Dreams of 18(47)

That’s it. That’s all. A bottle of Jack Daniels and nothing else.

But I knew.

I knew he’d agreed to my plans. He’d agreed to quit.

I smiled that day.

But I’m not smiling now. It has not been pretty.

I knew that, though.

I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty and I thought I was prepared for it. But you’re never prepared when it comes to seeing someone else live through the pain of detox. Someone you care about so deeply that their every discomfort makes you feel useless.

First of all, there are the headaches.

God, his headaches.

It’s like I can feel them myself. I can feel his temples pounding. I can feel the heat and the pulse of his pain at the base of my own skull. His eyes water when it gets too bad. They get red-rimmed, bright in a way that I know comes from exhaustion.

It would’ve been okay if he just got the headaches, though.

But it’s never just the one thing, is it? It’s never just the headaches. It comes with waves of nausea.

Yeah, nausea is even worse.

It burns your gut and your chest and your throat. It makes you sweat and shake and sometimes, with all your gagging and retching, nothing comes out. Because you’ve already expelled everything.

I’ve been through this. But Jesus Christ, did I sound so agonized? Did I sound like someone was torturing me, strangling my windpipe and I was hoping and praying that I’d die?

I don’t think so. I don’t think I was as tortured as he is.

Through the bathroom door, I keep telling him that it’s going to be okay. That it’s going to pass and he’s going to be fine.

But he never utters a word. He never complains about any of it.

Although he does ask me this one thing, when I tell him to drink more fluids and count out the multi-vitamins that I had my pen pal, Billy, buy for him so he can keep up his strength.

He trains his eyes on me, his hazel-colored, chameleon eyes, as he gulps down the pills with the juice. “How do you know so much about this?”

“You mean, alcohol and all this?”

“All of this. Yeah.”

Now I feel like throwing up. I feel my stomach churn.

“Google.” My heart starts to hammer when he doesn’t buy it. I can see it in his speculative gaze. “And because I come from a family of closet alcoholics.”

That seems to satisfy him. “Your mom.”

Phew.

Good.

“Yeah.”

He scoffs. Like he doesn’t approve of it. Like he doesn’t approve of my mom drinking and I feel so guilty about lying to him.

I mean, of course my mom drinks. But all this knowledge I have comes from something else. Something else that I can’t tell him about.

I don’t want to tell him about.

But it’s getting harder and harder to lie to him.

It’s fine, Violet. You’re fine. There’s nothing to tell. It’s all in the past.

Just focus on him.

So that’s what I do. I focus on him.

I don’t understand how he can be so calm and tight-lipped and un-mean to me when I know – I know – he’s suffering. I can see it in those eyes of his.

Like for example, take the bathroom incident.

I was taking a shower and when I was done I wrapped myself in a towel. But as soon as I walked out to go to the room I was currently occupying – which was like, three steps away from the bathroom – I came to an abrupt halt.

Mr. Edwards was standing at the mouth of the hallway, his eyes on me. It looked like he was walking but had come to a stop, as abruptly as I had, at the sight of me.

There was a huge frown on his forehead like he was having a headache. And his jaw was clenched so tight, like it usually does when he’s trying to stave off the pain, that I thought he was grinding his teeth into dust.

I wanted to ask him if he was okay. If his head was bothering him again, but I couldn’t speak. Because man, he was staring at me.

Staring and staring and burning me with it.

My hand was on the knot of my red towel and my fingers tightened. They kept tightening as he moved his eyes. With every inch of skin he gazed at – my throat, my collarbone, my bare shoulders – my fingers tightened a little more. My pulse fluttered so much that I was sure he could see it.

His stare, heated and slow, became too much, so that I had to clench my thighs and stop my thoughts from going to inappropriate places.

I had to blurt out, “I-I thought you were sleeping. Or you were in your room.”

His eyes came back to mine and I could’ve sworn they were green-ish when he started looking at me but now they were all dark and brown. And I could’ve sworn that his sharp cheeks were tanned but now they were colored in a dark flush.

There were even a few drops of sweat beading his forehead, as if just standing there was too painful for him.

Too much suffering.

With a tic of his jaw, he raised his hand and showed me that he was holding a bottle. “I was thirsty,” he said in a raspy way.

“Oh, I –”

He didn’t wait to see what I was going to say. He whirled around and walked out of the cabin, closing the door violently.

See? Detox is not pretty at all. The man is not doing well.

But on day five, things change.

He starts to look better.

His skin glows. The dark circles under his eyes have almost disappeared. Even though it looks like he’s lost some more weight, he’s healthier.