Out of Nowhere (Middle of Somewhere 2)

He turns to face me. “What?”

I tell him about talking to Carly and how I asked the kids to write testimonials about how important Rafe had been to them. When I tell him that instead of writing them, they recorded videos on their phones, he almost smiles, and mutters, “Of course they did.”

“I can’t believe you did that for me,” he says finally, and shame settles in my gut at how clearly Rafe expected absolutely nothing of me.

“Sorry it didn’t do any good.”

“It did,” he says softly. “Thank you.”

“I get it more now. How freaked you were about the thing with Anders. How scared you were to break any rules. I—” I roll my eyes at myself. “—read some articles about all that stuff. How difficult it is to get hired when you have a record and how hard people come down on anything you do that’s not perfect.” I trail off, not really knowing how to talk about this stuff. “It’s so damn unfair.”

“Fuck, Colin,” he says, and he takes my hands. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without them. I just… I haven’t felt this… untethered since….” He shakes his head and slumps back into the couch.

“Look, everything sucks right now, but you’ll figure it out. You will,” I insist as he starts to turn away. “When I met you, my life was utter garbage. No, it was. You changed everything for me, man. If you can do that for me, you can do it for yourself. Hell, maybe you’ll start your own version of YA. Or whatever. I don’t know. But you’ve got all this experience and you know tons of people who’d want to help. Maybe you can’t do the same job. But that doesn’t mean your life is over.”

Rafe bites his lip and doesn’t say anything, and I go up on my knees on his stupidly uncomfortable couch and put my hands on his shoulders. “I know my timing’s shit,” I say, forcing him to look at me, “but I want to be with you. For real. I want to… go to dinner at your mom’s or whatever the hell.”

“You do?” Rafe says suspiciously.

“Well, okay, no, I don’t actually want to go to dinner at your mom’s, but I will. If you want. And yes, I want to be with you. I just… I need you to tell me shit that you want. Like going to dinner. And I’ll try. I know I haven’t been very good at that, but I’m going to do better.

“And, like, we might each need different things, but that’s normal, and if we can tell each other what those things are, then we can try and… you know… give them to each other, and….”

I trail off, embarrassed. Rafe’s looking at me with narrowed eyes and a slightly open mouth like he has no idea what to say to me, which is fair, given that I totally garbled that.

“Uh. Fine. Daniel told me a bunch of that stuff, but it’s true, right?”

Rafe almost smiles, then lets out a long sigh and scrunches up his eyes. “You’re not really letting me wallow in my misery here, babe.”

I grin. “Yeah, I guess I’m not as good at that as you are with me. Besides, you’ve been wallowing for weeks, looks like. So go on, then. Tell me what you need.” I cringe at sounding like a self-help book.

He runs a tentative finger up my arm, and I brace myself to listen to what Rafe’s conditions are. “I need you not to be drinking, mostly. A beer every now and then, sure. A glass of wine with dinner once in a while, okay. But I… I can’t see you drunk. I just can’t. And I can’t know that it’s your coping mechanism. I can’t be honest with you if I know that I might potentially be the cause of you going off and getting wasted to cope with what I’ve said, even if you do it where I can’t see. I can’t know that’s what I might trigger. It’s not something I can live with. And I need to be able to be honest with you, so….”

“I get it,” I say. “I—it’s just something I’ve always done. I—Pop was always a drinker, and my brothers, and so….”

“I know a lot of people who could help you with it. There are meetings. A lot of support.”

I shake my head. “Nah. I mean, no offense to the twelve steps or whatever. I know it helped you a lot. But I don’t want to talk to people about that shit. I haven’t had anything to drink since that night. The night you left. I can do it. I promise.”

Rafe traces my mouth with his finger, but he doesn’t look as hopeful as I’d like.

“That’s good. That’s really good. But… you can’t promise something like that, okay? I mean, promise that you’ll try, but it’s a big deal. A process, not a onetime decision. And it’s exactly because you’ve always done it that it’s going to be hard. Because it’s not only about stopping. It’s about finding other ways to cope with stressors and problems when they arise. Do you see?”