Slow Burn(47)

    Whoa. He’d called me by my first name. He was obviously in a bad mood. I stopped giggling.

    “Feet shoulder length apart,” he said.

    I moved my feet.

    He walked around me, so that he was standing next to the gun. “Okay, you want to use the pad of your forefinger to push the trigger, not this inside knuckle. You see what I’m saying?”

    I moved my finger and ran it over the trigger.

    “Exactly like that,” he said. “Now take your finger off the trigger.”

    I did.

    “You see the target?” he asked.

    The target was an empty marshmallow vodka bottle. I thought we were being a tad ambitious with something so small, but Griffin thought otherwise.

    “Okay, you’ve got three posts to line up. Those are your sights. You see what I’m talking about?”

    “Yeah.”

    “The front post needs to be horizontally centered and vertically level with the rear posts. You line up the front post with the target, you line up the rear posts on either side of the front post, you look back at the front post, and then you pull the trigger.”

    I bit my lip. “Um.”

    “Try it,” he said. “Don’t pull the trigger. Just try lining up the posts.”

    Once I had the gun aimed at the bottle, I saw what he was saying. Looking down the barrel, I could see the three sight posts. I did what he had advised. “Okay, I think I understand.”

    “One more thing,” he said. “You’re holding your breath. You don’t want to do that. You want your body loose and relaxed. Breathe through it.”

    I nodded.

    “Go ahead,” he said. “Give it a shot.”

    I squared my shoulders, took deep breaths, put the pad of my finger on the trigger, lined up my sights, and squeezed the trigger of the gun.

    It kicked in my hands, I nearly dropped it. “Jesus!”

    Griffin laughed at me.

    “You could have warned me it was going to do that!”

    “I thought you knew,” he said, still laughing. “I’m sorry.”

    I peered at the intact vodka bottle. “I didn’t even come close, did I? I told you I wouldn’t be any good at this.”

    “Loosen up. It was your first try. If you did well the first try out, you’d be exceptional. Practice, doll.”

    My shoulders slumped.

    We practiced.

    Eventually, I did start shattering vodka bottles. My ratio wasn’t exactly great, though. I think I missed more than I hit. But Griffin said I was improving, and that was all that was important.

* * *

    Saturday night was my one-month sober party at Stacey’s place. I was excited about it, even though she’d invited all these people who I didn’t know from other NA meetings. She said it would be cool for me to meet other addicts. I was a little nervous. I used to be really good at meeting people, but I didn’t know if I still was. How much of that had been me, and how much of it had been cocaine?

    The morning of the party, I woke up alone in bed, which was strange, because I’d gone to sleep snuggled up against Griffin. We’d been sleeping in the same bed ever since camping, but we still weren’t doing the deed, just messing around. And he still wasn’t letting me touch him much. I knew Stacey was right, and I was going to have to talk to him about it, but I hadn’t. I couldn’t figure out quite how to bring it up. And it wasn’t as if things were going so badly, anyway. Griffin seemed happy, and he was making me very happy.

    I got out of bed, put on some slippers, and padded out into the kitchen, where Griffin was busy dicing potatoes on the kitchen counter.

    “What are you doing?” I said.

    “Well, I was going to make you breakfast in bed,” he said. “But you’re not in bed anymore.”

    “Breakfast? You?” I said. “You cook?”

    He grinned at me. “I cook quite well, thank you very much.”

    “But why?”

    “Because you’ve been sober for a month,” he said. “And I’m proud of you.”

    “I could get back in bed,” I said.