Step one of healing: go to a therapist. Now, that’s a hard one because of the obvious problem—I’m traveling the world. How the hell am I going to drag a therapist around with me? Well, I do exactly that. I hire this guy who’s supposed to be the best of the best. His name is Andrew.
He agreed right away when he saw the big, fat check he’ll be receiving every month for a year.
Having a therapist is something I never wanted to have. If talking to this man, who’s way too happy for his own good, will help me get there faster, then I might as well talk to him for an hour.
I know Trinity is proud of me. I see the way her eyes sparkle after I finish a session. She always rewards me with a blissful kiss and a massage.
She talks to Andrew too. Everything that we say to him is private unless the two of us bring up the topics we share with him. The stubborn part of me doesn’t want to admit this, but having someone to rant to takes weight off my shoulders. It makes me feel lighter and happier. This stuff works, and it’s only been a week.
I tell Elijah and Amelia to talk to him. I see the way they’re different after the shooting. Amelia agrees and talks to him regularly, but Elijah is a different story. He waves me away with a tight smile. I won’t push the guy, but I know it would be good for him, especially since he’s extremely jumpy.
Amelia’s foot is healing slowly. She’s now walking on a boot. She threw those crutches as far as she could when she heard the news.
As for me, I’m doing good. I assumed I would be shaking in my boots when I just thought about going onstage again to perform. I won’t let fears and evilness consume me. When I’m onstage, I hear the roar of the crowd as I strum my guitar; I feel electricity run through my veins. I’m living, and that’s proof.
Now, it’s even better with my girl watching me.
Our team is making sure that we have top-notch security. No one with any weapons will get in. My mind travels to Trinity and her dad. That day left a gap in my heart. The gap just got bigger when I realized I was falling in love with the daughter of the man who had died that day.
I wanted to run, run so fast that people would think I was the Flash. But no matter how hard I tried to move, I stayed rooted in my spot. Trinity pulled me in the first encounter we had. The way she flirted with me without even knowing it. The secret looks she would send my way.
I loved every single moment I spent with her. There was no way I could have let her go after that. I held on to the girl I fell deeply in love with, with both hands because no one could make me feel the way she made me feel.
The more time I spent with her, the more my love grew for her. She started filling that emptiness in me. Every night, I would be wide awake, wondering what I was doing. Why the hell I hadn’t told her about her dad. The genuine answer was, I was afraid to lose her.
So, when she came to me that day, saying I didn’t kill her father, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing or hearing. I stood there with my mouth open, like a damn fish, because after everything I’d kept from her, she still wanted me. She found it in her own heart, which had been through so much damage, to forgive the one guy who’d kept hurting her.
Every day, she amazes me. The way her presence feels like the sun when it finally peeks out of the clouds on a rainy day. Her laugh is the only melody I crave to hear, and seeing how close she is to my siblings makes my heart warm.
I know … who would have thought? Not me, of course.
So, from the days when I thought I was better off dead to all we’ve been through, life really does get better with time. This proves how much I would have missed. I would have never met my rock star. All thegood morningandgood nightkisses would have been given to another guy. I wouldn’t have memorized the way her arms felt around my body. Most importantly, I would have let my thunderstorms win. I wouldn’t have felt the happiness I feel in this moment.
I almost ended my life for a temporary problem. Nobody deserves that pain. So, that’s why I’ve donated a shit-ton of money—with no one knowing—to suicide awareness. I want people like me to get the help they need.
Pain should end no life. Everyone has their story to live out. I hate to think that people’s stories would end early because of sadness and loss of direction.
“I’m almost out of space,” Trinity mumbles down at her plate, breaking my thoughts.
If someone saw me right now, doing what I’m doing, I would get laughed at. When I’m with Trinity, nothing matters. As long as she’s happy, that’s all I care about. If doing this makes her happy, then so be it.
Speaking of Trinity, the picture I posted on Instagram gained a lot of attention. When I say a lot, I mean, millions of people were invested. Radio stations, news stations, gossip magazines, paparazzi, and fan pages. If it had anything to do with the media, you name it, they were talking about her.
She took the attention well. I told her to delete social media for a while until all the frenzy calmed down. She followed my suggestions after all her classmates started texting and calling her.
Harper has been really supportive throughout this. The more she and Trinity talk on the phone around me, the more I like her.
Yet knowing people were trying to use her to get to me pissed me off.
As for the hate, it came. Comments about Trinity’s body and how she was a gold digger popped up frequently. My blood boiled as I read every comment. It looks like the comments affected me more than it did her. She just brushed off the comments with a smile on her face.
My girl, so strong. I couldn’t be prouder of her.
“I’m all filled up,” I reply to her. My fingers close the marker in my hand as I eye the plate in my grip.
Trinity and I came out here an hour ago. Andrew told us to write all our frustrations, terrible memories, basically anything that has kept us away from happiness over the past couple of years on a plate. After we write everything down, we’re supposed to smash the plates on the ground. That’s our way of letting everything go after all this time. Smashing something sounds pretty therapeutic.
Closing her own pen, she turns her now-black plate full of letters around in her hand. She eyes it carefully.
