Page 8 of Like First Love, Again

Drifting between boozy waking and sleep, Tori’s thoughts slipped away. Mia’s smile at the sight of her had been so bright, the memory of it seared into her hippocampus. It joined the thousands of snapshots that had accumulated there against Tori’s will. Mia reciting a ridiculous mnemonic device to help Tori pass her AP Bio final. The one time they’d skipped class to go to the beach, only to panic and sneak back into school. Driving all the way to the Keys in a borrowed car to get Mia’s mom’s favorite key lime pie for her fiftieth birthday.

Her chest throbbed, pulling her out of any attempt to sleep. She hadn’t seen Grisel, Mia’s mom, since Mia’s going away party. So many years had passed so quickly, and now she wasn’t going to ever see her again. Tori wasn’t prepared for how sad that made her feel. How helpless.

Tori resisted the urge to reach for her phone on the nightstand. Resisted the impulse to look up photos of Grisel. To sharpen the edges of her memories.

Grisel had been so different from Tori’s mom. Ballsy and driven where Tori’s mom was sweet and nurturing. When Mia said she wanted to go to college in Philadelphia, Grisel hadn’t reacted like a typical Cuban mom. She hadn’t sobbed and made melodramatic proclamations intended to provoke Mia’s guilt. She hadn’t cried about being abandoned by her only child. Instead, she’d helped Mia put together applications and reminded her she could do absolutely anything she wanted if she worked hard enough.

She muttered a curse under her breath and reached for her phone. Tori opened her social media app. The personal one she shared with very few and never added anyone from high school.

The two drinks too many made it impossible to resist the real reason she’d grabbed the damn thing. She hit the search icon on the corner and typed.Mia Falcon,Our Lady of Solitude High School.

Mia’s face on her screen was a punch to the chest. It was a deluge of too many things she should never have wanted and definitely could not still want. Her heart shouldn’t still race at the sight of her. She flung her phone across the bed, covered her face with a pillow, and screamed.

Four

Mug of crappy single-serve coffee in hand, Mia stood in the kitchen and stared at the very Tuscan-inspired dark cabinets and beige countertop. When her mom remodeled it twenty years earlier, she’d been so excited about the design. Her dream kitchen, she’d called it. A dream she’d saved every penny for years to make a reality.

It really had felt like a dream when it replaced her grandparents’ avocado green 70s’ fantasy. Even at twelve, Mia couldn’t wait to have sleepovers once it was done. A wave of loneliness and fear immediately snuffed out her spark of joy at the memory.

She closed her irritated eyes before stinging tears set them on fire again. She couldn’t get the horrendous image out of her head. Some investor buying the home that had been in her family for generations and tearing it down to the studs to throw up the next soulless, ship-lapped, barn-doored, farmhouse-sink flip.

The imagined sound of whirling power tools and shattering glass made her want to puke. She set down her untouched coffeeand lunged toward the kitchen sink. Sticking her face under the cold stream, she narrowly avoided getting sick.

When the nausea eased, she gave up on her plans to gather donation items and crossed the archway into the living room. She dropped onto the couch and buried her face in one of the white throw pillows.

Irony, caustic and cruel, made her wish she could ask her mom what to do. Mia had never known her dad, and her mother never remarried. Not that Mia ever missed having a second parent. There hadn’t been a day in her life that she’d felt anything but loved and supported. Even as a bratty teen, she’d still told her mom everything. As an adult, they talked three times a day, and she never made a move without her mom’s advice.

All she wanted to do was hug her mom again. Just once. But her arms ached with how empty they felt. The icy absence wormed its way into her muscles and leeched all the heat from her body. She’d never missed anyone so badly that the agony manifested into something tangible.

Mia wouldn’t have survived the greatest disappointments in her life without her mom’s support and now she was sitting in her house—empty and cold without her—trying to figure out how to let go of all she had left of her.

It was impossible. No way for her not to make the wrong choice when nothing felt right. For the first time in her life, she wished there was someone else to decide. A sibling. An aunt. Anyone to tell her what to do. Tell her how to navigate so many kinds of grief at once.

Thirty-two suddenly felt so young. Mia wasn’t old enough to be on her own. She didn’t know what the hell she was doing. Hadn’t figured anything out yet. She hadn’t even managed to make a freaking marriage work. How the hell was she supposed to do this?

Mia let herself wallow in her misery for an hour. Let herself cry because she missed her mom, and indulge in anger because it wasn’t fair that she died before having done everything she wanted. She’d had so many plans for after retirement. So many things she wanted to do. She’d worked so fucking hard and put off so much because she never imagined that she’d go to work one day and never come back.

Mia’s sore chest heaved and her raw throat burned. In so many ways, her mother had barely started living. What the hell was the point of denying themselves everything for some tenuous hope for the future? Drowning in regret, Mia wished she’d encouraged her mother to take the damn French river cruise instead of waiting for her seventieth birthday.

Angry, Mia tore herself from the couch and wiped her face with her sweaty T-shirt. Leaving the stupid boxes laying flat on the floor, she went to her room. She didn’t want to give away her family’s things. She wanted to get in the damn pool.

In a two-piece that showed too much of her soft curves and round belly and boobs that used to be significantly closer to her chin than her navel, she stomped out of her bedroom. Once outside, Mia filled her lungs with the warm morning. It wasn’t too hot yet. Not so humid that the air felt like a solid, living thing capable of forming the felonious intent to suffocate.

Mia walked around the narrow pool and passed the pool house. Like the garage, her mother used it to store so much of her grandparents’ stuff. Yet another project she’d have to tackle. But not yet.

She stepped to the diving board. Despite having face-planted on it in her youth, she stepped onto the aluminum with confidence. Without the good sense to hesitate, she bounced at the edge and dove headfirst into the water.

The cold plunge was exactly the shock to her system Mia needed. Every lap brought her closer to a version of herself sherecognized. Lungs burning and body alive with use, Mia swam until she couldn’t force herself to push any further and flipped onto her back to float.

Her mind drifted toward the past. To the last time she’d ever labored under the delusion that she knew anything at all. That she had any control.

Attention drifting to the pool house, Mia thought of all the times she’d lain up there looking at the stars. Thanks to city lights there weren’t ever a ton to see, but she loved searching. Loved climbing up the ladder she’d tied to the overgrown mango tree that never actually produced a single fruit.

She almost never went on the roof without Tori, she realized with a little grin. With how much taller Tori was than her, she shouldn’t have been so freaking nervous about heights. Mia still saw the hard flush on Tori’s olive skin when she pretended she wasn’t terrified of tumbling to her death. Tori had always been terrible at hiding things from her. It was one of Mia’s favorite things about her.

Her tired heart ached with a new flash of pain. A different kind of regret. She’d missed Tori so many times over the years. Wondered so often how she was—how shereallywas. It was obvious from her business socials that she was successful, but Mia had no way of knowing whether she was happy. Whether she’d fallen in love or had kids or adopted a stray cat.

Tori hadn’t kept in touch with anyone from their all-girls’ catholic school. It was like she’d joined the witness protection program instead of just going away to freaking college.

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