Handing a beer to each of them, Mia stood before them and tried to calm her jittery stomach.
Nerves, go away, she ordered. She was not naïve; Mia knew certain topics were going to come up tonight, topics that needed to be addressed, but that didn’t mean that she wanted everyone handling her like she was going to break. She was stronger than that now.
She’d hit bottom—twice. She’d learned from her mistakes, her past. She had grown and was still the same Mia, for the most part. She ticked off each item on her life list, she felt different . . . more complete.
Ethan called out her name and broke through her thought process, bringing her back to them.
“Hmm?”
“Come sit down. I feel like you’re going to lecture us the way you’re standing before us.”
She chuckled. “Sorry. I’m a little antsy.”
“Why, sweets?” Luke piped in, leaning forward and putting his beer on the table.
“I haven’t been in a room with just the two of you for well over three years. This should be easy for me, but my mind keeps focusing on three years and how completely fucked up that is.”
“You like to swear,” Luke stated the obvious.
“You like when I swear,” she retorted, a smile forming because her wonderful best friend always knew how to make her laugh, how to lighten the mood and make things easier.
“Yeah, I do!”
Heading towards the sofa, she asked, “Do I swear a lot?”
“I, for one, think you should swear more often,” Luke chimed in.
“It’s not very lady-like to swear,” she said, sitting on the arm of the sofa by Ethan, her bare feet on the cushion, facing both Luke and Ethan.
“When have you ever been a lady?” Luke asked.
Her mouth formed a perfect “O” causing Ethan to laugh. She kicked at him and he grabbed a hold of her ankle and pulled her on to the sofa. As he pulled her to him, her dress rode up high on her thigh.
“Proving my point,” Luke said, getting up to get another beer.
Ethan’s hand continued to snake up her leg as Luke walked to the fridge. He pulled down the dress but left his hand on her bare thigh.
“Luke, another for me,” Ethan called out, his smoldering eyes locked on hers.
“Uh, Ethan,” she whispered as his fingers inched up beneath the fabric of her dress. Her eyes fell shut as he teasingly touched her panties before quickly removing his hand.
Damn tease.
Mia didn’t know whether to feel sad or glad that his hand was gone. What she did know was she now had a frustrating ache between her legs. Yep, officially very turned on.
His hand left her and he then used it to push himself up from the sofa. She grasped at his arm, not wanting him to leave her. Ethan kissed her head and whispered, “I’ll be right back. Bathroom.”
She watched Ethan leave and Luke return from the fridge. Luke put the beers on the table. She smiled at him—her very first love. That love was much different now. It had grown and changed over the years. He’d played a lot of different roles.
Annoying, know-it-all, over-protective older brother.
Gossipy sister.
That embarrassing crazy uncle everyone seemed to have.
A thirteen year-old horny teenager with a sense of humor to match.
Her most trusted confidant.
Her best friend.
Her family.
“Nice purple underwear,” he said in his current role as pain in the ass.
“They are not purple. They are lilac.”
“Which is purple.”
“Is not! They are much lighter than purple.”
“Show me again,” he teased, heading in her direction.
Mia shook her head and rose from the sofa. Luke grabbed her around the waist with one arm and with the other, tried to pull up her dress.
“Come on . . . how can I know for sure, if you don’t show them to me one more time?”
She grabbed the nearest item, a pillow, and started playfully swatting him with it. Damn, it didn’t deter him one bit as he inched her dress up higher.
“You know it turns me on when you beat me,” he said, laughter in his voice.
“You are such a perv!” she laughed and hit him harder.
“I’m a perv?” he asked as he blocked the pillow and pulled her down on top of him. “Isn’t your name Mia ‘Kinky’ Devereux?”
She huffed indignantly. “Hey. I was young and finding myself. It’s normal to want to experiment.”
“Have you two ever slept together?”
Mia whipped her head around at Ethan’s voice. He was standing halfway in the room, staring at them, confusion lining his face. He ran his hand through his hair but stayed where he was.
“I feel like an ass for asking that,” he continued, “but I just need to know.”
“Ethan . . .” Mia said before Ethan cut her off.
“I trust you two. I know nothing would happen now, but I need to know about the past. I need to stop wondering about it.”
“Wait. You didn’t know?” she asked. This was news to her.
When he shook his head in the negative, Mia pushed herself off of Luke’s lap and started to move towards her lover.
“I thought you knew,” Luke directed at Ethan. “I thought she told you,” he said, pointing at her.
“Obviously not. I thought you told him before you set us up,” Mia tossed back. She was floored that Ethan never knew about her relationship with Luke, that Luke (the dumbass) never told him. Typical male, leaving out important pieces of information.
“No one has told me a thing!” Ethan exclaimed over their bickering. “But you can start now.”
She was having a hard time gauging whether or not he was angry. She didn’t want an angry Ethan. Before she could speak and answer him, Luke started to talk.
“We dated for about a year when I was still in Chicago. She broke up with me after I found out about Kaitlyn.”
Ethan turned to Luke. “She’s the one who left you? She’s the one you’d go back to Chicago to fuck?” he asked unbelievably.
“Uh, yeah, I may be the bad guy for some of this, but I was definitely more than a fuck. I left him, broke his heart. Blah, blah, blah. Yet somehow he and I stayed friends. Then luckily he introduced me to you,” she shrugged shyly. “I’m sorry. I really thought you knew.”
Ethan looked away, processing what he’d heard. She seriously thought he’d known about them and that he didn’t ever say anything because he was all right with the whole thing. She sat against the back of the sofa. “Ethan?”
He ignored her and turned his attention on Luke. “Do you still have feelings for her?”
Oh shit, she thought, quickly turning to check out Luke’s reaction. Oh yeah, there was the “oh, fuck,” reaction on his face.
“No,” Luke croaked. He cleared his voice and continued. “No. For one, she’s too high maintenance.”
What? Oh, he was so going to pay for that remark.
“Look at Luke sweat,” she said, laughing at him.
“What is this? Gang up on Luke night?” he said, getting up and heading to the fridge.
“You called me high maintenance,” she said, pouting at him.
“Seriously, man,” Luke said, talking directly to Ethan. “You two are my family. I won’t mess that up.”
Though as he walked by Mia, Luke slapped her head playfully and mumbled, “Brat!”
“You love me,” she said, following him, a grin on her face.
“I do.”
“It’s hard to imagine that you two actually had a romantic relationship the way you act now. It’s more like twin brother and sister,” Ethan commented.
Mia wrinkled her nose in disgust at that notion. “Not a good mental picture.”
She glanced over at Luke, his face a mirror image of hers. “Yeah—no. That just ruined every memory of us as a couple.”
She agreed, nodding her head. “You just ruined a lot of sex memo
ries, Ethan. You happy now?” Mia accused.
Ethan laughed and returned to the sofa. “Actually, yes.”
Mia felt the sofa give with his weight. She scooted over to sit beside him, their thighs touching. Looking up at him, the smile on his face reassured her. Placing her hand on his knee, she lightly caressed it.
“So, you two? A couple? Wow!”
“I was . . . what? Twenty-one, I think, when I first met him. Wow, it’s been eleven years! I thought he was so cool back then. I definitely know that’s not the case now.”
“Harsh!” Luke exclaimed, his hand going to his heart.
“Oh, whatever! I’m so much cooler than you.”
He thought about it and nodded. “You got me there.”
“Luke . . . why don’t you have a girlfriend?” Mia asked him. She’d never really thought about it before, but as she sat there and wondered, she found it a bit strange. “Do you not like girls anymore?”
“I like girls just fine,” he said with a laugh before grabbing the back of his neck. “I, uh, pretty much just have one-night stands.”
“Really?” Mia exclaimed, surprised at that confession. “Why?”
“Uh, for the sex?” he replied.
Ethan laughed knowingly. She raised her eyebrows in warning and shook her head at him. “That’s not what I mean and you know it.”
“I just haven’t found the one, I guess,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. Mia could see in his perfectly chiseled face that there was more to that story.
“Well, I’m going to work on that, and maybe Ethan could help, too.”
“Uh, sweets, where do you think all these one-night stands are coming from?” he said, his eyes on Ethan.
Her mouth opened in surprise.
“Yeah, just some payback from over the years,” Ethan said.
She hit Ethan on the arm, shocked that he had been doing that. “Start finding him the right girl,” she directed him.
“They were . . . for what he wanted.”
“Oh my God! You pigs!”
“New topic!” Luke exclaimed. She laughed. Luke time was over.
“I want you to have someone.”
“I’ll find her someday, probably when I least expect it, like in an alley or at a concert or something like that. I’m not worried,” he said with a thoughtful smile before turning back to her. “I want to know why I wasn’t your date to any of these big award shows. I mean, fuck, Mia! The Oscars! You totally should have won. I never would have imagined my best friend the Oscar-nominated actress-slash-musician! I’m so damn proud of you!”
Hearing those words meant the world to her. She would’ve loved to share that with him, but she didn’t want him in the limelight like that. She wanted to protect him. So even though it would’ve meant support for her, Mia opted to go with Josh and Austin.
“Did you see the movie?” she asked them hesitantly.
“Yeah, I dragged Ethan to go to it with me.”
Mia looked from Luke to Ethan.
“Fuck, dude!” Ethan cursed.
“So . . . you saw it?” she said, a little unnerved. She had hoped he would’ve listened to her and wouldn’t see it, but now, she felt relieved that he had.
They both nodded silently.
“And? Honestly.”
“I was surprised at all the nudity—and sex. Pretty graphic. I mean,” Luke paused, scratching the back of his head, his discomfort easy to spot. “I know we had talked about it, but I was still surprised by it, seeing you like that on a big screen.”
“So is that good or bad?”
“I’m a guy. What do you think? It was hard for me to think of you as your character at the beginning.”
She looked over at Ethan who had been silent. Mia and Ethan had disagreed about her doing this movie and now that he’d seen it, she wanted to know what he thought.
“Ethan?”
He squeezed his eyes tight, rubbing at his forehead before he spoke. “Well, I felt guilty the entire time since you had asked me not to see it, but I had to for so many reasons. It was weird seeing you up on that screen, kissing another man, doing the drugs, but what stuck out for me was your appearance. You looked so young.”
“Are you saying I look old now?”
“No, definitely not, but it just really struck me how young you looked.”
“And the other stuff?” she asked, running her hands nervously up and down her thighs.
“I’ll be honest. It was hard to watch. It was hard to wrap my head around the fact that millions of people have gotten to see you naked. But, at the same time, I was proud—you did a great job. Like Luke, after a while, Mia disappeared and Sophia was there. I was watching all this happening to her.”
At what point was that, she wondered? At what point did Ethan stop visualizing her having sex, doing drugs? When he thought of Mia doing the drugs, did he picture what he saw in the movie? During the sex scenes, what did he see? Did he imagine him with her like she had so many times?
Mia looked over at Ethan who had been, for the most part, engaged with the conversation, yet she didn’t feel that he was completely all there. What was going through his mind? She lightly nudged him with her foot. He grabbed both her feet and pulled them onto his lap with his fingers caressing her ankle. He looked at her, a smile on his face, letting her know it was all right.
Ethan may be fine now but things still needed to be talked about.
“I love how both of you have totally ignored the drug scenes and have not said anything about them in general. Well, I don’t love it actually.”
“Mia . . .” Ethan interjected.
“I’m here, in front of you. Now’s the time. Whatever you say isn’t going to break me. I’m sure you both have things to say to me, ask of me. I rather it be out in the open. Hell, I need for it to be out there.” She paused for a breath. “I know you’re disappointed. No one was more disappointed than me. So this is your chance. Think of it as a post-intervention.”
“Why don’t you start from the beginning? Why did you start?” Ethan suggested. She never really went into the reason why she started or why she continued.
“My first time was my junior year in high school. Just pot. I didn’t need to use it all the time. I just used it to cope with my shitty life. It continued like that through college. I partied a lot. I hated having to stay at home with my dad. So I took any and every opportunity to get out of the house. When I finally graduated, I took the first opportunity to move out. I headed to Chicago—a new job, a new life. Then I met Luke and I didn’t need the drugs . . .”
She sighed, a sad frown forming on her face. Nor had she ever told Luke how she coped after they broke up. “Life was so good—almost perfect and then one night, it was not. The life I had with Luke was changed in one instant, with the words that fell from Taylor’s mouth. I couldn’t find an equilibrium after that. I was all over the place. Then one day I went to a barbecue, and there it was, being passed around. I didn’t think twice. I took the joint from Marc and felt the pain go away.”
“Marc?” Ethan asked, confused.
“We all worked together at the paper. He’s a reporter,” Luke answered, his words clipped, his eyes not leaving Mia. “You did this with Marc?”
She nodded and Luke’s eyes grew wide in surprise. “Seriously? Where was I? Why didn’t I see this?”
“Because you weren’t there.” She knew her words hit him hard. His eyes closed in pain and when they opened again, they were watery. “I’m sorry, but what do you think happened after you were gone? I loved you and you left. I was broken. I did what I could to put me back together. I know I said to go. The most selfless thing I had ever done, but it still hurt like hell. Each and every time you left, it hurt.”
“Mia,” Luke started.
“No, it’s okay, Luke. Really. It happened. I can’t change that nor do I want to. If it didn’t happen, we wouldn’t have Kaitlyn in our lives and I wouldn’t have Ethan.”
Ethan squeezed her leg and
smiled and winked at her. “And I’m totally worth it.”
She busted out laughing as did Luke. They needed that break from the heaviness. After the laughter died down, Ethan touched her knee, silently asking for her to continue. Mia really didn’t want to go further. She was nervous. She never discussed this with Ethan. Hell, she hadn’t discussed it with Luke either.
“I’ll be honest, I’m a little scared to talk about the next part. This is the reason we’re even having this conversation and it freaks me out a bit.” Taking a deep breath, she continued. “While on that second tour, I was so lonely. The first one, I really didn’t know what to expect. This one I knew I was going to miss Ethan. I had too much time alone to think, to get sucked into the negative and then everything seemed to work against me—the tour schedule, the UFL schedule, the freak blizzard keeping me in New York over Christmas. God, that Christmas I was so fucking high. And then touring started up again and the days just racked up, and then it was months since I had last seen you. Those eight hours just didn’t cut it. I needed you, Ethan, but I didn’t have you, so I was turning to the other things that made things okay—drugs and alcohol.” Mia cracked her neck and rubbed her eyes, trying to make the uncomfortable feeling go away. She had to get up. She couldn’t have his hands on her when she said the rest. Lifting her legs off his lap, she rose from the couch.
“And when we did talk, it seemed like all we did was argue. All I wanted was you there with me. I needed to see you, begged you to visit me in New York. I . . .” she looked over at Ethan, then Luke. She couldn’t share the reason why Ethan didn’t come. “I was so beyond frustrated and then there was that last argument when I said we needed a break. I was so tired of everything. All I wanted was to feel good again. The next day I got pretty high and decided to go out to a club. Before I left I took some ecstasy and put another pill in my pocket. I took them and did some stuff I regret. All of this left me vulnerable, weak, and that’s when my past decided to attack. It was relentless, but I was just as relentless in trying to hide from it. The months after I broke off our engagement, I, uh, was like in a witness protection program with all the hiding and running I was doing. I was drunk basically the whole entire time. Until the night of my overdose . . . where I went further than ever before. And I paid the price.”
Still Into You Page 34