Content Warning: This story discusses the following sensitive topics: substance abuse and early recovery.

We walk every morning at sunrise—not all of us, but enough to know who’s missing. They say to each other, You gotta chase that recovery like you chased that drug as we huff our way around our rehab. We toe an exact perimeter before the campus turns into a big open field, like we can see barbed wire hemming us into the lines we draw ourselves, the lines that separate our special space from the world beyond. 

I, personally, think it’s fucking bullshit. I hate everyone in the group. I hate Xanny Granny, the old lady whose grandkid found her stash of benzos, who carves up the air with her elbows while she walks, like she’s putting on a whole-ass play about how serious her power walking practice is. I hate Grief Spiral Daddy, who never shuts up about his dead wife, telling whoever-the-fuck how empty his life has become between heaving exhales when the going gets good. I hate Travis Kelce, who obviously is not actually Travis Kelce, but that’s the only sports player I know and this kid got hooked on percs after an ACL tear playing college ball (oh no, his poor future!). He’s thick in the good way (I like big boys) and in the bad (he is stupid). They all complain all the time about their broken lives but that’s what happens when you’re a drug addict. I must have the craziest pace of our group, scooting ahead or behind whenever I can to avoid all these motherfuckers. Even though it’s still hot as balls in September and the zipping gives me armpit stains like helicopter pads. But I have to keep my tight little ass in some kind of shape while I’m in here (have you seen the way fags look at each other these days? Honey I can’t afford an OUNCE of fat), and there isn’t exactly a rehab gym. 

I don’t have a sob story or a tender heart like the idiots in the power walking group. I’m like if a rom-com was all about how much everybody sucks. It’s not just that I hate them, it’s that I hate myself more when I’m with them. I hate the way they make me feel. I hate the little crinkle they get above their nose when they’re looking at me like I’m nuts. (In my universe, a.k.a. the workings of my inner mind, us fags are still quoting When Harry Met Sally, so fuck off. Yeah, I’m a nineties gay. Or was that the eighties? When was I thirteen and jacking off into tube socks and stealing my mom’s VHS tapes?)

My first day in rehab, the lunch lady (later dubbed Matilda Molelip) asked if I was new before she offered me the meatloaf. I nodded, to mean, yes I’m new but also I hate you. But then she gave me a look of such pity and manufactured tenderness, like her eyes were trying to tell me You’re safe now, that I yanked my whole tray away from her and the loaf plopped right on the counter. “I’m a VEGAN!” I seethed, scandalized, just to have something to yell at her, and I turned away in a huff and sat in a corner. Some jackass brought me apples and peanut butter. Now I have to eat vegan every day and it’s a short list of what I wouldn’t do for a real goddamn hamburger. 

I don’t have ~~~TrAuMa~~~ and I’m not trying to get better for anybody. There’s no family or friends. My parents stopped talking to me literal decades ago, wah wah wah. I mean I think I have a cousin in like, Chambersburg or something, but this trip to MAGAstan, PA is as far out of Philadelphia as I’m willing to go. The bouncer at the club sure as hell doesn’t miss me, and the revolving door of muscle queens I used to invite back to my place has probably found some other semi-hairy short round middle-aged fag with adult acne to replace me. There’s nothing in my life I’m trying to save, I just don’t want to go to literal prison. Though they would probably have a gym. I got my fourth DUI, and I sure as hell don’t want to end up like my friend Kevin, because he killed somebody while driving drunk and any time he calls from prison he’s talking about GOD (Good Orderly Direction, another of the brilliant clichés) and being better today than he was yesterday and making it up to the dude he rolled over and Sweet Saint Francesca is he irritating to listen to. I haven’t killed anybody yet, but still, by the time you get to four DUIs, the Honorable Judge Bald Spot wants to see some “resolve to change” and “remorse” and I’m not naturally filled with those things. A six-month program seemed like a big enough swing to avoid hard time. Unless I murder someone in this walking group, in which case I think I’d start with the elliptical if there is one, and then I could see if there are free weights. But maybe prisons don’t have free weights because the guys would throw them at each other’s heads and die.

The person in the walking group I hate the least is Tina Tony. I can’t hate Tina Tony properly, because he is hot as fuck. I call him that because he’s a methhead like me and a homo like me. (Tina’s the gay word for meth—crystal into Christina into Tina, we’re a very clever people.) Looking the way Tony does, Tina probably chased him, not the other way around. Tina Tony is a man with legs. Tina Tony is a man with those asscheeks that tell you what the shape of your hands should be. They make a little shelf at the bottom of his back. He has those broad-ass shoulders (like the width of Ohio, okay?) and he’s tall, tall, tall. You know those guys where you’re like, if you weren’t gay, what would even be the point of a body like that? He’s one of those. He looks like the guy who gets free drinks just for showing up, and the bartender decides to bottom just this once, just for him. Not like me, who always thinks a guy’s more likely to stick around and chat for a bit if I’m taking him back to my place instead of sucking him off at the urinal, but who’s always left alone sooner or later anyway. Meth highs last way longer than those club fags do, and then I’m home alone and wired and ready to jump out a fucking window. That’s a time when I really hate everything, especially all my own bullshit in my crappy apartment staring back at me, stupid as fuck. So I wanna run. So I get in my car. Et cetera. 

Tina Tony’s been here the longest out of everybody. Not that I actually talk to him. I don’t talk to anyone. But I hear things. I hear how people trust him more than the counselors. I saw him and Xanny Granny talking in whispers one time, and she left looking happy. I hear how Tina Tony parrots the stupid clichés like the rest of them, but I don’t hate the clichés as much coming out of a mouth that looks like God created it special to fit perfect around your asshole. 

This morning I hear him say, Your worst day sober is still better than your best day using—a fucking lie. You wanna say the day I spent vomiting my guts out in detox was better than my first week in Philly, when crystal gave me something to love? 

I’ve been watching Tina Tony for the bounce of that perky little ass of his, but now I’m starting to figure I can do what he does. I mean, how hard is it to solemnly say, Just for today after somebody shares? And that makes you like, Rehab Princess? So I decide to try it. It’s a Tuesday, the third one since I got to rehab proper, after the whole detox hellhole. I like Tuesdays, because you usually have time to recover from the weekend but you’re not gearing up for the next one yet. This young girl, she’s new so I don’t have a name for her, but she says something and then she’s crying and I say solemnly, One day at a time. Literally just like that, and I’m trying to look out of the corner of my eyes to see if I get any response, and yep, everyone’s looking at me in awe, like I’ve got the secrets of the universe. New girl smiles through her little tears and says “Thank you” and I nod, so sage and so wise. I get this feeling, like calm I guess, or like there’s something inside of me. I kinda don’t hate it.

So over the next few days, I try sprinkling in a few more. Secrets keep us sick. That makes Xanny Granny cry on Wednesday. I can be addicted to anything, I’ll even check my email alcoholically. That gets a good laugh on Thursday from Lives in Her Carla (new girl shared more about herself and I was actually listening this time). It also gets Tina Tony’s attention. 

Friday morning, Tina Tony’s all of a sudden noticed I exist. You’d think he would’ve clocked another homo and come over to me as soon as I arrived, but maybe he thinks being gay stops when you hit forty-five or you have to be at least five-foot-eight. Anyway now he knows I exist and he’s trying to be my power walking buddy, which really inhibits my view of his ass, but also shields me from Tammy Two-Teeth, whose nickname needs no explanation. 

Tina Tony asks me about myself, and instead of zigzagging away from him to the sweet freedom of self-isolation, I try to form words. I’m staring down the barrel of that perfectly stubbled jaw and a literal honest-to-god chin dimple and I don’t know how humans are supposed to speak coherently in these conditions. I can’t really say I ever figure it out, because a whole pack of lies falls right out of my mouth without me knowing. Like just one little nudge from this dude and I’ve invented a new plane of existence. I’m not telling a man whose shirt crests over curved pecs that I live above a convenience store ten stops from the gay part of town, or that I pick up shifts with the mobile STD clinic. The nipples poking through his shirt are too precious to hear that I mostly just eat at Wendy’s, even if I’ve found the perfect combination of sauces and should basically publish my recipe and become famous for it. 

Instead, I tell him I have a wife at home—so much for making gay friends at rehab! But this wife, man, she’s legit. I fucked her over so bad and I’m so sorry about it. She had to pawn her princess-cut wedding ring to pay for our son’s violin lessons. Apparently I was making good money, because we lost a very bougie life. I never say what I did for a living, but maybe being rich isn’t about having a job anyway. It fits with the whole vegan thing, since I’m still suffering through the wilted kale salads they must import from the Whole Foods three towns over. I tell him we lived in Villanova, because fuck it, if we’re gonna be rich, let’s be rich. But it turns out There’s nothing you can’t fit into a pipe. Damn. I’m even moved, a little, hearing myself speak. I gotta get back to my wife and my kid, man. 

Tina Tony thinks my story is incredible. He makes me feel like I have hardship, a reason to be the way I am and the strength to overcome it. It’s comforting, the way he says “I see you,” the way his elbow grazes my elbow as if to say, We’re all a little crooked in this world. It’s much more compelling than Matilda Molelip’s pity face, and not just because I get half a chub from him touching me. It’s something about the way he looks at you, these eyes that have never seen nothing but you. I’m like, damn. Maybe things don’t have to be as fucked up as they have been. Maybe my kid can still learn the violin someday. Maybe I can have more people in my life than the bouncer at the club. We walk together a few more days, and we start to say the clichés back and forth to each other—the spiritual principles, how you gotta be honest, open-minded, and willing—and it feels good to pretend to feel good. Then all of a sudden he’s sitting with me at art therapy, and of course it turns out this man’s figured out how to make forearms hot, so that’s very distracting. It’s how the hairs fall over his skin, maybe. Tender and wiry. He has the kind of arm hair where you know he likes to call you names when he fucks you, but then after he says you were so good. Instead of spending art therapy glaring at the Crayola and being angry that I’m being treated like a child like I usually do, we make a little poster that says HONEST OPEN-MINDED WILLING. We tape it over the microwave. Everybody likes it. Or they say they do. People are real nice to me, now that I’m going around with Tina Tony. It makes them think I’m Spiritually Fit (whatever the fuck that means). I think the sign looks like shit, because TT’s drawn all these faggotty butterflies everywhere, and I tried to channel my sixth-grade self by writing in bubble letters with purple colored pencil. They could at least buy us a brand of pencils for adults, are they really that much more expensive? Plus I don’t know how good I am at like “embodying” any of that shit or whatever. But when we’re done admiring the poster Tina Tony gives my shoulder a long squeeze that makes me think maybe he knows my wife isn’t real, or maybe he knows she’s the kind of wife who understands a man who needs to get dicked down on the side. Maybe Jennifer (you know her name is Jennifer) gets that being anally penetrated is a core part of the recovery journey. 

But Tina Tony’s next level. At dinner, he asks one of the rehab techs if I can share my story the following week. Usually outside speakers are the ones who share their stories, but Tina Tony tells Crackhead Craig (sorry, Reformed Crackhead Craig—he’s the head of the techs so he’s gotta be all healed and shit) that my story is worth slotting in. He does this without asking me, and I just sit there watching him pitch me and I’m like, man, good thing I didn’t talk in any groups or RCC would blow my chances with this boy right now. This rehab’s not exactly organized so it’s not like the counselors talk to the techs, the techs are basically random idiots who are qualified to tell us stuff we already know and babysit us. I don’t think they have to have more than a GED to get the job, not that I’m like a PhD or whatever but I’m just saying. Counselors see us one-on-one and if there’s a schedule for that I haven’t seen it. Anyway, RCC is nodding as though considering Big Deep Issues and I hope and pray he’ll shoot the whole thing down, but then Tina Tony flashes me this big thumbs-up, like we’ve won something. Can you win rehab? I bet the prize is like a Perrier or some shit. Lifetime supply of LaCroix. Fuck.

So now I’m trying to write down every lie that’s come out of my mouth. Because in theory, whatever shit I said to Tina Tony should probably match what I say up there. The week passes pretty quick. He’s sitting next to me in more and more of the dumb stuff we’re supposed to do. Handwashing seminars (like I don’t know how to wash my fucking hands). Workshops on setting SMART goals (the solution to substance abuse! realistic goal-setting!). He smokes next to me during smoke breaks. He keeps walking with me during our morning group. I’m not completely out of my zigzagging era though, because motherfuckers talk Tina Tony’s ear off, and the third time Grief Spiral Daddy gives TT a never-ending update on his crappy existence (spoiler alert: his life is still empty), not even the allure of being hot by association is enough to keep me from beelining to literally anywhere else. 

It’s okay though. Mostly I can use Tina Tony as the hottest human shield that ever existed. It’s all kinda less lame with a buddy anyway. People know my name now. It’s Dean, by the way. They say “Hi, Dean” to me when I walk by and I actually kind of fucking hate it so in my mind I say “Good morning, fuckface” but out loud I don’t say anything. Now they just have a story that I’m the strong silent type, which actually works because they think I’m straight (no homo has ever been the strong silent type, not even since the forbidden faggotry of Abraham Lincoln). Over all these classes and shit, I catch Tina Tony looking at me sideways one too many times and I’m starting to wonder if he might be into railing chubby old men. It would be cool if he was, because we wouldn’t have to sneak around during lunch hour like the straights have to do. Travis Kelce and Lives in Her Carla have been taking very suspicious bathroom breaks, but we wouldn’t even have to do that. Convenience can be a big turn-on, in my experience. Especially for tops. 

I actually feel like I can confide in Tina Tony. The night before my big speech, the stars align and Blessed Britney it’s just the two of us. We’re supposed to be in bed, but I get up to pee (because I pee five times a night) and he’s sitting on the couch. He says hey and I walk over and sit next to him, and I’m thinking like, is this it? Is this when he tells me there’s actually a secret step between two and three, and it’s taking a nice big dick that’s thicker in the middle than on the ends? (I’ve decided he has my favorite type of dick. It would just be rude if he didn’t at this point.) 

He asks how I’m feeling about telling my story, and I tell him part of the truth—that I’m anxious. I leave out that I’m anxious about someone seeing through the lies, but it’s true that I’m anxious, and that’s kinda nice. 

“I can help you out,” he says, and my heart does that flutter that pop songs yap about. Tina Tony’s the kind of fucker who can help anyone, and the way I’m drooling he must know exactly the thing that would help me right now. 

Then his hand unfurls around a couple little pills. I don’t process what I’m looking at before the edges of my vision go black, like some kinda telescope’s closed in around my eyeballs. I can practically hear the pills rattling against each other in his palm, I’m like an ant crawling on his wrist and they’re the fucking Appalachian Mountains. 

“Where’d you get that?” I hear myself ask, a rumbling sound from somewhere beneath the telescope.

“I’ve been sneaking it in,” he whispers. “Why do you think I’ve stayed this long? I’m making bank. Fifty for any of these.” 

I blink, but nothing changes. Ants look like they go fast but it’s just because they’re small. The pills are still as far away as they ever were. Something in my face must break though, because suddenly the pills blip out of existence and his hand darts to his pocket. Now I can hear things, the rattle of the common room air conditioner, the screaming of the cicadas outside. I hear a rustle, and it’s that perfect ass of his on the couch, he’s repositioning himself. Like he’s uncomfortable. Is he uncomfortable? 

“Hey, man, I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought you were a bullshitter like me. If you’re really trying to get clean, I won’t fuck you up.” 

And then he’s gone.

What the fuck just happened? 

Am I trying to get clean? 

Fuck.

Of course he didn’t want to fuck you, you stupid fuck. 

Of course he didn’t see any good in you.

My whole body’s on fire and also made of stone and I’m glued to the couch. This couch is my new home. This couch is a good couch, I never should’ve said anything bad about this couch and how it’s basically a crime that anyone would put a beige couch in a yellow room, especially with these hideous green cushions, I never should have said that this was the least-relaxing and worst-looking room I’d ever been in, even if I only said it to myself. This couch is greater than any empire and I will sit here until the day I die or I melt out of the statue my body has formed or Reformed Crackhead Craig tells me I’m supposed to be in bed, which only happens like six minutes after Tony leaves probably. I go try to bust the kernels of my room’s popcorn ceiling with my glare. 

All these fuckers in this place look up to Tony. Like he has the answers. Like he gives them hope. They literally follow him around in a little pack, while he’s out on his walks. They looked at me different, just because he fucked with me for a minute. I guess Tony learned to say the right things. There’s a cliché for that, too. Your mouth gets well. This evil set of long long legs has me back on my bullshit, chasing some liar with drugs in his pocket, but now I don’t even have the drugs to make me hate it less. 

I shoulda eaten the pills right out of his hand and then begged him to fuck me. He can have any kind of dick he wants and I’ll take it, I don’t care if it’s huge and it hurts. I coulda gotten him to fuck me. I’d cry if I had to. No one likes to see a grown man cry. Maybe he hasn’t even fucked since he got here so his standards are low so I’d do. I shoulda fucking begged. 

I think I sleep a little. It’s hard to know what’s a nightmare, and what’s my own wishing. 

Sleep or no, the rehab techs come for us all. I skip power walking group. I eat my dry granola while everyone else has pancakes and eggs. Fuckers. I hate them for my own stupid lie. I’m trying not to think about the morning I coulda had, smoothed out with whatever pill was in that boy’s hand and getting ready to knock all their socks off with my experience, strength, and hope. As soon as I see the walkers coming, I get the fuck out of there. I don’t see Tony until it’s time to share, when I’m sitting by myself in the back of the room, with a stack of index cards that tell me the tragedy of my life. The reason I’m so desperate to redeem myself. To do better.

Tony’s sitting between me and the podium, so I have to walk past him. I wish for a minute that he’d watch the jiggle of my ass while I pass like I watched his, but I know there’s nothing there. I have nothing to offer. I can feel his eyes on me, though. Probably thinking about how you can see my love handles through my shirt. I should’ve worn a different shirt. This one is pink and stupid. Who’s gonna believe I have a wife when I’m wearing this thing anyway? 

I get up there. Finally. I’m supposed to share my beautiful transformation. My inspiring lies. But I see Tony sitting there, and he’s got an encouraging smile on his face. Genuine as fuck.

There’s like this thing inside me. This sounds lame even as I’m thinking it. But it’s like there’s some kinda wooden bridge in my chest, and it’s been creaking for ages, and I’ve been trying to keep it up as long as I can, and that big dumb smile from Tony, like he doesn’t even know he did anything wrong, that just collapses the whole bridge, and instead of creaking I hear crashes and devastation, and I feel these weak-strong beams just fucking break, and now there’s a wide open space. 

In layman’s terms, I have snapped. 

“Listen,” I say, and I drop the notes about my poor wife and the horseback riding lessons she had to stop taking because I drunkenly accosted her instructor. “I don’t have anything to tell you. The person I hurt with my using is me. Literally. First DUI: broke my nose. Second: bruised shoulder. You get the idea. But nobody gives a shit about me. I don’t give a shit about me. You assholes, with your broken families, at least you have relationships to ruin. But some of you still buy pills on the sly from Tony.” 

Stolen glances, creaking seats. Tony’s face is stone. 

“I’m not here to get better. I just don’t wanna go to prison. No bullshit: I don’t wanna get clean. Being clean is so much fucking worse than using and we all know that.” 

This time—a chuckle. Like people get me. I will fucking punch them. 

“I hate this place. I hate the food. I’m not a fucking vegan, by the way. I hate all of you. I hate you so much that I don’t care whether Tony gets in trouble for selling shit to you. I hope you let him fuck you over. I hope you all get worse. I hope you die of an overdose alone in your rehab dorm room, I hate you that much. But you know what I hate the most? I hate being like this. I hate hating everything. I just want something—anything—that I don’t—” 

There’s stupid water in my stupid eyes. Knives of embarrassment slice me from the center out. My screwed-up wet red face is betraying me worse than Tony did. I can feel my mouth like a runaway train and all I can do is try to swallow it whole.

“I’m done. Get the fuck out of my way.” 

I leave the podium, surrounded by stares, past all the people I hate, past Tony. They let me go. I walk far into the field. 

I never felt like I wanted something I didn’t hate before. 

What’s the point of not hating things? 

In an instant I’m sitting out in the field. Rehab’s a dot behind me. No one is coming after me. Thank whatever needs to be thanked.

The blades of grass are so green. It rained, last week I think. It rains a lot here. But I’ve lived here all my life. Not this rehab, and not Villanova, obviously, but Pennsylvania. Different parts. Grew up outside of Allentown, parents are there still. Or they were when they stopped talking to me. Decades ago now. It hurts, still, sometimes. I’ve been in Philly a long time. Philly’s one of those cities where there’s still a lot of trees. A lot of green, in some parts. This is a state where it rains. The rain always pissed me off, harder to get a guy to follow you home through a storm, but when I was a kid I used to love it. I’d watch it come down through the window, and my dad wouldn’t try to get me outside for a catch or anything, I could help my mom cook. Fag stereotype but I loved to help my mom cook. Haven’t cooked in—who knows. Why would I? I’m not gonna cook for just me. But maybe I could. I could get a Tupperware, maybe, and save the rest for later, if I made too much. Pennsylvania is a big state. Lots of people in it. A cousin, in Harrisburg. Or Chambersburg, maybe. I think she has a dog. Dogs are cute. I hope it’s a small one. 

I take my shoes off. The blades of grass stick up between my toes. They’re kind of—I don’t know. They’re something. I can feel just a little bit of cold in the air. Not in a bad way, but like that first nip that you only notice inside your lungs, that tells you you have an inside. Maybe it’ll be autumn, sometime. 

I start to go back once the sun’s all the way down. It’s stupid that I have to go back. Maybe I should just walk farther out into the field until I find a truck stop or something. Maybe everybody back the way I came thinks I’m a narc, or they’re offended because they think I want them dead or whatever. Which I guess would be fair, because I did say I hoped they died. That was me. Maybe better to just keep walking and never find out who else was buying pills from Tony, or who all hates a messy fag. But I’m hungry, and I’m tired, and back the way I came’s at least a little bit familiar. I haven’t hit any new low for this rehab, probably. So fuck it. We all come straggling back when we lose our shit. Or we don’t, and maybe that’s worse. 

When I get back, it’s the end of dinner. They’re putting the food away. Everyone’s still in the dining room though. 

Tony is gone. I don’t know where. 

I go over to the microwave. I’m keeping my head down, even if the side of my eye is trying to tell me who’s looking at me and who isn’t. That’s not my problem right now. I’ve been watching fuckers make nachos for weeks, and I’m envious of that layer of cheese, even though it melts the Styrofoam into these swirly cancer triangles. I want the nachos. I put cheese on chips. Real cheese. Ha. What did I think would happen? They’d tell the vegans I wasn’t real? No one gives a shit if I’m a vegan. No one’s watching me make nachos. But that’s a good thing. I press the buttons. One-zero-zero. One minute. Styrofoam be damned! The triangles will be mine! I watch them turn around. A treat, for me.

Grief Spiral Daddy evades my side-eye apparently, because suddenly his voice says, “Good share today.” I don’t like being mocked, and he’s interfering with my plan to not give a fuck. So I glare at him. It’s an expression he can read, but it seems like it doesn’t piss him off the way it would piss me off. 

He points to the sign above the microwave. My stupid bubble letters, Tony’s stupid butterflies. HONEST OPEN-MINDED WILLING. There’s a rage fire brewing in my stomach again, the humiliation of being mocked, here, in this moment. I am unwilling to explode before I’ve had my nachos. I will control myself, for the nachos. 

“You were honest,” Grief Spiral Daddy says. Just simple, just like that. I think his name is Eric. He must have said it at some point. They always make us introduce ourselves in the meetings and I never listen. But I think I know this one. Anyway, he goes back to his table. 

I stand there and blink at our sign. The fire’s getting quieter. Like a soft candle flame of understanding. The microwave beeps at me. The nachos are done. I’m still looking at the curve of the letters on the sign. I didn’t do the worst job ever, on the letters.

The microwave beeps at me again, because she’s an impatient queen and she has shit to do tonight apparently. I take out my nachos. I turn and look over at everyone. 

The man whose name I think is Eric is sitting by himself, reading his newspaper. His shirt is green, like the grass. It makes sense, his empty life, his wife gone. I don’t know what else there would be to feel. With no one there anymore. Nothing but wreckage. A life to rebuild. Here he is. Here I am. 

I sit at the table behind him, my back to him. I think he knows I’m there. 

The nachos rule. I will never deprive myself of cheese again. 

I get up the next morning with the orange dawn. I lace my shoes on the porch, breathing in the dew-filled air. Crisp. I walk over to where the group meets, when it’s time. The air sits inside of my lungs, just enough to make me know I have an inside. It’s time for autumn. This time I know. It’ll snow by the time I leave. And melt. Snow again, melt again. Maybe flowers bloom. Maybe I walk outta here, then, but not like I woulda walked out yesterday. Maybe there’s some kind of other side to all this. But all that’s a long way off. 

I’m not the first to arrive at our walking group. I don’t need to be. I’m not the last either. For once. 

I wait for everyone to arrive. Just chill. Whenever we’re ready, we’ll go. Don’t matter to me when that is. I’m just here, and so are they, and that’s cool. 

Maybe today I won’t zip around the group, avoiding whoever I can. 

Maybe I’ll just walk, in the middle of the pack.