Page 97 of Cherry Picking

That’s Ziggy to the core. Blunt and unapologetic about it.

“We had the same sponsor for a while. Renata Silva. She figured out the connection and made us both promise it wouldn’t be an issue.”

“Was it?”

“For eight months, it was the best thing in my life. You were the second.”

I stand up and walk to the sink, bracing my hands on the edge, looking out at the decorative rock where the grass used to grow.

“He was the only person in this city who knew what my Tuesdays were like,” she says behind me. “He relapsed in November. Something happened with a job. He’d been counting on it, and it fell through. He called me from a parking deck downtown. I knew in three words.”

“Where was I?”

“In Charlotte or on a plane.” She shakes her head. “You were somewhere else. I drove down and got him. He’d had four drinks, and he was crying in a stairwell. I sat on a concrete step with your brother for two hours. We ate pancakes at a diner at midnight. I drove him home. And then I came back here and drank a bottle of wine alone.”

The granite under my hands is cold.

“Nobody in that stairwell decided to do it. I picked up because he picked up.” She pauses. “Eight months of sobriety, and I threw it away in an hour. I’d do it again tomorrow under the same conditions, which is why I don’t let myself get near them.”

I turn around. “And the rest?”

“Nine days later. We were both drunk at his place. There’s no version of that story that makes it anything other than what it was.” She doesn’t look away. “I’m not going to polish it for you.”

“Okay,” I say.

“It happened eleven more times over the next seven or eight months. So nobody gets to call it a one-night mistake. We drank and we did that, and we drank because we’d done that, and it went in a circle until that summer.”

I’ve rehearsed this conversation for two years. In my head, she begged or cried or told me it was nothing. I never pictured her handing it over like a bill of sale.

“First of July,” I repeat.

“When you checked his phone.”

“Yeah.”

“He called me late that night, which he only did when he was in trouble, and he said, he knows. That was it.” She nods tightly. “We never spoke again after that.”

My stomach turns over.

“He went to a meeting that same night,” she continues. “Renata told me. I switched sponsors within the week because he’d been there first, so I was the one who had to leave.”

“He got sober?” My voice is thin. “When?”

“That week. He didn’t drink again after that. Renata still had him every Thursday.” She waits a beat. “He picked up his two-year chip in July.”

A few months before the car accident. I sit back down because my legs are done. “He got sober the week I stopped talking to him.”

“Yeah, but if you take credit for him getting sober, you have to take the hit for him drinking. He was responsible for that. Anyone in those meetings would tell you the same thing.”

“Then what am I?”

“You’re his brother. He hurt you, and you didn’t call him back.” She leans back. “That’s a lot to carry, Briggs. Don’t try to add to it.” She refills our cups without asking for permission. “He made me promise never to tell you we were drinking. Or that he was, anyway. If you ever asked.”

I stare at her. “Why would he want that?”

“Because he said if you knew he was an alcoholic, you’d have excused it.” She shakes her head. “He didn’t want the discount. He wanted you to hate him for what he actually did. He thought if he stayed sober long enough, he could come to you and let you decide.”

“That’s . . . that’s not fair.”