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“Harder! Punch!”T.J. shouted.
My shoulders burned as my fists fired furiously at the pad.
“Three! Two! One! Time!” He lowered the pad while I caught my breath.
“What time is it?” I gasped. “I need to leave here by six-thirty.”
“You’ve got two minutes. Don’t worry. I’ve been keeping my eye on the time.”
“My stomach is in knots.”
“I know. Just breathe.”
“All your words of wisdom, and you just tell me to breathe?”
He grinned. “I have faith in you. You need to have faith in yourself.”
“I’ll be fine once it’s over.”
“Call me when she leaves. We can talk it out.”
I inhaled deeply. “Okay. Here I go.”
“You’ve got this, Curly Sue!” he called as I exited the ring.
I left the gym, and took a quick shower. After I finished getting ready, I paced in my living room, going over everything I planned to say.
Again, my mother arrived promptly at seven o’clock with a knock on the door.
I let her into my apartment, and she took the same seat on the couch as last time. This time, however, I sat next to her, leaving one cushion between us. She sensed the change, and shifted nervously in her seat.
“I just wanted to start by saying I’m sorry about upsetting you last time,” she began.
I held up my hand to stop her. “You don’t have to be sorry. I am sorry for how abruptly I made you leave. I have a habit of shutting down when I feel emotional. I’m working on it, and I will try to do better tonight.”
She swallowed hard, and her eyes were wide. “Okay. Thank you. I understand.”
“You shared a lot with me last time, so now I want to share some things with you. I have been struggling since Dad died, as I’m sure you can imagine. What you don’t know is that I fell in love with someone who helped me put the pieces of my life back together after that.”
“The blonde one that was here the day I came?”
I nodded. “He is a singer in a band. We went to California together in February to meet with a record label that wanted to sign him. It was right after you showed up out of the blue, and that brought back so many demons I had been running from for so long. While I was in Los Angeles, I started drinking… a lot. It just felt so good being drunk. It became something I counted on, something I needed, in order to shut off the constant thoughts inside my head. I craved that allover numb feeling from it.”
I looked into my mother’s brown eyes, and knew that she was not judging me; I knew she understood. She placed her hand on my knee, and though I flinched, I forced myself to allow her to keep it there.
“When I tried to stop drinking, I realized that I couldn’t; or I didn’t want to. So, I left. I came back home, and left Chase behind.”
Claire swiped away a tear that had rolled down her cheek. “Merritt, you need to get help for your drinking. It can get so much worse.”
“I have been working with someone for the past two months. I only made one mistake, and that won’t be happening again. I’m learning to deal with my emotions, and I’m getting stronger every day.”
“That’s good to hear. You’ve always been strong-willed. If you say you’re going to do something, then I know you will. And what about Chase?”
“We tried to make the long distance thing work, but after a while it hit me that he deserved someone better than me. I think I always knew, deep down, but I kept telling myself that I could be better – I could do more, or try harder.” I shrugged. “I broke up with him. We haven’t spoken in weeks.”
She took both of my hands in hers. “Do you love him?”
“I love him more than anything in this world. That’s why I had to let him go.”
