Seven Days in June(36)

But he had come. He’d started another fire. This time, he’d stay and put it out.

Slowing his pace, Shane glanced up at the horizon to check the sunset. The predusk sky was vivid with waves of fuchsia and lavender, and not for the first time since getting clean, he was struck by how alive the world looked. He was suddenly so alert. It was how he’d been as a little kid, before he’d started anesthetizing himself. Back then, he’d felt things too deeply for his own good.

One time, while waiting in a Kmart checkout line, five-year-old Shane had seen some guy steal a waffle iron from a woman’s cart while she wasn’t looking. His mind had quietly spiraled over it. What if waffles were all she had to feed her thirteen badass kids because their dad squandered her modest bank-teller salary on fantasy-football bets and scratch cards? What if her life depended on that waffle iron? He’d obsessed about it for days.

And snakes used to ruin him. Just the idea of them. Shane couldn’t bear the thought of those delicate-looking reptiles trying their hardest to travel around their patch of forest while legless and footless. It broke his heart! They were so unfairly handicapped. He used to obsessively sketch pictures of snakes with four legs, until it occurred to him that he was, in fact, drawing lizards.

The world was too loud for little-boy Shane. What he didn’t know was that he was training himself to be a deeply empathetic writer—understanding nuanced emotion, spying humanity in unexpected places, seeing past the obvious. He was taking notes for his future self, who would write it all down. Every fucking thing he saw. And thank God he was good at it. If nothing else, writing helped organize the chaos in his brain—even if it had only come in four intense bursts over the past fifteen years.

I’m already thinking of my career in past tense, he realized, speeding up a bit.

Shane wrote his books hoping to smooth out the jagged edges of his life. Which didn’t exactly work. If reviewers were to be believed, his novels could rearrange the way a reader thought, sparking existential epiphanies. But he could never reach himself. In fact, his biggest triumphs were followed by his biggest benders. No matter how dizzying his professional highs, Shane just couldn’t resist the pull of the tide sweeping him out. Self-destruction was always imminent.

No, if writing had been the cure, the past fifteen years would’ve looked very different. He wouldn’t have taken so long to get sober. He might’ve picked a permanent place to live, put down actual roots. Invested in Seamless or Spotify. He’d have gotten serious about the business of living.

And he would’ve found Eva long ago.

Stretching ahead of Shane was Pier 25. Families swarmed the turf overlooking the water, taking pics or waiting to hop in rented kayaks. Shane glanced over at the dads with toddlers on their shoulders, while moms juggled cell phones, snacks, stuffed animals, and juice boxes in two hands. It was all so exotic. He’d always appreciated families from a distance, looked at them like they were a fascinating experiment: all that intimacy and domesticity couldn’t have been more foreign.

Maybe it was the disjointed way Shane grew up, but he didn’t know how to cultivate that sense of home. So he rejected it. He always lived alone, far from crowds and populated cities—especially ones that reminded him of DC—preferably near the ocean, and rarely longer than six months. Rentals only. There was a freedom in staying at places that weren’t his. Shane reveled in that vaguely disorienting vibe of bed-and-breakfasts, Airbnbs, somebody’s seaside shack—just-passing-through places where things were a little bit off. Lamps instead of overhead lighting. Sheets aggressively scented with some foreign fabric softener. Jumpy ceiling fans and dusty bookshelves with eclectic ’80s paperbacks (often historical westerns featuring covers with chesty women and sometimes a horse). It was impossible to get too comfortable in a place that kept reminding you it wasn’t yours.

And it was impossible for anyone to know him, either. Which was perfect. During his lost years, he hadn’t wanted people to see how unstable he was. Of course, sobriety had shown him that everyone was a little bit off. His shit was just closer to the surface.

What’s wrong with you? Eva had asked that first day. Shane had been fielding this question for years. But when Eva said it, it was the first time he’d actually given it any real thought. She’d asked with curiosity, not judgment.

Shane was a complete stranger and confessed to breaking his arm on purpose—but she didn’t write him off or condemn him or, worse, laugh. She didn’t try to convince him to stop. Eva’s generosity was stunning—she just wanted to know why.

And he would’ve told her. But back then, he couldn’t articulate the reasons why he did that to himself.

Keeping a steady pace, Shane powered past City Vineyard, the riverfront restaurant with its dazzling downtown skyline views and digital nomads sipping rosé in plastic glasses. The sweet, fermented scent of bar wafted over him on the dry, hot breeze, driving him to run faster. With every heavy footfall, every forward swing of his upper body, the bones in his left forearm reverberated—a low thrum, just enough so he could never forget his old habit. And what, exactly, was wrong with him.

The first time it happened was when Shane was seven, the terrible event that had sent him hurtling from foster home to foster home, where he learned new crimes, new dysfunctions, new ways to be unloved. That was one piece of it. The other was every time he broke his arm, it hurt, but when it dulled, he’d be shot through with this remarkable insight about himself. It was the only time he saw who he was, crystal clear.