The rest of the evening passed in a blur, a blur I couldn’t wait to be free of so I could get home and drink away all of the pain. And that was exactly what I’d done. I’d gone through every bit of liquor I could get my hands on at the store after the bar closed and drunk pretty much all of it.

Unfortunately, that meant I had to recover from it, and I was feeling it. I woke up feeling like I was in a bed of sludge like it took one hundred times more effort to do basic movements than it normally would’ve. My head pounded, my joints ached, and my throat was so dry that I felt like I’d tried to swallow fire.

But you know what, I deserved it. I’d broken Mike’s heart, and hadn’t even been subtle about it, hadn’t even tried to avoid it. Well, I had tried to avoid it, but in so doing, I’d ruined everything. So, this was my penance; this was the cross I had to bear for what I’d done. It felt like the appropriate southern American response.

Even more unfortunately for me, I was supposed to work again that day, with Mike and the whole rest of the crew. I couldn’t do it, there was no possible way, even if I hadn’t been hungover as hell. I couldn’t stand the idea of having to look Mike in the face, having to try to explain, or just pretend like nothing was wrong. Because at this point, I sincerely doubted that there was anything I could say or do to get him back, anything I could do to make him understand why I’d done what I did.

I knew how he’d taken it, knew that he’d seen it as a rejection of him, but it wasn’t like that at all. The only thing I cared about, literally the only thing, was making sure I didn’t hurt him. I could and should’ve done things differently, done them better, but he’d cornered me, and I felt like a trapped, terrified animal so I’d said things I wouldn’t normally have said.

More than anything else, being with Mike made me realize just how little confidence I had, just how much of a scared little boy I still was. It was terrifying to think that one person could have so much power over me, could make my emotions flare in such powerful ways just by their own words, but maybe that’s what love really was—not that I would know, it wasn’t like I had a whole lot of experience with love in the first place.

And maybe that was why I’d screwed this up so royally. I had no idea what I was doing, I was making it up as I went along, and there were a lot of complicating circumstances. Mike had accused me of choosing money over him, and I understood why he thought that, but it was as far from the truth as was possible and I hadn’t done anything to help him see that.

In some ways, he was right. I had chosen money over him when it all boiled down. But it wasn’t really like I’d even made a choice; the choice had been made for me the second I was born to my parents. It was crystal clear to me now that I would always be a slave to celebrity, to money, and fame, even when I didn’t want it. I couldn’t escape it, it would follow me everywhere.

Still, a mature adult, unlike me, would have sat Mike down and had a real conversation about it, but that had never even occurred to me—when you grow up in a house that doesn’t talk about anything, where nothing ever gets resolved unless it’s via some social, public punishment to make sure you really learn the lesson—you don’t exactly pick up mature coping skills.

Hence the hangover. Hence the wild, raucous house party I’d thrown, which had also gotten me thrown out of Stockholm University and Sweden in general. That was the one part of the story that I’d failed to tell Mike, that the whole reason for the party was because of an argument I’d had with my parents. I’d wanted to blow off steam, wanted to forget about everything, and I wanted to stick it to them.

I still had a lot of growing up to do. Maybe that was why they’d sent me here in the first place, but I didn’t seem to have learned any lessons just yet. So, because I was already feeling like a little boy in a man’s body, and because I didn’t know how to else to deal with the situation, I reached for my phone from the bed and dialed the bar’s number, knowing that somebody would be there to answer. The ring was like a shriek in my ear, activating my hangover in a way that I didn’t know was possible, but someone picked up mercifully just after two rings.

“Second Chances bar and grill, this is Dan,” the voice answered, which itself was like a hammer against the side of my skull. If I weren’t already feeling like absolute death, I absolutely would’ve after realizing Dan had picked up the phone, the last person I wanted to talk to right now. Of course, he probably already knew everything that was going on, but that didn’t mean I wanted to talk to him right now. Go figure, the one person who had any ties to my old life back in Sweden would be the one to catch me at my worst point in the US.

“Hey, Dan, it’s Kai,” I said, my words still somewhat slurred. Dan cleared his throat, and the background noise seemed to die down as he moved somewhere with the phone, presumably somewhere quieter.

“I had a feeling we might be getting a call from you today,” Dan said, and though it would’ve sounded patronizing coming from anyone else, it honestly sounded like he felt sorry for me. Which, in its way, was still kind of patronizing.

“Yeah, look, you know I hate to do this, but I just can’t be there right now,” I said.

“I understand. You deserve some time to figure things out. I’ll let Jason know you called,” Dan said.

“Thank you, I appreciate it,” I said.

“Just take care of yourself, Kai. Can you do that?” he asked. Truthfully, I didn’t think the answer was yes, but what else was I supposed to say?

“I will, I promise,” I said and hung up before he could say anything else. Guilt washed over me almost immediately. Who were these people and why were they so kind? What had I done to win over their trust and affection, and how could I go on like this ruining it?

I wouldn’t have been surprised if they fired me. It would kill several birds with one stone, and it would wash their hands clean of the whole situation. Thankfully for them, I hadn’t been around for very long, so it wouldn’t be a very contentious thing if they did, and I would have understood. They’d taken a chance on me, chosen me, a random foreigner wandering the streets of the town over a local who would’ve fit in much better, and this was how I’d repaid them.

Knowing I’d disappointed them and crushed Mike in one fell swoop was worse than all the times I’d disappointed my parents combined.

The thought alone made me feel like I was falling into a black hole. My head continued to throb, and I knew it wouldn’t stop until I got some food in me, but I didn’t have the energy to even get out of bed, much less go in search of something to eat.

As I laid on the bed, the ceiling above me rotating ever so slightly thanks to the hangover, I wondered how something that felt so right could have gone so wrong in such a short amount of time. It was unlikely, Mike and me, but we’d just clicked. Maybe I should’ve listened to the voice in the back of my head screaming at me not to get involved with him from the very start, but it wasn’t like it was the first time I’d failed to listen to that voice, and somehow I didn’t think it would be the lasted.

“God, I’m the worst,” I groaned as I rolled off the bed to the floor. Everything I touched seemed to turn to crap. Was I cursed in some way? Was that what my parents thought of me, that I ruined everything for them?

If my mother had been there, had heard the things I was saying and thinking, she would’ve accused me of being maudlin, that I was making a scene and needed to get my act together before people saw me. In a lot of ways, I admired that sort of strength of hers, the desire to never let anybody see her in a moment of weakness, but weakness was all I felt.

This was supposed to have been the right decision, the thing that would protect both Mike and me from any harm, but instead it’d turned into its form of hell. Now what? What did I have here in town to cling to? One day away from the bar wouldn’t make the shame disappear, wouldn’t smooth things over enough for me to be able to go in there and do my job without wanting to jump into the fryer to avoid the awkwardness.

I imagined what it would be like to call my mother and father and tell them I needed to come home because I wasn’t able to hack it here on my own. It would be the ultimate joke, and I knew they would laugh at me from thousands of miles away, tell me it was time for me to leave the nest and fly. I’d made mistakes before, and I never had to be responsible for them, and though it was probably good for me to learn the lesson, this was a particularly hard one to learn.

I wanted someone to rescue me, to swoop in and tell me they would make everything better, but I had no one. The only person I had, to blame and to save me, was myself. Calling my parents would only make things worse, they would probably see it as some justification to punish me even further, and then where would I be? The trust fund would go away as fast as the setting sun, they’d terminate the lease on this shitty apartment, and then I’d be out on the street in Beauclaire of all places.

I couldn’t take much more, so even with my head pounding in my stomach feeling like it was doing corkscrews, I managed to get dressed and stumble out of the apartment. It was chilly outside, but not too bad, and the cold air was a bit of relief against my skin. The sunshine, however, was not welcome. It pierced my skull like a chisel and continued to eat away at the hangover, aggravating it and making it feel like I had a living beast inside my head.

I needed food, and I needed it desperately, so I stumbled a few blocks like a stunned zombie toward the nearest restaurant, the nearest place that wasn’t Second Chances—because as much as I wanted to walk in there, apologize profusely to Mike and try to smooth things over between all of us, I knew it was the worst possible thing I could do. Right now, I needed to keep my head down, keep out of trouble, and try to formulate a plan for how and when I would get out of town.

Because I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Mike, Jason, and the rest, of having to face this horrible decision I’d made in a situation I’d created for myself day in and day out. I couldn’t go back home—I didn’t have the money to go there even if I’d wanted to, and it wasn’t like my parents would be hot to trot to wire me money—and I couldn’t stay here, a fact that became crystal clear when I shuffled past the gym Mike had taken me to.

My breath caught in my throat as I remembered that night, the night that changed everything between us, and I started bawling right then and there. Some strong guy I was, right? It was almost like he’d set a trap and I’d walked right into it, or maybe it was me who set a trap for myself, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t have to go out of my way to be nice to him, I didn’t have to invite him out to the gym to help him feel better about himself—and maybe, now that I thought about it, it wasn’t him I was trying to help feel better, maybe it was me.

It didn’t matter now, because it’d all fallen apart thanks to me, thanks to a decision I hadn’t made lightly, one that should’ve settled everything down, but instead had thrown everything into chaos. What the hell had I done? I wished I could step into a time machine, go back 48 hours, and redo it all, but that was impossible. All I could do was move forward.

“Hey there pal, you feeling all right?” the host asked as I stood unsteadily in the doorframe of a restaurant I had no recollection of even walking into.

“Been better, but I’m fine,” I said. “Can I have a table somewhere away from the light please?” I asked. Though he eyed me suspiciously like he thought I might overdose in the corner, he eventually led me to the back corner of the restaurant, which smelled delicious, like fried chicken and mashed potatoes and everything else I needed to help me soak up the booze in my system, and left me alone.

Despite myself, I imagined what it would be like to have Mike sitting across from me if all this crap hadn’t happened and we found ourselves going to dinner one night. I realized then that that was something we’d never done, and now would never get the chance to do, because I’d been a coward. I should’ve known better, should’ve known that in the end, I would disappoint him in the same way I disappointed my parents and everybody else I knew. When would people learn that I was trouble, that I should be avoided at all costs? When would I learn to quit fighting it?

Or maybe I was being maudlin. Regardless, it felt justified, so when the server came around a few minutes later and asked me what I’d like to drink, maybe a sweet tea or Coke, I ordered the largest beer they had. Though the server widened her eyes at me and checked her watch for the time in incredulity, after she took a longer look at me, she decided that maybe I needed it.

I needed it.