You’ve always treated my sobriety as a delicate thing, and I suppose I’ve earned that. More than anyone, you saw how often it crumbled in the beginning. That was because you’re you, though, and I knew you wouldn’t use it against me unless you had to. So you’ve seen the most of its flimsy side, and you’ve used it against me the least, and of everyone, you’re the sanest one who still sees me as capable of being good for anyone at all.

You do, however, still get shifty around the notion of me falling back into drinking and drugging.

I knew the question was coming before you said anything, before we even met up that day. I knew because of how you hesitated on the Zoom call when she invited me, and I knew because of how you are in the face of me in a location that isn’t devoid of what you see as temptation.

I waited, though, for you to say it. “You know,” you started cautiously, “there will be, like. Drinking. Drinking, and drug use, at the lake…”

“I know,” I said, and did not roll my eyes, at least not too hard. “I mean, I assumed. There’s only so many reasons she’d have said it’s a ‘grown-ups only’ vacation, and I’m pretty sure it’s not a sex or violence party, so.”

You snorted, looked away. Worry, still stuck up on your forehead, creasing between your eyebrows.

“You don’t have to worry about me, though. Ok?”

You laughed, and it was incredulous, “I know, ok, just, you’ve been having a bit of a hard time, and–“

“Oh,” I laughed. “Nah, you got it backwards. It’s not a hard time you have to worry about.”

It’s what all of you worry about, though, I didn’t say. It’s the fucking gun you think I hold against my forehead. Maybe you’d rather it be a real one. Maybe–

“Really,” you said, like I was absolutely bullshitting you.

“Really really,” I said lightly. “For real, why would I make a bad thing worse? You gotta understand – when you’ve reached the bottom with booze, that’s what relapsing is. Make it all worse. No, it for real doesn’t occur to me. Not when it’s bad.”

Silence. You don’t believe me. This is frustrating, but less than it is when someone more full of shit and related to me doesn’t believe me. I decide it might be comforting to drop the whole truth, so I add, “If it’s good, though. Then, I mean. Look out.”

“What?” you laugh like you didn’t mean to, and I find myself laughing too. “What the fuck, dude? That… that doesn’t make sense.”

“No, no, it does! Cuz I mean, if life sucks – why make it suck harder? But if life rocks? If shit is just flowing, if it’s all up from here… I mean…”

You are snickering in full now, not hiding it, and I try not to dissolve into laughter as I finish with, “that’s when I’m like – you know what I never tried? Fucking meth. I bet I could do it, too. I mean – I made a killer cup of coffee this morning and got a good quarterly report at work, so why not?”

Fucking hysteria, and for me, too. Why not?

No one told me how funny it’d be, once a good few years had gone by.