“But then?” Liv repeated, prompting me to quit stalling and tell her what happened.
“But then I got to Seattle, and ran smack into a pile of bad memories. Some shit had happened in a certain park overlooking Puget Sound, and I…I thought I could handle it. I thought I could face…what had happened there. I thought maybe it’d help me to be there, to face things sober for the first time in…a long time.”
“No?” she asked, her voice hesitant.
“Not so much.” I swallowed, pausing. “I…well…it got the better of me. I couldn’t deal, couldn’t—facing it was too much. I ended up with a big ol’ bottle of booze, drank it all, quit caring, and…got behind the wheel. Dumbest thing I ever did. Pure blind luck I didn’t kill myself or someone else.” My face burned, and I swallowed hard. “Woke up in the hospital, laid up with a broken leg, broken arm, cracked ribs, cut up, hungover, knowing what I’d done. What I could’ve done. How I’d fucked up.”
“God, Lucas.”
“One dumb decision, and…” I shrugged, lifted my palms up. “My boys brought me up here, rented me an apartment, gave me an allowance, took turns watching me like a hawk while I recovered, got out of the casts, worked on staying sober again. I built myself a little life here, but this is where I grew up. This is where things really started to go sideways a long time ago and that led me to that park on Puget Sound which, in turn, led me to…to being a fat useless old alcoholic bumpkin with a bum leg and no car.”
“Hospital bills?” she guessed.
I shook my head. “Nah, I’m solvent enough. I had insurance—haveinsurance, through my retirement plan. I just…I can’t bring myself to get behind the wheel again, even though I’m sober and a pretty damn good driver.”
She eyed the sky. “You up for hiking some more?”
I nodded and heaved myself to feet, hauling myself up on the walking stick. “Let’s go.”
“Are you sure you’re up for it?” she asked, the picture of concern.
“Yep. We’re out here, on the trail, might as well finish the hike. A few more miles won’t kill me. Probably.”
She stopped, her face pale, shoulders drooping. “Lucas, I know you meant that as a joke, but I don’t find it funny.”
I cursed myself mentally. “Shit, Liv, I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me, and I’m sorry.”
She stared at me, eyes hard, fierce. “You know, you spend a lot of time talking about being a fat useless old man with a bum leg, but not a lot talking about what you could do to change that. You’ve been rather honest about not caring whether you lived or died, and I appreciate that honesty. But I have to be honest with you, Lucas—I can’t be friends with someone with not only no will to live, but no will to improve themselves. To become better than they are.” Her eyes bored into me, the compassion and concern gone, now replaced with something very much like anger. “Yes, you’re overweight. Yes, you have a history of heart disease and alcoholism, a bad diet, and a bad leg. All that is true, I grant you. The real question is, what are you going to do about it?”
And with that, she turned and walked away with an angry stomp in her step, arms swinging, Nalgene bottle bumping her hip. I followed, a bit more slowly, both because my leg was aching something fierce, but also because my gut and my heart were aching even more.
The easy camaraderie we’d shared at the beginning was gone, and the rest of the hike was consumed by a hard, cold silence from Olivia, and a tense, thoughtful, uncomfortable silence from me.
She carried the anger with her all the way to her truck, and the entire ride back to my house. It wasn’t until I was about to climb out that she spoke.
“Lucas…”
“Let me stop you right quick, okay? You didn’t say anything but the truth. Now I gotta think on what you said. Did I like hearing it? Not s’much. Did I need to hear it? Probably. Definitely, if I’m gonna be honest.”
“I wasn’t going to apologize.” Liv traced the stitching on the steering wheel leather with a fingertip. “I was going to say that what I said was borne more out of anger at my husband than you, but that doesn’t make it any less true.” A long, thick silence. “I want to be your friend, Lucas. But I’m not sure I can, if you’re not able or willing to be healthy. To get healthy.” She shook her head. “The way I lost Darren? Lucas, I simplycannotgo through that again. I cannot, and will not.”
I nodded. “I understand that. But you know as well as I do that changes like that have to come from me, not you. I couldn’t have stopped drinking for you, and I can’t change my diet and start exercising for you.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
I tilted my head. “Mmm, you sort of are. It’s complicated, is what it is.” I held up a hand to forestall her. “I want to be your friend. I like spending time with you. So whatI’msaying is, I need to think on some things.”
She nodded. “Okay. I have client meetings and designs to work on that will take up most of this week.”
“I did enjoy the hike,” I said.
“Until things sort of blew up?”
I laughed. “Yeah, up until that. But I bet you could get me on another hike, and maybe the next time, things won’t go boom.”
“I’d like that,” she said, her voice low and quiet. “A lot.”
“Me too.”
