If Chicago hadn’t called that morning, I might not have gone to Josh’s shiva. I knew when it was, but I had tried to will away that knowledge, as I’d tried to will away the knowledge of his death; ever since word of it spread throughout the rooms, I’d been skipping meetings, in hopes that I wouldn’t learn anything more about it.
“Are you coming?” Chicago asked, right when I picked up. He sounded calm, like he did most days. We were in the habit of doing morning check-ins, even though we weren’t each other’s sponsors. We just liked waking to each other’s voices.
“I haven’t seen Josh in years.”
“But you knew him.”
“I did.”
Chicago hummed in response. There was judgment in that hum. I knew it well.
“A lot of guys from Angry Men’s said they were going. He got sober there, way back, you know.”
“The misfortune to get sober there.”
“There’re worse places to get sober,” Chicago said. “Either way, I know that they’d all be happy to see you — Oak, especially,” he added, chuckling.
“Oak,” I echoed, dropping my head in my head. I thought of the last time I’d seen that man: at Angry Men’s three months ago. In his late forties, sober awhile, with an undercut and a silver cross hanging from his neck, I’d made the mistake of grabbing coffee with him. It went well enough, but there was something off about the guy. He spoke to me like we’d known each other our whole lives, and when I told him I had to go, he asked if he could come join me on my errands. It seemed like a bit much, so I said no. Then, the following week, he called me almost every night. I picked up the second night, then the fifth, thinking that might appease him. But he continued, leaving me the same voicemail — Hey Leo, it’s Oak. Just wanted to see how you’re doing — until my mailbox was full. More than six months after our coffee date, he still called me at least once every other week. I hadn’t answered him in almost nine weeks. “Is he really going to be there?”
“Probably,” Chicago said. “He was around when Josh got sober. But even if he’s there, you should still go. Think of how you’d feel otherwise.”
He was right.
“Alright,” I said.
“So, do you need a ride? Shotgun is going to come pick me up around noon. We could swing by and get you, too.”
Biting my tongue, my gaze drifted around my bedroom. It danced over the shut blinds and my dresser, until it landed on my bedside table. On it, next to a small lamp, were the two bracelets I wore most days. Pill Free, the yellow one said, Living Sober, the white one said. I slipped them around my wrist and remembered how Josh had looked when he’d given them to me seven years ago to celebrate my 90-day anniversary, just a few days after my 19th birthday: beaming, with his wide, charismatic smile, and that tight crew cut, hardly 21 years old. Healthy. Sober.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ll meet you there.”
*
The house Josh’s parents lived in when I met him was settled at the foot of the Watchung Mountains. A tall Queen Anne that had more room than they had use for, Josh had invited me over for dinner once, not long after I got sober. I showed up at their house in the nicest clothes I owned: an unstained hoodie, a polo I’d picked up at Good Will, and a pair of khaki shorts. Staring up at the turret two stories above me, I felt underdressed, and I was sure that I was walking into an awkward evening that would be punctuated with pitiful glances.
To my surprise, Josh’s parents were kind and talkative. They had grown up in West Orange, like my parents, among a cluster of orthodox Jewish families whose children had largely become secularized. When they asked after them, I answered nervously: they’d moved to a community in Florida six months after I graduated high school. As for Josh, he sat at the head of the table, with a soft, polite grin, intruding into the conversation only when it needed a jumpstart. When I left, he walked me to my car, and as I opened its door, he put a hand on my arm and said, “Call me anytime. I’m always around.”
Heading down the driveway to the Goldsteins’ new home — a modern temple etched into the side of the Watchung Mountains that they’d moved into two years ago — I didn’t feel the warmth I’d felt by the end of that earlier night; I did, however, feel that same sense of being alien, wholly out of place, that I’d felt at the start of it. In the cool autumn air, I was surrounded by a string of people, all dressed in black, none of whom I knew. I assumed they were family. Or friends. Family friends. People who knew Josh well. They were heading toward the home’s front door, which had been left open. Outside the door stood a man: tall, bald, with a wrinkled brow and a stern expression. With a nod, he shook the hands of everyone who passed him.
Inside, everyone was shedding their coats in a cramped mudroom that opened up into the living room. Shedding my own coat, I looked over the shoulders of those before me, searching for Chicago’s familiar face. Beside a pair of watercolours in a corner of the room, I saw Shotgun Tommy, a regular attendee of Angry Men’s who insisted on sponsoring every newcomer that walked through the door, chatting with José, a Messianic Jew who gave me a kiss on the cheek and whispered Shalom into my ear whenever I saw him at a meeting. On the couch next to them were two men who looked like they were Josh’s relatives, and standing above them was Monday, a heavyset broadcaster for ESPN that managed a decade of sobriety before losing it a year ago, and Oak, who was cradling a palmful of hors d’oeuvres wrapped in a gold napkin.
I threw my coat onto a thin bench, ducked to the side, and followed in step with a couple in front of me, to keep out of Oak’s line of sight. We passed the rabbi, who was shaking hands with the many congregants of the Goldsteins’ temple who came to give their respects, and the food table, which was arranged with dozens of catered foods I didn’t have the stomach for. And then, thankfully, I spotted Chicago stepping out of a bathroom. I beelined over to him, threading through the mourners. When I reached him, I clasped a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey there,” I said, turning my back on Oak and the rest of the Angry Men across the room.
Chicago smiled, and took me in for a small hug.
“Glad you showed up,” he said, once we separated.
I nodded and, huddled in this corner of the room, let myself relax. Being next to Chicago made it easy. Although he was more than twice my age — 60 to my 25 — and his story of addiction largely differed from mine — I was a suburban kid who cleaned out people’s medicine cabinets, and he got swept up in the crack epidemic in Chicago before I was even born — I had always felt safe with him. He was a gentle man, who, among his warmer traits, was perpetually guilt-ridden for having left a few children back in Chicago. He’d been trying to reconnect with them in the past decade; during most of our morning calls, he talked about them: who he was able to get on the phone, who responded to a text. It was upsetting to see how he still suffered for the mistakes he made when he was younger, and to think of his children who grew up without a father, but I found his heart-on-his-sleeve approach and his willingness to mend past harms inspiring, an expression of a good spirit.
“Who’s here?” I asked.
“The usual faces,” Chicago said. “Shotgun, José, Monday. Some of the other guys couldn’t make it.”
“Have you talked to Oak?” I hoped my voice didn’t telegraph my nerves, but I was sure it did. “I saw him. He’s on the other side of the room, I think.”
“Yeah, he’s there.”
“Did you tell him I was coming?”
Chicago gave me a face.
“What?”
“Lee, he’s just a man. He don’t bite.”
I grew small at Chicago’s admonition, knowing, again, that he was right.
“I know. I just hope he doesn’t come over.”
Chicago nodded uninterestedly and looked across the room. He leaned backward to scope out a hallway behind us, which led to another room.
“Have you gone to see the parents?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“They’re right down that hall.”
I sighed. Another reason I didn’t want to come to the shiva: because I knew I’d have to talk to Josh’s parents. Over the past few years, when I saw either of them at the supermarket or out on a run, I looked away, and sometimes I changed my route entirely. I didn’t want to talk to them and hear about how poorly Josh was doing. Every report I got about him from people in the rooms said that he was either back in rehab, in detox, or starting out at a new halfway house.
“Want me to come with you to see them?”
“Have you been to see them?”
“A minute ago,” he said.
“Then, no,” I said. “I’ll go on my own.”
*
Mr. and Ms. Goldstein were sitting in the centre of their library in high-backed chairs. They reminded me of my parents: Ashkenazic, their faces weathered and lined, in their early 70s. I saw small smiles curl onto their cheeks when the mourners before them bent over to privately offer condolences and kind anecdotes, and I saw those small smiles recede moments later when the other mourners left.
I hesitantly made my way over. There was a line of two in front of both of them, but they were moving quickly. I was only moments, if not seconds, away from my turn, and I hadn’t come up with something to say. I didn’t want to say what so many others had likely said: he was such a sweet man, he left us too soon… I closed my eyes to conjure up some kindness, some story that might’ve brought him — and then Ms. Goldstein — warmth. But nothing came to mind.
I opened my eyes. A man with a combover and Mr. Goldstein were caught up in conversation; I looked away to give them their privacy. On the wall beside me, I noticed a poster that I’d missed when I came into the room. Blown up to the size of a desktop monitor, the poster had two photos of Josh printed on it. One was of him on Montclair high school’s lacrosse field, dressed in his gear and sprinting past a few of his teammates, looking like a warrior charging into battle. The other was of him on a cigarette-butt-riddled lawn, arm-in-arm with half a dozen people, none of whom I knew personally, but who I recognized as members of Rutgers’ recovery house.
“You don’t have to go it alone,” I remembered Josh saying to me on the phone when I was four months sober. I’d just told him that I was thinking about going to college, but I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to stay sober if I went. Through high school, I thought that I’d spend a robust four years binge drinking in college, and all the college stories people in AA had shared made it sound like, for four years, I’d be batting off lines of coke and red solo cups. I didn’t know if I had the strength.
“There’re schools that have housing and resources for people like us,” he added. “It’s why I’m at Rutgers right now. They have one.”
“But I don’t want to be entirely cordoned off from the rest of the school with a bunch of people in recovery. It seems like such a small community.”
“It is,” he said, “but it’s a loving one.”
Seven months later, I moved into the recovery house at Seton Hall: a two-storied colonial at the edge of campus that I’d share with a rotating cast of men, some with a few years of recovery under their belts and others just drying out, for the next four years. The day I moved in, I sent Josh a selfie of me standing beside a framed print of the Serenity Prayer mounted on the wall by the front door, with the message, thanks for the push. He quickly replied with a heart and the message, don’t thank me. Thank your higher power.
I looked away from the poster. The man with the combover was giving a hug to Mr. Goldstein. Then, a second later, he walked away.
*
Mr. Goldstein was looking at the floor when I stepped up to him. His small, compact body fit neatly in the deep-seated chair. When he saw me, his weak, dull eyes widened briefly, before narrowing again. There was a spark of recognition in them, but it was faint.
“Leo?” he asked.
“Leo,” I confirmed.
“It’s good to see you. Are you well?”
“Yes,” I said. Automatically, I added, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
He bowed his head. “Thank you.”
I nodded in return, and sifted through my thoughts for something to add. I was tempted to just start talking, in hopes that I could string together something worthwhile, but decided to take a breath before going for that. I looked down at my hands; dangling over my right wrist were the Living Sober and Pill Free bracelets.
“Josh gave these to me, when I got 90 days,” I said airily, shaking my wrist. “I thought he’d ask for them back one day, but he never did.”
“I remember them.”
“I never asked where he got them from in the first place. I assume online somewhere? Did he have a lot of them?”
“No, those were the only ones he had,” Mr. Goldstein answered. “He got them at rehab — the first one he ever went to, when he was 18. Caron, it was called, down in Pennsylvania. The three months he spent there was the first time he ever lived away from home.”
“That couldn’t’ve been easy for all of you.”
“It wasn’t,” he said. “Josh didn’t want to go, but we told him that if he didn’t, he couldn’t live with us anymore. He eventually resigned to his fate once he got in the car, but he made us stop on the side of the highway every hour to have a cigarette. He was going to be gone for so long, so we figured why not. The last time we stopped, though, when we were only a few minutes away from Caron, he pulled a balled-up napkin out of his pocket and plucked a yellow pill from it. ‘May as well enjoy it while I can,’ he said, like it was a joke we were all in on. And then he popped it in his mouth.”
Near the end of his story, Mr. Goldstein’s eyes started to grow damp. He hid his head, tucking his chin into his chest. I wanted to put a hand on him, to offer some sort of solidarity, but he picked his head up and continued talking before I could do anything.
“He went back there two more times after he graduated college. The last time we dropped him off, a nurse there recognized him, and waved him over for a hug. He looked excited to see her. An old friend.”
“Everyone loved him.”
“They did.”
He wheezed into a clenched fist, as his eyes cleared. He took a breath, and when he exhaled, he looked up at me intently.
“Josh didn’t talk about you much near the end, but when he was still at Rutgers, he’d mention when he spoke to you. He gave us updates. He was glad that you went to Seton Hall.”
“Was he?”
“Of course,” he nodded. “He was proud of you.”
My cheeks grew hot. I didn’t want to think about Josh being proud of me. It made his loss too real, his connection to me too certain.
“He always wanted you to be happy and sober. He cared about you very much.”
“And I cared about him, too,” I replied. Quickly, I bent over and hugged him, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and said, “He will be missed.” Then, I shuffled away.
*
To my relief, Ms. Goldstein was too overwrought from the last person who spoke to her to have a conversation with me. Seeing her tear-drenched cheeks, I simply gave her a hug, a kiss. I looked at her with as much sympathy as I could muster, which she seemed to appreciate. When I took a step back, she mouthed the words, Thank you.
On my way back to the living room, the walls in the hallway seemed to shift and swim. I rubbed my hands down my face, blotting out the sweat that’d gathered on my forehead. I knew I shouldn’t’ve come. To have to feel this way, to have to see the effects of Josh’s passing on his parents’ faces— I needed to get out of this house. I needed a cigarette. I patted the pockets of my suit and felt nothing but my phone and wallet and car keys. I recalled then that I’d left my pack at home. You won’t need it, I’d told myself. You’ll only be there for a little while.
Back in the living room, I looked for Monday. He was a smoker, known to step out of meetings halfway through to burn a Pall Mall. But I couldn’t spot him. A new rush of people had come in. The front door was clogged, and there were enough bodies before me that I could hardly see the other side of the room.
But there — there was Chicago, with Shotgun by the food table. He’d know what to say to make me feel better.
I struggled through the crowd. Across the room, Shotgun was surveying the crowd with a cup in his hand. Chicago had his back curled forward, his eyes were heavy. Tired. I soon sidled up beside him.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
“It was a lot.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Could we—”
“You just talk to the parents?” Shotgun asked. His voice was loud. He had his hair gelled back for the occasion, and he had trimmed the stubble which usually dotted his chin.
“Yeah.”
“They didn’t say much of anything when I offered my condolences.”
“They’re not in a chatty mood,” I said.
“Can’t quite blame them.” Shotgun sipped his coffee contemplatively. “It’s terrible to lose a kid. I wonder what’d be like if I lost my Sarah like that. It wouldn’t be so hard to imagine — I almost did lose her. She was like Josh: got into pills as a girl, then she left and I didn’t see her for some time. I spent those years always ready to plan her funeral. She’s sober now, thank god, but can you imagine?”
I didn’t have the patience to indulge Shotgun. I waited a beat for his words to settle, and then I put a hand square in the middle of Chicago’s back. “Can we go outside for a minute?” I asked. “I need some air.”
“Sure.” Turning to Shotgun, he said, “I’ll be back in a little.”
“I’ll be here,” Shotgun said.
Chicago flashed a cheap smile, then headed for the front door. Him in front, me directly behind, like two soldiers marching into battle. We quickly reached the mudroom, where we stopped to get our jackets. Chicago went in first, grabbing his off a hanger and slipping it on. “I’ll meet you outside,” he said. I nodded, and watched him step into the sunshine.
My coat was resting underneath a dozen others on the bench pressed against a wall. I rifled through them, until I found the one. Slipping it over my back, I had to shuffle further into the mudroom to make space for a couple who was trying to get to the living room, and others who needed to shed their coats.
When I was facing the mudroom’s corner, with my arms snug in my jacket, I heard a low, raspy voice. It came from a man with an undercut, with a silver cross hanging from his neck.
*
Oak stared at me with an expression that looked both confused and hurt. His frame was wide, square — it took up most of the doorframe he stood in — and the shirt he was wearing under his sport coat was unbuttoned near the top, allowing for some coarse chest hairs to poke out.
“Leaving already?” he asked.
“No, I’m just going outside to talk with Chicago.”
“He said you’d be coming.”
I knew he was harmless. The few who I’d talked to about Oak’s unrelenting phone calls reassured me of that. He just has trouble getting on with people. He’s really a nice guy. Yet, standing in this corner, his body blocking me in, I didn’t feel reassured.
“Why didn’t you say hello?”
“I’ve only been here not too long,” I said. “I haven’t even said hello to Monday or José.”
“I was waiting for you to come over.”
“I was going to.”
He looked into me unwaveringly, trying to see if I was lying. When he realized that I wasn’t going to betray my words, he softened. He gave me a jocular shove on my chest with a loose fist.
“It’s been forever,” he said.
“It has, hasn’t it?”
“Were you and Josh close?”
“Not really,” I said. “But he always treated me well. He was one of the few people my age I knew in early recovery.”
“He wasn’t much older than you, then?”
“Only by a few years.”
“What a tragedy,” Oak hummed.
“Did you know him well?”
Oak shook his head. “I met him a number of years ago. Always seemed like a sweet kid. Shotgun told me the shiva was today. Figured I’d come along. For support.”
“Sure.”
Oak nodded, then fiddled with a hanger by his side and looked to the bare lightbulb that hung from above. His nose twitched, he breathed loudly. There was an uneasiness to him, a restlessness, that extended outward, like a forcefield.
“Such a terrible way to go.” He let go of the hanger and looked back at me. “I heard his parents called in for a wellness check, and the cops found him lying on the floor of his bathroom. He was blue in the face. I heard that he’d been like that for hours. Someone even said a whole day.”
“Oak.” I sighed. It was these kinds of details I’d been trying to avoid by skipping meetings this week.
“It’s true. They said he’d been using again for a while.” Oak pursed his lips thoughtfully. He held his hands together and looked down, as if in prayer. “Just another sick and suffering addict. Garden variety.”
A terse quiet emerged between us. In the quiet, I considered leaving. I could’ve hurriedly stepped around him, put a hand on his shoulder, and said, “We’ll catch up soon.” I could’ve given his shoulder a squeeze, and before he could’ve argued otherwise, I’d’ve already stepped out the front door. But I got the sense that Oak still had some words on his lips, and I was certain that if I didn’t hear them now, I’d be hearing them on my voicemail later, perhaps for nights to come.
“Those who do not recover,” he started, in a teacherly voice, “are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.”
He looked up at me, his eyes beckoning for me to agree, or to add the lines that followed the ones in the Big Book he just quoted.
“There are such unfortunates; they are not at fault,” he continued. “They seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.”
Even though these words were famous — they were read aloud at the start of half the meetings I went to — I never liked them. They always seemed like an ugly consolation for the pain of watching another addict relapse. An ugly reassurance — a pat on the back — that we, the recovered, were thoroughly honest with ourselves. It always felt both dismissive and arrogant.
“Josh was an honest guy,” I said. “Besides, you just said you didn’t even really know him.”
Oak’s contemplative gaze quickly morphed into one of pity. He almost seemed disappointed, as if he was failing me somehow.
“Yeah, but I know addicts and alcoholics. I got some 24s, and I’ve learned that staying sober is about looking yourself right in the eyes. You see what’s in there, you throw out the junk, and you stay vigilant with what comes. If you can’t do that, you can’t stay sober. That’s what the Big Book tells us.”
“I don’t care what the Big Book tells us. Josh was honest.”
“Leo,” he chided, “the authors of the Big Book knew a thing or two. Bill and Dr. Bob were smart guys.”
I looked over Oak’s shoulder: a broad beam of light was shining through the opened front door.
“Listen,” I said, “Chicago is waiting for me. I have to go.”
I stepped to the side, moving toward the small gap between his body and the doorframe. Before I could pass him, Oak stepped in front of me, closing off the gap.
“Oak,” I said. “C’mon.”
He didn’t react. He just stared at me, his eyes still full of that gross pity. I stepped to the left where a different gap had emerged and made a move for it. But once I started to slip around him, he got me: he enveloped me in his arms.
“Oak—”
“It’s okay, Leo,” he cooed, as if I were a child having a tantrum. “It’s okay. Breathe. Breathe with me.”
His gut expanded with a deep inhale, and his arms steadily applied more pressure around my torso when he exhaled. I wanted to press my hands against his cushy chest and shove him across the mudroom and onto the floor. I wanted to lock him in a room, so he could never bother me again with his stupid, unwanted advice, with his voicemails. Hey Leo, it’s Oak. Just wanted to see how you’re doing.… But his grip was too tight, and my want to not fight was too strong.
“Some of us die,” Oak whispered, “so the rest of us can live. We’re saved by their memory. We learn from them.”
I shook my head. Josh did not die with purpose. He did not overdose as a part of a grand plan.
Instead of responding, I let my mind drift away from my body, from Oak’s. A tiny act of rebellion. With my eyes slightly opened, I scanned the room from over Oak’s shoulder. I saw a few faces that resembled Josh’s and a myriad of framed photos of him sitting on end-tables and mantels. There was one of him at picture day, his adolescent self dressed in formal clothes. There was another of him at the top of a mountain, wearing a backpack with a triumphant look in his eyes. Everywhere I looked, I could see his welcoming smile, his pointed nose and strong chin. It was a barrage of Josh. I closed my eyes to avoid it, but still, he was there: in my mind’s eye, I could see him standing outside the door of the Seton Hall Recovery House my freshman year, waiting for me to finish putting on my shoes so I could take him on a tour of the campus. I could see him standing at the podium at Reservoir Dogs, a speaker meeting he took me to in my first year, reading aloud AA’s Responsibility Statement: I am responsible, when anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help. I want the hand of AA always to be there, and for that I am responsible.
These memories swarmed me. I pushed them from my mind — all except one, the stickiest of them all: the memory of the day we met.
That afternoon, I was only 18 hours sober. I’d OD’d the day before in the company of my running buddy, who drove me to Mountainside Hospital and dumped me at its front entrance, before taking off. I woke later that night in a hospital bed, feeling as sick as I’d ever felt, and panicked about whether my running buddy had pinched the handful of Percocets I’d had in my pocket. (He did).
The following morning, a nurse told me that members of a local AA meeting would be coming in, and with nothing better to do, I figured I’d hear them out. I sat there in the detox’s waiting room, expecting a fleet of cleaned-up men to walk through the door, but only one person showed. He walked into the room, dressed like he was about to head to the gym, and took a seat right next to me. There was nothing about his posture that signalled the holier-than-thou attitude I expected from AA members, and the slowness with which he introduced himself — no handshake; just a nod and a smile and, with a hand on his chest, “Josh” — made him seem in control and at peace. I introduced myself, and after a few how-you-doings, he told me a story.
In his unassuming voice, Josh said that for a long, long time, he felt out of place. He said that he felt like everyone else in the world had gotten a copy of this secret, special book that had all the rules to being a person in it, and that he just happened to not be around the day they were giving them out. Then, when he was a teenager, a friend handed him some pills, and he swallowed them, and pretty quickly he felt like everybody who he was with liked him, and that he liked them, too, and for that evening he felt like he finally wasn’t walking by himself anymore. But he said that in the months after that — after he’d started taking the pills regularly — he started feeling lonely when he was sober. Really lonely, he said. He said sobering up was like getting sucked into a capsule that had no monitor, no phone, no connection to the outside world, just him and his thoughts and the rising panic that that’s how it would always be. It was so overwhelming, he said, that he had to start taking more pills to avoid it. This worked for a while, but not long after that he said the pills got too expensive, they weren’t keeping him away from the capsule long enough, so he started sniffing heroin. That was fine, too, he said, but soon he realized that the loneliness only left when he left, you know? and I said, I did, and he asked, Did I know what it was like to feel that lonely? and I said, Yes, and he said, I know. And then he said he didn’t feel lonely like that anymore, not for the past few years at least, after he went to this place that helped him get better.
To that, I didn’t say anything. I knew where this conversation was going. But I didn’t try to derail it. I didn’t tell him, “Not today, I can’t go to rehab and get sober today,” because I really did feel that lonely, that specific loneliness, and I’d never heard anyone talk about it before and hearing him talk about it felt nice, very nice.
Trapped in Oak’s arms, my lips trembled. I thought of Josh’s kindness that afternoon, of how he’d taken time out of his day to come to the detox, and of how he’d welcomed me into a world where I could build relationships as deep and meaningful as the one I had with Chicago. Despite how much I didn’t want it to, I let spill a sob in Oak’s chest. Quiet but consuming, it fell from my mouth like a boulder.
“He saved me,” I whispered, after regaining my breath.
Oak pulled back a few inches and looked down at me. His look of pity had changed into one of compassion.
“You don’t have to drink today,” he replied.
I blinked my red and glassy eyes in confusion.
“It’s one day at a time.”
“No,” I mumbled, shaking my head. “I don’t want to drink. That’s not what I’m saying. What Josh did—”
Oak lowered his voice until only he and I could hear it.
“All we have is today,” he said. “Remember that. All we have is today.”
Part of me wanted to argue, to let Oak know that he was misinterpreting my words. This was about more than just staying sober today.
But arguing would’ve been wasted breath. Oak wouldn’t’ve heard me. He had his own narrative, and I wasn’t going to change it right then. So, I just let whatever tears that were still in my eyes flow. I knew that I would talk to Chicago about it all when I got outside, and I knew that he would understand.