble before sliding next to her. Joe chuckles and pulls something from a box behind him before handing it to me.

I look at it. “Hairnet? You were for real about that?”

“Of course I was. No one wants to come across one of those curls while they're eating. Put it on.”

“Yes, sir.” I stick out my tongue and he laughs at me again.

“I know you're meeting with Kathy on Sunday mornings, but you'll need to do that earlier. We need you here by eight for setup. Breakfast is nine to noon. An hour of cleanup afterward.”