Page 11 of Nailed (Dad Bod Contracting 3)
“It didn’t last, huh?”
He barks a laugh, a bitter sound. “It lasted six months. And, to be honest, those six months were the best of our relationship. She was working, she was fairly level, didn’t drink all that much or smoke or pop pills, she was happy, she was affectionate, business started to pick up again.” He sighs. “And then she got a DUI. She was over twice the limit, in the middle of the day. I took care of it—paid the fines, bailed her out of jail, got her car out of impound, went to court to get her fines reduced, which cost a mint in lawyer fees. And then, bam, less than two months later—two months of her going to AA once a week, and I know she went because I took her and waited outside and picked her up—she got another DUI. This time, she took my truck in the middle of the night—she was hammered and stoned and decided she needed food to sober up, and she went to Denny’s.”
“Ryder, god…how much more could you have taken, at that point?”
He sighs, a pained expression on his face. “I loved her, Laurel. We’d been together ten years by that point. How could I just abandon her? She’d get herself killed without me.”
I winced. “God, that had to be hard.”
“There aren’t really words for it, honestly. Yeah, I thought about leaving her all the time. But I kept coming back to the question of what would happen to her without me?”
“So what was the breaking point?”
“She led the police on a high-speed chase through a quiet suburban neighborhood, hammered off her ass. And then, while on a high-speed chase, she popped a handful of pills, threw them down with a slug straight from a bottle of vodka she’d bought with loose change, and OD’d. Behind the wheel. I think at this point she was trying to kill herself, she just didn’t have the…I don’t know, courage? That’s the wrong word, but I don’t know what the right word is, just that she wasn’t going to cut her wrists or shoot herself, so OD-ing behind the wheel was her way of trying to end things, I think. Only, her luck held out one last time—going ninety through an intersection she rear-ended a car. The other driver was seriously injured, but Amy didn’t have a scratch. The lucky part was that the other driver didn’t die, which was a miracle, considering how bad the wreck was.”
“Jesus, Ryder.”
He laughs bitterly. “Sorry you asked, now, aren’t you?” He sighs. “There was no avoiding jail time for her, this time. The costs piled up, my debt increased, and I was getting desperate. I knew it was only a matter of time before she killed herself or someone else. So, when she got out of jail, I gave her an ultimatum. She had to get clean and stay clean, or I’d leave her.”
“Good for you.”
The bitter laugh, this time, was painful to hear. “Yeah, if I’d only had the balls to keep it. I gave her the ultimatum in the car on the way home from jail. Mistake, that was—a big mistake. She opened the car door and unbuckled—and we were on the freeway doing seventy-five. Stone-cold sober, she told me she’d kill herself if I ever left her.”
I exhale sharply. “Oh, wow.”
He nods. “Yep. So…I mean, I wasn’t surprised, but she was dangling a foot out the door of a moving truck, threatening to throw herself out if I didn’t promise to stay with her, so I promised.”
“God, Ryder.”
He takes a sip, finally, but a tiny one. More for something to do to cover his emotions than anything. “Part of her sentence for the crash was court-ordered mandatory rehab, the kind you can’t just check yourself out of when you feel like you’re all better. The rehab…that was the last straw for me, financially. I ended up having to sell my business to keep from going bankrupt, had to sell the house, my truck, everything except my tools and this old, beat up, rusted-out piece of shit antique I’d salvaged as a project. I’d been fixing it up on the weekends, and I had it running, sort of. It wasn’t worth anything, so I couldn’t sell it, and it ended up being my only mode of transportation. The tools, the truck, and my personal effects were all I had left. I had this month-to-month lease at a dumpy apartment while I figured shit out, and that’s when everything blew up.”
“What do you mean, blew up? How much more blown up could things get?”
“Right? Broke, unemployed, all but homeless, my wife in rehab? Couldn’t get any worse, huh?” Another bitter laugh. “I got divorce papers in the mail.”
I rear back in shock. “What?”
He nods. “That was my reaction. I thought it was a cruel joke or something. Until I got the letter the next day—she’d sent the letter at the same time as the papers, but the papers arrived first for some reason. Her letter basically said rehab had shown her how much of a mess she’d made of her life and mine, and how she finally had to face the reality that she’d never be able to get clean if we were together because I’d keep bailing her out, keep fixing things for her. She apologized for everything, promised she was going to get better, and that if I had to move on, she’d understand, but she hoped I’d wait for her.”
