Miami Beach Addiction by Chase Waters

Author:Chase Waters [Waters, Chase]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Austin Drake was drunk again.

He didn't need to be. He bought a whiskey bottle for his interview with Max Crawford, and while there, saw a nice vodka.

There was a time, back when he drank regularly, when he would assemble a rather nice collection of aesthetically appealing spirits. They looked nice. For a while, anyway. Before he drank them all. It was this, among many other concerns that led him to think that maybe he had a problem.

So, when Maria cleaned him up, she insisted that he dump his bottles down the drain.

And, with no liquor in them, just recycle the bottles like anybody else.

At the time, he didn't complain much about this. Sounded perfectly reasonable, all things considered.

Except that, months later now, he didn't have any nice bottles in his house. He started wondering, a while back, whether he genuinely had an alcohol addiction, or was it merely circumstantial, that he needed to pull back from an inebriating beverage at a time when his life was falling apart. And, if his life was more stable — like it had been in recent times — maybe he would have handled a drink just fine, without losing control of the situation.

Not that he was ungrateful to Maria or anything, Austin thought. But maybe, just maybe, going straight into thinking he had a problem without any real proof that his problem was nothing more than a shitty life situation was the definition of overkill.

So he bought the whiskey for Max. Then he saw the nice vodka. Austin asked himself if he wanted a drink. He said to himself, no, no he didn't. Well, maybe he did, but he wasn't going to. Fine. … fine.

And he bought the bottle. And put it up on top of his fridge. Looked nice.

A day later. He met with Castleton. Realized he owed a debt to him and Lady Magdalena for almost creating a madman. Realized how incompetent he was as an investigator.

How much he wanted to help the good guy. As if there was such a thing.

How madly he wanted to be a detective again, after failing the FBI. His parents. His whole life. He'd take any case from any sad teenager, no background check, no questions asked.

How he wanted to be right. How badly he wanted to MAKE himself right! At any cost!

How it all amounted to nothing.

How easy it was to give up.

Why wasn't he enjoying himself, Austin thought, looking at the Vodka. It's not like he had a problem anyway. He wasn't a better person for not drinking. He wasn't a worse one for drinking. He just … did things. For nothing. Nothing mattered at all.

The bottle wasn't on the fridge anymore. It was in his hand. It was half empty.

There was a tipped over glass on his kitchen counter that he used at first. He hadn't been using the glass for the past hour or two. Too slow. Easier to just go with the bottle.

He didn't feel like a good guy anymore.

Couldn't remember feeling anything anymore.

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