Page 26 of Pulse
I’d made it out the door and into the yard when she called out to me.
“Ren, wait.”
I turned and waited for her to catch up, embarrassment flaming in my cheeks.
“Please don’t give up on him,” she said coming to stand beside me. “You know what he’s like.”
“A stubborn, secretive asshole?” I retorted.
“Yeah,” she said with a smile. “All of the above.”
“Don’t tell him I was here.”
She tilted her head to the side, squinting in the elusive spring sunshine. “You didn’t talk to him? Why?”
I shook my head, not knowing how to answer when I didn’t understand the emotions I was feeling. “Don’t give him any hope when there mightn’t be any.”
Before she could reply, I wrenched open the gate and made my escape.
I leaned my head against the window as the number eight tram rattled down High Street Prahran, taking me away from Ash and his fancy house, all the way back to my denial at Beat. Back to the life I was using to try and forget for all the wrong reasons.
When I was ten, I remembered coming home from school and finding my mum unconscious on the kitchen floor. I was just a kid so it would’ve been understandable if I’d been afraid, but instead of crying and hoping that she’d wake up on her own, I picked up the phone anddialedtriple zero. The lady on the phone told me how brave I was and how proud my mum would be for knowing what to do. She stayed on the phone until the paramedics knocked on the door.
It wasn’t the first or the last of those calls and every single time, I was the brave one. I kept a cool head, called the number and saved my mum’s life. It’d became like a routine and it wasn’t until later that I understood she had been trying to hide how bad things had gotten from me. I guess she figured I had enough to deal with without having to worry about her not being around anymore. Except it never went that way.
She was getting sicker with each passing episode and all it did was create more problems. She left it too long one time too many and it was game over.
As I sat on the tram all the way back to Beat, I knew I was doing the exact same thing. I was my mother’s daughter through and through. I was leaving it until it was too late to stop thetumorfrom destroying everything.
Mytumorwasn’t cancer or anything life threatening and it was even more heartless of me to compare my mum’s illness with this thing with Ash…but my fear was eating away at me in much the same way. My fear of abandonment would destroy everything.
I had to get a fucking grip.
Ren Miller was the strong one. I was there for people and stood up to everything life threw at me. I stood up and kicked life in the balls when it tried to shove me down.
What was I really afraid of?
I was there for my mum until there wasn’t anything left to do but let her go. If I was there for Ash and he didn’t want me…he’d still be there living his life without me. Could I go on knowing that? It was bad enough now, so what would a total meltdown look like? More than ever, I wanted to talk to Mum and ask her how she did it, how she got over Dad, because I couldn’t remember a time that she was ever sad, even when she was at her worst with her cancer.
Seemed like I took after my mum in more ways than one.
Would I go back and try again? I didn’t know.
I didn’t know shit.
