Scarred Cliff

Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Mia

My heart is shattering into a million pieces, or that’s what it feels like. I knew that Poppy had died, Grandma had told me, but she’d been vague about the how of it. Now I get why.

She didn’t want to tell me that Poppy had taken her own life. She knew that I would not have just dropped everything I was doing to come here, but I would have fallen apart, forever broken, if I’d heard it back then. I was in no place to deal with Poppy’s loss, my first big girl crush, my first female lover, I was already in a bad place myself. I don’t know what I would have done, if I would have survived that winter, had I known that she’d taken her own life.

Mal is holding me, and Dylan is holding the both of us, I feel their silent sobs with every breath we take. Now I get why Dylan hadn’t wanted to say anything when we were at the pub, why he’d kept quiet. He knew what would happen if he told me, he knew that this would happen.

It’s hard to imagine Poppy being so unhappy that she’d wanted to stop living, it’s so hard to wrap my head around, when it had always been Poppy who’d been the happy silly one. Both twins, Poppy and Mal, had that silly streak in them, both in a slightly different way, Mal always mischievous while Poppy tended to be the loud and happy one, but they both loved life. They loved life and they loved the people around them, even when things were hard.

It’s like I’m losing her all over again, it’s like I’m losing even more of her than I’d lost before, knowing that the girl I’d loved had been in that much pain, and I hadn’t been there for her. I hadn’t been in a position to be there for her, forever losing that chance.

To think that we share so many important experiences, life-altering experiences, and I never get to talk about it with her, joke about it with her. We never get to compare and contrast our experiences, because I stopped coming here, and now it’s too late, now she’s gone.

Pain settles in my stomach and I just want to disappear for a while.

The last summer I spent here, we had crazy plans for the final summer after Mal, Poppy and I sat for our exams and before we would be off to university. We were supposed to go camping, take a trip along the coast, and live out of our car for weeks on end, all sorts of silly things. We’d reasoned that if we’d be old enough to go to uni, we should be old enough to get to go camping for a couple of weeks, on our own.

Of course, that would mean surviving those final weeks of exams... And that’s where everything went wrong for me...

The most important results I got that summer weren’t from my exams, which I’d aced, but from a pregnancy test, three of them, because I didn’t believe what I saw the first two times.

I got into a huge argument with my parents and they’d told me that I had to work for the summer, because obviously, if I’d been grown up enough to have s*x, then I should be grown up enough to support myself, ourselves, financially...

So, I worked, I worked hard that summer, saved up a lot of money, and even took a year off before going to university so that I wouldn’t be ‘that pregnant girl’. But even after Oliver was born, I couldn’t come here. I was too scared, too messed up, too ashamed of what had happened.

Oliver doesn’t even live with me, or his dad, but he lives with other people because we couldn’t care for him. We wouldn’t have been able to support him, our families were too poor to be able to support us, and we wouldn’t have been able to manage by ourselves, at least not to the level that we wanted Oliver to be able to live. Not like us, we didn’t want him to end up like us. We had to give him a better future, and that choice still hurts so bad, even when we knew that it was the best we could do, for him.

And these guys have no idea, none of them have. They have no clue why I stopped showing up, just out of nowhere, when we had all these plans. To think that we’ve all been suffering in silence, all of us, each in our own way...

My heart breaks even more, because I can’t tell them. I can’t tell them why I wasn’t here, because I’ve been trying really hard to push it away myself...

Because if I think about it too much, I fall apart, every time.

At some point, Dylan made us pizzas and we all ended up on the couch again, eating, but not speaking much, too lost in our own thoughts. I’m staring at a spot on Dylan’s table, when he sits up straight, making both Mal and me look at him.

“My divorce finally came through yesterday.” His voice is rough, and sad. “I got the news late in the afternoon.”

Divorce? What the?!

“Grats. Took long enough,” Mal grumbles, sitting up more and pulling me to his chest, making himself comfortable against me as he chews on a pizza crust.

“I know.” Dylan sighs, then looks my way, not fully facing me, like he’s ashamed or something. “I got married after I finished my bachelor degree. We lived in the next town over, closer to the school I work at. But...” He grimaces. “I wasn’t a good husband.”

Mal lets out an unimpressed sound. “You two didn’t match.”

Dylan smacks his arm, glaring at him. “A guy who can’t commit to anything but his music doesn’t get to pass judgement on relationships with other people.”

Mal shrugs, grabbing another slice of pizza. “Just saying.”

“What went wrong?” I find it hard to believe that Dylan, the guy who always takes care of other people, would be a bad husband to anyone.

He lets out a long breath, grimacing again. “My first year as a teacher wasn’t easy for me, I was overworked and...” He glances at Mal. “Things here, with the guys and Poppy, were also not very good. I got into a bad habit...”

“Alcohol.” Mal’s voice is softer this time, more caring. “It’s why there’s no booze in the house. He doesn’t drink anymore.”

“I’m so sorry.” I reach out to Dylan, who takes my hand and holds it.

“It took me much longer than it should have to admit that everything was falling apart. Even after Poppy’s death, I was trying so hard to keep everything together, to keep everyone together. I had to keep going. In the end, I was kicked out of my house. She’d gotten tired of my arguments, of me never being there for her, of me never being there, period. And she was right about it too.” He squeezes my hand softly. “My parents weren’t happy about me moving back, but together with Tom, and some help from that clutz,” he nods his head at Mal, “we managed to convert the garage.” He lets out a sigh. “Just haven’t been in a mindset to move elsewhere since then.”

Mal lets out a low laugh. “And that’s good, because this is a great place to hide when I’m tired of the band.”

“You mean when the band is tired of you.” Dylan rolls his eyes, glaring at the guy, but it’s in jest. “Honestly, how they haven’t run away from you yet... It’s a miracle.”

Mal laughs again. “They know that I’m the mastermind, they don’t want to leave the mastermind behind.”

I laugh too, surprised by their teasing. “Or they just put up with it because you’re great entertainment for them.”

Mal’s eyes brighten up and he slowly smiles. “I knew that that smile of yours must be hiding somewhere inside.” He reaches out, his eyes going hooded, and slides his fingers over my cheek. “Good to know that you can still smile.”

Heat spreads over my cheeks and I get all hot and bothered on the inside. Fuck... When he looks at me like that, it’s hard not to remember some of the nights we spent together...

Not just with him, but over the years, I had many a sexy night with each of them. We never had penetrative s*x, I managed to not do that until the guy who got me pregnant, but that doesn’t mean that we didn’t do just about anything else you can do with hands, and fingers, and mouths.

Mal sticks out his tongue, showing me exactly what I mean with sexy times as he flashes me his tongue piercing... f*****g hell, how can I think about wanting him to go down on me after everything we just talked about? Of course, he manages to spoil the mood with the next words out of his cursed mouth. “I wonder if there’s something else to eat in here.” He climbs from behind me and wanders off to the kitchen. He moves strangely, like there’s electricity running through him or something.

I look at Dylan, who softly smiles and then pulls me against him instead. “You don’t have to look that sad.” His voice rumbles against my back. “We manage pretty well most of the time. It’s just...”

“It’s soon, isn’t it? The day Poppy died?” I can’t remember the exact date, but I know it’s somewhere around this time of the year.

“Yeah. He gets agitated when it gets close. He always comes back to us around this time, just a little earlier than expected this year.” Dylan plays with his fingers over my arm. “Not much we can do to help him right now.”

I nod, following Mal with my eyes. In comparison to these guys, I’ve had it much easier, so much easier. To think that they kept going, even when everything went wrong, it’s like I gave up too soon, much too soon.

And that thought makes me feel like crap, because this isn’t a competition... Suffering isn’t a competition, but it’s hard to ignore how they’ve been through hell, and in comparison, I’ve just had a bad night or something.