Page 55 of Dirty Love

I punish myself on the treadmill and in my home gym. I do sit-ups until my stomach seizes up in protest. I run for miles, long past the point of my legs burning. I don’t care.

When Grant comes by on his way to his parents’, he tells me I look better than I have in ages. I want to punch him in the face.

“It’ll be good to be fit for tour,” I finally manage.

He doesn’t ask me if I want to join them for Christmas dinner. I know I’m not welcome there, not that I’d accept the invitation anyway.

I’m not the little slut that ruined their son’s life.

Exactly the opposite, not that I’d ever try to win that fight. They’d never hear it. People like them are too closed-minded to hear anything other than what they’ve already decided for themselves.

Well, fuck them. They can say a prayer for me to go to Hell when they go to Mass tonight. Joke’s on them. I know God doesn’t listen to bullshit like that.

Not when he’s got my son by his side, whispering the truth.

When he leaves, I slam the door a little too hard behind him, and something inside me snaps.

I sag against it, my oversized Acacia wood door in my sprawling, beach-view mansion that will never have crayon on the walls or a plastic play kitchen in the real kitchen.

Maybe that’s why I don’t fucking use it.

An ugly, gross sob wells up in my chest, and I fight it hard.

No, I tell myself. Fuck off with that sadness. It’s been a long year. A long decade. And I’ve done my share of grieving, but this feels different.

This feels like it might actually break me if I let it out.

I can’t break now. I gave up Wilson. I gave up the only goodness I’d allowed myself, to keep everything tight and controlled.

The sob didn’t care. It ripped out of me, coming out a wounded howl, and I crumpled to floor as another followed. I relived every moment in the hospital, from waking up in Emergency to being transferred to Labour & Delivery.

They shouldn’t call it that when your baby is dead.

They shouldn’t let you go there when you killed your baby, even if you’re a baby yourself.

There are some things that are unforgivable, for which they should just send you straight to the morgue.

Familiar guilt swirls over me like a fog. I can hear myself sobbing, but it’s in the distance. There’s ringing, too, but I ignore it. I give in to the fog until it swamps me fully, until I’m limp and lifeless on the cold tile of the entranceway.

Eventually the sobbing stops, and I think, oh, she’s done.

Good, she doesn’t deserve grief.

Then the ringing starts again, this time different.

This time it’s my song.

Did I tell you I loved you

Enough times for you to remember

Won’t make it to heaven, though

So you’re on your own there, love

But you’ll be fine

You’ll fly

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