Fear of Falling

Cole and, as much as I hated to admit it, the know-it-all bitch was right. My fears had become irrational. I was collecting them like coins or stamps. Like tiny paper stars. Like shot glasses from all over the world.
    My body and mind weren’t the only things that were on the mend. My mother had made the trip from The Philippines to help with my care after I was released from the hospital. We talked. We screamed. We cried. And I finally told her everything that had been festering inside me like a disease.
    My mother had lived through the unthinkable. She had been beaten and tormented beyond anything I could ever imagine. He took everything from her, leaving nothing but the hollow carcass of a woman. And, being birthed into a traditional Asian family that didn’t believe in counseling or exposing dark family secrets, my mother never got the help she needed. Therapy was taboo. Talking about your problems with loved ones, let alone a stranger, just wasn’t the norm for them.
    My mom never got a chance to heal. She didn’t have a Dom or an Angel. She didn’t even have a Blaine. But she had me. And together, we would fix what had been broken between us. It would take time, and probably enough tears to fill the Grand Canyon, but we would get through it. She was my mother. She was me . Repairing our relationship was helping me come to grips with what had happened to me. What happened to us .
    I looked over at the guitar sitting on its stand in the corner of my room. I hadn’t touched it since…since before the attack. Since Blaine. When I let him go, I let go of music. I said goodbye to the one thing that made me feel whole. That made me fearless.
    Music made me remember, and I needed to forget. It was damn hard. Shit, it was impossible. But it was getting easier to breathe everyday. I could think about him without breaking into a million pieces, sobbing so hard that my chest ached. I’d even been able to say his name aloud. And when Angel would update me on AngelDust’s weekend shows at Dive, she didn’t have to omit him from the story. Shit, he wasn’t Voldemort. Still, I insisted they keep all Blaine-related news to a minimum.
    I missed him. Missed him like hell. But this was better for him. He deserved a healthy, loving relationship. One where the girl worshipped the ground he walked on and showered him with affection. Someone who didn’t break down when fear swallowed her whole. Blaine deserved normal, and I was far from that. And that was ok. I had come to grips with that fact. I could want the best for him and know that it wasn’t me, and still manage to be happy for him. Eventually.
    That was the noble thing to believe. But loving someone, yet knowing that you could never be with them, doesn’t make them any easier to forget. If anything, it just made you want them more.
    You see, the heart was a stubborn, selfish bastard. It didn’t let go easily. It never did what the brain commanded, no matter how badly you tried to push it into detachment. It kept on feeling just like it kept on beating. And the more you tried to deny it of what it wanted, the more it pined for that forbidden piece of fruit, the stronger the craving grew. So while it became less painful to accept that Blaine and I could never be, it felt like my heart would explode every time I thought of his playful smile. Or remembered the way he smelled. Or daydreamed about the feel of his bare skin against mine.
    I didn’t let myself wonder if he missed me too. I wasn’t a total glutton for punishment. I knew Blaine wouldn’t stay single for long. It had been months. Months without any contact whatsoever. He never tried to see me after I dismissed him at the hospital. No phone call, not even a text. He was done with me, and I should have been satisfied with that result. I had been right all along. I told him I wasn’t the girl he was looking for. I just hate that I had let myself try to be.
    I’d probably always love Blaine Jacobs. But I also loved him enough to let him go.
    “Hey Kam?”
    I looked up from the piece of paper I had been mindlessly folding into a crane. In the past few months, my collection had tripled in size. Luckily, Dom had suggested I donate most of the pieces to the center where he worked. The kids loved them so much that he arranged a special origami class once a week. Of course, it took many hours of begging to persuade me to do it, but after I saw how much those children enjoyed it, I was sold. Many of them were