Speakeasy (True North #5)(44)

I sputter with laughter. “You sound like a beer snob.”

“Snobby cider is the family business. Here. Try this.”

She offers the bottle, and I take a sip. I see what she means about the texture. The flavor is still not nearly as amazing as the award-winning beers in my life, but it’s really not bad. “You’re right. It’s good. Let’s compare it to another one.”

May is already opening the lager. She takes a sniff and then a swig. “Okay, also not bad. But I think this might be harder to pull off. An IPL relies on that alcohol tang, you know? And even though this is tasty, I miss the real thing.” She hands it over.

“Yeah,” I say after a taste. “This one gets voted off the island.”

“It’s not terrible,” she hedges.

“We have one more to try, though.” I open the stout from Virginia and give it a taste. “Pretty great. Kinda similar to the porter.”

“Let’s see.” May sips from the bottle and agrees with me.

We sit back against my pillows and pass our favorite two beers back and forth. It’s nice. Things are always so easy between us.

“You know,” she says, “some people in AA don’t think alcoholics should drink NA beer.”

“Why?” I take a hasty look at the label. The beer is less than a half percent alcohol by volume. “You’d have to drink more than ten of these to equal a beer, right? Is there any way to get a buzz off this?”

She shakes her head with a smile. “It’s not that. They say it’s a crutch. Like you’re not doing the real work of staying strong if you drink it.”

That sounds like bullshit. “This isn’t my area of expertise. But if you took up running or chewing gum or knitting instead, is that bad, too? I’m not buying that argument.”

“I’m not buying it either,” she says. “I think it counts whenever I’m staying away from the hard stuff. Not that it’s easy.”

“Still?” I’d assumed she was doing great. She seems like someone who’s in control.

May’s face clouds over. “There’s a reason I don’t talk about AA with you. It’s not sexy.”

“Well…” I am in over my head here. “I think everything you do is sexy. So why not tell me? You go to those meetings, right? What’s that like?”

She tugs the sheet up over her delicious breasts, as if shielding herself from the topic. “It’s important to my recovery, to be near people who absolutely get it. But it’s not exactly a party.”

“Lots of heartbreak?” I guess. I know alcoholism can tear families apart.

“Sometimes I feel like a poser at AA,” May says. She takes a sip and then leans her head on my shoulder. “Everyone in there has lost more than I have.”

“But that’s a good thing, right? You don’t want to change places.”

“No. Of course not. I just mean that women who were sexually abused at age seven have more of a right to their coping mechanisms than I do. Like—they have better justification for their pain.”

“Nah,” I argue. “Nobody gets to decide that for you.”

She traces a shape on my chest with one finger. “I know I’m supposed to feel that way about it. It just seems true sometimes. I have a nice family and plenty of opportunity. I just learned to numb myself with booze instead of turning to them for help.”

“Wait. When did you learn to numb yourself with booze?” I ask her. We never talk about this. I don’t want to push, yet I care about her and I’m curious.

“Sophomore year of college is when my dad died. I didn’t handle it very well. Then junior year Lark went away for a semester abroad, and there wasn’t anyone I had to look in the eye at the end of the day. I was super lonely. I found a boyfriend who liked to be in charge…” She lifts her head off my shoulder. “But not in a fun way,” she adds.

“He was controlling?” I set the beer bottle on the table and give her my full attention.

“You could say that.” Her voice is flat. “He hit me when I didn’t agree with him.”

“Aggh.” I make a noise of dismay. Who the fuck could hit May Shipley? That’s like kicking a puppy. “Please tell me he’s out of your life.” I’ve made a fist with one hand, as if I could punch the guy right now.

“Hell, yes. Haven’t seen him since graduation. He moved to California last I heard.”

Good riddance. But now I’m struggling with the mental image of May cowering from some asshole. So I haul her onto my body where at least I know she’s okay.

“I really didn’t start drinking until that semester when Lark was gone. I was lonely and he liked to tell me all the ways I was inadequate. Getting drunk made my life feel easier. And he used to treat me better when I was drunk than when I was sober.”

And now my blood is boiling.

“Then he graduated, and it saved me from him. He got a job in another city and broke up with me. So it’s not like I woke up one day too smart for his bullshit. It just fixed itself. But by then I’d figured out how nice it was to feel numb. So I kept drinking senior year.”

“What did Lark think?” I wonder why nobody noticed May’s problem.

“Well…” She hesitates. “It was college. There was always lots of drinking. Lark would get drunk with me. But her motivation was different. She was just blowing off steam. I drank even on the nights I was home alone. I hid it from her.”