35. Cole

Chapter 35

Cole

I blinked, and three months had passed.

I sat on the sofa, the sound of music coming from somewhere upstairs. Empty bottles and cans littered the floor, the couch, littered my fucking life.

I tipped the bottle back, letting every fucking drop fall down my throat. It did nothing to cure the ache, though. That wasn't from the booze anymore. No amount of alcohol killed it, no matter how much I drank. It got worse when I thought of her, when I thought of him, the ways in which he must be changing, how much bigger he must be by now.

It throbbed for the first time when I found out she'd resigned from her position. It throbbed again when I called Lottie ten minutes later, demanding she tell me where Dana had gotten a job and almost crying when she refused. It throbbed when I found myself on the bathroom floor almost every night, sick from too much booze and unable to stop thinking of her.

The binges had become worse. I couldn't remember the last time I was fully sober or the last full day of work I completed. I couldn't remember the last time I'd left my house. Everything was blurring, and she wouldn't answer my calls, she'd blocked me everywhere, and I couldn't even find a photo of my son. Lottie wouldn't tell me a single thing, wouldn't show me any recent pictures of him, instead sending me links to rehab facilities.

Everything was blurring, and I was losing my mind.

Blind hope was what led me to the door when my sensor dinged. I didn't check the camera. I knew it wasn't her, but I could pretend it was.

She'd taken every good part of me when she kicked me out of her life.

I pulled the door open, fully expecting nothing more than another package Bobby had delivered or maybe another crate from the liquor store, but instead, it was Grayson's face and black hair that filled my narrowing field of vision.

Before saying a word, he took a step back, covering his nose with the collar of his shirt. "Jesus, Cole."

I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen Gray, either. "What are… what are you doing here?"

"You're drunk," he said, and all I could do was nod. "It's one in the fucking afternoon."

"My sleep schedules fucked." I mumbled.

"You're slurring."

"If you…" I took a moment, centering myself to try to keep my words together. "If you just came here to point out my failures, you can leave."

He shook his head, the snow behind him melting as the sun sprung out from behind the clouds. "I'm not here for that. I'm sorry. I just wanted to see you if you wanted to, you know, go do something. Get out of the house."

I glanced over my shoulder at the state of the grand foyer. The sight of clothes strewn in random places, plastic bags and empty cardboard boxes from delivery after delivery, made me cringe. "Yeah. I would."

"Fishing, maybe?"

"I don't know how to fish."

"You can watch me then. Go put on clean clothes," he said, placing one hand against the center of my chest and pushing me back into the house. "If you have any."

————

It was barely spring. The trees were just beginning to grow their leaves, the birds chirping and playing in the little patches of snow that remained. The water, crystal as could be in the center of the lake, shimmered its reflection of the hanging sun and the open blue sky.

Gray had stopped at a local pizza place on the way, the level of grease nearly turning my stomach when he told me to eat half of it. I'd thrown up on the side of the road before he told me to eat some more, shoving a giant bottle of water in my face.

I was hitting the lows, that level just slightly above sobriety when I felt shaky and angry. The ache in my chest was all-consuming, but I watched as I sat across from him on the small fishing boat, taking in every stroke of his hands as he hooked a worm and cast his line. We sat in silence.

The longer we sat, the more sober I felt, and the more grounded in reality I became. Three months. I'd missed Drew's first Christmas, missed Dana's birthday. I'd miss Easter, too, at this rate. I couldn't help but think about how many Christmases, how many Easters and Halloweens and Fourth of Julys and birthdays my parents had missed when they left me.

But I'd had plenty of celebrations with my aunt. Those were the holidays I cherished the most, not the ones where I was spoiled with gifts and left to play with them alone. The Christmases where it was just me and her, and she got me the things I needed and a handful of things I wanted. The ones where we watched movies and drank eggnog, laughing about something that McAllister kid did even though we'd seen it a million times.

Dana would be that for Drew. That pure kind of love where you only want the other person to thrive, to be happy, to turn out the way you hope for them. I'd had that with Aunt Kathy, and the longer I sat there on the lake, the water nearly making me sick, the stench of a bucket of worms nauseating me to my core, the more I realized that I'd had it with Dana, too.

And I'd ruined it. I'd been the one to tear it down. I'd been the one who put myself in this position. I had the chance to have a family, to have love in a way I'd been craving for most of my life, yet I'd thrown it all away. And for what?

"Cole?"

Shit . Reality rushed in again and my cheeks were damp, a lump forming in the back of my throat as I shuddered in a breath.

"Hey, man, it's okay?—"

"It's not," I croaked, hastily wiping my face as if he hadn't already seen it. "Oh my god, Gray, it's not okay."

He hooked his pole into the side of the boat and crossed over to me, making my stomach churn even more with the rocking of it. He placed a hand on my shoulder, his gaze nearly ripping a hole straight through me.

"I lost her," I said, and everything became too much, too loud, too hard. That was why I drank, to avoid this. This, and the reality of my goddamn agonies being infinite when sympathy wasn't. That ran out quickly from everyone I met. Everyone but Gray. "I fucking lost her, and I lost him."

"You don't know that?—"

"I didn't want this," I sniffled, wiping my eyes again as if I had any control over when they'd stop leaking. "I don't want this. God, Gray, I don't want this. I want my life back. I want Dana, I want my son. What the fuck has happened to me? How have I lost three months?"

Gray shifted on his feet and the boat rocked again, sending the pizza straight up my esophagus. I twisted on a dime, hurling everything up over the side of the boat. I gagged, over and over, one hand clutching the only clean shirt I had left and the other clinging to the rail of the boat. I felt like it would never end, but every second that passed with Gray holding my shoulder, it felt just a tiny, minuscule amount better.

"You need a plan," Gray said softly. "We'll do it right this time. No disappearing, no running away. You'll stay in town and you'll keep in touch, you'll be made accountable. And you'll keep up with your fucking AA meetings this time, you understand?"

I nodded as another wave of vomit spewed from me. "Okay," I coughed. A tissue entered my line of sight, and I took it from him, wiping off my mouth and chin.

"First thing we need to do is get rid of Bobby."

If I had anything left to hurl, it would have come up then.

For once, I agreed. Bobby had gone down the relapse hole with me and hadn't done a single thing to try and get better, though neither had I. But if I stood a chance at all, if I genuinely wanted to try, I needed to be away from him and I needed him out of my fucking house.

"Yeah," I conceded, slowly turning myself back into my seat instead of staring at the water below. "Bobby has to go."

————

After a bit more food and zero fish caught, Grayson walked me up the driveway, a plan and an end in sight.

We both stopped in our tracks the moment we realized the front door was open.

"Did I…?" I asked, pointing to the empty space.

"No, I double-checked for you," Gray said. He took the few steps in front of me until he reached the door, peeking inside to see if anything had been broken.

"Should I call the cops?"

"No, I think Bobby might have left it open," Gray said, stepping inside and checking the table by the door. "All of your keys are still here. Anyone who wanted to break in would be an idiot if they didn't take one of your cars."

I joined him inside as I pulled up the security footage on my phone. The last motion at the door was two hours ago, and I clicked the file to open it.

Gray went on ahead as I watched the footage of Bobby stepping out onto the front porch, a bottle of whiskey clutched in his hand as he shouted something down the phone. He paced for a few minutes, practically stumbling, before slipping back inside and leaving the door wide open.

Shit, is that how I look when I'm drunk?

"Cole!"

The urgency in Gray's voice had me running. I sprinted up the stairs, taking them faster than I'd been able to in weeks. Around the corner at the top of the staircase, through the theater, into the game room?—

"Call an ambulance!" Gray shouted, but oh fuck, things were blurring, and no, no, no, why was Bobby on the floor? What was the white shit coming out of his mouth?

" Cole !" Grayson shouted again, the fear and trepidation in his voice mixing with anger but I couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't let myself blink and let time go?—

"Nine-one-one, do you need police, fire, or ambulance?"

The sound entered my left ear and I couldn't remember dialing, but I was aware the phone was in my hand. "Ambulance," I croaked. My heart raced, my hands shook, my chest roared with far too much fear and anger.

"I'm connecting you now."

"Cole," Gray said again, his jaw fucking steel as he held two fingers to Bobby's neck and another two on the inside of his wrist. "There's no pulse."