“You deserve more than me. I don’t want to disappoint you,” he said quietly.

“I’m sure you’re going to disappoint me. I know I’ll disappoint you. Most of the time I won’t mean it. I’ll let you down. I’ll piss you off. I’ll hurt your feelings. I’m bitchy. I have a life. I don’t need you to complete it. I’m complete already. I don’t need a boyfriend.”

She took a deep breath. “But I need you. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s not the office you fill in my life. It’s you. Despite the reality that two people will inevitably annoy each other in some way, I like you in my life. I want you to take a chance. Be willing to need me. Why not? This is not the same as craving drugs or alcohol.”

“But the feelings are the same. I’m a bad bet. We talked about this already. I am broken and you deserve way more than I can give you.”

“Are they? I’m not where you are, so this is a real question, Ezra. If you compare what I am to you with what heroin was to you, do you really truly think it’s the same? If it is, I don’t honestly know where to go from there.”

She got up and he watched as she put her clothes back on.

“I’ll still be in love with you when you get back from Vancouver. I’ve never been much for other people deciding what I needed. I need you.”

He paced, needing the rhythm of it. “After I got clean I had to figure out what things that made me feel good were acceptable and what ones weren’t. It means I spent more time focused inward than I had before and looking at some hard truths. So while I could definitely say things like drugs and alcohol were definite noes for me, I had to struggle with exercise and eating right. And sex.”

She nodded.

“I tended to exercise too much, for instance. So I had to be mindful about it for a while until it became routine and not obsession. Sometimes when something feels good I panic.”

“You cleaned up and you turned your life around and you’re indispensible to your family. And me. Can’t you see that? When are you going to accept that it’s okay to feel good? Not everything is shoving a needle in your arm.”

“You have no idea what I was like.”

“Yeah? You think I’d be shocked? I imagine you stole some money. You let people down. I saw the fight you had with your brother onstage. Get online and you can find ten different angles of him punching you and your head slamming into the speaker. Would that help? To watch rock bottom over and over? I bet you have anyway because goddamn it you love to wallow in your mistakes.”

She didn’t know anything about it.

“What’s that going to solve? How do you use that to move on and have a life? Because you can’t possibly spend the rest of your life freaked out by everything that makes you enjoy it enough to want it more than once. Hell, what about pecan-praline ice cream?”

“Don’t downplay it.” He heard the anger in his voice and so did she.

But she pushed on. “I’m not downplaying it. I’m asking you a real question. How much is enough? When will you feel like you’ve finally made your reparations and that it’s okay to want to see a gorgeous woman who loves to get naked with you? A woman who loves you, Ezra. Who trusts you. Like Paddy trusts you. Like Vaughan trusts you. Like Mary and Damien. Like your pigs and your chickens and three goats all named Marshmallow. Like your dog and your cats and your parents. All the people who know you best, we all trust you. When do you trust you?”

“After the fight I had onstage, they took me to the hospital to stitch up my head. But there were drugs there and all the shame I’d been starting to feel was gone in the face of all those painkillers. I filled my prescription and left when no one was looking. I hadn’t been arrested or anything. So I walked out. My dealer picked me up, handed over a huge amount of heroin and dropped me off at a by-the-hour motel. I hid there for a few days until they found me. I was little more than an animal by that point. I used every single thing I knew to get them to leave. I said things that can’t be taken back.”

The memories of it, the shame seemed to coat his skin like dirt stuck to sweat. He wanted to run away. To clap his hands over his ears and pretend she didn’t make so much sense he wanted to scream.

“You don’t have to take them back, Ezra. You said them and then you sincerely owned it and made yourself into a better person. You can’t constantly hold out the lowest point in your life as the norm. Unless you like feeling like shit. It might have been normal for that Ezra but it hasn’t been for a long time. The only person who can’t forgive you is you. The rest of us know better.”

“My mother locked herself in the room with me. She was crying. In all the time growing up when we fucked up she never cried. Oh, she got pissed and we made her sad. But my mom doesn’t cry like that. She was crying, begging me to get help. She was worried I was going to die. I probably would have but I didn’t care. I started to get sick. I needed to get high and she wouldn’t leave. Then she took my rig and touched the needle to her arm, pressing so I could see a bead of blood. I’d been in there with her for several hours and I needed it. I’d started cramping up. She said she would give me the heroin back if I really wanted it, but that she would use first. Use with me.”

Tuesday didn’t speak; she just watched him from where she stood, leaning against the corner of his writing desk, listening as she petted both cats, who’d moved to be sure she could reach them.