Chapter 97
Mireya
Play - Unsteady by X Ambassadors
Aren’t we all addicts?
The music is loud here, but my thoughts are louder.
I did it again yesterday. The blade, the fresh scars… the tears mixing up with blood. The fake smiles to make sure Milo doesn't know how weak of a sister I am.
Apparently the truth isn’t enough to soften the pain.
Sometimes I wonder if grief fucked me up to the point of no return. Is it how it works? Grieving things that never even happened, grieving yourself because you feel it deep in your soul that nothing will ever heal you. Not even love.
I always had this irrational thought in my head, if someone loves you enough, the love will replace the sadness inside your heart. But it doesn't work like that. It works differently.
When you feel an immense hole inside your soul, the only thing that could help is to make it bigger, until nothing is left.
But I wish I could. I wish I could heal it with feelings. With something stronger than any loneliness. With the soft eyes of a man who lied to me. With his gentle hands healing my wounds. With Damien.
I crave love the way roots need soil even when it’s poisoned, yet I flinch every time someone offers it. And he…he gave it to me so many times, but I kept burying it deeper in dead ground. Falling for someone means being ready to stay away for their own good.
In the meantime, I can allow myself to miss him at least.
I know what addiction and exhaustion look like when you’re trying to protect someone at the same time. You’re fighting for both of you, begging them to love you enough to make you stop. I’ve been both. The one begging, and the one who failed.
He can’t fail, it will ruin him to fail me like it ruined me to fail my mother.
Please don’t let go of me because I’m too sad to fight for us.
I’m outside again, cigarette burning down too fast, vodka going warm in my hand. I exhale and watch the smoke leave and disappear in the sky.
I think I’m too far gone to fix gently. Too tired to pretend it’s still something I can heal into.
I don’t want Damien to fall out with me, so I start pulling away before he can.
I always do that. I just learned how to leave before people decide to.
I tried it once with Hayzel when we were younger. I pushed, she stayed.
That was different. That was safe.
He’s not safe in the same way. His existence is a threat to everything I tried to keep up all my life.
Gosh I’m high…
The drugs are starting to blur everything at the edges. Grief comes in with it, and missing him, and everything I never put in order. Nothing lines up anymore, not my thoughts, not my reasons, not my hands. Why is everything so okay when I’m just sitting there overwhelmed?
I take another drag and let it fill the space with the smoke where my words should’ve been.
“Look at you, relapsing again, Vitelli? I thought you stopped,” Ethan says as he looks at me with a smirk on his face.
“Aren't we all addicted to anything that fills the void? Yours is just different, Bennett,” I reply, focusing on the stars.
“Yours is worse,” he adds, sitting next to me. “You’re still too fucked in the head, Mireya.” He steals the cigarette from my hand and takes a long drag. “That’s why we stopped talking for years, you realize that, right?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ethan.”
You have no idea what made me this way…
He laughs before giving me the cigarette back and shaking his head, “trust me I know.” His eyes meet mine again. “What is going on with Mister Caldwell? He was angry last time I fucked with you,” he asks.
“Nothing,” I lied. “You were just acting dumb and he didn’t like it.”
“Then why are you all sad like this?”
Because I want to die but can’t…
“None of your business, Bennett.”
He laughs once more while drinking his beer. “I’ve known you for so long, Reya. I can tell you took something before coming here.”
“I said, it’s none of your fucking business.”
The laugh turns bitter before he asks again in his meanest voice,“You added a few glasses of wine or went straight to the vodka after the coke?”
“Don’t do that…”
“Oh, why? Is the truth too much to handle?” he says, standing up and pointing at me.
“Can't you see how fucked up you've become, Mireya?” He laughs, shaking his head.
“You can't even see what he's doing to you.
You're still the same fucking sad little girl I gave drugs to when she was trying not to kill herself.”
I want to tell him to shut up, to wipe that look off his face.
I hate him for saying it, but I hate myself because a part of me checked to see if it was true.
The part about Damien is bullshit. But the rest, the exhaustion, the drugs, the feeling that no matter how hard I ran, I always ended up back in the same place.
That part hurts because it belongs to me.
“You have no fucking idea of what these last twenty years did to me, do you get that? You have no fucking idea, Bennett.”
He sighs, laughing again. “So vodka? Are you planning to hurt yourself in the bathroom again? I remember you loved that shit when we were younger. When I fucking found you passed out and drowning in blood the night I left and knew why you were pushing me away.”
No…He probably remembers the cuts, but I remember who handed me the knife. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what it took for me to fight it still.
Every word out of his mouth made me want to tear my own skin off. I stand up, slapping him hard across the face before spitting, “Fuck you, Ethan.”
His eyes soften, as if he didn’t think it would hurt to hear that. “Mireya … I’m sorry I just…”
I open the door to get back in and throw one last look at him. “If you approach me I’m gonna cut your dick off. My problems are my fucking problems and you should shut the fuck up.”
The noise from the bar gets worse as I walk in, but all I can hear is his words; over and over again.
You’re still the same little girl.
People brush past me, dancing, singing, someone laughs near my shoulder, someone throws a glass behind me.
You’re still the same little girl.
I go straight to the bathroom, pushing the door shut and lock it and then it’s like everything finally catches up at once. His voice again. That smile. That tone like he already decided who I am. And worse than that, the part in me that agrees with everything he said.
I bend forward a little, hands on the sink, trying to breathe.
In. Out. In. Out.
My chest feels too tight for my ribs, it hurts. It fucking hurts. I hate this. I hate that I don’t know how to be different from what he said. My eyes burn but nothing comes out.
I turn the tap on just to have something loud and simple to focus on, and look at myself in the mirror. I don’t feel angry anymore. I’m stuck, trapped inside something I can’t outgrow no matter how hard I try. I hate that I’m still the same little girl.
My hands are still shaking when I finally open the door. I’m met with a line of girls waiting to get in, and Hayzel looking at each of them as if searching for me.
“Oh here you are,” she says, looking at me once and her face changes immediately. “What happened?”
I shake my head too fast. “Nothing.” For a second I’m stuck between telling her and swallowing it down again. It presses against my throat, but nothing comes out. “Let’s just… get another glass.”
She hesitates, I see it in her face. But then she nods anyway and grabs my hand, pulling me deeper inside the bar and apologizing to everyone in the line.
She gets a water glass for both of us before leaning toward me.
“You’ll always be my favorite person, don’t forget this,” she says with the most compassionate voice ever.
“What would I be without you?” I smile and squeeze her hand tighter than I should.
She shrugs and says, “Let’s not talk about a world where you and I aren’t best friends. I’d throw up.”
A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. It hits me then how unnatural it is, reaching for numbness when someone still stays. When you’re still loved and you still drift anyway.
I will keep reaching into the graveyard of my life and still act surprised when I bleed, even when I already know exactly where it opens.
But I know my best friend will still be there, sitting with me through it.