Текст книги "The Play"

Автор книги: Karina Halle

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Текущая страница: 25 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

“It’s not your fault,” I try and tell her but I know my words fall on deaf ears. My good friend guilt has a way of blocking everything else out.

“I have to go home,” she repeats, her face frozen in this state of blank fright. “I have to get on the next plane out of here.”

I bury the crushing fear deep inside. “Of course,” I tell her. “Let me handle that okay. Just go and pack. We’ll get you back to your mother. Everything is going to be fine, okay love? Everything is going to be fine.”

She nods and turns in a daze, heading over to the bedroom.

I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck. If her mother doesn’t pull out of this, Kayla will be beyond devastated. More than that, she’ll be an orphan, just as I was. And though she grew up with two loving parents, when I only had one and for a short time, I know what it’s like to feel utterly alone in this world.

This is going to destroy her.

I lean against the wall, trying to breathe. Our relationship is hanging on by a thread, I’m probably the person she trusts the least at the moment and now she has to go back home. I can’t even go with her because of rugby, even if she wanted me there.

Still, I have to make sure. I could try.

I head to the bedroom to see her shoving everything in her suitcase, a blank expression on her face.

“Do you want me to go with you?” I ask her.

She barely looks at me. “You can’t go. You have rugby.”

“I know I do but this is important.”

She shakes her head, grabbing a pair of jeans out of the laundry basket. It’s all happening so soon. She’s leaving.

It would be completely selfish to fear that she might not ever come back.

“You stay here,” she says. “This is…I have to go be with my brothers. We have to figure out what to do.”

“I know,” I say softly. “But I could make something work. If you needed me, you know. For support.” The truth is, I probably couldn’t make anything work. Not right now, before our first game. But if she needed me to be there, if she wanted me there, I would do whatever I could.

“You stay here,” she says again.

I nod. “Okay. I just wanted to make sure.”

I go to my computer and quickly book her a ticket on the next flight out of Edinburgh. There’s one that leaves tonight, stopping over in Newark and then LA, but at least she’d get to leave as soon as possible.

And just like that, both our worlds completely change for the second time today. We’re both silent and reeling on the drive over to the airport, with Lionel and Miss Emily in the back seat to keep me company on what I know will be a very lonely drive back home.

Everything is happening so fast, my heart and mind can barely catch up. One minute I’m begging her to stay, to give me a second chance. The next minute she’s leaving and it’s out of our hands. She’s leaving and what we are as a couple, who are to each other, is being left completely unresolved. But that’s the least of our problems right now and right now I don’t think I deserve to dwell on anything that remotely resembles myself.

It’s all about Kayla. And that’s where my heart breaks all over again. Because I know how much she loves her mom, how much responsibility she feels for her. I just want to be with her, by her side through all of this. I want to be the rock she so desperately needs. I want to be the hand she reaches for at night, the chest that she cries into.

And skip, skip, skip goes time.

I’m getting whiplash.

We’re now at the security gate and she’s already said a teary goodbye to Lionel and Emily in the car, and she’s all checked in and now we’re standing a few feet apart and the short distance between us feels a continent wide already.

“I know I’m going to regret this moment,” she says quietly, her tone still flat, in shock.

“What do you mean?” I ask, reaching for her hand. It’s cold and limp in mine.

She blinks a few times, then studies my face, her eyes pausing at my nose, my lips. “I know that in the future, when things settle down, in whatever way, I’m going to look back at this moment and I’m going to regret that I didn’t take it all in. That I didn’t see who was standing in front of me. That I’m going to wish I could recall your face.” She shakes her head and a single tear spills down her cheek. “None of this is sinking in. That I’m leaving. I don’t know what’s going to happen. With her. With us.”

I raise her hand, flipping her palm up and kissing it. “Your mother is going to be fine. You’ll get there and she’s going to be fine. She’ll know you’re there. She’ll pull through, okay? And us. We’ll be fine too. You’ll come back to Scotland when she’s better, love.”

But as soon as I say the words, I see the look in her eyes. The look that says she doesn’t know. The look that said that maybe she was planning on leaving anyway.

Sorrow carves a path through my chest.

She was never planning on staying.

It takes all my strength to stop from collapsing to the ground, right there in the airport.

“I’m sorry,” she says to me.

I try to smile. I fail. “Don’t be.”

“I love you, you know.”

My vision blurs. “I love you too.” But my voice cracks and it’s all too obvious that I’m being decimated from the inside out.

This is probably the last time I’ll ever see her again.

And now I know I’ll regret this moment too.

For not forcing myself on her plane.

For messing everything up and preventing us from having a chance.

For letting her go.

I can’t let her go.

With tears in my eyes, I grab her face and kiss her hard on the lips, letting all my love, all my cares, all my pain melt into her, as if she could take all of me with her.

I let out a soft sob against her mouth, my hands starting to shake.

This is the end.

We’re both so blindsided.

She pulls away from me first, sniffing hard, mascara underneath her eyes. “I have to go,” she whispers.

Then she turns away.

Walks away.

Disappears behind the security partition.

And I’m lost in the distance between us.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Kayla

The flight attendant is telling me to buckle my seat belt but I barely hear her. I can barely move my fingers, they are so cold. I feel like a block of ice, numb to the marrow, but I think it’s keeping me alive, keeping me from losing my mind to worry and grief. So I welcome the way I move, slow motion, underwater. I hope it wraps around me for all the time to come.

If I try and think about any of it, it creates cracks down my middle and I am trying so hard to hold it all together. On one hand there is my mother, in a coma, on the threshold of life and death and none of that would have happened if I had been there. It’s my fault through and through that this happened and I have no one to blame but myself.

On the other hand there is Lachlan, the man I love, the man with demons I can’t fight, that fight me back, and I left him. I left him in Scotland and I left our relationship broken with no chance of repair. I might never see him again and that too, even for all his faults and his self-ruin and his terrible addictions, feels like a death as well.

Shut it down, I think to myself. Bring up that big black heart and shut it all down.

It’s a shame. But it’s the only way I’m going to get through this in one piece, even though I know I’ve already left a vital part behind in Scotland.

When my plane finally lands in San Francisco, I’m a walking statue. The only thing that gets through is seeing my brother Nikko, along with Stephanie, waiting in arrivals.

“Oh, honey,” Stephanie says softly when she sees me, running toward me with open arms. She holds onto me tight, sniffing into me and it takes so much to not break down and lose it. I have to stay strong though, because if just seeing her makes me cry, I’m not going to get through the next few days.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, pulling back. Her eyes are swollen from tears. “Toshio called me and told me what happened, said Nikko was going to pick you up. I had to come along.” She looks around me. “Lachlan couldn’t come?”

I shake my head. I can’t even explain.

She winces. “It’s okay. I’m here. We’re all here for you. Nicola, Bram, Linden. We’ll get you through this.”

I nod, appreciating it more than anything. I look over at Nikko and give him a soft smile.

Nikko is the second oldest, a really smart software engineer with a wife and a toddler. He’s always been the quiet one, the calm one, the old soul, and I’m glad he’s the one who came to get me. Nikko always provides the right amount of comfort.

“Kayla,” he says, embracing me. “I should have been there. We should have done more.”

I shake my head. “No. I was wrong to leave.”

“No,” he says adamantly, pulling back. He stares intently at me. “Kayla you have done so much for her. So much. Her sons just haven’t been there and we should have been. We should have never let you take on so much by yourself.”

Oh god. Now his eyes are watering. I can’t do this.

I turn away. “Let’s just go. Please. I need to see her.”

The drive to the hospital feels surreal. It just doesn’t seem like anything other than a bad dream. Then again, the last twenty-four hours have been a nightmare, with Lachlan starting it all. My eyes pinch shut at the image of him dropping to his knees, holding onto me for dear life as he sobbed his apologies. I knew he meant it all. I knew he did. But the damage was already done.

My beautiful beast. I don’t think I’ll ever see him again.

I lean forward, curling over the pain and Stephanie reaches forward from the back seat, rubbing my arm, telling me it will be all right. She doesn’t even know the half of it.

Once at the hospital, we go upstairs and I’m hit by the painful wails, the sterile smells, that heaviness in the air. Each step we take down the hall seems longer than the first and there’s a part of me that starts to panic, wondering if it will all be too late by the time I get there.

Eventually we get to the ICU and see Paul and Brian in a small waiting room, talking to the doctors. I give them quick hugs as they tell me Toshio is on his way, had to drop off Sean somewhere.

The doctor, a tall blonde woman with a no-nonsense face, proceeds to tell me everything as Steph holds my hand.

My mother appeared to have a major stroke, blood clot in the brain.

Toshio came over to the house and found her unresponsive on the kitchen floor, called an ambulance.

They’d said the damage so far points to her being on that floor for a very long time.

In the back of my head I think about when I rang her to tell her my news.

And she never answered.

Could that have already been it? Could I have been so selfish in my desire to stay with Lachlan that I was calling her up to tell her this while she was suffering from a fucking stroke?

Loathing myself has reached another level.

The doctor then tells us that she’s been put into a medically induced coma in hopes of keeping the swelling down. The coma shuts down everything in the brain so that in extreme cases such as this one the brain has a chance to recover.

“And what are the chances of recovery?” I ask quietly. I glance around at my brothers’ faces and I’m hit with how grim they look. They already know. Of course they already know. The chances aren’t good.

The doctor gives me a tight smile. “We can’t say for sure yet. It depends…if the swelling recedes, then we can try and lighten up the coma and see if she can come back and what her level of function is.”

“If she can come back?” I ask incredulously.

“Our goal is to get her out of the coma as quickly as we can. We don’t want to have her under for any more than we should. But it’s still a risk to put her there. We never know if the patient will come out of it, even if we lessen it. But sometimes it’s the only chance we have.” She tilts her head sympathetically. “When we decide to put a patient into a coma, we’re already talking about extremes. Your mother has a very tough time ahead of her. You’re all going to need to be very strong.”

I almost faint. Steph tightens her grip on my arms, keeping me upright. “Can I see her?” I whisper.

The doctor nods. “Of course, follow me.”

We go into the nearest room and she pulls a curtain aside.

There is my mother.

But it’s not my mother.

My mother was tiny but she’s never this tiny. Not this old.

This is a small, dying woman, skin greying, almost translucent, painfully thin and hooked up to a million machines. They beep, monitoring her, the only sign that she’s not dead at all. I watch her heart beat on the monitor for a moment, then look back at her, trying to connect the two images, the proof that she’s alive.

“That’s not her,” I whisper, my hands at my mouth, waiting for someone to agree with me, to tell me that this is all a big joke. But no one says anything. The amount of pain between us all is staggering. I can’t even comprehend it and my brain shuts down all over again. Switch by switch.

But still, I pick up her hand, her papery skin so weak and thin, and I hold it, willing strength into her, screaming inside my head for her to please, please pull through.

There’s no response. I don’t know why I thought there would be. They have to wait to bring her out of the coma anyway. But even so, I thought that maybe, maybe just me being there, having all her children around, would let her know that she has a lot left to fight for.

I’m terrified, terrified, that wherever she is, that she can see my father and that he’s reaching out for her and that she’s going to take his hand. She’s going to let him pull her away because that’s all she’s ever wanted since the day he died.

I can’t stop the tears from rolling down my face. Even I can’t shut down completely.

Steph holds me and I’m so glad she’s here and I’m so glad my brothers are here but I know who I really need, whose arms I want to crawl into tonight.

With everything that’s happened, everyone I’m losing, I’m amazed I can still feel my heart in my chest at all. I would have thought there was nothing left.

***

The next few days ghost by. Somehow I go back to work, though after one day of moving through the motions like a robot, Lucy tells me to take more time off. I know it’s also because Candace has effectively taken over my job now but I don’t care one bit. I don’t care about anything at all.

So I’m at the hospital most of the time. I sit by my mother’s side, I hold her hand and I talk. I just talk. About everything. Happy things. Old memories between us, the good old days. Things were so beautiful, so simple then. Everything that seemed to happen before this seems to shine in remembrance. Nothing will ever be the same again. I know this.

Steph comes by when she can. Sometimes with Linden. Sometimes its Nicola and Bram. Usually one of my brothers is there. They all have the same apology to me, that they should have never let me be the one to handle everything to do with my mother, that I needed their support, that they should have been less selfish, that they weren’t raised to be that way.

But it really doesn’t matter what they say. I don’t blame any of them. I just blame myself for not being there. If I had never left for Scotland, maybe this would have never happened. I don’t know what the signs were leading up to it, but I’m sure if I could have got her to a hospital, I know I could have made a difference.

The funny thing is, I’m starting to understand Lachlan more and more. It’s grief and guilt of a different kind, but in the end, the emotion eats at you the same way. When I’m at home, I find myself drinking a few glasses of wine just to take me to a fuzzy place where I don’t have to think, if not to just pass the hell out and find sleep.

I haven’t talked to him much. He texts me, always, asking how I am, how my mother is. I never answer him back with more than a few sentences. It seems easier that way, even though I care about him. Even though I want to know he’s okay, that he’s getting help. I want to know how his rugby game went. It’s enough that I look it up on the internet instead of asking him. He didn’t play that first game against Glasgow, but they won and that brings the smallest, saddest smile to my face.

After it’s been about a week since she had her stroke, we’re told by the doctors that the swelling has lessened a bit and they’re optimistic about bringing her out of it.

We all gather at the hospital, just my brothers and I, anxiously standing around while it happens behind closed doors. This could be it. We could walk in there and she might be smiling at us, groggy, but she could be our mother again. She can tell us about the dreams she had about our father and we’d laugh and cry and thank her for coming back to us, her children who need her more than we’ve ever been able to say.

But when the doctor comes out, we immediately know it’s bad news.

She exhales heavily and looks us all in the eyes. “We weren’t successful.”

The floor drops out from under me.

“She’s alive but…we can’t take her off the life support. She wasn’t able to come back.”

“So she’s still in the coma?” Paul asks, sounding irate. That’s always been my oldest brother’s job. To get angry.

The doctor nods. “As I said, putting her in a medically-induced coma is a last resort for anyone, especially someone her age. It is, and always has been, a leap of faith.”

“Well what do we do now?” Toshio says, panicking. “What…what can we do for her?”

“We’ve weaned her off the barbiturates that essentially turn off her brain to begin with. But sometimes the brain doesn’t switch back on. It’s impossible at this stage to know how much damage was done because of the stroke and how much was done because of the coma. If she had a good chance to begin with, she should wake up. But she’s not. We’ll give it a few more days, but, I’m so sorry, I don’t think she’s going to come out of it. The only thing you can do is wait. Pray if you must.”

“Pray?” Paul says with a sneer.

Nikko elbows him to shut up then says to the doctor. “Look, how long can she be in the coma for? She’s in one of her body’s own doing, correct? Well, people wake up from comas all the time. I don’t even think we should be discussing any alternatives until we give her all the time that she needs.”

Toshio is nodding, wiping away a tear. “Yeah. Sometimes people wake up after years and they’re fine.”

Yeah, I think sadly to myself. But those people are young. Our mother is not.

I glance at the doctor and I know she’s thinking the same thing. It’s the truth and one I’ve spent my whole life trying to come to terms with, knowing I’ll have to see my own mother die and probably while I’m still a young woman.

But the doctor doesn’t say that. Instead she says, “We will keep her on life support until you, as a family, tell us not to.”

I close my eyes and feel Nikko’s arm around me.

I want to believe we will never have to make such a horrible decision.

I want to believe that my mother will still come out of it.

I want to believe in a lot of things.

But I’m not sure how much belief I have left anymore.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Lachlan

For days after Kayla left, the only people I see are my teammates and Amara. That’s all my world has whittled down to. Without Kayla, everything just shrinks. When she was here, the world was wide and infinite. Now, it’s back to sleepwalking, just as I had been all those years before she came into my life.

So while I’ve been ignoring calls from my family, from even Bram in the States, I’m not too surprised to find Brigs buzzing my door and throwing stones at my window late one afternoon.

I poke my head out the window, glaring down at him. “You know I have a buzzer,” I yell.

“Would you answer your buzzer?” he asks.

“No more than I’d answer some bugger pelting my window with rocks.” I sigh and take the key out of my pocket, dropping it down for him.

To be honest, I’m nervous about seeing him. The last time I saw him was the day everything ended between Kayla and I and I still can’t quite recall what happened. But he was there, at least for part of it.

He comes in the door, shutting it behind him. “Hey.” He slides his hands in his pockets of his sharp suit and saunters over, watching his shoes on the hardwood floor before glancing up at me. “I saw the game. Congrats.”

“Thanks. You know I had nothing to do with it though,” I tell him, sitting on the couch, Lionel flopping over on my lap, begging for his stomach to be scratched. He knows when I’m anxious and this is more for me than him.

“Ah, I’m sure everyone is playing better because they know you’ll be joining them soon.” He pauses, squinting at me. “How is Denny? He seemed in fine form.”

I nod, trying to ignore the spread of shame. “Yeah he’s all right. I guess it helped that I was a bit drunk during that practice. I wasn’t able to do as much damage.”

I look at him for a reaction.

He only raises his brow. “I see. I thought as much. You know, Lachlan, this isn’t exactly a friendly visit from me.”

I lean back in the chair and stare down at Lionel, running my hand over his stomach. “I guess that would be asking too much from my brother.”

“Oh now I’m your brother,” he says. “I see. Only when you’re sober then.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell him, angry at how weak my voice sounds. Pitiful.

“I know you’re sorry,” he says. “But I don’t think you’re sorry enough. You know, Lachlan, I know you pretty well I think. I don’t claim to know everything about you but that’s only because you keep your cards close to your chest. And for good reason. But I think, even though we aren’t technically related, we handle things in a similar way. We drown in decay. Because when the pain gets too great, it becomes a comfort. You can fall in love with your sadness, your shame. I know I did.” He bites his lip and looks up at the ceiling, as if reasoning with God. “I did. And only now do I feel strong enough to crawl away. But you have to hit that point. You hit yours a decade ago, when your friend died and you were too fucked up to save him. But you and me. People. Everyone. We all have many points during our lives. There is always more than one bottom. This is your other one. You have to crawl out of it, I’m telling you this as your brother, your friend, someone that loves you and knows you. You have to crawl out of it now.”

I stare straight ahead, letting the weight rest on me. “It’s not that easy,” I tell him and I regret it the moment I say it. I eye him warily and see so much indignation and pain on his face that it shames me.

“Don’t tell me it’s not that easy,” he says softly, his voice shaking. “I lost my wife and my son. At the same time. They were taken from me and I have no one to blame but myself for that one. Do you know what the last words I said to her were?” I shake my head, not wanting to know. “They were ‘please forgive me.’ I was begging for her forgiveness because I fucked up something in a major way. And she never got a chance to forgive me. She took Hamish with her and she fled from me. She drove fast and the roads were wet and then I didn’t have a family anymore. The irony was that I was on the verge of losing them anyway. So, don’t tell me it’s not easy. It’s the hardest fucking thing to do, to come out of that black dark hole and into the light where you can clearly see what a piece of shit you are. And I’m still climbing out of it, but at least now I know that I’m going to make it through.” He closes his eyes and gives his head a quick shake. “I have to. I can’t live the rest of my life hating myself. That’s not a life at all.”

I don’t have a rebuttal to that.

He quickly sits down across from me, leaning forward, elbows on knees. “I’m not telling you all this to discount all you went through. This isn’t a competition to find out whose life went more tits up. Yeah? This is about me reaching out to you and trying to give you help. Will you let me help you? I know Kayla wanted to but she’s not here anymore and I’m not going anywhere.”

I want to tell him that it’s not Kayla’s fault that she left but I think we both know it’s my fault anyway.

“What kind of help?” I ask thickly.

He reaches into his front pocket and pulls up a piece of folded up paper, holding it out between two fingers. “This is the number of my psychologist.” I stare at it blankly until he shakes it. “Take it. Call him. Make an appointment. Please.”

I hesitate. My pride is begging me to turn it away. “Brigs…”

“No,” he says. “Do you want gravity to take you back to the bottom? Do you want what happened with Kayla to happen with someone else? Do you want to lose your organization, your career, because I guarantee all of those things will happen if you don’t do something right now.”

“This is some sort of intervention,” I mumble to myself but I take the paper from him.

“Yes, it is,” he says to me. “Our parents don’t need to know about it so it’s between you and I. But I need to know that you’ll call him. I’d watch you do it right now but I’m not your bloody babysitter. I trust you, aye.”

He gets to his feet. “I also hope you’ll check into rehab. There’s a great facility for sports players. They’re discreet. And you know it’s nothing to be ashamed of anymore. Don’t make me sing you an Amy Winehouse song.” He nods at me. “I’ll be in touch. Make the coach put you back on the pitch. You need it.”

And just like he leaves, leaving me reeling on the couch.

“What do you think about that, Lionel?” I ask him, holding the paper. He sniffs it then deems it uninteresting and goes back to sleeping.

I’d been to rehab before but a psychologist is a totally different thing. My prescriptions so far have been filled by the team doctors. Tell me your problems, here is something to fix it, boom, you’re done.

But a psychologist will bring up every single ugly detail of your life. I don’t think I’m strong enough to relive it, I relive it enough in my nightmares as it is.

I don’t discount it though. I respect Brigs too much for that. I get up and post it on the fridge door, underneath a magnet, so it will look me in the eye every day until I finally get the courage to do something.

***

Game number two is tomorrow and I know Alan will be putting me in. I’m nervous but relieved all at the same time. I don’t want to fuck up but I’m so glad the waiting period is over. With Kayla gone, there’s just this ghost of her everywhere I look, haunting my bones, and I need something else to keep me going, to push me along the right track

Still, I need to hear her voice. Just for a moment. All my texts and calls to her either go answered or they just get something generic and I need, want, so much more from her. And I need to be there for her. I can’t imagine what she’s going through right now.

I call her. It’s around dinner time here so I know it has to be the morning for her.

As usual though, it rings and rings and rings.

I’m just about to hang up when she answers.

“Hello?”

The sound of her voice nearly breaks me.

“Kayla?” I say. “It’s me. It’s Lachlan.”

“I know,” she says flatly. She sniffs and I wonder if she’s been crying.

“Are you okay?” I ask her. “How is your mum?”

“She’s…she’s still in a coma.”

“Shit, love. I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to call you…”

“I know. I’m in the hospital a lot, they don’t really want you using your phones.”

“That’s okay, I understand.” I pause, pressing my fist into my forehead, closing my eyes. “It’s just…you don’t know how good it feels to hear your voice. I miss you. So much.”

So much that my chest is burning with the words.

I hear her swallow. “Yeah. I miss you too.” Her voice sounds so fragile, like glass, as if she doesn’t really believe what she’s saying. But still, I cling to it. She misses me.

“I…I think about you all the time. You know. I love you,” I whisper.

But there is only silence stretching an ocean between us.

I go on, unable to handle it. “I know I really fucked up, love, but…”

“Lachlan,” she says tiredly. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes it does. It matters. You matter. I’m changing, I swear, I know I have a problem.”

She grunts angrily. “Yes you have problems. But I have problems too. My mother is in a fucking coma. Forgive me if I don’t care to hear your sob story right now.”

Ouch.

No blow in rugby has hurt quite like that.

“Okay,” I say raggedly. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she says. “Look, I have to go, I’m heading back to the hospital now. I’m just…this is my life now, you know? Just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“I could come over there,” I tell her. “I can help.”

“No, you can’t help.” she says quickly. “You can’t even help yourself. You stay where you belong. Okay. Look, I just can’t deal with you, with what we were, right now. Please just…don’t call me again. Don’t text me either. I can only handle one heartbreak at a time.”

I feel the last shred of hope inside me crumple into a ball, blown away by some cold wind, never to return.

“Bye Lachlan,” she says.

I can’t even move my lips to answer her back. She hangs up and everything I had with her is immediately severed. I can feel it, cutting so deep.

I’ve truly lost her.

My love.

I get up, grab my wallet and keys, and leave out into the night.

I go to the closest shop, pick up a bottle of Scotch, then go and sit in the park across from my flat. I sit there for hours.

I drink nearly the whole damn bottle.

When I wake up, I’m on the bench still and some man is trying to steal my shoes. I kick at him, catching him in the face and he runs off across the grass, jumping over a fence.

I stumble to my feet, leaving the bottle behind, and somehow manage to get inside my flat.

When I wake up again I’m on my stomach in the hallway.

A puddle of vomit lies beside me.

My vomit.

A few piles of shit and piss are near me too.

Thankfully those aren’t mine. Just poor Lionel and Emily’s, since I never took them out last night.

No, instead I did such a noble thing and got absolutely wasted by myself, chasing the sorrow Kayla left on me with an unending flood of Scotch.

I can’t do this anymore.

Brigs is right. I won’t get Kayla back this way and I probably won’t get her back any way, but one day, if I ever get a chance again, I can’t fuck it up.

I can’t fuck up my life anymore.

I have these dogs. I have my friends. My brother. My family.

I have all these beautiful, lovely aspects of my life and when I started out as a wee lad, I had nothing at all but a stuffed lion.