Page 54 of The Spider & the Storm

We laughed, and, fuck, it felt so normal and good to laugh with him. His hand on my back, moisture collecting in both of our eyes as we fell into silly hysterics. And why the hell we were laughing so hard, I had no idea, but there we were, belliedup to Tony’s polished bar and unable to stop laughing until our stomachs hurt and the tears were flowing into our nearly identical beards.

“Ah fuck,” Luke muttered, running his palm over his mouth and chin. He sighed audibly and pushed his fingers into his hair. “What a crazy fuckin’ life it’s been, huh?”

The joy and laughter wilted like a dying flower as I nodded and quietly replied, “Yeah, it has been.”

“We did okay though,” he said with reassurance, and I wasn’t sure if that had been for him or me. “I mean, all things considered, we turned out all right. I’m getting fucking married, I have a good job, and you …” His hand clapped against my back once again. “You’re working, you’re fuckingdriving, and you’re not nearly as neurotic as you used to be.”

I chuckled with melancholy at that. Luke always had a harsh way of speaking the truth, but that didn’t make it any less true. I was doing better—Dr. Sibilia told me frequently. Panic still had a way of choking the life out of me sometimes, but it wasn’t nearly as debilitating as it had once been.

“So … yeah, man.” He nodded to himself, his fingertips tracing a knot in the mahogany wood. “All things considered, I’d say we did pretty fuckin’ good.”

“Mom and Dad would be proud,” I said, unsure why I had even spoken it out loud. I didn’t like to talk about them like that—and especially not with Luke.

He swallowed hard, the muscles in his throat shifting. “Yeah,” he replied in a whisper.

I realized too late that it’d been the wrong thing to do—mentioning Mom and Dad—because that was when Luke uttered a rasped curse and grabbed the neck of my beer bottle.

Then, without a second thought, he took a sip.

I watched in horror, like I’d just witnessed a homicide. He’d been sober for over a year—a whole fuckingyear—and it had taken my birthday and a stupid comment about our dead parents to tip him over the edge.

“What the hell, Luke?” I hissed with a gasp.

“Relax,” he said, then cleared his throat and sucked at his teeth.

He stared at that bottle, looking down its gaping mouth as he licked his lips. His eyes were glazed over, in a trance, gazing into the amber glass like a junkie who’d just gotten a sought-after fix—and, I guessed, that was technically what my brother was.

A junkie.

An addict.

And after a year of fighting to shake the hold his poison of choice had on him, he’d given in.

And it was all my fault. Always,alwaysmy fucking fault.

“Luke,” I said, already sliding off my barstool. “I think we should go. Melanie—”

“Hey!” he called the bartender. “Bring me another one of these, will ya?”

The bartender nodded, and I could only stare at my brother, horrified, as a turbulent wave of nausea barreled over me.

No, no, no.

“It’s one beer, Charlie,” he muttered, giving me the nastiest side-eye glare I’d ever seen.

“You shouldn’t haveone beer,” I murmured just as the bartender slid the bottle over.

Luke caught it like a seasoned pro and knocked it back without a second to spare.

“God, we never should’ve come here,” I said, shaking my head as he guzzled the whole damn thing down in three hearty gulps.

He sighed and smacked his lips, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. His eyes rolled toward mine, and I could see it already. Sober Luke was gone. Just like that. One stupid little fucking sip was all it had taken to wipe away every bit of his progress.

Why didn’t I drive the fucking car?

“Oh, shut up, Charlie. I’m fine, okay? Fuckingrelax.”

And, hell, you know what? Maybe it could’ve been fine. Maybe in some other dimension, we walked out of that bar with one celebratory beer under each of our belts without any lasting damage to my brother’s journey of an alcohol-free life. But that wasn’t what happened.

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