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When Princess Carolyn started seeing BoJack, she noticed that he would often dip into the restroom and come out smelling like liquor and mint. Like he had gulped alcohol and tried to hide the scent. She accepted eventually that this was exactly what he had been doing.
He had a nervous tick, fidgeting with his hands. Sometimes he would disappear from an event and come back with that minty alcohol flavor in his mouth; his words would get looser and his eyes bleary. He had this smile that she liked better sober. He liked himself better drunk.
At some point his drinking became an understood thing between them. She knew he drank more than simple overindulgence, and he knew that she knew. When he went long enough without a drink his hands shook.
He went to her father’s funeral and held her hand. She hadn’t expected to cry, but when she disappeared into the bathroom the tears came. He found her and wrapped her in solid arms.
“It’s okay,” he told her gently. He was often sweet, but rarely gentle.
“I didn’t even like him,” she said, at a loss for her own feelings.
“That’s parents,” he deadpanned. “They make you miserable when they’re alive, and keep making you miserable even after they’re dead.”
She smiled wryly in agreement, but there was no humor in it. She wiped at her eyes, then raised an eyebrow at him. “You know this is the women’s restroom.”
“Oh, yeah, I was hoping to catch you pants-less,” he quipped. She laughed, shaking her head. He smiled at her, and with pleasant surprise she realized he hadn’t been drinking.
During the reception after the funeral, he lingered vaguely while she made her rounds. He told her he wasn’t good with families and she knew he didn’t appreciate being in a backwater town where the glittering, unpolluted sky outshone his stardom.
She saw her sisters and her mother made slighted remarks about how she should come home. She lost track of BoJack until at one point she caught him making her cousins laugh and wearing a self-satisfied expression.
Princess Carolyn knew she would have to stay behind to make sure everything was taken care of. She preferred that to answering a phone call later, people demanding help or asking questions. It was a feeling she had grown accustomed to ever since she was young, when she packed the cleaning supplies and her mother lay passed out on the couch.
“I’m going to stick around and help clean up,” she told BoJack.
“Oh, alright,” he replied. His breath burned. She managed not to wince, but the sinking disappointment inside her remained. Part of her thought that, for her, he left the alcohol at home. It had been a naive thought. She had never seen him go anywhere without it, and more than that, she knew he couldn’t.
“You can go back to the hotel if you want,” she said, but hoped he would stay.
“Okay,” he said. “You know me, I’m no good at cleaning, just at messing things up.”
When she got back to their room, BoJack had bought her a bouquet of flowers. She thought they were beautiful. She worried about how to take them onto the plane.
Somewhere across the years he stopped caring who saw him drink the way he did. He carried flasks openly. He stopped buying mints.
When he called late at night because the bartender took his keys, Princess Carolyn wouldn’t hang up. She assumed he was too drunk to remember all the times she had guided him, unsteady and ill-tempered, from barstools to her passenger seat. She would always leave him safely on his couch to sleep it off before she made it back home, the clock glaring at her that it was past 2:00 AM.
BoJack didn’t remember, but he knew that Princess Carolyn was the only one who would cover him with a blanket.
He never thanked her.