I wish I was gold.

But I wasn’t. I wasn’t shiny and new. I was dull and heavy. Tarnished metal. The bronzed consolation prize that had dust settling on it.

You ever see those brass things on a church altar? The ones that look nice from the pews but if you get up close, they’re all fingerprint smudges and chipped edges from years of being passed around? That was me. My mother’d like that comparison. She’d say “He sees himself in holy things, so there’s hope yet.”

Nah. There’s no fuckin’ hope.

They prayed for a boy and then forgot to raise one. Said God would do it instead. He didn’t. The whiskey did.

Braelie’s standing at the edge of my room, arms folded over her chest like she’s trying to hold herself together. I can’t blame her. I’d be holding myself too if I had to smell this.

“I only had a sip,” I lie, which is stupid, because the room reeks. It clings to my hoodie, to my skin, to the fuckin’ carpet. It was the shit my dad kept hidden away in his cellar.

She flinches when I move. Just the kind of flinch that says: this is familiar. Which guts me, because her dad? it’s all she sees when I reek like this.

I reach for her. Not fast. Just gentle. Palms out like I’m some tame animal begging for a crumb of affection. She doesn’t step back. Doesn’t move forward either.

“You said you’d stop.”

“I know.”

“You promised, Lucas.”

“I know.”

The way she says my full name…I’d rather she screamed. Honestly. Scream, cry, break something. Not the disappointment, fuck haven’t I lived through enough of that already.

Have mercy, baby.

“I needed something to take the edge off,” I mumble, and it sounds pathetic even to me. “It’s been a shit week.”

She laughs. But not a haha laugh. The kind you do when you’re holding back tears someone says, “Long day, yeah?”

“You think I haven’t had one?” She bites, “You think I don’t walk into a room and know instantly if there’s a bottle under the sink? You think I haven’t had to hide my mom’s purse or wipe blood off the fridge door when he—”

She cuts herself off. I hate that I made her go there. I’d rather drive my hand through the fuckin’ saw than watch her force a breath through her nose because she’s trying not to cry.

She should leave. I wouldn’t stop her.

But instead, she perches on the edge of the bed. Her fingers are knotted in her hoodie strings. She won’t look at me.

“Why didn’t you call me?” she asks quietly.

I blink. “What?”

“When it got bad. When you felt like drinking. Why didn’t you call me?”

This is the part where I’m supposed to say I didn’t want to burden you, or I didn’t think you’d answer, or some other lie. But the truth? The actual, rotten-core truth?

Because sometimes I don’t think I deserve her kindness.

Because I was raised by people who only touched when they were angry and only loved when the bottle was half-empty.

“I dunno,” I say, and I mean it.

She sighs, and it sounds like disappointment. The kind that doesn’t make noise but still breaks things.

“I can’t be near you when you’re like this,” she says, standing.

I nod. “I know.”

“You smell like him.”

I know. God, I know. It’s the worst thing she could’ve said and the most honest. She’s crying now. Quiet again. Always quiet. I’ve ruined her whole night and I still want her to stay. How fucked is that?

“I’m sorry, Braelie.” I say.