Max directed Tate into town, unable to drive them himself, and to the coffee shop he frequented, ordering the strongest coffee on the menu, as well as a chocolate muffin. They sat at the same table he’d been sitting at when Grace had joined him the day before. Max’s headache strengthened at the thought of her. Jesus. She must think him an absolute prick. He was an absolute prick.
“So you wanna explain to me why I got a phone call from you at two o’clock this morning, at three o’clock this morning, and at four o’clock this morning?” Tate asked, showing him the missed-calls list on his cell phone. “As well as several texts telling me how much you wanted to drink yourself to death, how you couldn’t stay clean, how you were giving up?” Tate dropped his cell to the table and crossed his arms over his chest, serious and stern despite the T-shirt he wore, which read “A salt with a deadly weapon” underneath a picture of a salt shaker holding up a gun to a pepper shaker.
Max dropped his forehead to his forearm on the table and groaned. He only had a vague recollection of speaking to Tate. In regard to the texts, he was fucked if he could remember. “Christ, man, I’m sorry,” he mumbled before sitting up again. “If it’s any consolation, I feel like death wrapped in shit, wrapped in death. I’m really fucking sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Tate retorted firmly. “Tell me what the hell happened.”
Vomit crept up Max’s throat. He took a huge gulp of coffee to chase it back down. “Yesterday was . . . Lizzie—it was when she left. It was the date of when she left me.”
“And instead of calling you decided to deal with that little detail by getting hammered,” Tate stated. “Great choice. I see your time in rehab has really helped you make spot-on decisions. You drank your weight in alcohol while on antidepressants and all the other pills that—”
Max’s temper flared. “Fuck you, okay, I had a bad day, and I wanted a drink.” His curse and loud voice brought the attention of the other patrons to their table. Glancing around quickly, Max swallowed and took a breath. When he spoke again, it was quieter but still angry. “I shouldn’t but I did. I know for damn certain I’m not the first it’s happened to. You can’t sit there all fucking self-righteous, either, when you know you did the same. I can’t change it. It is what it is.”
“No,” Tate argued. “It isn’t. Yes, I fucked up when I first left rehab, too. And I’m gonna tell you exactly what my sponsor told me: You have the choice, Max. You have the tools to make a good decision, to fight against days like yesterday. You have people who care about you, who want what’s best for you, and you can’t afford to forget that.”
Max clasped the bridge of his nose and sighed. He did know it. He knew he’d let everyone down, he knew it was a setback after months of hard work and fight. It was just that some days the fight in him just wasn’t enough.
“Open your wallet,” Tate said.
Too dizzy and tired to ask why, Max pulled his wallet from his jeans pocket and handed it to his sponsor. Tate opened it and pulled out the five NA medallions Max had received.
Tate pushed them into a circle. “These show how far you’ve come,” he said, his voice quieter. “These show the choice you made five months ago when you grabbed your addiction by the balls and said ‘screw you, bitch, I’m fighting this.’ ”
Max held his head in his hands. “It’s hard sometimes.”
Tate scoffed. “No shit. It’s hard all the time, Max. All the time. And it’ll continue being hard for the rest of your life, because that’s what we, as addicts, have to survive. You think I still don’t have bad days? Days where I just want to call my old dealer or steal a prescription and get dosed? I do.” He stared at the coffee cup between his hands. “But then I remember what that would do to my parents, my family, and my friends. To me. And that’s what you need to do.”
“I did,” Max mumbled. “I knew this day was coming. I haven’t slept all week. I’ve had nightmares like you wouldn’t believe, even with my meds. I painted for the first time since I got here. I went for a run, I tried to sleep, to read, I called Carter, Elliot, but it was like a fucking lead weight around my neck. I couldn’t breathe. The only thing I knew would ease it was a line.” He grimaced. “So I went to the bar to find the next-best thing.”
The two men sat in silence, both drained by their respective struggles. “Max, I get it,” Tate offered quietly. “You know I do. But these days will happen. They’ll poleax you and leave you desperate to throw your medallions away. But, I promise you, one day you’ll wake up and you won’t think about a line, or a pill, or any kind of fucked-up high first. You’ll find something that makes you want to leap out of bed in the morning and say ‘come on life, bring it, I’m ready.’ ”
Max picked a chocolate chip off his muffin and put it in his mouth. Grace was right. They were good, even with more alcohol in his veins than actual blood.
“Promise me next time you’ll call me before you get to the bar, not when you leave it,” Tate urged.
“Next time?”
“There’ll be many. That’s a fact.”
And didn’t that sound superfun? Max nodded despondently.
“Good. Now call Elliot for an emergency appointment.”