Saving Moxie

Never Leave

A wise person said, 'time heals all wounds', but I don't agree. For me, the wounds would always remain. Eventually, I may be able to forget the details and it will all heal over like my physical scars, but it will never be truly gone.

Dax had taken everything from me: my home, my love, my voice. He made me powerless. But he was gone now, hopefully forever after my testimony, and I was safe. I wasn't powerless anymore. Now, I had the freedom to be whoever I wanted and nothing could stop me from my dreams of a boring life.

My release from the hospital took days before they could clear me well enough to go home. Jamie had made himself scarce, only sitting outside my hospital room and occasionally peeking his head in to check on me when he thought I was sleeping or Roxie left to call the funeral home or her fiancé. I hadn't met the famous Todd yet, but my sister always came back with a giddy smile in her face after a call to him, so I guessed he must be a pretty decent guy.

We discussed her wedding as if we never had been apart for nearly a decade. It felt nice to know that she didn't judge me for everything that had happened and respected me enough not to talk about Jamie with me, though I wasn't sure if I deserved her respect.

Damian came to visit me a couple of times to give me updates on when I would need to meet with the prosecutor to go over my testimony. He's promised that my time on the stand would be brief and since I was so willing to comply with what they were asking me to do, the judge had agreed to give me full immunity with only a year of probation. So long as I kept my nose clean and did a couple hundred hours of community service, I would be free to live in my own house and keep my job and be a free woman. Dax was looking at life in prison with no hope for parole and his thugs were coming forward in spades to provide testimonies of their own with the hopes of their own immunity deal.

By the time I was ready to leave the hospital, Roxie had politely informed me that Jamie would no longer be living in the studio above the garage. It shattered my heart and I had asked her to tell him that he could stay, that it would be nice to have someone there in case someone tried to come after me now, but she had told me that it was too hard for him to stay.

"You'll have Security until the trial, Moxie. You're safe." She said. I didn't know if it was the fear of retaliation against me for testifying against Dax or if I just knew how much I would miss seeing Jamie every day. I knew it was selfish, wanting him to stick around after I telling him that I didn't want to be with him.

The house was empty when we got back and everything was still where I had left it before going back to Jack. I almost expected to see Jamie in the kitchen cooking dinner, but as an afterthought, I remembered why he wasn't there. I knew I had made a mistake, but I was too proud to admit it to anyone other than Jen.

Of course, Jen immediately told me I should just go to him, to beg forgiveness, but I knew that was even more selfish. How many times could I break Jamie's heart and expect him to come back to me?

He deserves better.

Everyone wanted answers I wasn't ready to give. 'What happened to you?' and 'why do you seem so different?' were among the list of questions. While some people respected boundaries and just gave me sad smiles and dropped off casseroles to my door, Roxie didn't mind asking me the tougher questions. I couldn't blame her - I had been plagued by nightmares since the hospital and most nights, I woke up screaming and crying. I had never cried so much in my life, which disturbed my sister. So many cameras would be on me for the next few weeks; questions firing from every reporter in the area about what happened and why. I knew that my face would be plastered all over the local papers and news channels. Thousands of people would see my face and be thinking the same thing:

Victim.

One night, I heard my sister sobbing on the phone to someone after I woke up screaming and she consoled me back to sleep. I thought at first that maybe it was Todd, but quickly realized she was talking to Jamie. I had padded across the hall to her room and sat on the floor as I eavesdropped on her side of the conversation.

"I don't think I can help her, Jame. She cries every night and barely eats. Can't you just-" She sighed. "I know, I know. I'm just not cut out for this."

The next morning, the morning of the funeral, I asked her to go back home.

"I'll be fine, Roxie. You should be with Todd. Like you said, I have cops all around the house until the trial."

She had fought me, of course. Ever the dutiful older sister that she was, she didn't want me to be alone in the big yellow house. I reminded her that I was never truly alone and that I could actually have a social life now that I was free. Finally, she agreed, but I thought it was probably because her wedding was in less than a month and she made me swear I would be there.

"Or I'll send the hounds out after you!" She swore. I believed her.

I didn't cry at Jack's funeral. I didn't cry even when I stood watching my father being lowered into ground. I couldn't help but feel that this was my own funeral in a way - burying the life I had before along with Jack's body. I had to remind my sister over and over again that a beautiful expensive funeral didn't mean our father wouldn't go to hell. While she didn't laugh, she also didn't disagree.

After the service, everyone was eating, talking softly, glancing at me, hugging me, eating more, and avoiding me. It was as if someone had turned the volume down in the room just enough that I couldn't hear the people's voices around me. Everything looked normal, but the sound was muted.

Jamie didn't show. He didn't show up for the funeral or the dinner afterward, which bothered me more than I wanted to admit. Roxie told me she had seen him during the speeches, but I had a feeling she was lying.

The month went by in a blur. I had met with the attorneys a few times in the past few weeks, but it felt like they were saying the same things over and over again.

I noticed that the nightmares had improved and I was actually beginning to put some weight on and it looked good on me. I still was below the weight I had been at when I had been with Jamie, but it was a work in progress. The casseroles from the neighbors and the local church had gotten me through the few the first few weeks, which was good considering that I had spent more time in bed the first few weeks than I would ever admit to my sister or anyone else. I was slowly starting to get back to work - on the record this time. Jen was beginning to actually teach me how to do tattoo work and while it was still just practice on bananas and faux skin slabs, it felt like I was actually working in the direction for my future career. She joked that maybe we would be business partners one day, but I reminded her that I'd had my fill of business partnerships for at least the next decade.

We both laughed at the weirdness of the situation.

Things were getting to a point of new normal.

Roxie called me at least twice a week after she flew back home to check in on me. She had brought up the idea of moving closer to me once the wedding was over, but I couldn't tell if she was just saying it to make me feel less alone or if she truly did want to try and get our relationship back on track and have the sister relationship we both craved. Usually we just traded crock pot dinner ideas or talked about the wedding. It all felt nice, normal, but not quite the way I expected my life to begin. Once, we even had a full conversation about Jamie and how much I missed him. The chat ended with both of us in tears, but I felt it made us closer.

I had jumped on a plane the day before the wedding, bringing Jen as my plus one. I knew if I had to go through the airport and make it through the whole wedding full of strangers in a new place without a friend by my side, it would end in disaster.

I had tried to call Jamie before we boarded the plane to ask if he would be attending the wedding, but he didn't answer. I left him a voicemail asking if we could talk.

"Can you zip me up?" Roxie asked as we all shimmied into our dresses before the big event. We had gone through hair and makeup for hours to look just so for Roxie's big day and I could tell she was a mess of anxiety.

My sister looked at me with tears in her eyes and a smile of pure joy. She saw me, the real me, not the broken girl that Jamie saw, or the rebel the world used to see. Roxie saw me as I want to be: a sister; not broken, not a victim, not a monster. Today, we were just sisters. We used to tell each other every secret, every thought. Today, even though we didn't share the secrets of the past ten years, everything was known. A silent understanding passed between us as I zipped the back of her dress.

"You look awesome, bitch." I chirped happily as she spun around to show off her shiny white dress. While I wasn't entirely thrilled to be wearing a yellow dress, I wouldn't do anything to ruin my sister's special day.

The ceremony was beautiful.

Honestly, I had never been invited to many weddings in the past, especially since the last one I had been to started a rumor that I had slept with the groom. I felt painfully normal now that I could set through a full wedding without being drunk or needing to be wild to protect my reputation.

Unfortunately, after the ceremony, my plan of having a support system had crumbled as I held Jen's hair back while she puked in the church bathroom. She swore she was completely sober and that she must have just caught a bug from the airport, but it wasn't the first time this week that I had held her hair back while she emptied the contents of her stomach into the toilet. At first, I had been worried that she had the flu, but she didn't seem to be getting any better. The last time she puked like this, she felt fine afterward, but tonight she still felt sick. I had offered to join her in the hotel room, but she said I should go to the reception without her.

Now, I was regretting it. Sitting at the table by myself after eating salmon and hearing complete strangers toast my sister and new brother-in-law's love, the idea of sitting around much longer didn't sound like a fun time. Roxie had so much going on as she tried to entertain everyone and be the perfect bride that I couldn't ask her to help keep me company. This was her day.

"I thought you hated parties. For the record." Jamie'a voice came from behind me, throwing my world upside down.

"If I'm not drinking, is it considered a party?" I asked slowly, turning to take him in. His beautiful face broke my heart all over again. He wore a formal tux that looked like it had been designed just for him and his curls flopped over his forehead in the way I loved. The butterflies in my stomach were undeniable.

"I tried to call you back. I thought it was weird that you didn't answer since you said you wanted to talk." The way he rubbed his neck made me remember when we were both awkward teenagers, unsure of where we stood with each other.

"Jamie.."

"I just want to say one thing and if you don't like it, you don't have to see me ever again. Okay?"

"That sounds fair." I said slowly.

"Moxie... I've loved you since you were ten years old. I still love you. I will always love you." He began, though when I opened my mouth to speak, Jamie brought his finger to his lips to silence me. "You need to hear this. I deserve this."

I nodded. "Sorry. Not my turn. Got it."

He cleared his throat, as if the words were hard to say. "You left me not just once, but three times. It's hard to believe that you won't leave me again. I don't know if you even want to be with me, but I want you to understand where my head is at." He swirled his cup of brown liquid that I hadn't realized he was holding, as if he were working up the courage to speak again. "Do you even want to be with me?"

"Yes." It wasn't a question, there was no wavering in my tone. From the moment I left the hospital, all I wanted was to come home to Jamie. "I want to come home to you every night and wake up to you every day. I want to cream you at scrabble on a regular basis. I want you to hold me and tell me you'll keep me safe and make each other eggs for breakfast when we fight." I smiled slightly, remembering.

"What made you change your mind? I thought it was too hard."

"I realized that I do deserve you."

The silence stretched between us for a long time while the music pumped from the dance floor behind us.

"I don't want to be standing at the end of an isle on our wedding day and hear that you took off because things got too serious. I don't want to have kids and wake up to find out that you took off because things got hard." He sighed, taking my hand and I didn't pull it away. The warmth spread through my limbs and made my heart feel full. "If you even want kids, I don't know."

"We can figure it all out together." I said softly. "I want a normal, boring life with you. I'm tired of running away."

"That's all I needed to hear."

He kissed me then, a fire starting between us that I knew couldn't be extinguished. I groaned, not caring who could hear me, reveling in the feeling of his lips on mine.

"Please don't ever stop kissing me." I said between kisses as he pulled me closer.

"I'll never leave you."