Page 77 of Crash & Burn

Crushing over my best friend’s sister.

The one and only girl who is off-limits.

Fuck me.

Chapter 26

Mia

Getting ready for tonight’s show is bittersweet, and it’s impossible to ignore how much has changed in these three months. Not just what I’m doing and how I’m feeling, but who I am. Three months ago, I was in a constant fight or flight, always on edge and refusing to let myself heal. Three months ago, I punched a guy in the face, and my brother took matters into his own hands, upending my entire life.

Looking back on that night, I don’t even recognize myself. There were pieces of me fighting to stay at the surface, but I buried every part of me in hopes that it would help me forget what got me to that place to begin with.

It wasn’t until I realized that burying Nico meant burying myself too.

Losing yourself, little by little, is the most heartbreaking thing someone can go through, especially when you don’t even realize it was happening.

One day, something terrible happens to you, and you know you will never be the same. The next day, you cry and curse the world, and you wish it was you instead of him. The next day, you do it all again until it is three years later, and you don’t even remember letting yourself disappear.

Nothing will ever compare to being with Nico, loving Nico,losingNico.

No one will ever replace him.

And getting myself back doesn’t mean forgetting him.

It just means that I will carry him with me wherever I go. I will live because I am here to do it, and I can do it for the both of us.

Three months ago, I finally made the choice to move on. That choice comes with guilt, sadness, anger, and frustration, but it means that I will no longer live in the past.

Three months ago, I never would have told you that I could wake up with a smile on my face after dreaming about the first night Nico showed me the song he was writing for me. The song I wish I could remember, but I can’t. The song I will always cherish, and it will always be somewhere in my head along with the memories of Nico.

The smile on my face was also residual from last night.

Three months ago, I didn’t have a group of people who make me feel like I am on top of the world. People who fill me up in ways I didn’t know possible. People who love and care for one another enough for them to forget the people who don’t.

I realized last night that the universe works in mysterious ways, and I am insanely lucky to have walked the path I have walked because it led me to being part of something I never knew I needed.

If you told me back in June that, by September, I would be reminiscing on a night spent singing my heart out in a karaoke bar with seven people who would soon become so important to me, I would have laughed my ass off.

Yet here I am, feeling a lightness to me because I’m not just going through the motions anymore.

I amenjoyinglife again.

Three months ago, that felt impossible.

After finishing our song last night, Eddie and I needed some space. Not because he did something or because something happened. It was because I was two seconds away from saying fuck the consequences and jumping into his arms and never letting him let me go.

The time I spent with Eddie last night felt like those moments in my hotel room and on our road trip.

Raw.

Real.

Addictive.

Last night showed me that having him as a friend is harder than not having him at all.

But I don’t care.

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