Page 28 of In My Heart
“Lass…”
“Just show them out, please Arran. I just need a minute,” I pleaded. Finally he nodded and turned his attention to Gia’s friends.
“Out! The pair of ye! Grab yer shit and leave!” he barked, and both girls jumped at his command, fleeing the room as fast as they could.
As soon as the door closed behind Arran, and silence descended, all I could hear were the words they’d thrown at me, playing over and over again. They said I used my Mum. Was that what she had told Gia? That I had used her for what? Money? Drugs? Did she tell Gia I was an addict?
I felt sick at the thought of what Gia died thinking of me. Did she truly believe I had murdered my own mother and chopped her up? Did she really think me capable of that? If she did, the way she hated me seemed to make so much more sense. But it didn’t ease the agony I felt at what Gia had lived and died thinking of me.
I jolted as those two gunshots echoed through my mind, then I heard Gia’s body land on that hard floor again. I closed my eyes to try and block it out, but that just brought forward the image of her laid there, the life leaving her as she spent her last seconds staring at me with hatred and blame.
I took in a huge shaky breath and opened my eyes, lowering my gaze to the sink so I wouldn’t have to see my face. I was so lost, that I feared looking at my reflection would reveal someone I didn’t even know anymore.
Then my eyes landed on a small, clear bag of white, round pills, and I remembered what the girls had been saying when they walked into the bathrooms. Numb and spacey. That’s what those pills were going to bring them. Numb and spacey. That sounded like the off switch for my brain that I had been praying for.
But drugs? I wasn’t my mother. I refused to become her. I didn’t even like taking legal pain meds, and there I stood looking at a baggie of unknown illegal drugs like they were my only life line. What was happening to me?
“Cara?” I glanced up and saw Cal hobbling in on his crutches. I didn’t allow myself to think about why I automatically pulled the baggie of pills into my hand and gripped them there tightly. I told myself I couldn’t just leave them there – that I’d dispose of them later - but even I didn’t believe that bullshit.
“You shouldn’t be putting weight on your ankle,” I scolded him as I turned away from the counter and crossed the space to him.
“I was worried. What happened? Why did those girls walk out of here ranting about you attacking them? Did they hurt you?” he asked as he seemed to look me over for injury.
“I handled it. They were just angry. Gia had told them all about me, at least the version she got from our Mum anyway,” I shrugged.
“For fuck’s sake. That’s the last thing you needed. Are you okay?” he moved one of his crutches into the other hand, then held his free arm out to his side for me.
“I’m good,” I told him as I dipped under his arm and wrapped one arm around his waist. “I just want to go home and get some sleep. Are they all gone yet?”
“I’m pretty sure Arran scared off the last of the guests when he threw those girl’s out. He was pretty pissed about the crap they were talking,” Cal replied.
“They’re just kids. They believed what Gia told them, and Gia…well, she just believed what our Mum told her. I just hate it though…knowing how much Gia must have loathed me. She died hating me with her last breath, Cal. I wish she could have known…realised how m-much I loved her. I wish I could have stopped our mother from ever getting near her,” I whimpered as tears threatened again.
And I took those pills. I hated myself for doing it. I’d never felt more like my mother than when I scavenged through the trash can in my bathroom to retrieve them a week ago, and now I was turning into her, popping those unknown white pills in a desperate search for some calm in the storm inside my head. It felt like failure, and yet I didn’t have the strength to care much about that.
He just pulled me even closer into his hold and kissed the top of my head as I fought to pull it together again. It wasn’t the time or place to lose it, which I knew I would if I didn’t halt the emotion right then.
“Can we just go home, Cal? Please? I’m so tired,” I admitted after several minutes. The tears had stopped but the turmoil inside me hadn’t.
“Of course we can. Let’s get you out of here,” he agreed.
I hesitated as I followed Cal, struggling on his crutches, from the bathroom. The bin was right beside the door and it would be so easy to just drop those pills into it and never think about them again. They’d be gone so there wouldn’t be a danger of anyone finding them, and the question that was hanging over my head would be gone, the subject closed. It would take a second, and be so easy. But as I followed Cal out to the restaurant to find Arran and Terza, I still clutched those pills in my hand, too afraid to let go of the possible peace they could offer.
CHAPTER 8
CARA
The Weekndwas blasting out of the sound system in the gym, and I was trying to use the pounding beat to push myself harder and faster.
I had already been down there a while, desperate to find some quiet in my head. Those pills had been pressing on my mind all night, and I had come so close to just trying them out, that it scared me. I never wanted to turn to drugs and become my mother, but I was in a dark, desperate place and it all seemed so harmless – just to swallow one little pill to hopefully make all of my pain stop for a while.
I’d barely slept a wink again, not even Cal and Arran holding me between them all night, enough to keep my nightmares away after the emotion of the funeral.
It had taken every bit of determination and will power I had to force myself to throw that damn baggie of pills into the trash can in my bathroom after I had showered. I didn’t want to part with the life line I hoped they would be, but I had forced myself to remove the temptation. I was not my mother.
After that I had researched coping techniques for anxiety and stress on my phone, and that was how I found myself in the gym, my feet pounding against the treadmill as I worked to find theexhaustion and quiet an internet article had suggested I would eventually find.
The pain in my ribs was getting increasingly worse as I got shorter and shorter of breath, every inflation of my lungs causing the bruising to feel like I was being stabbed, but if anything, that pain was the only thing that was keeping me from slipping too deep back into my mind. The exercise wasn’t working, but the pain was.
