AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The intimate details of my life with Mia are contained in this journal.
A love letter to me and me alone.
“Yes,” I answer, hearing Jack’s empathetic sigh.
I learned a long time ago that not asking for help was just bravery wrapped up in stupidity. I needed Jack in the same way I needed to breathe. The three of us, myself, Jack, and Mia, had always been intertwined like the branches of a bramble. It may have looked ugly to those on the outside but being wrapped up with the intimate knowledge of each other from the inside, was a thing of untamed beauty.
No one ever said beauty was without thorns. Just pick up a single rose and you’ll feel it’s cruel sting. Just because it hurts doesn’t mean you should deny yourself the knowledge of its scent because never knowing that is the real cruelty.
It wasn’t until I met Sasha that I realized how much of Mia I carried around with me. The mural on the wall of the record store, the journal tucked away, and the shitty bass guitar that deserves to be played but instead sits in my loft next to my bed like a fucking guard dog.
Fate has a way of fucking with me and Sasha was the greatest curveball of my life in more ways than one. I didn’t want to fall in love with her. In fact, I was determined not to, but she danced her way into my heart with her pink glittered Converse, and the taste of peppermint that I will never be able to savor again without thinking of her.
And then I had to fuck it all up.
Without hesitation, I toss the journal into the center of the fire. Jack flinches but we both stare, unmoving, watching as the flames wrap themselves around the faux leather and slowly consume it.
Some secrets should be left buried but some refuse to be.
This one in particular goes by the name of Peter Hayes.
1
I WAIT
SASHA
Burning House by Cam
The camera is a liberator of sorts, in the way it can free you of something you wouldn’t otherwise be willing to give so easily. People tend to carefully erect walls or slip on masks because they are afraid to show their true selves. But you can’t conceal yourself from the lens of a camera because its sole purpose is to find what you’re hiding underneath.
I have thousands of pictures I’ve taken throughout the last twenty-three years of my life, but the one that holds me captive the most is one I didn’t even take.
But I know who did.
My father.
Only I don’t know who he is.
I hold in my hand the faded Polaroid taken of my mother, and I can tell just as much about the person taking the picture as I can about the person in the picture. The camera is a two way mirror, and it takes just as much as it gives.
That is how I know who took the picture.
It was taken by someone in love with her.
My mother had a thing for brown eyed, tattooed musicians, and it’s what cost her everything. I can only guess that my father had brown eyes because my mother’s were blue. A piece of genetic code I inherited from someone I don’t even know. When I look in the mirror I see pieces of her, like our blonde hair the color of wheat and our high cheekbones, but not the eyes. It’s like looking back at a stranger.
I tuck the picture back in its box, along with a few other trinkets of hers, and slip it under my bed. Just like my mother, I was pulled under by the illusion of love, blinded by those brown eyes and tattooed forearms of a man that knew how to handle a guitar - among other things. He was a musician, but not a very good one, although I loved to watch him play… that is until he spent all our rent money and fucked my best friend.
All things happen for a reason, but what happened means I’m back home with no money and a broken heart.
As I stare at the four walls of my bedroom that was once occupied by my mother, I find comfort in the fact that she had laid on this bed, propped her feet on the same wall, and got lost for hours listening to music. Today, I don’t have that luxury.
Before I head out the back door, I slip on my tall black boots. When I walk towards the pasture, I know that I am walking on the same dirt path my mother once had.
I stop halfway to the barn and prop a booted foot on the first rung of the worn wooden fence. Morning dew still clings to the grass that stretches to a line of maple and oak trees in the distance. Beyond that is Temescal Canyon Park, and one of the main advantages of living in Pacific Palisades. It’s a place where the mountains meet the ocean, quite literally. Its salty scent is carried on the breeze.
A few horses leisurely swish their tails as they look up to acknowledge my presence. One horse in particular ignores me. He stands imposing in the distance, pawing at the ground, trying his hardest not to look my way.
