Double Shot by Gwen Martin

Author:Gwen Martin [Martin, Gwen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Contemporary
Amazon: B08T5VWC2Z
Goodreads: 56784066
Publisher: Gwen Martin
Published: 2021-04-21T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

West was beginning to hate Tuesdays less and less.

The room where he had his AA meetings was still windowless and still smelled of pine cleaner. The metal chair West sat in still creaked under his weight. Every time he tried to get comfortable, another loud groan would belt out, causing someone to cast a sideways glance. It was all the usual motions, but today felt different.

He tapped his fingers on his knees and listened to the speaker ask if anyone wanted to speak. West rarely volunteered, but today was a special day, and he could feel Charlotte look over at him, a smile softening her face.

Here goes nothing, West thought to himself and raised his hand.

He cleared his throat and gave his introduction, breathing through his nose slowly in an attempt to quell the battering ram in his chest. He felt flushed all over, his Henley sticking to his back uncomfortably.

“Today is my three-year anniversary of sobriety,” West said, focusing his attention on a hole in the faded carpet. “It’s a bit surreal that I’m able to sit here today and talk to you all about this. It wasn’t an easy path, and I don’t think it ever will be easy. One of the many things that I’ve learned in my three years of sobriety is my life means more to me than losing it down the bottom of a bottle.”

West opened his palm and brushed his thumb over the chip he’d earned that day. It took him three years to get there. At home he kept his chips in the safety of a chip holder—his twenty-four-hour coin; the thirty-day red chip; the sixty-day gold chip.

Soon, he could add this one to the collection.

“I believed that worth was an exchange—that in order to feel worthy, I had to give up a part of myself. I had tried to do that and as a result found the only way to mask that pain was through alcohol. Being hospitalized was a huge wake-up call for me…it was the moment I recognized my own mortality and how my life could’ve been taken from me in a single moment.

“Coming back home to Laurelsburg was hard. It felt like I’d admitted defeat about my own life. I hadn’t been back here for longer than a week at a time in over twenty years, and everything changed. It wasn’t the place I’d known as a kid, and here I was starting over again with my life. For a long time, I just focused on my health—mentally and physically—but I was doing what I had done to myself before. I wasn’t allowing myself to live.”

West turned his attention to the chip in his palm. He knew deep down it wasn’t really worth anything monetarily or to someone who’d find it on the street. But to him, it was priceless. His throat tightened, and he inhaled a shaky breath.

“But I think now I’m ready. It took me a while to recognize that I didn’t have to bear the brunt of this on my own.

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