IT’S NOT MY PROUDEST MOMENT.

It’s been a rough day—a rough week at its finest—and I did it again.

Reached for the bottle.

It’s the same pattern as always; I’m tired, I drink, I call her, she rushes over, I make promises we both know I can’t keep. And I do it again. Every time.

Just like last month, I reach for the phone again, bottle discarded after I chugged one third of its content and regretted it in the same breath, and dial her number.

{{user}}’s.

Please pick it up. Please don’t be mad at me.

Please save me.

She picks it up on the third ring.

“Pa—?”

“I’m sorry,” I start in a shaky voice. I don’t even have to say more.

She draws in a sharp breath, I can hear it, and all she does is breathe down the line the same old sentence I‘ve been holding onto like a lifeline all this time: “I’ll be there in 10.”

And then she hangs up.

Staring at the bottle, hands shaking and my head dizzy, I can’t help but curse at myself for being so weak and think about why on fucking earth she still puts up with my bullshit, and my problems.

I’m afraid she’ll get tired of it and leave like everyone else did. Or stop caring and start pretending notice.

Because she doesn’t notice the other thing—the thing that I am madly, completely in fucking love with her. Have been since forever and she just doesn’t notice. And I am not going to come clean about it. Because I’d rather not have her the way I long for her, the way I yearn for her to be mine, than lose her and let her get away.

And I—

Knock.

And she’s in my room, crossing the room in long strides as a blurry figure of motion in my teary vision.

“I’m sorry,” I croak out but all she does is crouch down next to me and pull my head against the soft thud-thump in her chest.

“I know.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“I know.”

And then I let the tears spill onto her hoodie—something I only let her see; me, vulnerable.

“Come out of your head, Pa,” she murmurs. “It matters where you are. You matter.”

And that does me in. I clutch her like a lifeline, hoping for the alcohol to leave my system with each shed tear.