Still Into You (29 page)

She yanked her arm free, away from Death, and kicked towards the water’s surface.

Fight.

Her arms and legs propelled her through the water.

Fight. That’s it!

She did it again, faster this time, expelling the water and air from her lungs.

Come on, baby girl! Fight!

She broke the water’s surface, coughing, hacking, the salty water burning her nose and throat as she fought to live. Taking the biggest, deepest breath ever, breathing in that blessed, sweet ocean air, she tried to calm the coughing and tread water for a few moments, regaining her breath. With the adrenaline coursing through her body, she had the strength to make the mad dash to shore and out of the water.

Mia didn’t know what burned more: her limbs or her lungs.

She took short, shallow breaths as she closed the distance to land. When her feet could touch the bottom, she stopped swimming and sloshed through the water, pushing herself to shore. Her legs wobbled under the exertion, but she fought on and only let go when she was out of the water, collapsing face first into the wet sand, spent.

She inhaled sharply. Her breath came to her in ragged bursts. As the ocean crashed around her, she sobbed.

Holy fuck!
What had she done?

She couldn’t believe fucking believe it. She almost let go . . . almost committed suicide.

She screamed angrily through a sob. What in the hell had she been thinking?

Mia gripped the sand beneath her, her fingers digging into the cool, damp sand.

After a few minutes lying in the wet sand, catching her breath, she pushed herself to her feet, wavering a bit. Once she felt steady, she ran a hand through her wet hair, pulling it from her face. Now that she could see more than her hair, she tried to figure out where she was. She’d drifted quite a bit away. She trudged through the sand, her feet leaving their prints before the incoming water washed them away.

About ten minutes later, Mia found her shoes and rinsed off the vomit in the ocean. She slipped the soggy running shoes on her feet and continued on home. She had plans to make. A life to live. A therapist to call. Better add her best friend and his daughter to her list of calls to make.

Mia needed them, wanted to see them. Why had she pushed them away this past year? She would call Luke and make plans to see them. Maybe over the Christmas holiday.

She keyed in her code to her gate and walked up her steep, winding driveway. Before heading up her front steps, she pulled the key out of her shoe pocket. The sun reflected off of something at the top of her stairs. She squinted her eyes to try to make it out but couldn’t. When she made her way up the steps, Mia found the source of the sun’s reflection—her dropped phone.

Picking it up, she dialed Allie. She had to get to Chicago. The funeral would be hard, but she would do this right. She would support her friends. She would say goodbye to Tom. He’d been her family for so long. Three months changed that dynamic, but for eight years before that, Tom had been a part of her crew. She would be there to say goodbye to him.

Then, Mia called her therapist. She needed help.

Mia

“Mia, this is your second attempt at taking your life.”

Simone didn’t even give her a chance to sit down before diving in, as Mia collapsed on the always comfortable brown sofa. She had called Simone and the therapist wanted her in the office within thirty minutes. The drive itself was normally thirty minutes on a good day.

“So, get yourself in your car and drive,”
Simone had said when Mia objected. So Mia quickly threw on a sweatshirt and made the drive to Simone’s office in Brentwood.

“Uh, no. First. My overdose wasn’t an attempt to take my life. That was a miscalculation in my attempt to escape. If we’re saying that was an attempt, then all the times I’ve done drugs have been attempts. So I’ve attempted suicide hundreds and hundreds of times.”

Her therapist checked her eye roll, but barely. “Okay . . . let’s then talk more about today then. Start with your frame of mind.”

“My frame of mind? Numb. Trying to just put one foot in front of the other. Doing what needed to be done. But I was going for a run so that’s something.”

Simone nodded her head, her eyes engaged with Mia’s, encouraging her to go on. Mia ran her hand through her mess of hair, the smell of the ocean hitting her nostrils like a wave, before she continued.

“So, as I was locking up to go on my run, I got a call from one of my best friends informing me of Tom’s death.”

“Who’s Tom?”

“Tom was . . .”

A friend . . .

“Um, I met Tom the same time I met all my bandmates. So he was part of my group of friends.”

“Mia, there’s more. Don’t hide from it.”

So much more . . .

A crush.

Her lover.

“Yeah . . . I had a crush on him pretty much from that first night. We kissed once after probably four years of being flirty friends, but nothing came of it. Not until I broke up with Ethan. Tom and I had a bit of a relationship right after that.”

“When was this?”

She knew what the therapist was asking, where Simone was leading Mia. Her overdose.

“About a month after Ethan and I broke up until a week before my overdose.”

“Tell me about the relationship.”

She hadn’t told anyone about Tom. Everything and anything about him was all locked up inside of her—trapped.

Mia needed to speak, let it out.

“It wasn’t like I had hoped. I didn’t feel truly there. I felt like I was . . . hiding out. When things got rough for me emotionally, I either had sex with Tom, drank, or got high. I let myself escape in the sex.”

“Why did the relationship end?”

Mia put a hand on her bouncing leg and took a deep breath before she told Simone what an awful person she had been to Tom. “I, uh, realized I was using him and I couldn’t do that to him anymore. He deserved better than me. I’ve loved him for so long. What I was doing to him . . . I couldn’t anymore. It just wasn’t fair . . .”

Wiping her eyes, she looked away, not wanting to think about what happened when she ended things and her perceptive therapist knew it.

“Mia, what else?”

“I wanted Ethan. None of it—Tom, the alcohol, the drugs—took away the pain of not having him. And I told Tom this. I really gave Tom many reasons to hate me when I broke things off. God, I have never seen him so livid in the entire time I’d know him. I knew then I had lost him—for good.”

Closing her eyes, she could still see the anger in Tom’s eyes, the hurt in his posture, the pain in his voice.

She’d never felt more awful. She hurt him—on purpose. And losing him was her punishment.

At least that’s what she’d thought, but then when she’d seen him a couple months ago, he’d comforted her. He’d kissed her.

“It’s okay. We’re okay.”

He didn’t hate her. No . . . when Mia told him she still loved him, he’d returned the sentiment.

Tom still loved her.

And she would honor that the best way she knew.

Mia

Chicago, November 2009

The numb feeling Mia felt in Malibu only grew when she landed in Chicago. She was on auto-pilot. Allie had made all the arrangements to get her from the airport to her home. She took the red-eye into O’Hare. The visitation was that morning followed by the funeral later that afternoon. Marty would pick her up around nine which would give her just enough time to shower and get ready.

After drying her hair, she pulled it back into a simple French twist. She kept her make-up light, just enough to hide the circles under her eyes, and a touch of nude lip gloss. Adorning her body was a black, knee-length dress with three-quarter length sleeves, the neck high, pairing it with black hose and plain, black heels. Over the dress she went with yet more black—a peacoat to keep away the chill. The weather had turned cold. No more Indian summer.

Mia packed her purse with tissues, her lip gloss, sunglasses, her wallet, and her phone. The thought that she was forgetting something plagued her as she sat in her underused living room. Heck, her whole damn house was underused, she mused, as her eyes wandered around the place. They landed on the beautiful dining room table Tom created for her. So many memories of Tom in her house. He left his mark in every single room with his furniture and the little side projects he took on while they were together. Not to mention all the places he made love to her.

He helped Mia line her stairways with some of her favorite pictures. All she did was buy the frames and print the pictures, he did the rest. She remembered the day she returned home from the studio to find the wall complete and instantly loving it. That evening, she spent a long time looking at that wall of pictures, taking a trip down memory lane, laughing with Tom at some of the crazy shit they’d done.

Mia pushed herself from the sofa and crossed the room to look at that wall. She smiled at the photos. There were good memories here. She needed to add to the wall, make more memories, and stop letting her past hold her hostage from that.

Her eyes flicked to the center of the collection of frames and photographs, and focused on the surprise photo from Tom. She remembered being drawn to the unfamiliarity of it. It hadn’t been one of the pictures she had printed, nor was the frame one she’d purchased. He’d thought he was being so sneaky. She had thought he’d been freaking adorable for adding that picture. It was of the two of them that he’d taken one day they were at his house, in his bed. He had on a new Cubs cap and their smiles were huge and full of life. A rare happy day for her. He drove her out there on the back of his motorcycle, her arms wrapped tightly around his waist, the warm, spring sun beating down her sadness, pushing it aside to let her enjoy the air whipping around her as they rode west on the Eisenhower towards his home.

That was such a good day for them and she was thankful he’d left her with a memory of it.

The blare of Marty’s horn yanked her from that memory. She pulled on her coat, grabbed her purse, and searched for her keys. The forgotten item. She hurried to the small desk off the kitchen, her heels clicking on the wood floor, and spotted her keys lying right where she’d left them when she’d arrived earlier that morning.

Tucking her keys into her packed purse, Mia hurried out to Marty’s big, black SUV and hauled herself in. Marty didn’t speak, just gave her a sad smile which she returned before leaning over the console and kissing his stubbly cheek. She’d never seen Marty with these sad, red eyes before. It wasn’t something she wanted to see again.

As he pulled the vehicle from its parking spot, he said, “Glad you’re here, brat.” He took her hand and gave it a hard, comforting squeeze. Mia was so glad he was there for her and she for him. They had lost one of their best friends.

The ride to the funeral home was quiet. She thought about the last time she’d seen Tom. She’d dreaded that dinner, but not like she dreaded this funeral today when she’d say goodbye to Tom for the very last time. The finality of it.

Tom was gone.

Mia was alive. She may be sad, depressed even, but thankful that she was around to feel, even if this would be one of the hardest days in her life. She would not, could not, regret the choice to leave Tom. She needed to honor that choice, fight for it, and she began that the moment she pushed herself up to the water’s surface. That fight continued when she went directly to her therapist. She would continue to do so with even more visits to therapy.

Marty pulled up to the crowded funeral home and parked down the street in one of the only spots available. Mia stepped out onto the sidewalk, pulled her jacket tight to fight the bite of early winter and waited for Marty to join her. He hurried around the car and when he reached her, he cupped her elbow and guided her to the funeral home. With each step, her heart rate increased, her chest tightened, her breathing became more labored.

God, she didn’t want to say goodbye to Tom.

Marty stopped them about twenty feet from the doors. By her side, he calmly spoke to her. “Take a deep breath, Mia. In and out. That’s right . . .”

She didn’t argue. Doing as he said, she drew in the cool air through her nose, feeling it fill her, and then held it inside for a moment before slowly exhaling, a little bit of the heaviness leaving with that breath.