The leather chair squeaked underneath her as she moved, and her sweaty palms kept sliding off the arm rests. A thick silence hung over the room, a thunderstorm waiting to break over her head.
Gia shifted her eyes around the room, trying to look at anything but the woman sitting across from her. She was never good at talking about her problems, and sitting here with this virtual stranger was making the uncomfortableness of the situation that much worse.
She hated therapy, to be honest. It made her feel weak, like she wasn't capable of fixing her own problems. She knew that it was a necessary step, she knew that it could turn out to be very beneficial, but she still felt as if she were giving in.
"Georgia?”
The therpist was older, late fifties if Gia were to guess. Her hair was turning grey and there were soft lines in her face. She seemed nice enough but that didn't ease the tension in the younger girl's stomach.
"Gia, please call me Gia. The only people that call me Georgia are my parents and Justin." She faltered at his name, suddenly remembering why she was sitting in this room.
“Ok, Gia, why don’t you try telling me what’s brought you here.” The woman smiled and Gia wanted to scream.
She had already explained why she was here when she first came in. The initial meeting with another person had determined if she should start therapy and with whom she would be working…she really didn’t want to say it all over again. It made it too real.
“I’m depressed.” She stated simply, the words tasting foreign on her tongue.
She shifted, wondering why in the hell someone would put uncomfortable leather chairs in an office that was supposed to be inviting. They weren’t even that attractive of furniture.
“What’s making you depressed? Did something happen?”
eyed the woman before clearing her throat.“I guess you could say that I have a lot of issues with my family, things that I haven’t allowed myself to deal with until now, and now they’re coming back to bite me in the ass…”
~*~
She was exhausted. After 60 minutes of explaining why she hated herself to a woman that she barely knew, all Gia wanted to do was crawl into a whole and sleep forever.
She sat in her truck in the parking lot of the therapist’s office. She didn’t have too far to drive to her new apartment, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to be alone with herself at the moment. She had too much going through he mind and she didn’t trust her thoughts. That, and her apartment wasn’t anything as close to the home that Justin’s place had become.
Morgan, Justin’s friend, was a great help in finding a place. She was a lot of fun to talk to too. She had a dry sense of humor and it helped keep Gia’s mind off of why she was looking for an apartment.
Eventually they found a nice two bedroom place that was outside of the city so there was a little more peace. It was expensive, but Gia had saved up a lot over the years and she had a steady job tutoring for some wealthy families in the Hills. College does come in handy every once in a while.
It was a beautiful place to live, but it just wasn’t the same. It seemed empty without his presence. No discarded clothing lying around, no empty beverage cans, no random pieces of paper with song lyrics…there was nothing of Justin in this new place, and Gia really didn’t like it.
It was bad, how dependant she was, but she needed something to hold onto if she were going to survive. His memory would have to be enough. He had told her to call whenever she wanted to, but she knew that he was hoping she would separate herself. She needed to do this for him just as much as she needed to do it for herself.
She decided that she was going to make a clean break. Give up that piece of herself because it was better for the both of them. She wasn’t going to call, write, text, e-mail…nothing, not until she was completely over him and everything else she was dealing with.
So in her estimation, she would never speak to him again. The thought alone made her want to cry.It had been almost a month since he had dropped his big “I’m going to Tennessee” bomb on her, and it hadn’t gotten much easier. But she managed. She worked with the kids she taught four days a week, and she had recently picked up a job walking dogs. A strange thing, but she liked their company. In fact, she had gone out and picked up a black lab from the local shelter. She named him Frankie. It was her way of keeping Justin in her life without actually naming the dog JT, or something like that. She liked the character he had played in Alpha Dog, and it was fitting, kind of.
It made for an interesting conversation, to say the least.
Frankie was her new best friend. He was only 4 months old, but the previous owner had gotten the dog for his son and it ended up the poor boy was very allergic. Gia happened to be in the right place at the right time, and now the adorable ball of fluff was hers.
It made it easier to have someone to come home too, even if she had to clean up his accidents because he wasn’t completely house-broken yet. The more she had to do, the less she thought about her situation. It was probably a bad idea to name her new puppy after her ex-boyfriend’s character, but she was still working on the whole “moving on thing.” It was going to take a while.
~*~
Justin checked his phone again, just in case. There were no missed calls and he knew it, but he needed to make sure.
He missed her but he wasn’t about to admit it to anyone. It was so obvious that even his mother was getting annoyed at his vehement denial.
He worried about her, but Morgan had informed him that Georgia was safe and secure in a new apartment and she had even bought herself a new puppy.
He laughed when he found out the dog’s name was Frankie. Leave it to Georgia to name a dog after a weed smoking convict. He thought it was cute, and he wished that he could be there with her to watch the dog grow. She had adored his two Boxers, but she told him she was a Lab girl at heart. He thought about buying her a puppy of her own, but then everything seemed to spin out of control and he didn’t want her to have another living thing to worry about taking care of.
Morgan had told him where she lived, he had begged. He wasn’t quite sure what he wanted the information for, but he just needed to know he could find her if he had to.She hadn’t called at all, and the more time passed the less he hoped. This was what he wanted, right? This was what he had asked for, anyway.
“Baby, are you gonna come in here and eat? I know you’re a big boy now, but even you can’t go without something in your stomach.” His mother’s voice called him back into the present and he stood from his place on the porch steps.
“Coming, Momma.”
He loved his mother, really. She was always there to listen and she gave great advice, but sometimes she was too much for even him to handle.
She had understood why he was back in Tennessee, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Lynn was a woman that believed in keeping promises and not going back on one’s word, and in her eyes Justin was leaving a girl that needed some support.
Lynn had loved Gia from the moment the two met. Lynn had loved all of Justin’s girl friends, but she told him that there was just something special about Gia that made her want to adopt the girl. Lynn explained that Gia had this vulnerability that made you want to sweep her up and protect her, but at the same time the girl would never ask for help unless she absolutely had to. Lynn liked that.
The older woman had been ready for Gia to become part of the family, hell, everyone in the Timberlake/Bomar clan had accepted that Gia was just another one of them. Lynn was really upset to learn that things were over, and she was worried about the young girl being in LA all alone. But she understood why her Justin made the decision he did.
Justin found himself sitting at the counter with a sandwich and a bowl of soup waiting for him
I feel like I should be sick or something. You always used to make this for me when I was little.”
Lynn smiled, “Well, you seemed so down, it just seemed like the right thing to make.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I thought coming here would make this whole thing easier, you know? I figured I could escape and forget about life for a while, but it seems to haunt me more down here.” Justin took a bite of the grilled cheese and almost groaned at the taste. “Mom, this is amazing.”
“Thank you, Darlin’. Have you thought about going back to LA and getting some work done or something? I’m sure there’s lots of things you could do to keep yourself busy.” She started to clean up the dishes that were in the sink and Justin almost laughed. The woman always had to be doing something…he got is ADD from her.
“I would, but I’m afraid that I won’t be able to control myself and I’ll end up tracking her down and making a bigger mess of things.” He finished off the sandwich and started on the soup. He hadn’t realized he was this hungry until he’d sat down and started eating. There was really nothing like home cooking.
“You’re going to run into her eventually.”
“I know, I’m just trying to wait as a long as possible. I want her to be better before I show up in her life again. She needs that from me.” With a loud slurp he finished off the soup and received a dirty look from his mother.
“Who’s son are you? I thought I taught you better manners than that!” and just like that the serious moment was gone and they were both pretending that everything was OK.
