"You didn't go to the store, did you?"
"Shit! No, I didn't. I went straight from class to my AA meeting and forgot."
"You forgot? There's nothing in this house to eat, Chase. Here, look!" Sarah opened the refrigerator showing him a box of baking soda.
"We can go out for dinner," he said.
"Oh, sure! Then what do we do for the rest of the week?" Sarah slammed the refrigerator shut then said, "So are you going or not?"
"Yeah, okay. I'll take the bus and go buy groceries. It'll take me an hour, but..."
The phone rang and they let it go to voicemail. "Um, hello? Yeah, this is me again in number 214. I've called three times in the last hour and my sink is still leaking. I've got an inch of water under it and I have to make dinner for my daughter. Can you please get someone up here to fix this? Today?"
"She's called three times and you never picked up? What the fuck, Sarah?"
"I'm not talking to that psycho bitch, Chase. That's your job!"
"Yes, it is, but you know how to call a plumber, too. Jesus, Sarah!"
He went to grab his toolbox, but Sarah grabbed his arm and said, "Hey! Where do you think you're going? We still need groceries around here."
He picked up the toolbox and stuck it in her chest and said, "Then you go fix the leak."
"Okay, fine. I'll go buy the food." The last thing he heard was Sarah mumbling something about not being able to count on him for anything.
When he knocked on 216, the woman came to the door, her three-year daughter in tow. "Thank God! It's about time." She picked up her daughter and carried to the kitchen were Chase could see water all over the floor. He found the cutoff valve and shut the water off.
"If this ever happens again, just turn this off, okay?"
"Me? Are you kidding? That's what I pay rent for. You're the super. You're supposed to do ALL of that kind of shit..." Her voice trailed off as she remembered she was holding her daughter. "That kind of...stuff. And where were you all day? I've called 3-4 times trying to get you."
"I'm sorry. I go to school during the days."
"School? Are you kidding? Then who's answering the phone?"
"My girlfriend," he said. "Well, my ex-girlfriend really. It's...complicated."
"I don't really give a shi...a darn...about your personal life. My daughter's hungry and I can't do anything in here because of...that," she told him pointing at the sink.
Fortunately, this one was a simple fix and he had her water back on in about 30 minutes. "What about all this water on the floor? That's not my fault. You're cleaning that up, too," she told him in no uncertain terms.
Chase was reaching his boiling point but he counted to ten then said, "Fine. Do you at least have some old towels I can use?"
The woman threw three faded green towels at him which Chase used to sop up the mess then wrung them out in the sink. "Could you at least hang these up to dry yourself or do you want me to do that for you, too?" he said snidely.
"What an asshole!" the woman said as she grabbed the wet towels and took them into the bathroom.
"The pleasure was all yours," Chase said as he left, the woman just glaring at him all the way out the door.
By the time he got cleaned up, Sarah came in carrying several bags in both hands. She plopped them on the counter and said, "You're putting them away and making dinner."
Chase felt himself starting to boil again and tried counting. "Deep breaths," he told himself. When he was calm again he said, "Okay, sure. God forbid you take an hour out of your busy day of doing nothing to buy groceries then also have to help make dinner."
Sarah glowered at him and he asked himself again what he ever saw in her. The answer was always the same. A pretty face and a great rack. He'd been the handsome high school running back and she'd been a cheerleader. She was a walk on the wild side and Chase was...yummy. At least that's what Sarah had told him several times in the past.
The following morning, he repeated the serenity prayer when woke up, thankful for another day where no one was trying to kill him. Chase Edwards loved the mornings. It hadn't always been that way, but since he'd quit drinking almost a year ago, he appreciated them greatly. He'd rarely been tempted to drink before noon no matter how far down he'd gotten and now he knew he had at least six hours free of temptation. After that, he only had to make it six more before going to an AA meeting and that always gave him the strength to make through the night. In fact, he'd be getting his one-year chip later this week and after white-knuckling the first three months before getting some sense of control, he had no intention of blowing all the hard work and effort by ever taking another drink.
He was going to college on the GI Bill and he'd just managed to land a job as the super in an apartment complex near campus. He didn't have a lot of home repair knowledge, but he had a list of plumbers, electricians, and repairmen and he knew how to dial a phone. That said, he could pocket any money he saved doing a repair himself which is why he spent a lot of time watching repair videos and reading do-it-yourself articles on the net. However, if he botched it, he was responsible for any damage that might result from his mistake and then he still had to call in a professional.
The only thing not going so well for him was in the relationship department. He was sharing his apartment with his former girlfriend, Sarah Kenning. They'd been so in love in high school, or so he'd thought. Like him, she was an excellent student. So much so that she'd graduated a year early and went off to college during his senior year. They talked on the phone several times a week and texted each other throughout the day, every day.
Being from a poor family, there was no money coming from his parents for him to go to college, so Chase had decided to enlist in the Marine Corps for the GI Bill and he was scheduled to leave for boot camp in February, a month after graduating from high school a semester early himself. He had no idea Sarah had been seeing someone else for over a month when she came home just before Christmas. When he met her at her parents' house, she'd seemed distant. When he told her he loved her she told him, "I like you, Chase." Even now, nearly five years later, he could still recall that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach when she told him there was someone else. He'd asked if he could kiss her goodbye. She said 'yes' and with that he left and hadn't seen her again since getting discharged a somewhere around fifteen months ago.
Chase's drinking had gotten so bad he was almost involuntarily held on active duty to go to rehab, but somehow he'd found the strength to go three straight days without a drink between his attempt to check out for discharge when a corpsman smelled alcohol on his breath at 1500 or 3pm. He called a doctor in who ordered a liver enzymes test and based on the results, referred Chase to Balboa Naval Hospital for evaluation. His bried hiatus from drinking somehow got him through the eval and he was indeed sent back to the civilian world. Within two hours of being released, he was shit-faced again and didn't stop drinking until the accident.
The drinking started his second year on active duty following his eight-month deployment to Afghanistan. With just six weeks to go, his vehicle had hit an IED, a roadside bomb buried under the ground. Chase had walked away with a mild concussion from having his head slammed into the steering wheel, but his best friend, Lance Corporal Tom Reynolds, had been trapped inside. The seat pan had been deformed by the blast and wrapped around his lower torso making it impossible for the three Marines pulling on him to get him out. He'd had to sit there and helplessly watch his best friend burn to death before the ammunition inside exploded with Tom's body still inside. That memory had haunted him every waking moment since. There was no alcohol in Afghanistan, but the day he got back to Camp Pendleton, California, he got drunk and he stayed drunk every minute of every day that he wasn't on duty since.
Alcohol was the only thing that gave him any relief and even though it was only temporary, it was relief. Well, it was the only drug he could legally take and not find himself being court-martialed, and he kept right on drinking when he got home. He drank so much his parents told him he either had to stop or get out of their house. He had no intention of quitting so he moved in with his younger brother who worked construction locally. Then out of the blue, Sarah, who was home on Spring break during her fifth year of college, called him. She'd long since broken up with the guy who ended her relationship with Chase and had burned through several other relationships leaving her single and available. She wanted to get back together and Chase had no other prospects so they began hanging out again.
At first, his drinking didn't bother. After all, she'd known plenty of guys in college who partied—a lot—so she wasn't worried about the fact that Chase did the same thing. But what did concern her was the way he'd changed. There was something about him that bothered her deeply and one day she finally said something about it. They'd been out at a bar and as usual Chase had had several drinks too many. Her questions soon turned into a heated argument which continued all the way outside after Chase got angry and stormed out. When they got to his car, Sarah asked for his keys. Still fuming about her 'inquisition' over his moodiness he'd told her to get the hell in the car or walk the fuck home. As afraid as she was to ride with him, she was even more afraid to let him by himself.
Less than five minutes later, Chase blew through a red light and hit another car broadside. When we woke up, he was handcuffed to a hospital bed with his younger brother sitting next to him—the only family member who'd shown up. His first question was how Sarah was doing. "She's okay. She broke her nose and her collar bone, but she'll be fine. The driver of the other car's in pretty bad shape though, Chase. He might not make it." He looked right at his brother and told him, "You're being charged with felony DUI."
His head was still foggy and he needed a drink—bad. "Felony what? What does that even mean?"
An hour later his court-appointed attorney showed up and explained it to him in detail. "So I could go to...prison? For how long?"
He gave the ballpark figure of 1-3 years then said gravely, "And if the man dies...it will be longer, Chase. Possibly a lot longer."
Fortunately, the man didn't die. In fact, once he was well enough to leave the hospital he came to visit Chase, who was released on bond, at his brother's place. As fate would have it, the man was a retired Army colonel named Dennis Brant, who was himself a recovering alcoholic. Rather than wanting a pound of flesh, he took an immediate and personal interest in Chase and pleaded on his behalf with both the prosecutor and the judge. In the end, the case was reduced to a misdemeanor with Chase losing his driving privileges for a year and having to do 200 hours of community service.
Colonel Brant had also managed to get Chase to stop drinking for one day. That evening, he took him to his first AA meeting and Chase had been sober ever since. Brant also gone above and beyond and helped Chase find his current job.
Sarah's parents hadn't been so magnanimous. In fact, they were so distraught over the accident they forbade their daughter to see Chase again, but being 23 and on her own, she chose him over them and moved out. She decided to postpone finishing college, and she'd moved in with him to the apartment where he now worked as the super.
But the new Chase—the sober Chase—wasn't a lot of fun when he wasn't drinking. He was often somber to point of being stoic and Sarah liked to have fun. She was already planning on going back to school in the summer but for now, she was as stuck with Chase as she was with him. They weren't at one another's throats, but there was always an uneasy tension between them and they most definitely were not sleeping together.
The evening from hell with the crazy women in 214 behind him and his latest battle with Sarah over, Chase had had a pretty good day at school. He hadn't thought about drinking too often and he'd actually enjoyed his classes. He'd even met a girl he thought he might ask out, and he was on his way to the bus stop to head downtown for his AA meeting when the phone rang. It was Sarah.
