by LJ Evans
She smiled at me. I squeezed her hand.
♫ ♫ ♫
My phone was ringing. Except that I was pretty sure it wasn’t my phone. It was Derek’s. Derek had “Little Bird” as a ringtone, not me. I slammed the home button.
It started singing again.
Mornings. Have I mentioned I hate them? Even more so now that I was waking up by myself, still in a hotel room, but one miles away from the sexy BB that I loved.
“What?” I groused into the phone.
“Miss Mia. Up and at ‘em,” Derek laughed.
My heart leaped at his voice. God help me.
“Did you change my ringtone?” I growled.
“Now you’ll know it’s me calling.” And what could you say to that?
“What time is it?” I asked, trying to let my grouchiness wash away in his voice.
“It’s seven here, so it has to be nine there,” he said.
“What?”
I sat up, grimacing at the pain, and looked at the bedside clock, and sure enough, it was nine o’clock. My whole body groaned at me, agony radiating through every part.
“Did you have your labs taken?”
Nope, I hadn’t. “Yep,” I told him.
“Liar,” he said, but he wasn’t mad. I loved that he could read through my lies and call me on it as no one ever did.
“I was tired and forgot. I’ll have it done today, I promise.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not mad?”
“Pissed as hell, but nothing I can do about it. If I was there, you wouldn’t have forgotten. Can only be mad at myself for letting you talk me out of going with you.”
“What time do you get to the venue?”
“Later.”
“That’s specific.”
“I know,” and then he added, “whatchya wearin’?”
His sexy tone made me go to mush even though I knew he’d changed the subject on purpose.
“Clothes.”
“Sassy pants. Miss Mia the Sassy Pants. I’m kicking myself for ever letting her out of her box.”
“You didn’t let her out.”
“Sure, I did.”
“Conceited, schmuck.”
“Yep.” I heard someone in the background talking to him. “I have to go, but I wanted to hear your voice.”
Which just thrilled me as he always did. My hopeful heart was saying that we’d be okay. My Good Girl Mia, Doubting Thomas, was saying that this would fade in time.
“We’re going back to the hospital today to see Cam and the baby, but then I think we’ll go home.”
“I figured.”
“I’ll call when I can.”
“Okay.”
Silence.
“Little Bird?”
“Hmm?”
Silence.
“See you soon.”
“Okay. Bye.”
When we hung up, I tried not to dwell on the fact that neither of us had said, “I love you.” I tried not to dwell on the fact that we had thousands of miles between us and no plan to see each other past Derek’s promise that it would happen.
♫ ♫ ♫
I called my doctor at home, and he made arrangements for the Nashville hospital to rerun all my labs. He said he’d call with the results. He also told me I should probably be more careful with the sports I picked. Even though I’d found that to be true, I couldn’t help but smile because no one had ever said anything like that to me in my entire life.
When we got to the hospital, Mama and Daddy took off to the maternity ward, and I headed off to the lab.
When I’d finished being poked and prodded, I went up to see Cam. When I got to her room, it was just Cam and the baby. She waved me in. “Hey, kiddo,” she said.
“Hey back,” I said. “Where is everyone?”
“Went to get coffee, which just means they needed to talk about me behind my back as usual.”
She held out the little bundle, and I took him, sitting next to Cam on the bed, looking at the sleeping red-faced baby. I wondered what differences would have been in his tiny features if he’d been Jake’s.
“Do you think you and Jake would have had a baby?” I breathed out and glanced from the sleeping face to her own.
Cam shrugged. “I don’t know.” But she was thinking about it. I could tell. “I’m not sure there was ever room for anyone else in our lives. When Jake and I were together, there wasn’t anything else. Does that make sense?”
It did. Because if you had seen them together, you would understand. They were completely absorbed in each other. They were one being. It was why it had been so hard on her when he’d died.
“Plus, he was really concerned about passing the diabetes on. When we were younger, he used to say he was never getting married or having kids because he wouldn’t do that to another human being.” She was sad, and it made me kick myself as I always did when I made her sad.
We just let it settle in between us. Jake, and the baby, and our love for each other and my dead brother.
“He’d be proud as shit of you,” she said with a smile and a laugh that lightened my heart.
“How do you figure?” I asked.
She waved at my splint and beat-up face. “Livin’ the daring life. He worried you’d never step outside of your books.”
“He did not! He didn’t even think about me.”
“He did, goofball. All the time. And I think he would want to ask Derek to step outside and prove himself.”
“I think Derek could handle it.”
Cam laughed. “Quite the man, is he?”
I flushed. “You’re awful.”
“Do you love him?”
“More than words.”
“That’s a lot coming from the book girl.”
“Yep.”
“So what’s going to happen now?”
My turn to shrug. Because I didn’t know. He had a life that he belonged to in a mansion in L.A., even if it didn’t seem to fit him. I had a life that fit me here, but was now missing a chunk of what would make me whole. He had a band, a tour schedule, fans. I had a car dealership and a family I couldn’t leave.
“He’s got a fan club,” I said with a laugh, changing the subject.
“No way.”
“Yep. And they’re sexy and very, very forward.”
“Good thing he has his own sexy, then,” she quipped back.
Blake came bounding into the room with that positive energy that was so Blake and took the baby from my arms without even asking. I guessed that was okay since it was his baby after all. He kissed me on the cheek and then grinned at all of us.
“Did you tell her?” Blake asked.
Cam shook her head.
“Tell me what?”
“We’ve finally agreed on a name.” He smiled again his big, goofy Blake smile.
“You agreed with yourself,” Cam grumbled.
“Mia, meet Mayson Carter Abbott,” he said proudly.
I swallowed hard. Carter after Cam’s dad. Carter was Jake’s middle name too. It was a family tradition… family. Jake should be here.
“That’s lovely,” I said, trying hard to hold back my tears.
“Don’t you dare cry, or I will too,” Cam said.
I didn’t believe it. Cam didn’t cry, she just punched things. I guess that wasn’t true; she had cried for a long time over my brother.
People filtered back into the room, and I lost myself in the feeling of being with family. It was a place I belonged. But difficult, because I knew another place I also belonged now.
The doctor called to let me know all my labs looked good. I felt relieved and wanted to tell someone. So, I texted Derek. He didn’t respond, but I just figured he was busy practicing.
Eventually, Mama and Daddy said we better head out. It was two hours home from Nashville. I hugged Cam, and kissed the baby, and promised I’d be up to see them soon. Blake made
me promise to tell him when he could kick Derek in the arse personally. I told him I had no knowledge of any opportunities that would present themselves.
In the truck on the way home, I was quiet. I was so tired. I closed my eyes and tried to get comfortable.
Mama squeezed my hand. “Mia?”
“Hmm?”
“How was the trip?”
I opened my eyes and could see so many questions in hers. “It was really good.” I smiled.
“So?”
I shrugged. “I wish I knew.”
“Do you love him?”
Cam had asked the same thing just hours before. I couldn’t quite give Mama my same response, so I just nodded.
“Does he love you?”
“Yes.”
No one said how ridiculous that was when it had barely been a couple weeks. No one complained about loving someone I hardly knew. Probably because we all knew from heartbreaking experience that life was short, and you had to take what came your way and be grateful for it.
Be grateful for it, I told myself. That I had loved and been loved back. No matter what happened from here, I would always have that.
There was silence for a while as we were absorbed in our own thoughts.
“You know, you don’t need to run the dealership. Carter and I would be perfectly fine with selling it,” Daddy said, and I looked at him in surprise. I’d never heard anyone mention this before.
“Scott,” Mama hushed.
“I want her to know. There’s no reason to stay and run the dealership if where you really need to be is somewhere else,” Daddy said.
I could tell this had been a discussion while I was gone. One that Mama had not been happy about. She didn’t want me somewhere else. She’d had a hard enough time letting me go to college, even knowing that the plan was for me to come home for forever when it was done. She’d had an even harder time letting me go on a spelunking escapade with a gorgeous musician, even though that one was only for three weeks. Somehow, I think she had known that the three weeks would change me more than the four years. And it had.
The truth was I still wanted to work at the dealership. Nothing had changed that. I liked all the things about it, but I loved most that I was carrying on something that Daddy and Cam’s daddy had started. I liked traditions almost as much as my friend Harry.
I just didn’t know how that was going to also allow me to be with the crazy man who had stolen my heart. Because I couldn’t—wouldn’t—ask him to give up his life, and I knew him well enough to know that he couldn’t—wouldn’t—ask me to give up mine. So, what that left was an impossible love that would probably fade away into nothing as time and the miles wore at us.
“I want to run the dealership,” I said. “If you both still trust me to do it.”
“Baby girl,” Daddy choked, “we wouldn’t trust anyone else.”
But I wondered, as I always wondered, if he would have trusted Jake more.
“You know Jake never wanted to run it, right?” Daddy asked, and for a moment I thought I’d spoken aloud, but I hadn’t. Daddy just knew me. Like Mama knew me. Like I now had a boy who knew me.
“No,” I responded. “I didn’t know that.”
Daddy shook his head. “He was all football, that boy. If he wasn’t playing it, he would have been coaching it.”
I guess I had known that. He had wanted to go into coaching before the kidney gave out. Before I’d given him mine. And before mine had failed him. Guilt and sorrow overwhelmed me as it always did. Maybe harder because I’d been ignoring it for two weeks. The door that I’d forced shut, bursting at its seams to be opened.
And it did burst. It erupted in such a volatile way that before I could stop myself, I croaked out, “I’m so sorry,” and, to my utter horror, started to cry. I tried to hold them back, but the tears just wouldn’t stop. I was sobbing.
“What on earth do you have to be sorry for?” Mama squeezed my hand. Then she was crying too just because I was, and she didn’t even know why.
“I’m so sorry my kidney didn’t work,” I said so quietly I wasn’t sure they heard. But they did.
Mama wrapped her arm around me and held my head against her shoulder like it had been the night before. “Oh, my baby girl, please don’t say that. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t… Jake. God, he was almost as bad as Cam in doing things his own way.”
We were both crying.
“Damn, you two, knock it off or I’ll run us off the road,” Daddy said, choking up himself but trying to tease us out of our tears.
And just like that, I didn’t know why I had been carrying this guilt around with me for so long. Because really, I hadn’t done anything but try to give my dying brother a chance at life. It hadn’t worked, but I’d still given everything that I could. It hadn’t been enough. But it was all I could have done.
Together
THINKING OUT LOUD
“Baby we found love right where we are.”
-Ed Sheeran
When we got home, it was late, and we just ate cereal and went to bed. We were all exhausted. I texted Derek, asked how the gig had gone, but was so tired that I fell asleep before I heard his answer.
The next day, I had nothing to pull me from my bed and hatred of mornings, so I found myself sleeping the day away. Mama came to check on me multiple times, but I just told her I was resting the way the doctor wanted me to. She let me.
I texted Derek several times and got only a couple quick, short answers in return. He said the show had gone well, and they were finishing their caving ventures without me. I knew that he would be on his way back to L.A. the next day, with the band in the motor home they liked to call a tour bus. I tried not to wonder what would happen when he returned to the guesthouse, and to Jane the Kitten, and the Camaro because I didn’t even know if I should hope for anything. Or if I should just start trying to get over him, even though my heart felt like it never would. Like the hold Derek had on it was more than anyone had ever had on it in my entire life.
Good Girl Mia had gone quiet again after my confession in the cab of the truck the night before. I didn’t know if I’d banned her from my life, or if she was just keeping herself on a shelf in my mind’s closet, but I was glad that she was easing her hold on me once more.
I was hoping I could find some ground between old, guilty Mia and new, sassy Mia. A place where I could just be me and not have to think so much about what else I could’ve, should’ve, would’ve done if I had to do things over again.
Finally, in the late afternoon, I joined Mama in the kitchen to help with dinner like I always had. Somehow, tonight it felt more peaceful than it had since Jake had died. Not like it used to, but it felt right. I had told Mama on the night of the fundraiser that everything would be okay. I guess I finally believed my own words. At least for my family.
For me and Derek? Who knew? I’d loved him. He’d loved me. If nothing else, it was a happy memory that I’d still have with me when I was old and gray.
Even though I’d rested most of the day, my sore body begged for sleep. I hadn’t had much rest on my venture with Derek, and I flushed happily thinking of all the ways we’d kept each other awake, even before the Wooly Bison. So, after dinner, I headed up to the shower and stared in the mirror at the green and purple bruise on my cheek. It felt like this new scar somehow fit this version of Mia. It would fade, and what was left was going to be better than what was there before.
I pulled on a worn pair of yoga pants and an old t-shirt that had been too embarrassing to take with me on my trip with Derek. I missed my new clothes. I missed my new guy. I missed my new kitten. I missed us.
ME: Goodnight, moron, hope the guys are keeping the bus on the road. Meds are making me sleepy. I’ll talk to you in the morning.
No response.
I tried to stay awake, waiting for the response that I hoped would come eventually. I was trying to have faith. I was trying not to give up as Der
ek had begged me not to, but it was all still a mystery to me how any of it would work out. It was a relief when I was pulled under into a dreamless, medicine-induced sleep.
♫ ♫ ♫
The next day, I went with Daddy to the dealership. We talked through some changes, and I met with Joe in the parts department to see that he’d straightened the mess out there all on his own.
It was good and bad not to be needed.
Daddy sent me home at midday, saying I still needed to rest. I did, but I also felt like he knew I was having trouble focusing on the work. I still had a lot to resolve in my world before I could concentrate again on everything the business needed of me.
I felt like I’d grown tremendously in a short amount of time. I’d closed the door on Hayden. I’d come to terms with my responsibility for Jake. But I’d also fallen in love when I knew I shouldn’t.
When I got home, I turned on the TV, and the news was talking about the death of Hugo Brantly and how Hugo’s son was going to be taking over the business and the mansion. Ben Brantly planned on cleaning house and making the place over into something of a higher class. It hit me that Derek’s dad would probably no longer have a boss or a place to live. I wondered what that meant for Derek and his family. I wondered if Derek would go to the funeral.
I texted him, but I didn’t get a response until late, when I’d already curled up in bed.
DEREK: I’m so sorry. It’s been crazy here. I miss you.
ME: Are you okay?
DEREK: Better than I have been in a long time.
This, of course, made me both happy and sad. Was he better without me? I didn’t think so. I didn’t think that was what he meant.
ME: Are you going to the funeral?
DEREK: Yes, it’s on Friday.
ME: I’m sorry.
DEREK: Honestly, I’m good. I just miss you.
Then, he sent me a picture of him and Jane the Kitten cuddled up in the bed that didn’t seem like him, especially without me in it too.
ME: You’re such a tease.
DEREK: Damn right. Keep you wanting me.
ME: I don’t think I’ll ever stop.