Page 53 of The Spider & the Storm

Say something, they said.

No, you, mine said back.

Her brows lifted with a stern demand to man up and intervene, and Luke broke our silent, private conversation with a groan and athwackof his palm against the side of my head. Hard enough to send a message, not hard enough to inflict pain.

“Will you guys knock it off?” he grumbled irritably in the same tone he always used when we questioned his strength and sobriety. “I didn’t sayIwas gonna get wasted.”

“Well, I’m not going to either,” I declared.

While it might have sounded like a noble gesture of camaraderie—and it was—Luke wasn’t my only reason why I had no intention of drinking. I hated the taste of alcohol. Hated the way it made me feel. I’d only ever been tipsy on one occasion—on New Year’s with Melanie and Luke when I was eighteen—and the lack of control I felt after only a few glasses of shitty wine had scared me enough to never want to do it again. Especially after witnessing firsthand how toxic it could be to your life and the relationships in it.

But Luke didn’t like my answer, and he proved as much later that night, when he came to pick me up from work at the cemetery.

Ever since I’d started driving a couple of years back, Luke and I had been sharing Dad’s old car. Luke had said on many occasions that he was going to take the money he got from the sale of his old truck and get himself a motorcycle, and once he did, he’d give the keys to the car to me for good. But he hadn’t yet saved the extra money he’d likely need for his dream Harley, and so, whenever his shift at Melanie’s dad’s shop aligned with mine, one of us picked the other up.

It had been a fine system, until that night, when instead of turning onto our street, he kept on driving.

“Where are we going?” I asked, not intending to sound as worried as I did.

But I was a creature of habit. I liked my days to go as planned. It felt safe, it felt comfortable, and if something was even remotely out of place, I worried.

“I’m buying you a drink,” he said matter-of-factly, not taking his eyes off the road.

That was when I realized he was driving in the direction of Tony’s, and I ran a hand through my hair and held my palm to the crown of my head.

“No.What? No, come on. Melanie’s making dinner, right? And w-we’re having cake, and—”

“Relax, will you? Jesus.” He shook his head. “It’s one drink. Can’t I buy my little brotheronedrink on his twenty-first birthday, huh?”

It didn’t feel good. Nothing about it did, and I grimaced as I replied, “Shit … I don’t know. Let’s just—”

“Being in a bar isn’t gonna miraculously ruin everything I’ve done in the pastyear, okay? One drink. That’s all I’m asking. Just one. It’s what Dad would’ve done, right? So, just … just give this to me, okay?Please.”

He was begging, and it made me waver. It was cheap, using Dad like that. But he wasn’t wrong. I knew that was exactly what our father would’ve done—for both of us. He would’ve taken us down to Tony’s, bought us a beer, clapped us on the back, and told us how proud he was. And given that Luke had been the person to help me survive these past six years, I started to think that maybe it wouldn’t hurt to let him buy me that one drink. Never mind every warning I’d ever heard about letting an alcoholic walk within the vicinity of a bar.

I realized that what I wanted was to pretend that everything was fine for a couple of minutes. I wanted to pretend that we—all of us—were fine. That life was good. That Luke’s alcoholism wasn’t a giant fucking elephant sitting in the corner of every room, and my anxiety and penchant for premonitions weren’t a couple of shit-talking demons sitting on my shoulders.

So, I agreed.

I was going to let my brother buy me a beer. Iwantedto. Because it was what Dad would’ve done, and right now, Luke was the closest I was going to get to our father.

***

The thing was, I had always considered myself a smart guy.

I’d flown through school, thanks to being taught at home and being allowed to work at my own pace. Mom and Dad had set up college funds for both Luke and me, and while Luke had spent his on bills and food, I’d spent mine on getting my GED and taking college classes online at sixteen. I’d graduated with my bachelor’s degree just a few months before my nineteenth birthday, and I could run circles around nearly anyone in a game of Trivial Pursuit.

My point is, academically, I was a pretty smart guy. Book smart. Intellectually intelligent. A fucking nerd, as Luke would call it.

But I was also naive, and although my intuition had always been strong to a fault, I wanted to believe so badly that I could knock back a beer beside my brother without the fear of him sliding face-first off of the wagon.

But of course, that wasn’t what happened. And anyone else would’ve seen that coming from three hundred miles away. Hell, I did, too, when I really thought about it. But hope had a way of making us do dangerous, stupid things sometimes. And stepping foot into Tony’s Bar was a dangerous, stupid, stupid,stupidthing.

It started with one beer. Just one, and it was mine.

Luke watched me take a pull in a way that looked serene and desperate at the same time.

“How is it?” he asked, and I grimaced, choked, and barely swallowed before croaking, “Horrible.”

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