“Oh shit,” I said. “It’s champagne.”
Luke looked horror-stricken. “What?” He took the
fragile, fluted glass of golden bubbles from me. Sniffed. Tasted. Went white
and then red.
“That isn’t funny!” Luke stared around the crowded room—we
were at a party at his partner Rod’s house—looking ready to punch someone. “How
fucking dare—”
Nobody would fucking dare. Nobody was paying us a bit of
attention. Everyone was laughing and talking and, yes, drinking. A lot of
drinking at cop parties. Supposedly one out of every four cops on the street
had some kind of alcohol or drug abuse issue. Not that I judge. I am the last
person in position to judge.
The flavor of the bubbles still snapped and stung against my
tongue. I could practically taste the rainbow. Hello darkness, my old
friend…
“It’s okay,” I said
quickly. “Just get me something else. Get me a ginger ale.” Asking for
sparkling cider from a half-looped vice cop wearing a Santa hat had probably
been a bad idea anyway. I should have stuck to my usual tonic water with a twist
of lime, but sparkling cider had seemed more festive.
Luke’s gaze shot back to mine, searching, afraid,
remorseful. “I should have tasted it first.”
I laughed. “Come on. Seriously? I don’t need a poison
taster. I’m not going to fall off the wagon because I have a sip of champagne.”
If anything, he looked more aghast, and listening to the
echo of my words, I got it. Because shades of the old days. The bad old days
when I’d insist I could still have a drink and be okay. That wasn’t what I
meant. I had been sober five years. I knew better than anyone I couldn’t have a
drink and still be okay. Or at least, I couldn’t choose to drink and
still be okay.
But this…this involuntary ingesting of alcohol, that was a
completely different thing.
“I mean,” I said quickly, “It isn’t just about the alcohol.
In fact, the booze is the least of it.” Which is ironic, but true.
“Right,” Luke said equally quickly. “I know. Of course.”
And he did, but…
Once I would have been hurt by his fear, but learning to
forgive myself had made me gentler with others. And there was no one I wanted
to be gentler with than Luke who now looked guilty and apologetic as though
he’d let me down with that flash of instinctive alarm.
He hadn’t. Because truth? My tongue still tingled from that
sudden, unexpected taste of forbidden fruit. For one dizzying moment it was as
though that slightly dinged silver disco ball overhead had fallen to the shag
carpet, split open, and spilled out cartoon butterflies and flowers, fireworks
exploding glitter-hearts and rainbows and twinkling stars—thrilling and
sickening at the same time. Like Alice stumbling through the Looking Glass,
martini glass in hand.
Man, I still missed drinking.
And, man, I’d happily do without it for the rest of my life.
Happily avoid doing anything that made Luke
look so worried—worried and angry. He was back to glaring around the crowd,
waiting for some joker to burst out laughing and admit to spiking my drink.
That wasn’t going to happen because that wasn’t what had happened.
But cops are not trusting people. When you see the worst of
people, day in and day out, you start to expect the worst from everyone.
I put my hand on his arm. Luke’s hazel eyes jerked back to
mine, instantly alert, instantly attuned to whatever I needed.
“Hey. It’s okay,” I insisted. “It was an accident. Nobody’s—”
I broke off as a blonde girl in a dress about the size of an elf’s uniform,
stumbled against me.
“Sorry!” she said, and glared at the guy who had knocked
into her. He didn’t even notice, red-faced and laughing so hard he was nearly
doubled over. The elf and I exchanged grimaces.
I edged toward Luke, who nodded at the girl, and frowned down
at the champagne flute as though he still found it suspicious but couldn’t
figure out how to charge it. He met my eyes. “Ginger ale, you said?”
I took a breath. “Or we could just…split?”
I was afraid he might be disappointed, but no. He
brightened. “Right? You think so too? Because we did the thing.”
“We did the thing,” I agreed. Put in an appearance,
supported Rod’s efforts to impress Cara, his new girlfriend, had displayed a judicious
amount of holly jolly as befitted the season.
But if I had to listen to “All I Want for Christmas is You”
one more time maybe I would start drinking.
“You wouldn’t mind?” Luke added, and I got that he was
making the point that he didn’t think he needed to drag me out of there because
liquor had touched my lips; doing his best to erase my memory of his initial reaction,
that flare of clear and present panic.
“Not at all.” I smiled because I appreciated that show of confidence—and
because I understood and sympathized with his initial fright. We had only been
together—really together—for three years, but I felt sometimes like I’d known
Luke my entire life.
Anyway, we both liked parties well enough, but what we
really liked, what we really wanted—what we really needed—was a little home
alone time. I’d been away in Tuscany for the past eight days, so the last thing
I’d felt like was going out, let alone attending a Christmas party peopled
solely by members of LAPD and their plus-ones, but when you marry a cop, you
marry his partner.
“You grab our coats, I’ll say goodnight to Rod,” Luke said.
* * * * *
When I came out of the pool, Luke was waiting with my
robe—hot out of the tumble dry cycle, and I shivered into it, chattering out,
“It’s colder than I thought.”
The water had been a delightful 89 degrees, but the night air? Frigid.
“It’s fifty-nine tonight, you nut.” He wrapped his arms
around me and kissed me. “You’re going to have pneumonia for Christmas.”
“N-n-nah. I’m p-p-part s-s-snowman, r-r-remember?” I kissed
him back. His mouth was cold and tasted like cocoa. Funny to think there had
been a time I had not liked the taste of cocoa unless it had peppermint
Schnapps or raspberry vodka added to it. Now cocoa was part of our wintertime routine and I loved it to the last drop.
“S-s-so many s-s-stars tonight!” It was the truth; the night
sky was glittering—almost crackling—with flecks of diamond dust. I’d seen two
shooting stars while I’d been swimming. Good omens, if you believed in such
things.
I believed in such things.
“Fireplace or fire pit?” Luke asked.
“F-f-fireplace.”
He laughed, keeping his arm around me. “Come on, Frosty.”
After I’d showered and we were settled before the fireplace
in the den, drinking our cocoa, I said, “You don’t have to worry about tonight.
I’m okay.”
He said at once, so I knew I was right in thinking it was still
on his mind. “I know. I know that. It wasn’t about you, Tim—”
But, of course, it was. It was all about me and the number
of times I’d let him down—let us both down before I’d found my way out of that
dark, dark wood. Found the way out for both of us because when you love
someone, you’re trapped with them.
“And you really don’t have to apologize.” I smiled at
him. “Were you worried the whole time I was gone?”
Tuscany was the first trip overseas I’d made on my own since
getting sober. We’d traveled a couple of times together—our honeymoon in
Ireland had been the last time. At first, I hadn’t trusted…well, I won’t say
myself, because I did trust myself in the ordinary course of things, but
I didn’t trust the universe not to throw something at me I wasn’t prepared for.
Alcoholics and boy scouts prefer to be prepared.
So I wasn’t at all surprised that Luke hesitated, smiled
ruefully. “I was worried, yes, but not because I thought you couldn’t resist
the famed Tuscan wine. Your sense of direction is so shitty, and things
have a way of happening to you. That’s what worried me.”
I laughed because both were true. “Yet here I am, safe and
sound. And sober.”
“Yes.” He kissed me softly and then less softly. “Bed?” he
gasped out, the third time our lips met.
“I thought you’d never…”
But as I started to push up from the sofa, he caught my arm,
tumbling me back against him. He said with sudden urgency, “Tim?”
“What’s up?”
He looked so serious, so earnest. “I've got to say it."
I said warily, "Okay. Say it."
"When we got together
again, I really thought I couldn’t love you more than I already did. I just
couldn’t imagine—but every day, every year I love you more. And that’s why if I
seemed to-to freak out—I didn’t think it was even possible to be this happy
with someone. And it's all so fragile. It can all change in an instant. There are no guarantees. That's all. It's not about trusting you or faith in you or confidence in you. It's about knowing only too well how lucky I am.”
It’s not an Irish folk song, but it might as well be: When
you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose. We both had everything to lose. Everyone had everything to lose, because nothing lasts forever.
“It’s the same for me,” I said.
His gaze—the warm color of the firelight--searched mine.
I said, “Life is unpredictable. Nobody knows better than us. A lot of things aren’t in
our control, but this one thing—this is. I’m not saying I stay sober for you
because that’s not true. I stay sober because I want to be present and
accounted for in my life. But the best thing about that life? You. And I
wouldn’t risk what we have together for all the tea in China--or all the
whiskey in Ireland.”
I would have been too corny to say what I was thinking, but it was the truth: even when my glass was empty, my cup was full.
The star atop the tree was still shining when we went down
the hall to bed.
