The Less Miserables Lose a Friend (3)

Christmas Day, Wesley stayed at Dusty's house.

He didn't want to at first. Had tried to leave that morning, mumbling something about not wanting to intrude, about having somewhere else to be, about not deserving to crash someone else's holiday. He'd put on his shoes, grabbed his jacket, made it all the way to the front door.

But Dusty had blocked it. Literally stood in front of it with his arms crossed, his jaw set, his eyes saying something that words couldn't.

"You're not going anywhere. Not today."

"I can't just—"

"You can and you will." Dusty's voice was firm in a way Wesley had never heard before. "It's Christmas. You're staying."

So Wesley stayed.

The house was small—two bedrooms, one bathroom, a living room that doubled as a dining room—but it was warm. Not just the temperature, though the space heater in the corner was doing its best. Warm in a way that had nothing to do with heat. There were decorations: a plastic tree with lights that blinked in patterns, stockings hung over the TV stand, a wreath on the door that was losing its needles but still trying. Someone had cared enough to make this place feel like Christmas.

Wesley hadn't had a Christmas like this in years. His dad didn't decorate. His dad barely acknowledged the holiday except as an excuse to drink more, to get angrier, to remember all the things he'd lost and blame everyone else for losing them.

He met Haley, Dusty's little sister, who looked at him with the suspicious eyes of a kid who'd learned to be careful around adults. Her gaze kept flicking to the bruise on his jaw, to the dark circles under his eyes, to all the signs that marked him as someone whose life wasn't going well. But she warmed up eventually, especially after Wesley let her beat him at the Uno game she'd gotten for Christmas. He wasn't even trying to lose—she was just better.

"You're really bad at this," Haley said, not unkindly.

"I know. It's a gift."

He met Dusty's mom, who worked the night shift at the furniture factory and slept through most of the morning but still managed to put together a Christmas dinner that was better than anything Wesley had eaten in years. Ham, green beans from a can, mashed potatoes from a box—nothing fancy, but hot and real and made with something that felt like care. Made with attention. Made for people who were supposed to be there.

She looked at Wesley the way adults sometimes looked at him—seeing too much, understanding things he hadn't said out loud. Her eyes lingered on the bruise, on his too-thin frame, on the way he flinched when she reached past him to grab the salt. But she didn't ask questions. Just handed him a plate and pointed him to a seat and treated him like he belonged there.

"Thank you," Wesley said. "For—for all of this."

"You're Dusty's friend," she said, like that explained everything. And maybe it did.

After dinner, while Haley played with the secondhand Barbie Dusty had found at Goodwill, Wesley sat on the porch and stared at the sky.

It wasn't starless anymore. The clouds had cleared sometime during the day, and now the darkness was full of pinpricks of light—thousands of them, maybe millions, stretching out forever in every direction. Cold light, ancient light, light that had traveled billions of miles to land on his face.

He thought about last night. About the cold, the shaking, the moment where he'd stopped fighting and let himself drift. He'd almost died. He knew that now. If Dusty hadn't found him, if the timing had been different, if any of a hundred small things had gone another way, he'd be in the morgue right now instead of sitting on this porch.

The thought should have scared him. And it did, mostly. But there was something else underneath the fear. Something that felt almost like disappointment.

Maybe this is easier, he'd thought, right before everything went dark.

He'd wanted it to be easier. That was the truth he hadn't been able to face. Some part of him had wanted the cold to win. Had welcomed it, even. An ending that didn't require him to fight anymore.

The realization made him feel sick. And also, strangely, hopeful. Because if he could name the thing—the death wish, the surrender, whatever it was—maybe he could fight it.

"You okay?" Dusty asked, coming out to join him.

"I don't know." Wesley pulled his jacket tighter. He was still cold, even now, even after a day of warmth and food and something almost like normalcy. "I keep thinking about what you said. About finding another way to make the pain stop."

"Yeah?"

"What if there isn't one? What if the drinking is the only thing that works?"

Dusty was quiet for a long moment. The streetlight at the end of the block flickered, throwing shadows across the yard.

"My mom goes to this thing," he said finally. "Al-Anon or something. It's for people whose families drink. She says it helps, talking to people who understand what you're going through."

"I'm not going to some meeting."

"I'm not saying you have to. I'm just saying..." Dusty shrugged. "The drinking works because it's the only tool you have. Maybe if you had other tools, it wouldn't work as well. Or you wouldn't need it as much."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Skating helps me, sometimes. When I'm out there, doing tricks, I don't think about anything else. It's like my brain just... shuts off. No space for the bad stuff."

Wesley thought about that. About the rare sessions when he'd been sober enough to actually skate, when the motion and the focus had pushed everything else away. It wasn't the same as drinking—nothing was the same as drinking—but it was something. A door he hadn't tried opening.

"Maybe," he said.

"That's all I'm asking. Maybe." Dusty stood up. "You should come to the park tomorrow. Actually skate, not just sit in your truck. Let us help."

"Why do you care so much? I'm just some burnout who can't keep his life together."

"You're our friend." Dusty said it like it was obvious. Like it wasn't the kindest thing anyone had said to Wesley in years. "That's why we care."

He went back inside. Wesley stayed on the porch, watching the stars, feeling the cold, and trying to remember the last time he'd believed he deserved friends like this.

---

Three weeks later.

Wesley was at the park, skating.

Not well—three weeks of semi-sobriety hadn't undone months of abuse, and his body still shook sometimes when he pushed too hard. His timing was off. His balance was shaky. He bailed more than he landed, falling on concrete that was even harder in the January cold.

But he was there. Board under his feet. Wind in his face. The familiar sound of wheels on concrete.

He was staying at Dusty's house, sleeping on the couch, helping with Haley in the mornings before school. Walking her to the bus stop, making her breakfast, doing the things Dusty had been doing alone for years. It wasn't permanent—Dusty's mom had made that clear, gently but firmly—but it was something. A bridge between where he'd been and wherever he was going.

Dusty had found a number for him. Some kind of hotline, a place where you could call and talk to someone who understood what it was like to grow up in a house where drinking was the main event. Wesley hadn't called yet. The phone number sat in his wallet, folded into a tiny square, waiting for him to be ready.

He wasn't ready yet. But he was closer than he'd been.

The others were there too. All of them—Dusty on the ramp, Zara at the ledge, Hector drilling kickflips, Garrett watching from the bowl's edge, Nova sketching, Quinn attempting things he'd never land and laughing when he failed. Tanner doing something reckless that somehow worked out. Even the burnouts had cleared out, driven off by some combination of cold weather and the unspoken message that this park belonged to the kids who cared about it.

"Not bad," Zara said, watching Wesley land a sloppy kickflip. "For someone who was practically a popsicle three weeks ago."

"Thanks. I think."

"Don't let it go to your head." But she was almost smiling. "You're still buying me a Slurpee for making me worry."

"Fine. But you're helping me pick out the flavor."

"Always."

They walked toward the Quik-Mart, side by side, their breath fogging in the January air. Wesley's hands weren't shaking. His head wasn't pounding. For the first time in a long time, he felt something almost like... not happiness, exactly, but the possibility of happiness. The idea that maybe things could get better.

He hadn't stopped wanting to drink. That urge was still there, a whisper in the back of his mind, getting louder whenever things got hard. He'd slipped twice since Christmas—once badly, once less so—and both times Dusty had been there to help him back up.

"You don't have to be perfect," Dusty had said, after the second slip. "You just have to keep trying."

It sounded simple when he said it. Wesley was learning that simple things were sometimes the hardest.

It wasn't fixed. He wasn't cured. The road ahead was long and uncertain, full of slips and setbacks and days when the whiskey would call to him louder than anything else. But he was trying.

And trying, it turned out, was enough to start with.

"Hey," Zara said as they reached the Quik-Mart door. "I meant what I said, you know. About worrying."

"I know."

"I'm glad you're still here. Even if you're annoying and you smell weird sometimes." She said the last part with a half-smile, the closest thing to affection Zara ever showed.

Wesley laughed. A real laugh, the kind that came from somewhere deep. The kind he hadn't been able to make for months.

"I'm glad too," he said.

And for the first time in a long time, he meant it.
 

~End~