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

falling, or the getting back up. It’s seeing what happens to the people you fall on. You get bruised; they get flattened.

“I know you’re not supposed to move to a new place when you’re newly sober, but I also knew that if I didn’t leave home, leave that lie, I would never get better, so I left. And I moved here, to find a new home, create a new family, figure out who I really am, who I want to be.” Here Hannah looks at Jax, who nods, and then, for a second, at me.

And every time they get flattened, so do I, killing me, cut by cut. And I know we’re supposed to get better for our own sake, but damn, I want to get better for theirs. And here Sandy looked directly at Ira, at Mom, and then at me. He didn’t stop looking at me for the rest of the meeting.

“So here I am,” Hannah continues, “on the cusp of my first year of sobriety, about to travel home to my family of origin for the first time. I’m terrified, but I’m oddly grateful to be terrified. It feels like that means something. Like, I’ve heard it said that in destroying ourselves, we also learn to create ourselves. So maybe that’s what’s happening. And whatever is happening, thanks for helping me get here.”

Thanks for catching me no matter how many times I fall. And here’s hoping, with all the humility in my heart, that I can learn to fall without flattening anyone else.

That meeting, Sandy got his three-month chip. Afterward, we went out for ice cream to celebrate. Mom held his hand, eyes shining. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Me too,” Ira said.

I said nothing. I wasn’t proud. I was disgusted. Because I just knew their hope was misplaced. Sandy was gonna yank the football. On all of us. Like he always did.

Later, as Mom and Ira were settling up the bill, Sandy looked at me. “Are you gonna say anything?”

I shrugged. “You want a medal from me?” I asked. “How many times do we have to do this? How much more debt do we have to go into? How much more misery do you have to put us through?”

“Hopefully, none,” Sandy replied.

“I don’t believe it, and you know what, I don’t care. I’m so tired of this. So sick of waiting for the inevitable. If you’re gonna die, just get it over with already!”

I’d just wished my brother dead, but he barely reacted. Instead, that next morning, he went to the hardware store, the lumber yard, and built his bins. Locked away his precious albums.

“You gotta promise me you won’t let anyone sell them,” he said. And then he handed me the one and only key.

“Why are you asking me?”

“Because you’re the only one who hates me enough to keep the promise,” he replied.

I accepted the key. I sealed the promise.

Five months later, Sandy was dead.

After the meeting, people gather around Hannah, just like they do at shows, sharing their stories, or telling her how inspiring she was. I watch from the wings, trying to re-inflate myself because I don’t want Hannah to see me flattened.

“It’s always like this with Hannah,” Jax tells me. “Always has been.” They check their phone and smile, and I know it’s a text from Chad but I don’t say anything. “I’m gonna pull an Irish goodbye,” they say. “Tell Hannah I love her and I’ll call her tomorrow.”

Eventually the crowd thins, and the people start to pack up the remaining donuts, empty the coffee samovar, sweep the bits of Styrofoam that litter the floor like chemical snow. Hannah talks to Fran quietly and they hug for a long time before she comes over to me.

“I thought you might bolt,” she says.

“I’m not the bolting type.” I glance at the other addicts. “Just waiting my turn with the groupies. You’re popular.”

“It’s a good room. So, what’d you think?”

“What I always think. That you’re amazing.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

“What are you asking?”

She sighs. “I want to know how you feel. About this. About me. About us.”

“I’m in love with you.”

She rocks back from side to side, as if she doesn’t believe it. But I do.

“You’ve known me like a month.”

“So what?” It was a matter of hours between the time Ira picked up Mom and dropped her off, and by then, they both knew. “Time is not a measure of love. You said that yourself,” I remind her. “Feelings aren’t facts.”

She nods, her ponytail bouncing. Then she looks at me, her face so open and vulnerable it makes my heart split open. “I haven’t done this sober. It feels terrifying. Like I’m a newborn. I have to relearn everything.”

“Well, I haven’t done it, period. So we’re in the same boat.”

“Except I’m an addict and you’re not and your brother was and he died of his addiction.”

“That has nothing to do with us.”

“But it does,” she says. “He does. It’s a part of you. And I want to know all the parts of you and for you to know all the parts of me.”

“I can think of better ways for you to know all the parts of me.”

She rolls her eyes but the smile spreading across her face gives her away. “I’m serious.”

“I am too and I promise I will tell you anything you want to know. I am an open book.” I spread my arms wide.

Hannah chuckles. “This is a lot for a first date, isn’t it?”

“So let me get this straight. This is our first date, and before you said we’re in a relationship? Slow your roll, girl.”

But I don’t want to slow anything. I want to catapult into a future with Hannah. I pull her to me and I kiss her. She’s tentative at first, but then she opens to it, opens to me, drawing me closer, running her hands through my hair, gasping. I kiss her back, trying to lose myself in it, in