We Are Inevitable by Gayle Forman (read aloud txt) 📕

“Why do you assume I’m a moron? Just because I didn’t know Gone Girl was a book you think I haven’t done all the due diligence and come to the right decision? Your brother was right about you.”

At the mention of Sandy, my blood goes cold. “What was my brother right about?”

“He said you were a condescending goody-two-shoes little shit.”

“He said that?” My voice cracks, the hurt humiliatingly fresh, even after all this time. Fucking Sandy! He’s the reason I know not to trust glossy brochures. We got so many of them over the years from places called New Horizons and Second Chances and Clean Futures, all of them brimming with heartfelt testimonials, promises of a fix. And in the beginning, I believed them. God, how I hoped one day Sandy could be one of those happy endings.

Here’s what the brochures don’t tell you: That the relapse rate for most addiction is more than fifty percent. That because of the particular way opioids remain in the system longer than other substances, they are even harder to kick. That just when you think you’ve reached the finish line, opioids pull a Lucy on you and yank up the football. And that there’s no such thing as a miracle.

“I was only trying to help,” I tell Chad.

“I don’t need your help. I might never get my legs back, I might never get my boner back, I might never fall in love or have anyone fall in love with me, but I’d still rather be me than you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re a coward.”

“How am I a coward?”

“You sit up there on your high horse, hating on everything, judging everyone else like you’re better than us when really you’re just a chickenshit.”

“If I’m such a coward,” I say, the blood thrumming in my veins, “why are you hanging out with me?”

“You know, that’s an excellent question!” Chad shoves back against the table, cursing as he maneuvers around it. It takes a while, and by the time he’s out, the waitress is back with our meal.

“What about your food?” she asks. “Not hungry?”

“No.” Chad throws down a twenty and looks at me. “I lost my appetite.”

I get the food to go and head back to the truck, where Chad is sulking in the driver’s seat. I climb into the passenger side and he peels out of the parking lot, not saying a word. I assume we’re going straight home. But he drives us to the club and, still not speaking to me, gets out. I scramble after him but he goes into the bar, which I’m not allowed in. So I sit in the empty club for an hour, then two hours, composing a treatise in my head on what a dickhead Chad is.

I’m a coward? Because I made some basic inquiries about a questionable procedure in a different country? No. Chad’s an asshole. He always was an asshole. He’s just using me. And I’m sorry, but who doesn’t know that Gone Girl was a book first? An ignorant buffoon is who.

The opening band starts playing: they are loud and unpleasant, a groaning bass beat that sounds more like moving heavy furniture than music. I contemplate calling Ira and asking for a lift home, but Ira is sick, in bed, asleep. I’m stuck. As usual.

“Didn’t expect to see you here.”

It’s testament to just how foul my mood is that the sight of Hannah Crew walking though the mist does nothing to make me feel better. She plops down next to me, her fishnetted legs inches away from mine, hoodie up, tight around her face. “You must a be a glutton for punishment.”

“Yeah. That tracks.”

“You here with Chad?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I came with him. But he’s in the bar. I think. I don’t know. I can’t go in there.”

Hannah nods. “I get that.” She touches my wrist. Her nails, painted gunmetal gray, are bitten down to the quick, and picturing Hannah gnawing on her fingers makes my heart twist.

“Want me to have someone get him?” she offers.

“Who? Chad? No. Chad can go to hell.”

“You two have a falling out?”

“No! We’re not even friends.”

“You seemed pretty close.”

“We’ve only known each other a few weeks.”

“Time’s not always a good measure of things like love, you know.”

“Right. Feelings are not facts,” I say pulling out some of Sandy’s rehab lingo.

“Exactly,” Hannah says, staring at me. After a bit, she stands to go.

“Well, if you want to be alone . . .”

I don’t want to be alone. I’m so tired of being alone. “Stay. Please. I’m sorry. It’s just been a day.”

“They’re all days,” she replies. “You take ’em one at a time.”

“I’m trying to.”

She sits back down.

“You want to talk about it?”

I shake my head. “Not right now.”

“Okay,” she says. And we sit there, in silence, but it’s not awkward. It’s comforting, like Hannah is someone I’ve known for a long time. Like someone I was meant to know.

“I’m sorry I compared your band to waterboarding,” I say.

“Please. I’ve heard worse. And at least you were telling the truth.”

“But I wasn’t. I hadn’t even heard you when I said that.”

“And now that you’ve heard us, did it change your mind?”

“Uh-huh.” I pause. “Not waterboarding, more like garden-variety drip torture.”

“So a lesser water torture?” Hannah asks, gripping her chest. “Be still, my heart.”

Be still, mine.

“It really isn’t personal,” I tell her. “I’m just not a music person.”

“Not a music person,” Hannah repeats. “What does that even mean?”

I shrug. “Music doesn’t do that thing to me it does to other people. Books do. But not music.”

“So it’s an either/or?”

In my family, yes. An age-old distinction. Years of defining myself in alliance with Ira, in opposition to Sandy. “Maybe?”

“Then explain Patti Smith.”

“Patti Smith?”

“Musician. Poet. Author. Genius. She wrote one of the most incredible albums of all time, Horses, and she wrote some of the most incredible books too. Her memoir Just Kids is my bible.”

I make a note to read Just Kids. Or try to.

“Music and books are