Bitter Kisses (It's Just High School #3) - Thandiwe Mpofu Page 0,136
I get to eight hundred, just to calm myself down. This isn’t about me. It’s about her, so I stick it out and listen.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask, managing somehow not to let the anger seep into my voice.
She laughs but it’s humorless. It’s more on the pissed off side.
“You know, I’ve had about ten different people ask me that question, including your brother and Cole, but I’ve never wanted to spill my guts to anyone else but you.”
“Ah, fuck, Mia.”
Shit, what is this girl doing to me?
I glance at the framed picture of her on my desk. I snapped a picture of her when she was dancing alone in the middle of the night in her home studio years ago. I never realized that I’ve always had this picture with me, no matter where I go, until now.
She’s always been the constant where everything else failed and disappeared.
“It’s the truth,” she grits out.
“And it pisses you off, huh?” I mutter.
“You have no idea how fucked up it is that I want to tell you all my secrets and all my shame when you have contributed to some of that mess,” she says. “And not to mention, you all but disappeared on me.”
She’s pissed
‘I’m here, Mia,” I say softly.
“No, you’re not,” she whispers. “I know you’re not here!”
“Do you need me there?” I demand.
Silence.
“If I say I do, will you come?”
“In a heartbeat.”
Even more silence.
There’s a golden grandfather clock in the office, I can hear it ticking as I listen to Mia breathe, hanging on to the next words she says.
“You say that now, but you’re gone, Julian,” she croaks, her voice scratchy and breaking me all over again. “You left me high on you and out of my mind in that hospital room and you never looked back! You send your boys to watch over me, no doubt reporting back to you, but you never have the guts to be here yourself.”
Well fuck me sideways then.
“Aren’t you the one who told me you learned your lesson about me, Little Minx?” I ask, my voice hoarse. “Weren’t you the one who was crying in my arms, and reducing me to nothing with your words, Mia?”
She sniffles. I don’t like that she’s distressed and in pain but after all these years of holding everything in, never expressing herself, burying every tiny detail of herself, I’m glad she’s feeling everything now. She needs that.
“Yeah, but that didn’t mean you can just say things that leave me suspended in space, waiting for something, waiting for you to come back and press the start button so I can tell which way is up and which way is—”
“The grave you fell into when you let me kiss you?” I snap. It’s been weeks since she said that, but I haven’t been able to get over them.
She said those words for a reason. That I’m death personified. Loving me is like dying and yet still, why am I the one who feels dead already?
This time, the silence is deafening.
We’re both angry at each other, that much is fucking clear. The tension between has only grown worse over time, but she has to know.
“You can’t just say shit to my face, refuse to kiss me and then be mad that I stayed away and gave you the space you said you needed, baby, that’s not how this works,” I say. “You’re mad that I’m not there but Mia, you’ve always known where to find me and how to reach me. What did I tell you when we were in Europe?”
She’s silent but I can hear her occasional sniffles.
“You said…” she croaks. “You said that when I need you, I can just send you my pin and you’d be right there.”
“Fucking right, baby,” I whisper. “Your mind is declaring a war on you and it’s messing with your sleep and your peace, I get that more than you think, and you knew what to do. You’ve always known what to do when it gets bad, don’t you, Little Minx?”
“Oh God, Julian, I…” she trails off, as if she can’t find the words. Or maybe, she doesn’t want to say it.
“You miss me, huh?”
“Uh, no…” she says after a beat. I can hear her fighting to stabilize her breathing, as if she’s calming down from hearing my voice, at least that’s what I’m going to tell myself.
“Tell me you miss me, baby,” I say.
“Ugh, I hate it when you’re smug,” she says softly.