Page 18 of The Ballad of Us
Just one, the voice in my head whispers. One drink to take the edge off. You've been doing so well. You deserve to relax. It's not like you're going to spiral from one drink.
Except I know better. I've always known better.
The first time I drank, I was fourteen years old, raiding my adoptive father's liquor cabinet because the nightmares about Mom's death were getting worse. That first sip of whiskey burned going down, but it made everything softer. Quieter. Bearable.
It also started a pattern that nearly killed me multiple times over the next sixteen years.
I lift the glass to my lips, and the smell hits me first—that distinctive Jack Daniel's scent that used to mean relief, oblivion, escape. My hand trembles slightly, and I'm not sure if it's from wanting this or from being terrified of wanting it.
Rhea wouldn't leave you over one drink, the voice argues. She's not like that. She loves you. She understands the pressure you're under.
But that's a lie, and I know it. It's not about whether she'd leave me. It's about whether I'm the man I promised her I'd be. The man I promised myself I'd be.
The whiskey touches my tongue.
It's like coming home to a place you swore you'd never return to. The burn, the heat, the way it seems to quiet all the noise in my head for just a moment. One moment of peace in a brain that never stops moving, questioning, or being afraid.
I drain the glass in two swallows.
"Another," I tell the bartender, and I don't even recognize my own voice.
He pours without comment, probably used to watching people make terrible decisions at two in the morning.
This one goes down easier. It always does.
By the time I head back upstairs, I've had four. Not enough to be drunk—I've built up too much tolerance over the years for four drinks to do much—but enough that I can't lie to myself anymore about what this means.
The hotel room is dark when I slip inside, moving as quietly as possible. Rhea is exactly where I pictured her, curled on her side, breathing deep and even. Beautiful and trusting and completely unaware that I just shattered something we can't repair.
I should wake her up. I should tell her what I did. Get ahead of the lie before it has a chance to grow.
Instead, I brush my teeth twice, change into sleeping clothes, and slide into bed beside her. She shifts in her sleep, automatically curling into my side, her hand coming to rest over my heart.
"Love you," she mumbles, mostly asleep.
"Love you too, baby," I whisper back, and the words feel like ashes in my mouth.
She'll find out eventually. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, but eventually the truth always surfaces. The drinks will become a regular thing. One will become two, two will become six, six will become however many it takes to stop feeling everything so intensely.
And Rhea, my sweet, patient, endlessly forgiving Rhea, will watch me disappear one drink at a time until I'm nothing but a ghost wearing the face of the man she fell in love with.
But that's future Gray's problem.
Tonight, I just hold her close and try to memorize what it feels like to be the man she believes I am. Because part of me knows, even now, that I'm already losing that man.
The whiskey sits warm in my stomach, and for the first time in six months, the voice in my head finally goes quiet.
I fall asleep thinking that maybe, just maybe, I can control this.
I'm wrong.
I'm always wrong about this.
But I won't admit that for another two and a half years, not until I wake up in that Atlanta alley with no memory of how I got there and Rhea's voicemail telling me she's gone.
I look back at my reflection one last time and notice that for the first time in months, there’s the faintest flicker of hope in my eyes.
The road ahead stretches for ninety days and beyond. If I’m lucky, it will be years of sobriety and a lifetime spent carrying the weight of my choices, no matter where they lead.
