Where Happiness Begins (Evermore #3)

17. Carter

Chapter 17

Carter

Three and a half years ago

I f I can say one thing about Frank DiLorenzo, it’s that he doesn’t give up easily.

After that second meeting in the diner, I don’t magically begin to pour out my life story to him, but I try to be less of an asshole about the whole thing, and that seems to be enough for him. As payment for me being civil, he tolerates us talking about literally anything else, so long as we meet once a week. He doesn’t even rat me out to the judge about my lack of trying, so for that, I’ll do all the small talk in the world. I begin by humoring him with answers when he comments on the Sox’s shitshow of a season, and when he brings up his favorite movies during the next meeting, I can’t help but butt in with my favorite picks—mostly because of their insane soundtracks—and somehow, during that one-hour session, he doesn’t need to open his crosswords book once.

The following weeks look something like that too. We meet in a café or a restaurant, he asks me how my week has been, and when I say, “Fine,” he opens his book, then begins chitchatting about life. Sometimes I join in, sometimes I only give one-worded answers while I, too, mess around in a sudoku book I bought at the convenience store down the road, and those sessions are fine by me. I still attend the group meetings once every two weeks, but there, I can blank out and pretend I’m not there. All in all, things are fine. I don’t feel like any of it helps keep away from drinking—that is out of sheer will alone—but it’s not so bad either.

Except today, poor Next-Door-Neighbor Frank finds me in a mood I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. It’s not his fault, but I can’t do anything about it. Not when I’m this fucked-up inside.

It started off with something so stupid, it shouldn’t even have caused a reaction. I got a box of things in the mail. That’s it. A box of things.

Except those were things I’d left behind when I escaped California and booked a one-way flight to Boston.

Once I was cleared by the medical staff and was able to leave the hospital after my accident, arm in a sling and soul shattered, I decided that had to be my wake-up call. I didn’t even stop by the hotel where the band had been staying. I knew I didn’t have enough self-restraint to go back there, to see the boys probably high out of their minds, still partying, and be strong enough to leave. So I got a taxi straight to the airport and booked a flight to the farthest place in the States that came to mind. I didn’t know anyone in Boston, and that was just as well. All the people close to me were related to my career as a musician in one way or another, which meant no one was left when I quit.

And because I left so abruptly, I never went back to pick up the stuff I’d left in the hotel room. I never even emptied my studio apartment in LA—my landlord must’ve given my old furniture away to goodwill by now. I’d forgotten all about those things I’d left behind until I received the giant box to my new address here. I opened it up to find bunched up clothes, my computer, and most importantly, my favorite guitar.

It used to be, at least. Ever since my father sat me down at four years old and decided I would become a guitar player, not a day went by when I didn’t play. That specific guitar is the one I bought the day we signed our record deal.

This morning, seeing it in its case almost made me want to puke. I both wanted to tug it close to my chest and throw it out the window. I slowly opened the case and dragged my fingers over its silk-soft black wood, chipped around the body from so many sessions of heavy playing. I hadn’t touched a guitar in over four months. My fingers itched to pick it up and play.

My relationship with the instrument has always been strange. When I was a kid, I made myself sick over it. My parents said I’d be good, and so I would be. I’d play all the time. When my classmates attended birthday parties, I played. When they won spelling bees, I played. When they hung out over the weekends, you guessed it: I played. I didn’t care how much it overwhelmed everything in my life. When my mother would look up from her phone and pause a few minutes to listen to me play, then come to kiss the top of my head and tell me how good I was, it was worth all the sacrifice in the world.

Then, when I got old enough to understand that my mom and dad sucked at being parents and didn’t actually want kids, only little music prodigies like the clients they focused all their energy on representing, I decided to say fuck it. They wanted me to play? I would do everything I could not to. I wouldn’t bend over backward to please them anymore. It made no sense. They’d never see me, and I recognized that now. The thing was, at that point, I was addicted. The guitar was my safe space. It was what I did when I wanted to drown out my parents’ shouting matches in the kitchen, or when I wanted to comfort myself when I realized I was seventeen and didn’t have a single friend, like a goddamn loser. Plus, I was good at it. Playing brought me some sense of comfort I’d never found anywhere else. So, at that point, I started playing in secret. Hiding from my parents because I didn’t want them to think I was their little puppet anymore, but I also couldn’t walk away from it. I didn’t want the guitar to be theirs anymore. I wanted it to be mine and mine alone. I could play for hours, and nothing could ever come close to it.

At some point, when I realized it was the one thing I was good at and Brandon asked if I was ready to go all in with him, I did what any sane person would do: I said yes and followed him wherever he wanted. I wasn’t dumb enough to say no to that, even to piss my parents off.

Our band got a surprisingly good start, even with two players who had contacts in the industry, and soon enough, we were signing contracts and playing gigs with big names and being invited to parties, and I lost myself in that. In a way, the guitar led me to where I am now, which is an alcoholic who has nothing and no one, except for this one man waiting for me at the café table, sitting by himself. The one who somehow hasn’t given up on me yet.

Seeing my guitar this morning only reminded me of everything I lost along the way. Most importantly, I had to give up the one thing that ever made me content. I can’t play anymore—it’s too tangled up in my mistakes, in my drinking.

The fact that no note was in the box didn’t help either. I know Brandon’s the one who sent it. He’s the only one who has my new address, purely for business purposes. We still had contracts and engagements going on when I left. I can see my own fault in that, in destroying everyone around me by trying to save myself, but it still hurt when the only person I’d ever felt was actually on my side decided I wasn’t worth a single word to him.

I spent the day looking at that guitar still sitting in my living room, almost like a living entity that was taunting me with everything it had ever given me before taking it all away. Every glance made me tenser, turning me into a roiling cloud of anger.

And I wanted to drink. I wanted to drink so fucking bad it physically hurt. I kept thinking about that bottle of gin still hidden under my kitchen sink, and I could picture draining it so easily. I craved the burning in my throat, the haziness that would get over me almost instantaneously. The only thing that kept me from doing it was the idea that this was all I had. My sobriety. I’d left everything for it. How sad would it be if I didn’t even have that?

Still, I shouldn’t have come tonight. I’m too on edge. I can see this when I sit in front of Frank and realize my hands are still shaking.

He briefly looks up from his crosswords. “Hey, Carter.” Then he does a double take. “Everything okay? ”

I don’t answer. If I say something, I have a feeling it’ll all come out like a nuclear bomb touching ground and hitting everything it can reach, and he doesn’t deserve that. Logically, I can see this.

But when he asks again, “What’s wrong?” I can’t help it.

“Everything, Frank. Every. Fucking. Thing.” I drag a hand through my hair that’s in dire need of a trim, strands falling over my brows. “There’s no point anymore, so I won’t talk to you about weather or a fucking cookie recipe. I’m done.”

I expect him to explode back, the way my own father does. I start a reaction in chain, a kindle that eventually becomes a forest fire. I give it bad, he gives it worse. Of course, that was back when he still talked to me. My brother might have yelled at me with expletives and insults when I left, but at least he cared enough to say something. My parents didn’t even bother with a call or a text. I’d failed—worse, quit—at the one thing they’d ever expected from me, so what was left after that?

However, Frank does the opposite of that. Instead, he closes his book, leans forward, and says, “No point in what, Carter?”

So that’s the part he stuck on.

“In everything,” I say, maybe sounding dramatic, but I don’t know how else you could see my situation. I have no family, no friends, no career, no prospect for the future, not even the hobby I used to love. I have money from the royalties we made, but what worth is that when I’ve got no one to share it with?

I have nothing.

“You seem angry,” he says in that annoying, calm voice of his.

“No shit. ”

“Who are you angry at?”

The muscles in my jaw tighten so much, pain rises to my forehead and then to my scalp. My hands bunch, my feet push against the floor, and my shoulders squeeze up to my ears. The tension has to release one way or another.

“The entire world,” I say, loud enough that a couple a table over looks up at me. I ignore them, focusing on the way Frank’s stare holds mine as if he wants me to stay, to keep on talking. I realize just then I’ve fallen right into his trap, but I can’t make it out. Not anymore. He wants me to talk? Fine. I’ll talk. “I’m angry at everyone who’s ever crossed my path. I’m angry at the people who offered me drinks when I was already trashed. I’m angry at the girls who climbed me during parties when I was too drunk to even realize what was going on. I’m angry at my parents for not preparing me better for what was to come.”

He looks at me so long, not even blinking away at the awkwardness of the held eye contact, that I let myself say the most accurate part of my answer, in a voice that’s barely a whisper now. “I’m angry at myself.”

I’m the one who decided to join the band. I’m the one who never said no when I was offered a drink. I’m the one who lost control so much that I had to break the one thing my only brother had ever wanted. I’m the one who ruined all the relationships around me.

I’m the problem.

And when Frank nods along, with his preppy sweater and his square glasses, looking like the most squeaky-clean human you could come across, I spit out, “Don’t act like you know the feeling.”

He stops moving. His body remains still for so long, I think I might’ve broken him. Then his lips quirk up.

Strangest man I’ve ever met.

“You think I’ve never been angry at myself?”

To be fair, I don’t know that. I can’t know that, mostly because I’ve never allowed him to actually start a conversation for us to get to know each other. I didn’t want him to know me, and I didn’t particularly want to know him either.

But now he’s got me wondering. He’s in AA. He used to have an alcohol problem. The probability of everything not being as it seems is high.

“Son, you don’t know how many days I’ve spent hating myself.” He shakes his head, still smiling, but this time, it looks sad. “Every time I hid in the pantry to gulp down vodka I’d hidden in vinegar bottles while my daughter was playing Barbie in the living room next door, I wanted to die. I really, really did. Her mother had left me, and I couldn’t cope, and I let myself drown while I still had my daughter to care for. She saved me from it, that’s for sure, but even still, I’m so angry at myself for all the times I failed her, even if she never noticed.”

I swallow.

“Being angry is part of the recovery. You’ll never be more angry with anyone than you will be with yourself. It’s the sad truth of it. But you wanna know something? ”

I feel like a kid watching television, entranced by the shiny new toy being shown off, unable to blink away. I don’t answer, but he must see how he’s got me in the palm of his hand.

“It gets better. At some point, the anger dulls, and you learn to forgive yourself.” He twists his coffee cup in a clockwise motion, over and over again. “It never truly goes away, but eventually, you see that some of the things you said and did were part of the disease, and you decide to move on from them.”

I don’t answer now either. I can’t find the words to say just how badly he’s hit the nail on the head and how much more I want from him. Suddenly, I want to hear all about what’s going to happen next. He’s gone through it, and it looks like maybe he’s not as different from me as I thought he was. Maybe he fucked up just as badly. I don’t know that he ruined his family like I did, but at this point, I can’t get any lower than I am, and if he has something that can make me want to live even an inkling more, I’d say I want to hear what it is.

Frank leans back in his chair, looking smug. I can’t fault him for it. He did make his point, in the end.

“Now, are you ready to get your head out of your ass and get to work?”

This time, I don’t hesitate. I have nothing else to lose.

“Yes.”

And so we truly begin.