THAT WAS THE DAY I TOLD STORMZY, MAXIM, VINCENT, MEL AND MY DIPSHIT HUSBAND BRADY to go boldly fuck themselves, when they lured me back home with the promise of brunch and I waltzed into their shabby Scooby-Doo intervention.

Maxim met me at the front door with a cracked can of San Pellegrino and a bear hug.  His thumb-thick Cartier bracelets clanked as he stood me off at arm's length.  Then a wormy corduroy of concern burrowed between his brown eyes, and I knew for sure my Maxy was done pretending.  He was reading me right, becoming critically hip to some alarming facts.

Fact:  I was rapidly accelerating toward an abrupt and unforgiving reckoning. Free-falling at terminal velocity through steadily diminishing options.

Another fact:  I would never have admitted it to anyone, but my twenties were a dark time.  I made the wrong friends, often on purpose.  My associates in school weren't friends, but hand-picked damaged cohorts best suited to chasing experiences on the slippery verge between foolish and fatal.  It's sick to say this, but beneath my penchant for meticulous preparations and plans, I've always harbored a desire to flirt with tragic outcomes.  To gamble with precious assets that I could never win back.

Final fact:  Every rotten molecule of self-hate roaming inside me was metastasizing. Rising to the surface and becoming visible.

I took the can from Max and I drank, drilling him with my cyclops eye, daring him to say something out loud.  Something about giving a fuck, or being worried for me, knowing what I knew about his hedonistic modus operandi when we were on tour and he wasn't busy playing World's Greatest Dad.  I saw it all and kept my mouth shut, but I wasn't blind then, and I wasn't fucking blind now. 

So Max didn't dare go there. His face brightened behind a cheesy Kraft Singles smile.  He hugged me again and I pushed gently off his chest to disengage.

"My Mags," he said. "Benna-while, sis."

Max towed my rollerbags into the house and I shuffled to keep up, seltzer fizzing down my chin, humming eardrums stung by the click and clack of plastic wheels.  I was hungry. Wretchedly hungover. Physically whipped and dead in the head after playing third-stage shows with Sarah Jessica Dracula at a black metal festival in Norway.

Maxim's sneakers shrieked along the hardwood hallway, trudging into the heart of Bancroft, the moldy country mansion Brady bought for us to renovate after he quit Five Ways.

I tipped my head back.  Stretched my neck like a greedy goose and chased the last drop of seltzer under a peeling plaster ceiling moonscape.  The grunt of Maxy's exclusive shoes led me into a stone-floored space Brady snottily referred to as the Great Room.

I lowered the drained can from my sunburned face.  Looked left and saw Brady anchoring one end of a pompous firing squad comprising Vincent, Melanie and other faces about to join the ranks of my ex-best-friends list.

Fuck me.  I had literally been blindsided.

Barely two weeks had passed since Brady and I reinstated basic domestic rituals of easy banter and shared meals.  We were moving away from ruination, I thought.  Evolving toward a splendid post-war renaissance.  One day we would kick back and laugh about this rough patch.

Brady was silent, his eyes stagey and unfamiliar.  He waved me toward a solitary chair before the cave-sized fireplace.  Maxim plunged the ratcheting handles into my luggage like Wile E. Coyote blasting a bridge. He shook his bracelets. Plucked up the knees of his track pants, sat beside Brady and said:

"Come on Mags.  We got sumfings to say okay? Youse a bad bitch sure, tough as they come, butt-cha been through a lot manz.  I'm sayin' we're here ta help, yeah?"

Maxy gestured toward the empty chair.  It was one of a dozen antique ladderbacks I found online in Liverpool and refinished by hand. That project offered crucial occupational therapy during the weeks Brady wouldn't speak to me, following my epic fuckuppery at The Electric Ballroom.

The craft of furniture restoration gave me an unexpected feeling of satisfaction.  A sort of peasant's purpose combined with small cycles of patience and reward.  I squinted at YouTube videos.  I made notes.  I learned to re-weave rush-bottom seats and I got over myself.

I believe I made significant progress in other areas, too. Like being strict about spacing my doses.  Drinking more water, going to bed early. Getting a lot of steps in every day, with a focus on inclines, and developing some discipline around my using.

I even started making plans again.  While breathing dust and restoring those chairs, I daydreamed of an intimate housewarming to break in Brady's studio.  A low-stakes catered event that would leave me free to portray a brilliant, resilient hostess. A bold showcase of my competence as Brady's creative and domestic partner, with optics that could only fuel positive press.

The guest list I drafted in my fume-addled mind included the very people now convened to judge me.  I pressed ragged fingertips into my palms and cringed, recalling how I rehearsed humble responses to admiring inquiries while frapping cane with bandaged hands.  I wouldn't be caught off guard by questions about our property renovation, or my bloody-knuckle revival of the handsome chairs beneath their asses.

It occurred to me like a backhanded slap.  We were finally having people over, but there was nothing to eat and I was being hunted for sport.

Bastards.

I banged my tot-coffin microKORG case on the flagstone floor. Kick-wiped my dirty boots across Brady's ugly new rug and let the room have a raw broadside. Foul words accelerated like dense particles, hammering the plaster panels and lacquered black timbers of Brady's beloved Great Room.

"So first off Brady, fuck you," I said. "Fuck your Paul McCartney gypsy wagon troubadour dreams. Fuck your stinky neckbeard. Fuck your spring-toned color choices and double-fuck the guy from Amazon who brought this shitty rug to our door."

Brady's eyes dropped as my decibels hit triple digits. My top lip tingled and went numb. I cleared a quick cough and worked from left to right, targeting my self-appointed life coaches with deeply personal attacks.

I exempted Vincent from my wrath. His kicked-dog body language, shined shoes and ironed shirt fit the profile of a hapless seat filler. And his Fender touring case, stowed in my custom Carole King sitting window, proved he was bamboozled by the same bogus "brunch and jam session" invite I received from Brady on What's App.

Drunk or sober, Vincent was an odds-favorite fuckup, but I knew he wasn't qualified to engineer betrayal like this. He sat pressed against the back of his chair, twisting a damp raffle of blank paper in his fists, dead eyes set like a candidate cosmonaut on the brink of a brownout.

The others rode their seats to the creaking edge, clutching crisp handwritten pages. They nodded and leaned into my noise, waiting for me to run out of steam.

I thought of a shaggy horned beast in a smudgy cave painting fighting for its life, surrounded by bipeds waving sharp sticks, and my rage peaked.

I kicked the empty chair.  The slender walnut piece tumbled over the stone floor and spun into the wall, leaving a black groove in the limewashed plaster.

Cool air sucked into the gap behind my jostled prosthetic. I turned from the group to reset it with a long stretch of the jaw, a hammy showgirl's wink from a silent film.

Mel must have misread my pause as an ideal time to get involved, because she chose that moment to pipe up over Zoom from Brady's open MacBook, perched on its own chair between Stormzy and Vincent.

"Margaret," Mel said. "Nobody is judging you. "This is all about you getting better, babe. And I want you to know how-"

I lunged and slapped the laptop shut like I was trapping a tricky genie.  Then I spun it through the air with a discus throw.  The silver device banked into the unlit fireplace and fell upon the blackened grating.

I faced the room.  Nobody's eyes wanted mine.

"Fuck all of you," I said.

I shouldered my microKORG and blew away on a weak storm front of dumb mumbles and cussing before dashing back for my luggage.

I dragged my rollerbags across the hallway, past a plastic flap through the unfinished kitchen, then out the back door and over the lawn to Brady's new studio.

I needed food. A couple of uninterrupted hours in the bathroom. Some private time to unpack, decompress and find a way to take the edge off while I waited for Dayglo Dave to make contact and provide resupply.