Mia Like Crazy (25 page)

“Mmm, that sounds like one of your better impulses. Can we do that next time?”

He didn’t answer, and I thought I knew why. “You don’t have to be so careful,” I said. “You won’t break me.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“It’s perfectly normal to have passionate impulses toward someone you love, and it’s okay to act on them.”

“For normal people maybe,” he argued. When he saw my perturbed look, he continued, “It’s like all these strong emotions are roaming around inside me, mixed up together. I’m afraid if I let one of them loose, the others might come rushing out with it.”

“You know, everyone gets angry. Everyone feels jealousy, lust, love, hatred. You’re not your father. In fact, you weren’t even related to that man. You can handle it.”

“I hope so, Mia. I really hope so.” He pressed our palms together as if comparing the sizes of our hands.

“Drew?” This felt like the right time to ask what I’d been wondering since I met with Dr. Schultz.

“Yeah?” His gaze left our hands, and he gave me his full attention.

“Would you ever have told me you didn’t rape that girl?”

He didn’t seem surprised by the question. “Yeah, I had already planned to tell you.”

“What was stopping you?”

“Well, the shrink says I was testing you, to see if you’d love me no matter what.”

“Drew?”

“Yeah?”

I laced my fingers through his. “I love you, no matter what.”

He kissed me on the forehead and whispered, “I love you, too.”

For the first night since we were married, four months before, I fell asleep in my husband’s arms.

Chapter Fifteen

I was startled awake. It took a few moments for the fog to clear so I could understand what was happening. I heard Drew next to me mumbling, “No…no…” and realized he was still asleep.

As I pushed myself up on the bed to a seated position, straining to see him better in the dark room, his head thrashed from side to side.

He sounded frightened. As his voice grew louder, I couldn’t bear for him to be in such misery, even in his dreams. I reached toward him, and touched my hand to his face, caressing his cheek.

“It’s all right, Drew—” I began, intending to awaken him gently.

I found myself airborne, landing with a painful thud on the bedroom floor. I was aware of his voice yelling, “Don’t touch me!”

“Drew!” I shouted his name, and the lamp by the bed came on.

“Mia?” he exclaimed when he found me on the floor. “Did I do this?” He helped me back onto the bed.

I didn’t answer, but I could see he already knew.

“Do you need a doctor?” He examined my naked body for signs of injury.

“No. I’m fine. It was my fault, I should have known better than to put my hands on a person who was having a nightmare.”

“You mean you should have known better than to touch
me
,” he replied, the anguish obvious in his voice.

“It could have happened to anyone.”

“Anyone that was sleeping next to me.” He stood up and started getting dressed.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s not safe for us to sleep like that…together.”

I was suddenly panic-stricken, thinking I was about to watch all my hard work walk out on me. “This kind of thing happens all the time, Drew,” I insisted. “That’s why they tell people not to wake sleepwalkers.” I thought I still sounded logical, despite my distress.

“It’s not going to happen to
you
again,” he replied. “Go back to sleep. I’m going to be on the couch.”

I got up on my knees in the middle of the bed. “No!” He couldn’t walk out on me now.

Drew had his hand on the doorknob. He paused and turned toward me, as calm and determined as I was desperate. “You could have been hurt tonight. I could have killed you.” He opened the door and started out.

“I’ll die this
way!” I yelled, knowing how melodramatic I sounded, but feeling certain what I said was true.

“You won’t die.” His voice was cold and flat as he called from the hallway. “You’re not
a baby monkey.”

I sank down into the bed feeling utterly defeated.

~

The next morning, I awoke alone in Drew’s bed, a sense of sadness settling over me before I opened my eyes.

The night before, I’d believed we’d experienced a breakthrough. Even though I knew he was still keeping himself under tight control, the fact was we had made love and afterward I’d been able to caress him and hold him to my heart’s content.

It was a wonderful, nearly perfect night, yet now I felt as though we were right back where we started. The thought of spending every night alone in my bed or his was so dismal I didn’t even want to try to imagine it.

He was my husband now in every sense of the word and I wanted to sleep in his arms. Would he retreat the way he did after the incident with the police and refuse to make love to me again?

After the closeness we’d experienced, the idea of leaving him now, or even in a few months, was unthinkable, but the future was looking more and more like a permanent state of semi-marital limbo. I wanted to pull the covers over my head and stay in bed forever.

As I lay there feeling helpless, I thought about the old Mia. No matter what was going on in my life when I was a child, I got myself out of bed and went to school.

When my parents’ party-animal friends were playing music and talking loudly into the night, I put myself to bed. When my mother was too messed up in the morning to even know it was morning, I poured myself a bowl of cereal—sometimes without milk, since my mom often forgot to go to the store—put on my clothes, and walked myself to the bus stop. When I came home from school, I told myself to do my homework.

I had always been “Never Say Die Mia Medina.” Not once in my life had I ever considered just sleeping in.

But the new Mia was out of ambition, out of ideas, out of energy, and nearly out of hope. I had always been irritated when I heard about people who were depressed. I’d been sure, if they would just get themselves up, make themselves presentable, and
do something
, they’d snap out of it. Now, I’d become one of them. I rolled over and let the bed swallow me up.

Sometime later, I awoke again. I lifted my heavy eyelids and peered at the clock through the sleep fog. It was nine-thirty. So this was what it was like to be in perfectly good health and still in bed at nine-thirty—with no desire to ever get up. I covered my head again.

There was a tap at the door. I ignored it. I heard Drew’s muffled voice. “Mia, are you okay?”

When I didn’t answer, the door opened and I heard his footsteps. I could sense him standing over me.

“Mia? Are you hurt?” He pulled the covers away from me. I knew from the look on his face he was still worried he had caused some damage the night before.

That just annoyed me. “No.”

“Do you have a headache? I brought that medicine—” He showed me the bottle in his hand.

“No, I don’t have a headache!”

“I’m…sorry I hurt you last night,” he said. “I’m going to call the doctor.”

I was so irritated, I was thinking up new words for his idiocy:
densosity, densationalism, densomania…
He picked up the phone from the nightstand.

“Drew,” I said with complete exasperation. “I wasn’t hurt last night! I’ve had worse injuries from getting my high heel stuck in a sidewalk crack!”

He hung up the phone and sat down on the bed. “So you’re mad at me, then?” he asked as innocently as a small boy.

I rolled over toward him and pushed the hair out of my face. “No, I’m not mad at you,” was all I could think to say. I already knew my kick ass lawyer skills were of no use whatsoever with Drew.

He stared at me for a long moment. When he spoke again, he was very serious. “Mia, you’re scaring me.”

“You’re not the only one who’s scared
.
” My voice came out much louder than his as I searched around for my underwear in the bed. He went to the drawer and got me one of his pajama tops. “I’m scared, too, Drew.”

“I’m sorry. I should have known better than to sleep in the same—”

“Stop it! Quit apologizing! I’m not afraid of your nightmares or
g
etting knocked off the bed.
I’m afraid of sleeping alone every night. I’m afraid you’ll always be forcing yourself to touch me. I’m afraid of being treated like some piece of china that you look at, but you never really eat off of.”

“But you don’t actually want me to eat off of you?” He was being purposely obtuse now and I knew it.

Angry, frustrated tears formed in my eyes. I was so tired of crying over Drew. “Maybe this is all funny to you, but—my God, you’ve turned me into a blubbering, overdramatic idiot!”

Having finished buttoning the nightshirt, I jumped off the bed, intending to storm out. As I passed the dresser, I stopped short. On it, was a tray with a plate of scrambled eggs, pancakes, tea, and a small piece of chocolate candy.

“You made me my favorite pancakes!” I exclaimed, as I burst into sobs. Since I quickly covered my face with my hands, I was surprised to feel his arms enclose me. I threw mine around his neck and hung on for dear life as I cried and cried.

When I was all cried out, Drew went into his bathroom and got a wet wash cloth for my face. This small act of kindness almost caused me to dissolve into tears again, but instead I sat down on the bed, and he placed the tray in front of me. He sat next to me, fully clothed of course, and gazed at me silently as I ate, until it made me self-conscious.

Finally, in a soft voice, he said, “I really like you like this.”

“You mean, an emotional wreck with puffy eyes and a stuffy nose?”

“Yeah,” he said, absent-mindedly. “Well, no. I don’t want you to be unhappy. I just like seeing you here in my bed with your hair messed up, wearing my pajama shirt.”

“That’s a pretty weird thing for a control freak to say,” I replied. “Would you like me to mess your room up for you while I’m in here?”

“You can do
anything
you want
,”
he answered with total sincerity. He wove
his fingers through those of my
left hand and raised them to his mouth for a chaste kiss. I was reminded of the first time he had offered me anything I wanted, and thought about how hard he’d tried to fulfill his promise to me. With all his imperfections, Drew treated me like I was valuable, as though I deserved anything he could give me.

I had been holding the piece of candy in my right hand, but his romantic gesture caused me to forget about it. When I popped it into my mouth, I realized I had held it too long, and the chocolate had melted.

I reached for the napkin, but he intercepted my hand and brought my fingers to his mouth. As he sucked the chocolate off them, one by one, I knew it was my turn to melt. I gazed into his eyes. “I thought you didn’t like chocolate.”

“Only when you’re wearing it.”

I was already mentally undressing him. I wanted to make a move, but was hampered by the breakfast tray. But he looked down at his watch and said, “I lost track of time. We’ve got to go.”

“Where?”