Page 110 of Rookie Recovery

She tilted her head. “You think you called it wrong?”

“I don’t know, but …” More words tumbled out of my drunk, stupid, blabbering mouth. “I love him.”

Katie stopped walking.

Which meant I stopped walking because she was still holding onto me with claw-like fingers. The world swayed around me, colors and sounds and lights and darkness. City and trees and cars and people. Things blurring and smudging like all my emotions inside.

“You love him.”

“I love him.” There they were. Again. So easy! Just like that. They spilled out and they were right and I knew they were right. And Katie knew it too, I could tell by the low pull of her brows.

“And … have you told him?“ Oh, that’s why she was looking all stern and serious. She wanted to ask stern and serious girl questions.

“Told him what?”

“That you love him, Jamie. Jesus.” Her head tipped back, offering an implorement to the actual son of God. “Have you told him you love him?”

“Um.” My brows furrowed tight enough to give me a headache. “No?”

Katie pinched my arm as she started walking again, dragging me along with her. Sending everything pitching and swaying and spinning. “Well, there you go, dumbass.”

“There what goes?” I tilted my face in front of her. Mistake. More spinning. “I don’t get it.”

Katie sighed as we reached the entrance to my apartment building. At least, I thought it was. Oh, yeah, that was the nighttime door guy, the pristine lobby, the fucking fountain—all of it way too nice for my sloppy, pathetic drunk ass.

I laughed, and Katie shoved me into the elevator.

“You have to tell him how you feel,” she said as the elevator went up—and my stomach stayed down. Jesus, did elevators always suck this bad? Or did rum make them worse? It was probably that one. “Tell him you love him.”

“He deserves better than me.”

“Maybe.” The elevator opened; Katie nudged me out. “But that’s his decision, not yours.”

Then, we were in my condo, and it was too big and too empty, even with Brady prancing around, nuzzling up against me like I wasn’t the worst dog-parent in the world and wagging her entire body for Katie.

“I’m gonna take her out, okay?” Katie snagged the leash off the hook by the door. “Be back.”

I plopped into a bar stool and stared at the screen of my phone. Nothing. Silence and hollow emptiness and nothingness. You have to tell him how you feel.

But it wasn’t as easy as that, was it?

Was it?

I stared at that blank screen until Katie and Brady returned. Whatever she said washed over me without sticking. In one drunk ear and out the other. Then those claw-hands were on me again, leading me into the living room. Pushing me down on the couch. Upright.

She turned the TV on, switched it over to Comedy Central for reruns of the Office. Then she sat next to me. “You okay here? I’m afraid you’ll puke if I put you in bed.”

“Probably,” I mumbled. “I drank all the booze.”

“I can see that.”

“You think I should tell him?”

“I think you should sleep, then think about it like a sober adult and not an emo mopey teenager.”

“Boring. I hate sobriety.”

“Yeah, okay. There’s a bucket next to you.”

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