MIA

Dean doesn’t show up for dinner.

He doesn’t call.

He doesn’t text.

I sit at the bar where he told me to meet him, where he told me we would finally get everything out in the open. I wait for a full hour, thinking he got caught in rush hour traffic, and then I text him to try and figure out where he is.

MIA: Hey. Are you still coming?

DEAN:  No. I changed my mind. I still need a little more time.

MIA: When were you planning to tell me that? I’ve been waiting here for an hour.

DEAN: My apologies. Maybe we can do this another day. Not today, though.

MIA: Dean...You do realize this is kind of fucked up, don’t you? What could’ve possibly happened between last night and today that made you change your mind?

No answer.

I refresh my messages several times and no response comes.

I’m not sure whether to be angry or hurt right now, but I refuse to let him ruin the rest of my night. I leave money on the table for the two drinks I bought while waiting, and decide to go to the bar that’s down the street, the one he took me to before, where the bartender knew how to make my drinks a lot lighter.

I don’t even mind that it’s storming outside as I walk down the street. I’ve become quite accustomed to the rain here, and no one who lives here ever seems to be surprised by people who enter buildings in wet clothes.

As soon as I make it to the bar, the hostess greets me with a small dry towel and asks where I would prefer to sit. The words “the bar” are on the tip of my lips, but they don’t come out because my heart is dropping to the floor.

What the fuck...

I stand still in the doorway, staring at Dean from afar. He’s sitting with someone else and she’s obviously flirting with him. I can’t tell if he’s flirting back, but he’s definitely not putting off her advances.

His gaze remains on her for several minutes and my heart breaks a bit more, with each one that passes.

Trying to remain calm, I pull out my phone and send him a text.

MIA: Where are you right now?

I watch as he pulls his phone out of his pocket, as he holds it in front of his face to read my message. Instead of typing back a response, he stares at the message, looking confused. Then he puts the phone back into his pocket and he orders another drink.

My heart drops lower than I’ve ever felt it, and I can’t force myself to walk out of the bar at all. I march past the hostess and straight over to him.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I say, stepping between him and whoever this woman is. “Are you fucking kidding me right now, Dean?”

He tosses back a shot, unfazed.

“You had me waiting for you!” I can feel hot tears falling down my face. “I was waiting for you right down the street and this is where you were the whole time? With someone else?”

“Mia—”

“Don’t you fucking ‘Mia’ me.” My chest heaves up and down. “You told me we were going to talk today, you picked the time and place. YOU, not me, and instead of showing up to face whatever bullshit issue you ‘think’ I did to you ten years ago, you’re still acting like a goddamn coward. Just admit you’re a goddamn coward.”

“I’m not a goddamn coward.” He slams his glass down onto the bar, shattering it to pieces, and I can feel the eyes of everyone in that bar staring at us.

The two of us are glaring at each other, refusing to blink, refusing to be the first to back down.

I open my mouth to shout at him again, to berate him for pulling the exact same shit he pulled ten years ago, but he grabs my hand and pulls me outside before I can get a word out.

He tightens his grip on my hand and tugs me down past a few businesses, stopping once we’re in the doorway of an abandoned storefront. With his eyes bloodshot red and his face tightened in an undeniable expression of rage, he looks me square in the eyes.

“What the fuck is your problem, Mia?” he bellows. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Is this how you still deal with things when life doesn’t go your way? When someone tries to understand you?” I couldn’t care less how angry he is. “You just decide to move on to someone else?”

“You have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. No fucking idea, you’re just jumping to your usual dumbass conclusions!”

“Who is she?” I push him away from me. “Who is she!”

He steps back and glares at me, seemingly trying to calm down.

I don’t give him the chance. “I want an answer, and I want it now.”

“Of course, you do.” He hisses. “You want everything done your way, on your time, and you still don’t give a fuck about anyone’s feelings outside of your own.” He moves closer to me again, so close that we’re chest to chest. “You still haven’t changed one fucking bit in that aspect, and that, THAT is why I didn’t want to talk to you today.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Is it?” His voice is even louder. “Is it, Mia? Or does everything you can’t control, somehow always seem to fall under that category?”

“Who is the woman in the bar, Dean?” I feel a lump rising up my throat. “Who the fuck is she?”

“She’s a friend,” he says. “One who actually knows how to let shit go.”

“You were never going to talk to me about what happened to us, were you? You were never going to—”

“It’s because you were so fucking selfish, Mia!” His skin turns a deeper shade of red. “You were so fucking selfish and you couldn’t even see it. Even now, you’re still running around playing like you’re some type of victim.”

“You hurt me, Dean...” I say, my voice cracking more than ever. “I was the victim.”

“No, but you’d get a goddamn Oscar if that ever was a category.” Hurt is in his eyes again, but his tone is all anger. “I was trying to move past your bullshit. I’ve been trying to let everything that happened go, by making up for the stuff that I did cause, but it’ll never be enough for you, will it? You’d rather hurt someone else in the process of trying to make yourself feel better, right?”

“Do you hear yourself right now? Do I need to list the ways that you hurt me? Is this your backwards attempt at trying to place all the blame with me?”

“Mia—”

“Fuck. You.” My heart aches. “Fuck you, Dean. I’m not going to stand here and let you vilify me over something I’ve been trying to understand ever since I got here. If you don’t want to tell me, fine. If you want to go the rest of your life, living in some type of world where people don’t address their issues, fine. And if you want to continue hurting the person who has loved you for the past ten years, even when I didn’t want to, that’s fine, too. But you’ll be doing that shit alone.”

“So tell me. Tell me right now...” I’m bawling and I know my words are coming out partially warbled, but I don’t care. “What’s it going to be? You can either tell me what the fuck happened between us right now, so we can try to get past it, or we can be done forever and I will never, ever come back to you, or speak to you again.”

“What’s it going to be?” I ask again, feeling the rain falling against us even harder.

He stares at me, jaw still clenched, but he slowly steps back. “It’s not going to be anything. We can be done forever, as far as I’m concerned.”

His words hurt, and my heart doesn’t want to accept them, but my mind will be playing life-director from here on out.

“I’ll never say another word to you again,” I say, and I quickly walk off, not giving him a chance to have the last word. I rush back to where I parked Eric’s car and shut myself inside, breaking down behind the steering wheel.

I now have no excuse for moving on from him, and I’m humiliated that life has had to teach me the same lesson twice. That I’ll have to call Autumn in the morning and tell her that I was dumb enough to fall for the same exact tricks, ten years later.