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“I knew it,” Patrick says, triumph lacing his words. “Iknewyou were in deep.”

I love Kali.

I’min lovewith her.

And I have been since the minute I laid eyes on her.

I run my hands over my head. “I should’ve told her everything right from the start.”

“Maybe,” Patrick agrees, and I scowl at him. “But it’s not something that comes up naturally over coffee the first day you meet someone. Look how long I kept things from Hazel.”

“That’s different. You weren’t a total fuck-up.”

Patrick shakes his head. “Anthony, you’re not a fuck-up.”

“Maybe not so much anymore.”

Patrick chuckles. “You’ve been through some terrible things in your life, but you’ve come out of it all and you’re better for it. You’re not responsible for Chloe’s death.”

“Now Iknowyou’re lying out of your ass.”

Patrick shakes his head. “I never blamed you. I was angry about the situation. Angry I wasn’t there when it happened. Angry at the world for taking her from me. But I was also grateful you weren’t taken from me as well. If we hadn’t lost Chloe, who knows … maybe you wouldn’t be here now.”

I fish out my elastics, the urge to break something building in my fists. “You think she was taken from us, so I’d get my shit together? That’s bleak.”

Patrick doesn’t answer. I wrap my hands around the pink material and pull so it digs into my skin. “I suggested we get high. I knew she was battling her own addiction, and I didn’t care.”

I glance at Patrick who’s watching me. “Remember what Chloe used to always say about addiction?”

“What?”

“We don’t choose to be addicted; what we choose to do is deny our pain.” Patrick’s lips lift into a small smile. “She was hurting, Anthony. She was using all the time. No matter how much I tried to help her, she was on her own destructive path. If she hadn’t done it with you, she would’ve done it soon after anyway.”

“But she-”

“And if she hadn’t joined you on the couch, maybe the car would’ve hityou,” Patrick cuts in. “Maybe you’d be dead, and she’d be alive, battling with the guilt and shame of it all, just as you have.”

“She deserves to be here more than I do,” I mutter.

Patrick shifts, turning towards me. “You have to stop blaming yourself for the past, Anthony. Let it go. LetChloe,go. You deserve to be here.”

He squeezes my shoulder before standing and heading inside.

It’s simultaneously peaceful and chaotic, listening to the waves crash on the rocks below whilst battling the thoughts in my brain. The twirling of the elastics causes friction on my knuckles, and I welcome it. Not in a morbid way, but as a reminder I’m still here. In flesh and blood and life.

Maybe my brother’s right. Maybe Idodeserve to be here. I’ve spent the past four years working hard to convince everyone else that I do. My family, my friends, people in NA, my therapist, my new boss.

Kali.

Somehow, amongst all the healing and hard work I forgot to check in with myself. I’ve been happy lately, but I’ve never consciously thought about how happy I am to be alive. To be where I am. I’ve never given myself time to stop and revel in it.

Despite the weight of the fight with Kali weighing on my chest, I smile. The fact that I can process events like this and not think about reaching for money to buy drugs, is a vast cry from where I was a few years ago.

I stand up and head back inside, grabbing my car keys with a plan of attack.

I’m going to go to an NA meeting. If I need to be around anyone right now, its fellow addicts trying to stay clean.

Then, I’m going to smoke the cigarette curled around my ear.