by Sasha Hibbs
“That you’ll stay in touch with me,” I said as he relaxed. “Promise that we’ll always be friends.”
“You got it. I’ll need someone to Skype with.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
I turned eighteen shortly after graduation. The greatest birthday present I’ve ever received was my mom’s own graduation. She was finally discharged from rehab. When Dad and I went to pick her up, I could never remember my mother looking so whole. We had come so far as a family. We all knew the neighbors talked and we laughed in spite of it. Counseling taught us not to let others break down what we built up together. That included negativity, opinions, and the occasional snarky comment. We resumed attending church aside from the weeklong vacation Dad whisked us away to at the Outer Banks.
We led different lives now, were stronger people. Mom became less and less involved with the Country Club. She’d met another woman in rehab, Cindy, who came from a similar situation. Their mutual problems drew them together. They usually visited each other a couple times a week, attended Alcoholics Anonymous, and our families even had cookouts together. We still attended family counseling once a week and I was surprised how much it truly helped.
The one thing our therapist said that stuck with me was when she reviewed the five stages of grieving. She told us that someone didn’t have to die to experience those emotions, that they were applicable to almost any situation in life that hurt. She said that when we experienced traumatic events such as my mother’s rape, my father going to prison, the following years my mother was alone with only me and then when she turned to alcohol to ease the pain of the past, that at some point we had to go through the motions to finally get to the last stage: acceptance.
She told us about denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. She was right. We had all experienced those. Perhaps not exactly in the order she presented them, but nonetheless, I’d felt them and I knew my parents felt them too.
As the summer flew by, I went through those five stages at the loss of Mickey. I kept telling myself he would call, or answer my calls, my texts. But he didn’t. I was in denial. I went through moments where I was so angry that he’d ignored me, convinced myself that I loved him more than he ever did me, that he hadn’t ever loved me at all. And in those moments of rage, I almost hated him. I had moments where the memory of us hurt so much I didn’t want to get out of bed. I would lay on my side curled up into a ball and listen to “Thank You” by Led Zeppelin over and over again. Singing the words through my tears, thinking of our prom, the night in Mickey’s shed, the looks he’d given me. I traced my lips where his had touched mine. I could almost feel his soft kisses. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the smell of the cologne he wore. There were times I could see his face clearly in my mind and there were times I thought perhaps I’d dreamed up our time together. I wanted to lay under my blanket forever, hidden from the world. But my mom would come upstairs, sit down beside me on the bed, and brush the hair away from eyes as I cried, soothing me as only a mother could.
I had days where I kept myself busy. I would go shopping, Skype with Jay, put on a brave face. Mom and I would go buy things I needed for my dorm at WVU. This was the part where I bargained with myself. If I could only keep busy and have one day where I didn’t think of him, then I would be okay. But I wasn’t. I had to accept that what happened between us was real, that I did love him, and that we were over. I needed to accept that he’d moved on without me. And I needed to move on too. Mary was right. Time helped. The more time that passed, the easier it became to get through the days without him.
Once the end of August rolled around, I finally accepted that it was time to let go. As I packed up for college, I actually had an eerie sense of calm. I loved Mickey. I would always love him. But I’d punished myself long enough.
The therapist advised me against looking up his profile on social media or trying to find out anything about him. It was hard. I really struggled with refraining from it. He was never much of a social media user, but my therapist and I both knew there were pictures and the possibility of status updates … all things that would hinder me from moving on.
When the end of summer came and the start of my new college life began, I was both excited and nervous. Change, even if a good one, was hard. I had always known the security of home. I had a routine. I would still come home on the weekends, but now I had harder classes, a quirky roommate who was difficult to adjust to, and was surrounded by new responsibilities.
Finding my way around campus was akin to hell. I’d toured the school earlier in the year but had no memory of it being so large. It was different buying my own groceries, eating microwave dinners, and having to wait for my turn with the shower. It took about a month, but I’d finally fell into a routine.
I’d taken an advanced load which pushed my boundaries, but I enjoyed the challenge. It kept me busy. There were a few freshman boys who had asked me out for coffee, and at first I politely turned them down. While I was living and getting on with my life, I had zero interest in dating yet. After Skyping one night with Jay, he suggested that I at least give it a try. The very idea made me cringe inside, but Jay was incessant about part of me moving on was not to necessarily go out of my way to meet someone else. Because if I did that, I would only be comparing my date to Mickey and it would never work. Instead, he suggested the next time a boy asked me out on a date, or for coffee, that I should go because I wasn’t looking for someone who happened to find me. I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but after several months of no word or news about Mickey, I decided to take Jay’s advice.
One day after my last class—composition and rhetoric—a boy I shared the course with caught up to me as I was walking toward my dorm.
“Hey, Autumn,” he said, falling into step beside me.
“Hi, Travis.”
“How would you feel about going to the student lounge with me later tonight for some lattes and ice cream?”
I slid a sideways glance at him. He was way shorter than Mickey, had dirty-blond hair, brown eyes … I mentally smacked myself. I was not going to compare them.
“That sounds great,” I said.
“Really?” he said, his eyes big with surprise.
“Sure. Why not? I’ll meet you over there, say, about eight PM?”
“Awesome. Well, I’ll meet you then,” he said, turning around to walk back toward the male dorms.
****
I took a shower and changed into some comfy clothes. I wasn’t out to impress Travis. We were only going to the student lounge where a hundred other students would be. We’d get ice cream, have some lattes, and call it a night. I Skyped with Jay before leaving to meet Travis.
Jay was doing great. We never talked about Sean, and I hadn’t ever tried to bring him up. I found out from Dakota that after the incident, Sean had decided to be homeschooled for the rest of the year and that he was braving going back to Clarksburg High this year. Jay didn’t need me to remind him of Sean. I’m sure he lived with that regret every day. I was so happy when he told me that he started seeing someone. They’d bumped into each other after work, or rather the cute bicyclist nearly ran over Jay causing the guy to wreck. It was quite an ordeal. The guy actually ended up in the hospital for a few days with three broken ribs. Jay went to check on him and things progressed from there. I was happy for him. He managed to carve out a life for himself. He talked about missing home, but said there were so many things to see and do he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. But I’d say Erik had something to do with Jay’s way of thinking. He’d started talking with his mom again, but his dad was another story.
Jay made me promise to come visit him sometime. The thought of traveling overseas was thrilling. I would have to do it over one of my breaks. When I told him about my casual date, he only smiled. He didn’t have to say it, I could almost read his mind. He felt like it was finally time and going on a date was me taking a step in the right direction.
I turned my
laptop off and set off toward the student lounge. As soon as I walked in, I spotted Travis sitting at a table for two. He waved me over.
“Hey,” I said, sliding down into the seat facing him.
“Hey,” he said. He looked a bit nervous. I didn’t want to read too far into this, but I was just a girl who wanted a latte with a boy who seemed nice. I didn’t want anything more than that, and needed to somehow gently discourage him because if he moved too fast, I would bolt.
“Come on,” I said, scooting back out of my seat and standing up. “Let’s go order.”
He wiped the palms of his hands against his jeans and followed me. It wasn’t Travis’s fault, but things were not starting off too good. I promised myself I would make it through this. The first time is always the hardest. At least that’s what Jay told me. I knew if I could get this initial meeting a guy for coffee out of the way, I could do it again. As we stood in line, I decided to break the awkward silence.
“I haven’t gone to any events around campus. What do people usually do for fun?”
“It’s Morgantown,” he said with a “duh” look. When I scrunched up my face, slightly peeved at his blasé response, he tried to salvage the situation. “A bunch of the upper classman usually hit the bars, check out the local band scene. Of course you already know what happens when we have a home football game.”
By this time, the students in front of us had been waited on. We moved up to the counter.
“Um,” I said, quickly glancing up at the menu, “I’ll have a chocolate latte and a butter pecan waffle cone. One scoop.”
I turned to Travis, prompting him to order. “Make that two.”
To his credit, he paid for our lattes and ice cream. While we waited for our lattes and cones, Travis walked over to a large bulletin board on the other side of the student lounge. I followed him over and scanned the board that was plastered with flyers.
“Here ya go,” he said, waving over the board. “This is kept pretty current with activities going on around campus. Sometimes they even get bands to come here. Oh,” he said, yanking one of the flyers down. “This is kind of becoming a big thing that students go to.”
I glanced down at the flyer in his hands and my knees nearly buckled under me.
“Amateur boxing,” I said under my breath as I read the headline.
“Yeah. There’s even some students here who actually compete. Something about regional tournaments, states, Golden Gloves. Not really my thing, but I’ve heard some of the guys at my dorm go on and on about how fun it is.”
Travis kept talking, but I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear anything, see anything except Mickey’s name printed as a “promising, upcoming star” and “the pride of the Mountain State”.
“Hey,” Travis said laying his hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“What?” I said, tearing my gaze away from the flyer.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t do this,” I said, one hand clutching onto the flyer and the other shoving a five dollar bill in his jeans pocket. “I have to go.”
I ran out of the student lounge and kept running until I reached my dorm room. I was never so thankful when I opened my door and discovered my roommate—Marci—not there. I ran over to my twin-sized bed and collapsed. I opened the flyer back up and all those weeks I tried to put Mickey out of my mind came flooding back to me. I don’t know how long I sat there in frozen shock, but in order to accept things were finally over, I decided there was one last thing I had to do.
Chapter Forty-Nine
I called my mom to let her know I wouldn’t be home until Sunday. Since our therapy, they treated me like an adult. It was funny how before I felt like they kept me under their thumb, controlling my life and treating me like I couldn’t think for myself. All I wanted was to be at liberty to do the things I wanted. Now that I had it, there was a small piece of me that wanted to be a child again. I was figuring out how to be independent, but discovered part of growing up was missing the security of being a child.
My mom never asked me why I wasn’t coming home, but I’d decided if she did, I wouldn’t lie to her. Those days were behind me. After finding directions to the coliseum, I grabbed my car keys and the pepper spray my dad made me promise to carry, and took a deep breath. As I snapped my seatbelt into place, I sat with my hands clutching the wheel. I didn’t know if I should do this. Would it unravel everything I’d worked hard to forget? I started the car.
I drove to the coliseum and as I parked, I was stunned at how packed it was. I didn’t want to assume things, and at all costs it would do me no favors to try and dig up information on Mickey, but that he was here legally with endorsements told me he must be trying to go pro with his boxing. Maybe make a career out of it. Maybe he would follow in his uncle’s footsteps and actually become an Olympic hopeful. Through all the pain he caused me, there was still a remote feeling of happiness for him. Perhaps he’d finally managed to turn all those feelings into something positive. Maybe he even had a good coach who could show him how to protect himself. Maybe he was finally doing this for himself.
I stopped dead in my tracks. What was I doing? Mickey was on the other side of those walls. I could hear the noise inside. Could I handle seeing him as a spectator instead of by his side cheering him on? Then a thought fluttered through my mind that nearly crippled me. What if he had a girlfriend? I’d prepared myself as much as possible for what it would be like to see him after all these months, but I didn’t think I could handle seeing him happy with another girl. I had once been his girl.
I started walking back toward my car. I didn’t think I was strong enough to see him after all. But as I reached my car, the thought of coming this far and not laying eyes on him left a sort of bitterness in me. I wished him well, truly, I did. I just couldn’t think of him with another girl. It was too soon. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. No. I made my mind up. I had to see him. Just once. And forever expel him from my life. It was so crowded it was not like he would see me anyway.
After paying the admission, I fought through the crowd to get a decent view. This was so unlike the underground fights at the old boiler plant in Anmoore. There were bright lights, media crews, concession stands. It was surreal.
I scanned the ring over the rows of heads in front of me partially obscuring my view. It was hard to see the fighters, but I recognized Mickey the moment he came into my view. He’d changed so much. He looked like he gained weight or muscle, or both. He’d cut his hair back. He looked like a man. I couldn’t wrap my head around how a matter of months could physically alter someone so much. It wasn’t in a bad way, it was that he was so changed from the boy I remembered.
I stood on my tiptoes to see if there was anyone I recognized outside the ring in his corner. I felt a smile tug at my lips once I recognized Mr. Romano. He had his game face on, intently watching as Mickey boxed his way through to the next round. It made sense that he would help coach him, and I was glad. It indicated that they worked on having a relationship.
I could hear bits and pieces from the people surrounding me talking about Mickey. He was going to become the next greatest Golden Gloves contender. Was going to have a long and successful career if he continued to win tournaments. They’d never seen someone who could juggle college and a boxing career at the same time. Not only was the boy a skilled fighter, apparently he was a scholarly genius as well.
I heard all I needed to. He had finally moved on. Without me. I wondered what college he was attending. It didn’t matter, really. I came to see him one last time and succeeded. Now I needed to leave. The crowded rows pushed themselves against me. I scanned for a way out because the way I came in was blocked. I squeezed down through the rows until I came to the first row.
I was so close to Mickey now. I scurried out of the way of angry spectators yelling at me to move. As I rounded my way over to the aisle leading to the exit, I looked over my shoulder one last time. He’d made it through the last ro
und, was sitting in his corner visibly exhausted. I took one last look at him, and as I went to turn away, there was a faint black stitching on his gloves that caught my attention. My heart broke. Hot tears stood still in my eyes. It couldn’t be. Why, after all this time, would he have not only kept but wore the gloves I had custom made for him?
I glanced up at him and stood in frozen horror as our gazes locked. For a split second, I thought I caught a look of shock on his face, but I didn’t stay long enough to analyze it. I ran out of the coliseum, my lungs burning until I reached my car. Why had I come? I told myself stupidly it was the final piece in me letting go. That seeing him one last time would finally lay to rest the pain of our past. I was kidding myself. Deep down I’d wanted to see the flesh and blood boy that I’d fallen so hopelessly in love with. I wanted to see the fire burning in his gaze when he looked at me. I wanted to feel his strong arms around me. I longed to hear those soft whispers of love against my ears. I wanted to see him and know he wasn’t a phantom, that he was real, but the painful truth was he wasn’t mine anymore.
I frantically pushed the unlock button on my car. I jumped in, quickly started the car, and geared down into reverse. As I backed out of my parking spot, my car felt lopsided. I geared into drive and crept at a crawling pace through the parking lot. The further I went the clearer the problem became. I had a left front flat tire. I limped along long enough to wedge myself in between two other vehicles. Why hadn’t I taken the time to learn how to change one?
I pulled my phone out. It was ten-thirty, just in time for the coliseum to empty itself out. How could this be happening to me? The irony wasn’t lost on me, but this time I couldn’t run into Mickey. I’d die if I did. There were so many people and things were so different now, I was sure he’d be held over with interviews, chatting it up with endorsers. I pulled my AAA contact out of my purse. At least Dad had thought to enroll me with them after the last time this kind of thing happened.
