North & West

Twenty-Three

I felt like a mess and probably looked like one too.

West and I had decided to stop by at the end of one of the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and I was regretting it. Not only had everyone turned to look at us when we walked in late, but they'd smiled at us too as if they knew what we'd been up to, which only made me feel like a complete disgrace to the entire town I lived in.

We'd walked past Kevin's house three times in an hour, telling ourselves not to stop. It had worked, but God, it was so hard. The first time, we stopped, our hands reaching for our phones to text him to come down, but then I'd shook my head and we'd walked away. The second had been a little easier, just a bit of a quickened pace to steer us away.

The last time we walked by had been the worst though, the time on my phone telling me that if we wanted to make it to the meeting at all, we needed to leave right now. West had lingered by the metal gate, his fingers touching the rusted and chipping painted metal, and it had almost taken everything out of me to call out to him and try and be strong for the both of us.

I never thought it'd be so hard, prying myself away from alcohol. Drinking seemed like an extracurricular activity, one to do when bored or just not having enough excitement in life, but for West and I, it had somehow become so much more than that.

West reached out a hand and skimmed his fingers across the back of my hand, his touch featherlight and comforting. We were sitting in the back row of the meeting, stuck in the most rickety metal chairs, the ones that creaked and rocked a bit on their back legs when you moved too much.

But it was fine by me, to be in the way back and away from most eyes.

It was weird, really, how I'd begun to hate the feeling of another person's eyes on me, their gaze skimming my face and undoubtedly coming to their own conclusions about me within their head. I think it was the fact that they could be making their minds up about me in the confines of their own minds, coming to completely wrong conclusions without me even knowing what they were thinking, that made me uneasy.

Our eyes were fixed on the front of the room, West's sister speaking into the microphone. Her hands were a bit shaky, the nervous movements only noticeable when she raised a hand to brush her hair away from her face.

I admired her, really, the way that she kept on trucking on like there wasn't a shit load of, well, shit trailing behind her. Her family had been torn apart and not only was she suffering with a problem, but so was her only little brother.

I often found myself feeling out of place around the two of them, West and Krissy so obviously close to one another that I felt like I was intruding, pushing myself in where I wasn't welcome. But that feeling disappeared as soon as Krissy hugged me before I left, often thanking me for just being around West.

I always wanted to tell her that he was the one who deserved gratitude, having brought me back from the brink of numbness. I still wasn't better, but somehow the little victorious moments that I did have like – the two weeks West and I had been abstaining from alcohol for – made me feel like it – that I – wasn't completely lost at sea.

I hadn't realized that I'd burrowed into my own thoughts, shouting out the whole world around me, until Krissy was done talking at the podium and came back to sit down beside me, nudging me with her leg and a concerned look on her face. “Are you alright?”

I nodded, moving my shoulders about for a moment to shake away any leftover thoughts I'd been caught in. “Yeah, just spacing out.”

“It happens,” She smiled.

I smiled back, my attention shifting when a middle aged man walked over to us, a strangely hopeful look on his face. His hair was dark, the sort of black you don't get unless you're of some foreign lineage, and his hairline had begun to recede. His shirt was tucked in, making the little overflow of his belly stick out a bit, but his pants and shirt were crisp and looked as if they'd been hand ironed minutes before.