Page 52 of The Spider & the Storm

Sometimes, I'd wonder if it was because of me, as I had for years. If he'd still look like that if he hadn't had to look after me for as long as he had.

I had mentioned it to Dr. Sibilia during one session, the week before my twenty-first birthday.

“Charlie, why do you think you blame yourself so much for Luke's poor choices?” she asked, sliding her thick, black-framed glasses off her nose. She held them by one arm in her pinched fingers, tapping them against her bottom lip.

She had recently gotten a labret piercing, and I liked it. I thought it suited her, and I’d told her so. But I wasn’t thinking about that now as my legs began to bounce and my fingers began to scratch at the threads holding my jeans together.

“I don't know. I guess because …” I shrugged, lifting my hands. “Because he needed to cope somehow?”

I sounded unsure because I was. It just seemed like the right answer. What other reason was there?

Dr. Sibilia sucked in a deep breath and nodded, raising her gaze to the ceiling tiles.

“I'm not saying you're wrong,” she said even though it seemed an awful lot like she was, in fact, saying I was wrong. “But did you ever consider that Luke was already a legal adult when he took over as your guardian? A legal adult in control of making his own choices?”

My legs bounced quicker in short, erratic little movements as I looked away from her and argued, “He was barely an adult when Mom and Dad died.”

“No, I know that,” she reasoned, laying the glasses in her lap to scratch at the side of her neck. “But, Charlie, didn't Luke already drink and smoke before they died?”

“Yeah, but no more than the usual stupid teenager.”

“And was that by choice or because he was forced to”—she pursed her lips and clasped her hands together—“to cope with … what, being a stupid teenager?”

I knew she was testing me. I knew she was only helping me to navigate through my discombobulated brain and the shitty, tragic circumstances of my life. But her condescending tone pissed me off. That she would insult my brother like thisand make him sound like the loser I hated to think he was pissed me off even more.

“Grown freakin' men become alcoholics because of their circumstances. Their kid dies, or they lose their job or whatever. So, I don't know why you think it's so damn impossible for him to have used booze as a—”

“Charlie, I'm not saying he didn’t turn to alcohol as a way to cope with his circumstances,” she interrupted, her tone a bit gentler as she leaned forward in her seat across from mine. “All I'm asking is, at what point do you stop blaming yourself for the choices he's made? At what point do you stop believing that it's your fault and start holding him accountable for his own actions?”

I’d been seeing Dr. Sibilia for years now. I knew I had been lucky to find a therapist I clicked with on the first shot, but that was all Melanie’s doing. I couldn’t take credit for that. But as good as I’d felt about my sessions with the doctor—and as much of a positive impact as she’d made on my mental health—she also had a way of pushing my buttons, of making me think. And I guessed that was the point, right? She made me think, recalculate, and look at things in a different way.

But this … believing that Luke was solely to blame for his poor choices … I was too stubborn—tooguilty—to release my fault in that.

But it was fine now.

Because Luke had been sober for a year. He’d been attending his meetings, and he’d been at least somewhat present in the planning of his wedding.

So, whether he was solely to blame or not was moot at this point. Because he was better—we all were. And whatever had happened before no longer mattered.

***

“My little Charlie’s all grown up,” Melanie cooed in an overly dramatic, babyish tone as she pinched my chin in her grasp and pressed a wet kiss to my squished cheek.

I brushed her away and rubbed where she had squeezed. “I don’t wanna break it to you, but I’ve been grown up for a while.”

“You know what I mean.” She walked away from the table to head for the fridge in the kitchen. “Twenty-one is, like … there’s nothing else, you know? All restrictions are lifted now. You’re free to do anything.”

I grabbed the pepper shaker and dashed my scrambled eggs as I asked skeptically, “Like what?”

“Well, like …” She produced the bottle of orange juice from the fridge and pursed her lips as she shut the door. “Um … you could rent a car …”

Luke entered the room with the grandeur of a hungry and sleep-deprived toddler, his boots clomping loudly against the hardwood floor. He gripped my shoulders from behind and gave me a hearty shake.

“You can get legally wasted,” he chimed in, an air of wistful delight heavy in his tone.

As if on cue, Melanie and I both froze in place, and I held the breath within my aching lungs. Being around Luke in the year since he’d decided to get sober had been mostly great,but every now and then, especially during times like this, it felt like we were precariously walking over shattered glass. Afraid to take a step, afraid to slip, afraid of what jagged fragment might wedge itself into flesh, only to fester, infect, and eventually require antibiotics and amputation. Neither of us wanted to say the wrong thing. Neither of us knew exactly what the right thing was.

Melanie’s eyes dodged quickly to mine and narrowed.

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