Good Enough (Scomiche)

Ch 9. Fallout

A/N. Um... I still love you... *chews lip*

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You can probably guess that I was a mess those first few days without him. Mostly I was angry. I told myself that I hated him for making me feel all of these things, for breaking my heart in the worst way on more than one occasion. I blamed him for all of it, the hurt, the pain, the suffering.

I hated him for making me love him. 

I hated him.

For the first few nights I would lay awake in bed, unable to sleep without him next to me, and wish he had never chosen me to fall in love with. 

For those first few nights I resented him. I would have given up all of the wonderful experiences we had shared to have never known him and never experienced the hurt and million other emotions and hardships that accompanied being with him. I threw tantrum after tantrum, ripping apart a picture of us together, breaking his favorite coffee mug  throwing his things all over the apartment in a blind rage, angry at him and angry at ‘them’, angry at Arya and angry at the world. 

Then the emptiness crept in as one week morphed into two. I stopped being angry and began to mope, slowly falling apart. 

I cried almost non-stop and in my breakdown I told Kirstie the truth. At first she didn’t believe me, but one look at my face and she knew. The story made everything make sense in a very strange way and it all seemed to click. Just knowing that I could talk to her helped immensely, but it still didn’t relieve the giant hole in my heart. 

After the third week of erratic behavior, Kirstie practically moved in. She was worried about me, more than ever before. I stopped answering phone calls, blowing off job opportunities again, not caring to see the latest Rolling Stone with my work right on the cover. I rarely ate, rarely got out of bed. 

I retreated into myself once again and once I had, the fear began to consume me. 

Fear is a funny thing. It seeps in and then it expands and affects everything. I began to play the “what if” game with myself, convinced Mitch would never come back, that this was the end and I would never even get a chance to say a proper goodbye. 

Maybe he'd been caught again. Maybe they’d actually kill him this time. I had numerous nightmares about that fear. I can’t even talk about them. 

Then I played with the theory that maybe Mitch would find someone better. Lord knows I’m nothing special. I’m nothing compared to him and maybe he had finally realized it. Maybe Arya would be the one to steal his heart. Would he really do that? Would he leave me for someone else? 

The small amount of hope I had died slowly and I had weeks upon weeks to dwell on it. 

Could I really complain about the prospect of losing him?

No. I had asked for a miracle, prayed for it night after night, wished on a million stars and begged to have him sent back to me. My miracle had come true, and I had only asked for one more day and here I’d been granted so many more. 

Could I really complain that he wasn’t still here? Could I really ask for another miracle? 

I didn’t care whether I should have or not, I did. I prayed and everything else for him to find his way home, healthy and there to stay. 

I tried everything until the second month started to creep up on me. 

The second month with no call, no letter, no sign that he was ok and not dead in a ditch somewhere, came and left me staggering. 

Two months three weeks and five days after Mitch ran out the door leaving me with little to hold onto, and I couldn’t take it anymore. 

I gave up. 

I gave up on him, and I gave up on the hope that he would ever come back to me. I took the small amount of belongings he had, boxed them up and gave them to Kirstie to dispose of. I knew in the back of my mind she probably just hid them at her place, but they were out of my apartment and if I couldn’t see them, then they didn’t exist. 

The day I gave up was the day I stopped crying. I finally slept a full night without waking up from a horrible nightmare or scrambling from bed and rushing to the door because I swore I’d heard him and that he had come home to me. 

The day I gave up was the day I started living again. 

I started taking jobs again, I ate on a regular basis, I went out into the real world and caught up with some old friends I hadn’t had time for when Mitch had come back into my life. 

Funny thing, giving up felt a lot better than crying and worrying, wondering and hoping. 

I guess I should have felt guilty about that, but honestly there is only so much a person can take before they are so destroyed mentally and emotionally that there’s no repair. 

Of course I was only repressing everything that I was really going through, walking around like an empty shell with dull eyes and covered in fake smiles and laughter. 

I was never a strong person. Without Mitch... weak, fake and numb felt a lot better than strong and struggling.

. 

Four months one week and two days after Mitch left was when everything came to a head. 

I’d just gotten back from a shoot in California two days prior and I was back on my game. 

Kirstie had finally moved back into her own apartment and things were moving along just as they should have been, only without him. 

Everything seemed just as it always had as I walked into my apartment, the new DVD season of The Walking Dead in hand. I removed my coat, hung my keys on the hook as always and settled in for a Walking Dead marathon. 

Barely 10 minutes into the first episode I noticed that I was not alone. I caught the man out of the corner of my eye. He was standing in the doorway of my kitchen, staring at me as if he had every right to be there, quietly watching me. 

I stood, bolting for the door but just as I’d discovered that I wasn’t alone, I discovered that neither was he. 

Five men dressed in all black took me down easily.  

Fists and boots came at me from every direction, and though I fought to free myself, I did nothing but tire myself out. 

I tasted blood before I felt a sting in my neck and everything went dark. 

The last thing I remember thinking was a prayer that fate would spare me and just let me die. 

Just give me peace.