Five(44)

“Sorry,” he whispers. She smiles. He sits in the row of seats behind her, still feeling the brush of her hand against his skin when he gave her the bag, and stares at the back of her head and her shiny, long raven hair and doesn’t hear a word anyone says because by the end of the hour he is madly in love.

“It’s not a good idea to date people in the program, you know,” she says, drinking coffee with him in a place around the corner after the meeting.

“I’m full of bad ideas,” he says, smiling.

“So am I,” she says.

And that is their start. Valentina is a piece of his life he did not know was missing until she came into it and filled up all the blank space. Sonny finds out that love is something new that can make the buzzing stop, that calms his mind and brings his brain and body together. Valentina is much further along in recovery than Sonny. She went to rehab for her addiction seven years ago, when she was nineteen, with the support of her family, surrounded by their love until she was strong enough to stand on her own. She considers her addiction to be in her past, but she still drops into meetings now and then, just to check in, as a way to stay vigilant, and now as a way to support Sonny, but always as a reminder to herself of how far she has come. Or how far she thinks she has come.

Valentina moves into the garden flat. They talk about a future that encompasses his dreams and hers. They talk about selling the flat, moving to London, or renting it out, maybe taking time off and traveling. Sonny thinks, to himself, about maybe buying Valentina a ring and getting married, maybe taking her to some remote, beautiful, spiritual place to make their vows. They both ignore the spark that ignites inside when they get the flat valued and find out how much they could sell it for. He does not acknowledge the flicker of the flame that starts to burn, he does not say his is the only name on the deed, that the money will be his, actually.

He does not mention that the next ?25,000 is wired straight into the lonely stray account that he doesn’t use. He has told her so much, so many things, he has even told her that the meetings were his dead mother’s plan for him, he said he goes to honor his mother, but he does not mention the money, the trust, its requirements. They have talked for hours and hours about the secrets gamblers keep, the plots and plans they make to hide the shame, the debt, the broken voice inside that cannot say stop. The thing he does with everyone else he does with her too. Especially with her. Because he knows her brain, so much like his own, and he loves her but he doesn’t trust her. Not fully. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

And now he is in the last year before the end of his mother’s master plan, the last year before she finally lets him go with the last installment of her painstakingly saved savings. She taught him that he could do it, and he has done it. She was right. He was fixable.

“Do you ever think about it?” he asks Valentina, in bed one morning.

“Every day,” she says, without having to ask what he means.

“I’m afraid to sell the flat. I’m afraid we can’t handle the money,” he says.

“We have to forgive ourselves at some point, Sonny, we have to trust ourselves,” she says.

“Do you trust me?” he asks, staring at the ceiling, holding her hand to his chest, where he keeps his secret.

“Yes,” she says, because she wants to trust him, she almost does trust him, she loves him so much but she knows him too well to trust him. As well as she knows herself.

Soon it is his twenty-sixth birthday. When he wakes up, he opens then closes his eyes again and listens. He tries to hear his parents, but he’s never been able to, not the way his mother always said she could hear his dad.

After work he goes to his favorite restaurant in Soho to find Valentina waiting with a bunch of his friends. A surprise party. “Make a wish, Babe!” Val shouts to him, and he blows out the candles.

“From all of us,” Greg, his friend from work says, handing him a card, as they drink and eat cake.

And Sonny says, “Oh, you shouldn’t have, mate,” as he opens the birthday card and he hears the sound—flit, flit, flit—of twenty-seven lottery scratch cards falling out onto his lap. One for every year of his life, plus one for good luck.

Greg doesn’t know, of course, none of their friends know about him or Valentina and their secret struggle. They’ve told everyone that they were at a bar when he tripped over her bag and fell in love with her. A half-truth, almost whole.

He holds the cards in his lap while his friends banter, wine is poured, beer is sloshed, a waiter drops a tray, glass breaks, everyone laughs. Panic surges through him. He could give everyone at the party a card to scratch all at the same time and propose to split the winnings. He could take the envelope to the bathroom and flush it. He could hand it to the homeless man sitting outside the restaurant. He could sit in a dark room in the middle of the night and scratch each card methodically, carefully, and feel the relief it would bring.

“Wow! So fun!” Valentina says, not looking at him, grabbing the envelope, stuffing the cards inside. “Let me put that where we won’t lose it, you know how Sonny is always losing stuff!”

When he can get her alone, he says, “What have you done with it?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it,” she says. Her voice tells him one thing, her eyes say another.

On the train on the way home, when they are finally alone, finally somewhere quiet, he says, “God that was awful, where is it?”