Walking on Broken Glass - Christa Allan [85]
“Brookforest? I was there, too. I’ve been in recovery eleven months now. I know how important a sponsor is. Mine is awesome. I don’t know if I’d be sober today without him. In fact,” he stood when Matthew and Rebecca walked over, “here he comes now.”
Myrtle pushed the speed limit, not too happy our extra time at the meeting meant she missed part of Smallville. “Clark's supposed to find out tonight that Lana's still alive, and now I gonna have to wait for the reruns.”
“You need TiVo,” Vince told her. “Then you could watch it without those dumb commercials.”
“What I know about TiVo?” she grumped. While Benny and Vince tried to explain TiVo technology to Myrtle, I asked Matthew about his conversation with Rebecca. “Did you tell her I was going to ask her to be my sponsor? Is that why the two of you were talking?”
“I did tell her. I knew she’d probably ask me about you anyway. Look, she still agreed, even after I talked to her,” he said.
“You’re cracking me up, Matthew. If I could reach your head, I’d whop you.” I was stretched out on the seat in front of him, wishing I had a pillow for my back, which bumped against the side every time Myrtle hit a pothole. “She already set up a time for the two of us to meet the first week I’m home. Lunch with my AA sponsor. Wouldn’t have thought six weeks ago I’d be saying those words.”
“By the way, I didn’t tell her about the baby. Just thought that should come from you, in your time.”
For a flash, I thought he meant Alyssa. “That's fine. I already told her. If it was going to make a difference in her decision, I figured we both needed to know tonight. New sober and new pregnant. She's got her work cut out for her.”
“Don’t underestimate Rebecca,” he smiled. “Or yourself for that matter. Seems the two of you working together is one of those God-incidents. That first year of sobriety is tough, no lie. Most people who backslide do it before they pick up their one-year chip. But Rebecca's all over tough love sponsorship. And, since she's your sponsor, that means I might be seeing you more than I might have.”
“Planning to check up on me, and I haven’t even graduated,” I said. I put my hand over my heart and pretended to be offended. Of course, we both knew I was anything but.
My father called and wanted to fly in for my graduation. I explained it wasn’t a cap and gown event—no awards, no scholarships, no pictures. “It's not that I don’t want to see you,” I said. “Carl and I need to spend some time alone this first weekend.” I tried not to wince. Of course, I couldn’t tell him the most important reason I needed to be alone with Carl. Once I broke the baby news, I might find hell broke open as well. “Peter isn’t planning to come, is he?”
“I don’t think so. But the last time I talked to him was when Carl called me about the news” … the new family euphemism for my rehab. “Haven’t you talked to him?”
“Dad, you haven’t talked to Peter in almost a month? You two live in the same city. What's going on?” I’d talked to Peter before “the news” long enough to know Dad was dating. Dad hadn’t bothered to mention this to me at all. My father not telling us something said everything about the something. It was either a bad news something or a guilty something. He probably thought his dating was both.
“Now, you have enough on your plate.” Yes, if you only knew … and now I have a saucer. “Peter and I will work this out. You don’t worry about us. You just take care of yourself. Now, I don’t want to talk anymore about this thing with Peter,” he said. “Haven’t you talked to him, honey? He should’ve called you by now.”
“He sent me cards. I wrote him last week and told him I’d talk to him after I was home a few days.” Peter was always much better at writing. Phone calls, he’d tell me, are ripe for mis-interpretation. He blamed