The Secret 02 The Forever of Ella and Micha (9 page)

The idea starts to seem better and better and I head to the bathroom to do… something. When I pass the mirror, though, I pause in front of it. My eyes are big and bloodshot and my skin is pallid. My thoughts drift back to when Micha made me look in the mirror at myself and he told me he loved me. I gently sketch the infinity tattoo on my back as a cloudy haze lifts from my mind.

There are people in this world who love me.

I wonder if my mom thought about this before she took her life.

I grab my phone, slip on my shoes, and run out of the house. It’s midafternoon and the sun is shining as I sprint across the parking lot toward the school’s main entrance. I haven’t showered in days and still have on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt I’ve been sleeping in. My hair is tangled in a ball behind my head and I have no makeup on, but it doesn’t matter.

I burst into the therapist’s office and luckily she’s eating a sandwich instead of talking to a patient.

She springs up from her chair. “Ella, what’s wrong?”

Breathing profusely, I lower myself into the chair in front of her. “I think I need help.”

It’s been over a couple of weeks since Ella sliced open my heart. My life’s turned into a shithole, full of booze and meaningless woman, although I can never get anywhere with any of them. Just when things are about to go somewhere, Ella’s sad eyes flash through my mind and I bail out. It’s like I’m back in high school again, searching for something to fill the void in my heart. Only the hole is twice as wide and the person who made it bigger is the only person who can fix it.

I’m sitting in the small apartment the band is renting for a month, writing some really messed-up lyrics that are too painfully insightful for an audience. I’m getting more riled up the further into the song I get when there’s a knock at the door.

I toss the pen onto the bed and drag my butt over to the door to open it.

“Dude, you look like crap.” Ethan pushes past me and makes a circle around the room. It’s a studio apartment with a bed in the corner and a set of old-school sofas in the center that face a television. “So this is where you’ve been staying?”

There are clothes all over the floor and I kick some out of the way as I trudge back to the bed. “It’s not any worse than where we grew up.”

He points over his shoulder at the door. “I beg to differ on that one. Do you know some guy just tried to sell me a hooker on my way up here?”

“That would be Danny,” I say, picking up the pen. “He’s always trying to sell something.”

Ethan turns to me with this wary look on his face. “So I’m on the road totally enjoying being by myself when I get this call from the lovely Miss Lila saying that you and Ella broke up.”

I rub the back of my neck tensely. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Ethan sits down on the couch and crosses his arms. “What happened?”

“Do you really want to talk about our feelings again?” I toss the notebook and pen aside. “Or do you want to go out and do something fun? How long are you here for? I don’t have to play tonight so we can go out. There’s this really awesome club I’ve been wanting to check out and Dylan assures me there’s a lot of slutty woman there.”

“As much as I love slutty women, I didn’t come here to party.” Shaking his head disappointedly, he continues. “I came to tell you something Lila told me. I would have just called you, but I was down in Virginia and I thought, what the hell, I’d come tell you myself.”

I pull on a T-shirt and shove my wallet into my back pocket, ready to leave him and go out by myself. “Make it quick.”

He rests his arms on the top of the sofa and his boots on the coffee table in front of it. “She didn’t cheat on you.”

I’m in the middle of reaching for my keys when I freeze. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s why Lila called me,” he explains. “She said that as much as she hates to stab her best friend in the back, she thought it was too important not to tell me what Ella told her, after a lot of shots of tequila. She made the whole thing up. Said she did it because she wants you to be happy and in her eyes you can’t be happy with her. Whatever the fuck that means. I never really understood half of the things she did—or does.”

My arms fall to my side, unsure whether to be pissed off or relieved. “Let me get this straight. She lied, told me she cheated on me, just so she could break up with me.”

Ethan surrenders his hands up in front of himself. “Don’t get pissed off at the messenger.”

“I’m not pissed off.” I sit down on the edge of the bed and drape my arms on my knees. “I’m confused as hell.”

Ethan picks up a photo of the band from off the table and examines it. “That would make two of us.”

I flex my hands and pop my neck. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

Setting the photo down, he deliberates it. “You feel like taking a road trip?”

“Is the wedding this weekend?” I sink back against the wall and fiddle with my lip ring. “Do you feel like driving my sorry ass to Chicago and back?”

He shrugs. “I got nothing better to do.”

“Alright then.” I grab my empty bag off the floor and start stuffing it with clothes. “Let’s go on a road trip.”

Lila and I are getting ready to head out to the wedding. We rented a car for the trip, a midsize one this time, but it still takes forever to hit sixty.

Before we head out though, I make one last visit with my therapist. Anna felt it was important, considering I just had a nervous breakdown only a week ago.

My head is clear now, or at least partially, but it makes no sense to me what happened or why I said those terrible things to Micha. It made sense at the time, but it was like I was in a dream and when I woke up, the consequences punched me in the stomach. I considered calling him and apologizing, but I can’t work up enough courage.

“You’ve been doing better then?” she asks, jotting in a notebook. “There hasn’t been any exhaustion or headaches, sensitivity to light?”

I shake my head. “I’ve been feeling okay and the medication seems to be helping.”

“Good, I’m glad.” She puts her pen back in the black ceramic cup with the other pens. “And remember what I said: act out, yell, scream, cry, whatever you need to do to get it out. Repressing it is where a lot of your problems come from.”

I nod. “I’ll remember that, I promise.”

“If you need anything at all while you’re on your vacation, call me.” She hands me her card with her phone number on it and I put it in my purse. “And I mean that, Ella. Call me, even if it’s just to talk about the chicken you ate.”

I get up from the chair. “Chicken?”

“They always have chicken at weddings.” She smiles, but then she grows serious. “Remember, just breathe and take things one step at a time. Don’t rush life. You need to take it easy for a while and focus on yourself.”

“I will,” I promise her and walk out the door, carrying her words of wisdom with me.

“I have to say that this is seriously the prettiest wedding I’ve been to.” I take in the black and purple candles on the table and the flower petals scattered on the white table clothes that layer each of the eight tables.

The wedding is taking place outside, underneath a white canopy in the backyard of Caroline’s parent’s house, who live in a two-story mansion with columns and a wraparound porch. I dreamed of living in one of these houses when I was a little girl, but then I turned six and painfully realized that it wasn’t possible.

“What’s the plan for tonight?” Lila glances down at the Rolex on her wrist. “I mean the wedding’s tomorrow, but still, I don’t just want to sit around and watch them set everything up. I want to have some fun.”

“I don’t think we’re obligated to do anything.” I twist the cap off my soda and take a swig. “I already got fitted for my bridesmaid’s dress, which is
so
weird.”

Her face contorts with confusion. “Why’s that weird?”

I screw the cap back on the bottle. “Because Caroline hardly knows me, so I don’t understand why she wants me as one of her bridesmaids.”

“You’re going to be her sister-in-law, Ella.” Lila scoops up a handful of petals and sprinkles them back onto the tablecloth. “And she seems really nice.”

I glance over at Caroline talking to the wedding planner. Her black hair grew out a little since the last time I saw her and she’s wearing a long black dress with a jean jacket over it. Dean’s at work and I’ve barely seen him since we showed up yesterday morning.

“We could go back to the hotel and order room service,” I suggest, returning my attention back to her. “And charge everything to the room so Dean has to pay for it.”

She giggles, winding a strand of her blonde hair around her finger. “As fun as that sounds—since I’m not really a fan of your brother—I think we should go out and have some fun.”

I rotate the bottle of soda between the palms of my hands. “Lila, I can’t drink while I’m on this medication.”

“We don’t have to drink. We can go out and have some sober fun.” Her eyes suddenly light up and she claps her hands animatedly. “Oh, we can go find a really fancy restaurant and charge it to the credit card my dad hasn’t canceled yet.”

A small smile curves at my lips. “I think we’re both feeling a little scandalous tonight.”

She laughs, throwing her head back dramatically. “Or maybe we both have family members who are total douche bags.”

I laugh too and it feels weightless, like breathing in the fresh air. “Alright, let’s do it. But no sushi. I hate that crap.”

We hike across the grass toward the paved driveway where the car is parked. It’s chilly in Chicago compared to Vegas and when we get in the car, I crank up the heat. “You want to look something up on the GPS?”

She scrolls through her phone. “We have to go back to the hotel first.”

I back out of the driveway, maneuvering between the cars blocking the way. “Why? You look fine.”

She looks down at her pink skinny jeans and her floral shirt. “I know I do, but I left the credit card on the nightstand last night when we ordered pizza.”

“Okay then, to the hotel it is.” I drive like a lunatic out onto the main road, skidding the tires in a pile of gravel, and Lila shoots me a dirty look.

I shrug innocently. “I’m hungry.”

She rolls her eyes and plays with her phone during the five-minute drive to the hotel. I park out front underneath the canopy and leave the engine running. “Do you want to just run in?”

She shakes her head and drops the phone into the middle console. “Come in with me, please. That front desk guy is such a creeper. He kept looking down my shirt the entire time we were checking in.”

“Wasn’t he, like, really old?”

“He had to be at least in his forties.”

“Ew,” we both say and cringe.

I roll the car forward into a spot, shut it off, and get out, meeting her around the back of the car. When we reach the sliding-glass doors, Lila catches my arm and stops me before I step foot over the threshold.

“Okay, so whatever happens, I just want you to know that I did this for your own good,” she says and frees my arm.

My eyebrows furrow. “Lila, what did you do…”

She struts into the lobby toward two guys standing near the seating area across from the front desk. It takes my mind a second to process that it’s Ethan and Micha.

“Damn it, Lila.” I’m not ready for this. What I said to Micha… it’s unforgivable, even if it wasn’t true. I’ll never be able to forget the look on his face, like he was child who just learned that his dog died.

Like always, his aqua eyes immediately magnetize to mine and I force my legs to move toward them. He has on a really nice pair of jeans and a red plaid shirt. Leather bands cover his wrists and his blond hair is tousled. It makes my hands ache to touch him, draw him, be with him forever.

When I reach them, Lila gives me a guilty smile and shrugs.
I’m sorry
, she mouths.

I slant my chin up to look Micha in the eyes. “Hi,” I manage to say stupidly.

Amusement gleams in his eyes. “Hi.”

We stare at each other and a wave of intense emotions rolls over me. I love him more than anything.

God, why does my head have to be broken?

Ethan clears his throat and offers his hand to Lila. “Maybe we should go check out the pool? It looked pretty big.”

“Why, that’s a wonderful idea,” she says like she rehearsed it. She takes his hand and they walk to the elevator area in the corner of the lobby.

My eyes remain on them until they are out of view, then with difficulty, I redirect my attention to Micha and my heart leaps into my throat. “So…”

He laughs at me, surprisingly happy. “Are we going to keep the conversation to one-word sentences?”

My shoulders unstiffen and my lips loosen to a tiny smile. “I’m sorry… about everything.”

“You don’t have to be sorry.” His intense gaze penetrates me as he sucks his lip ring between his teeth. “Stuff happens, right?”

He’s different—happier. What has he been up to for the last couple weeks?

Edging around him, I drop down into a chair in the seating area near the computer station.

I start with a simple question. “How are things going with the band?”