She didn’t know what to say to that. Here he was, declaring he still loved her and wanted to be with her, but what her parents put her through still chained her down. She needed to figure out how to cut the chain. Only then could she give all of herself to Ethan—like he deserved.
Wiping the tears from her eyes in frustration, she sniffled as they remained quiet, each in their own thoughts.
“Mia, I’m sorry I laid out all my frustration on you.”
She shook her head. “No. You are entitled to it. I needed to hear it as a reminder.”
“We really do belong together, you know,” he reminded her.
“I know,” she replied, chucking at the lightness in his voice.
“You know,” he said and she smiled hearing the happiness there, thankful that she could give him something, because it seemed as of late all she could do was the opposite. She wanted to get back to the time when all she saw on his face was a smile. But first, there were things she had to do.
“Please. Just give me some time.”
The line was silent for a minute and she could sense his frustration over the phone. He was completely in the dark. She knew he needed something from her.
“Have you thought about talking to me?” he asked, breaking the silence.
She smiled sadly, knowing he was right. She was afraid to even broach the topic. It scared her that much. That’s why she drowned it out. To remember that you weren’t wanted, weren’t loved. To grow up starved for affection and doing anything to get it.
“Ethan, my family—” Without warning, her body started to tremble and she drew in a deep breath. “I’ve tried to tell you so many times, but I can never get it out. It’s like my body fights it,” she said anxiously, a tsunami wave of apprehension sweeping through her body. Her heart beat faster and harder and her breathing followed suit. Mia knew what was happening but she couldn’t fight; it gripped her so hard.
Panic.
Dropping the phone, she cradled her head in her hands and began to rock. He yelled her name, but she couldn’t stop. Her breathing was loud and ragged. She needed to regain control. It took some effort to even attempt it. She needed to fight the panic seizing her body. She tried to right her breathing by forcing deep breaths, focusing on them, one after another, until her pulse got slower and her shaking started to subside. Sometimes, trying to focus on her breathing backfired and the panic took over for a while. Luckily, this time it wasn’t that bad.
She hadn’t had a panic attack since meeting Ethan, but that changed the night before she left to go on tour and had continued to occur more frequently.
“Fuck!” she exclaimed, her voice still shaky.
“Mia!” came the muffled shout from her phone. On her hands and knees, she scrambled for it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, leaning back against the chair.
“What happened?” he asked. He sounded worried. She heard fear.
“I had an attack,” she said softly, a bit embarrassed. No one knew about these.
“What kind of attack, suga?” he asked, his voice clearly tinged with concern. She smiled sadly and swallowed the lump in her throat. He called her suga.
“A panic attack.” There, she said it, and she was surprised that she felt relief.
“Really?”
“Yeah . . .”
“Why?”
“Thinking about it.”
“Do these happen a lot?”
“Now. Yeah.”
“When did they start?”
“At the start of the tour,” she admitted.
“Oh, Mia. Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, his voice filled with anguish. She sighed, closing her eyes, and told him the truth.
“Because I didn’t want you to worry. It was bad enough to see you sad. With everything else going on, your season . . . I didn’t want to give you anything else to worry about. So I smiled.”
“As much as I love your smile, don’t do that again. Talk to me. I can handle it, Mia. I can help,” he implored. “Even if to just listen. I can do that. I’ve had lots of practice with your blabber mouth.”
A chuckle escaped her mouth and she shook her head. It amazed her how easily he could make her laugh.
“You are such a wonderful person, Ethan.”
“I know.”
“You know,” she smiled tenderly.
“Talk to me, suga.”
“I thought that’s what I’ve been doing.”
“Mia.”
“Ethan,” she spoke his name in the same tone as his.
“Mia,” he repeated seriously.
She exhaled loudly. Let’s try this again, she thought. Give him something. You can do that. It’s just Ethan. He loves you. Trust that.
“I was just a little girl when it happened and it left such a mess in my life, affecting the way I think, the way I act, the way I love and trust. I grew up knowing that those who were supposed to love you the most would be the ones who would hurt you the most. A fact that I constantly and proactively protect myself from. I don’t trust easily. I don’t let people get that close. I hold back because I don’t want to deal with the pain that I know will come. I’ve tried to ignore the pain, but when that becomes impossible, I start to drown it out.”
She sighed thinking of all the times over the past decade that she had turned to drugs and alcohol to escape the pain, the hurt, the loneliness. In all that time, Mia never felt as lost as she felt right now.
“I still want to drown it out, Ethan. I hate these panic attacks. I fear them,” she quietly confessed, holding the phone between her shoulder and ear. While fidgeting with her nail polish, she waited with bated breath for Ethan to say something.
“You talked to me . . .” he said, the sound of wonderment in his voice.
“Ethan, I know you want to ask questions, but can I ask that you save them?”
“I can do that for you, but not forever.”
“I know. I don’t want that. Just not today. I can’t,” she said, her voice fading. Right now, she really could use a dose of his strength. She got up to retrieve her laptop from the table by her guitar. “Uh, Ethan?”
“What, suga?”
There he goes calling me suga again, she thought.
“Are you at home?” she asked, turning on her laptop.
“I am.”
“Got any plans this evening?” She quickly checked her battery. Definitely needed to be charged.
“None.”
“Uh, would you mind if we Skyped for a little bit?” she asked hopefully, sitting on her bed and plugging in her laptop.
“Sure,” he said with some hesitancy.
“If you don’t want to, I understand.”
“No, I want to,” he said quickly.
Mia opened the program and smiled. She needed to see him so badly, needed that strength she got from seeing him. Clicking on his name, she waited for him to accept her call. Her smile grew when she saw his surprisingly unshaven face pop up on her screen. He looked good, but it was weird to see him with a beard like that. The most she had ever seen him was with a few days growth. Nothing like this.
“Hi. What’s going on with your face?”
He toyed with it, rubbing the growth. “Yeah . . . I was being a tad lazy.”
“That’s a lot of lazy . . . like close to a week.”
“No, more like two weeks. I’ve lost track.” He looked defeated. Guilt stabbed at her heart. What wasn’t he saying? She knew the answer. Admit it to yourself, Mia! You’re seeing the man you love trying to deal with you leaving him.
She traced his face with her finger. She did this to him. This was her fault! Shutting her eyes tight, she swallowed back the sudden rush of tears.
“Mia, are you all right?”
She repeatedly shook her head. “No,” she croaked. “I see you and I feel an ache so bad in my heart.”
With the back of her hands, she wiped the tears from her eyes. “God, these tears. I’m sorry. I didn’t know how much . . . I�
��m sorry, Ethan,” she stuttered. She couldn’t complete a thought, except for the one that played on repeat—that she missed him.
They stared at each other. She thought about what he had said when they first got on the phone. She closed her eyes and sighed. It wasn’t fair.
“What are you thinking about, Mia?”
“I don’t think you want to know.”
“I asked.”
“I was just thinking how unfair life can be and doubting everything because all I can think about is you, being with you, missing you, loving you,” she spoke and her voice cracked from all the pain. “With you, I don’t hurt like I do when I’m without you. You make it better.”
“But you still hurt. I saw it when you were with me a couple weeks ago. The pain is still there. It’s like I’m that band-aid on your knee. I can’t heal you. Though I really wish I could.”
She stared off, focusing on her fireplace, the tears rolling out her eyes.
“You’re more than a band-aid, Ethan. You’re the love of my life.”
“And you are mine.”
“I don’t know what to do, Ethan. How do I get you back in my life? How do I do this?” she asked in frustration, running her fingers into her hair and squeezing her head hard.
Seeing him right now on her screen frustrated her. She could still be with him, see him with her own eyes, touch him. This Skype call was just teasing her with what she couldn’t have.
Him.
“Maybe this was a bad idea,” she suggested.
“No, don’t hang up! Stay on with me. Please. The only thing that is different than the phone is that you are seeing me. Just don’t think about it.”
“But have you looked at you?” Mia asked, astounded that he could think this was the same as a phone call when she had to look at his handsome self.
“Have you looked at yourself?” he retorted.
“What does that mean?”
“You are beautiful.”
“I’m a disaster. My hair’s a mess. I have absolutely no makeup on. My face is probably red and puffy from crying. And my clothes—definitely don’t want the paparazzi catching me in this.”
“What’s so bad with that?”
“Sweatpants and a ratty T-shirt?”
“I think you look good.”
“I think you took too many blows to the head.”
“Ouch, Mia,” he said, laughing. She smiled, happy to see the grin on his face.
“You know, when you smile, you’re even more beautiful,” he said matter-of-factly. “A big reason why I always try to make you smile.”
“You’re very good at it,” she observed happily.
“I wish I could always keep a smile on your face,” he stated, his face turning somber. “I realize now that trying to do so puts a lot of pressure on you. I can’t force you to be happy. I can’t force you to automatically be better. You need to do that. You have to want it.”
“I do want it, Ethan!”
“Good.”
“I just don’t know how to get there.” When she looked at him, she knew neither did he. And that fact scared her.
Mia
When Mia awoke the next morning, she felt extremely restless. Another panic attack dangled over her like a melting icicle on the eaves just waiting to break off. She knew it was only a matter of time before it waged war on her yet again. Those damn attacks would paralyze her sooner rather than later. She needed to fix this, figure it all out, so she could get on with her life. Stop this downward spiral into a full-blown depression. She was circling closer and closer to it, but didn’t know how to stop. Her life was caught in this cycle.
Today she planned to fight by spending the day doing something she loved to do: cooking in the kitchen. Before she could do that, she needed to make her list and then do some shopping. One problem of not going out much lately—bare cupboards.
Mia shuffled into her office and sat down at her make-shift desk—an inexpensive table from IKEA purchased years ago. She really wanted a big, heavy desk with drawers and couldn’t wait to talk to Tom about all the furniture she wanted him to make.
Knowing what she wanted to cook, her list went together pretty easily. Quickly getting ready, she grabbed the piece of paper, her phone off the nightstand, and headed downstairs to see if anything else needed to be added to the list.
Her first stop was the bar in the dining room. It was pretty sparse. She added alcohol to her list, then went to the kitchen and added a few additional items, including more wine.
Grabbing her purse and car keys, Mia left the house. A quick stop to the liquor store and she was stocked up on her booze: lots of tequila, whiskey, and vodka. Her trusted trio of liquor.
After depositing it in the trunk of the Pathfinder, she was off to Whole Foods for the groceries. Her starving self picked up a salad from the food bar to eat when she returned home.
By the time she finished shopping, her Pathfinder was full—back seat and trunk. When Mia got home, she unloaded all her packages and busied herself putting everything away. After finishing her salad, she put her iPod in the Bose speaker, hit shuffle and cranked up the volume. Cooking always calmed her down, made her focus on what she needed to prepare instead of whatever drama was inside her head. She desperately needed that outlet today. She didn’t want to think about Ethan or the conversation they had yesterday. Yes, she was avoiding it, probably be avoiding it a hell of a lot more later when she uncorked a bottle of wine.
Seeing Ethan hurt her because all she wanted was to wrap her arms around him and take away that sadness in his beautiful, amber eyes. Comfort him from the pain that she caused.
Mia took a deep breath, pushing her feelings about Ethan away. She couldn’t handle it. Not today. She didn’t have it in her. So she focused on her recipes. She’d be making a few different casseroles, chicken soup, and a vegetarian three-bean chili. Yes, a lot of food, but the casseroles were for her bandmates. They got food from her quite often.
As she chopped and diced her veggies, she danced to the music. Even though her own music leaned towards alternative rock, Mia really enjoyed music that made her body move. She couldn’t see herself performing it though. She loved her piano and her guitar far too much to let them go. It wasn’t that she didn’t dance onstage—wait, she didn’t. She performed. Pranced. Definitely not the kind of dancing she did in a club or right here in her kitchen. Certainly nothing choreographed.
After the slicing and dicing was complete, she started to prepare the meals. The casseroles wouldn’t be baked. The guys could do that. So that didn’t take too much time at all, then it was time to make her soup and chili. With the timer set, Mia wiped down the kitchen and then tossed the wet washcloth in the sink. Exhaling loudly, she turned around and leaned against the sink, her loneliness strangling her like a vice.
Now what? She had absolutely nothing to do. Maybe, she’d grab a book and read outside. It was better than just standing here, staring at her island.
She ran upstairs to get her book, and before heading outside, Mia caved and made herself a Jack and Coke. Sipping on her drink, she lay out on the lounge chair, remembering the last time she sat in this chair. Ethan almost made love to her. Before the tour started. Before all this mess.
Back when she was happy.
She had never been that happy. Ever. And within six months Mia went from blissfully happy to the complete opposite. As she bit down on her lower lip, her eyes fluttered closed. She took a shaky breath. Ethan wouldn’t go away. She needed him gone. He was a reminder of all she messed up.
Lifting her drink to her mouth, Mia downed most of the liquid without even tasting it, just feeling the burn, waiting for the numbness to come. She feared that she’d never be happy ever again. Woefully lost, she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want the pain, the fear. It overwhelmed her so much that she hid. In drugs. In alcohol.
And hiding was what Mia did best.
She strode inside, grabbed the bottle of Jack and a small tumbler, forg
oing the Coke this time, and sat in the family room. She couldn’t stay out on that lounge chair nor could she concentrate on reading. She flipped on the TV. Her favorite channel was on—the History Channel. Mia settled in to watch a program about what could happen if the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone erupted. This she could let her mind focus on. It was safe.
While Mia watched TV, she continued to drink. Quite a few drinks in, she got up and stumbled to the bathroom. On her way back was when she realized the forgotten soup and chili were still on the stove. She took them off the burners to let them cool and returned to the family room. Missing the bottom step, she almost landed on her face. Damn house is out to get me, she thought as she carefully made her way back to the sofa.
Her head was swimming. Too much alcohol and too little food did not make for a good combination.
“I should have eaten more than that salad,” she mused aloud, putting her palm to her forehead and closing her eyes, and within moments, passed out.
Mia woke up early Monday morning, excited to have Tom come over. She quickly got ready for the day, throwing on a pair of tight jeans and a dark gray tank top. The rest of the morning was spent printing out examples of features she wanted for her furniture—finish, functionality, and design, to give him insight into what she liked.
After a quick break to eat some of the soup she made yesterday, Mia nervously waited. She still felt the anxiety build within her. That constant feeling made her desperate to want to rid herself of it. Anyway she could. Tom would be there soon and she could focus her energy on him instead of dwelling on this panic trying to claw its way out of her chest.
The last time she’d seen Tom was at a New Year’s Eve Party in 2005. Luke had been her date, but Mia had felt Tom’s eyes on her all night. They had talked and joked around, but she’d still sensed a distance from him that wasn’t there when they first met. Their easy-going relationship had changed the year before that party. She missed their sexual banter, his bright smile, and infectious laugh. Then they went and kissed each other and things between them hadn’t been the same since. But damn, that kiss . . .
Still Into You (Never Over You Book 2) Page 10