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S E V E N
You can still be mad at me all you want. You can hate me until the day I die, but please come back home, Aggs. Please.
Evan's words from our conversation earlier kept replaying in my head as I put away the dishes he helped me clean after we had breakfast together, just like old times.
My gaze wandered towards the living room where Maia and Evan's laughter could be heard while they played with all the toys the little troublemaker managed to get out of her toy box.
If I closed my eyes and concentrated hard enough, everything would feel like nothing had changed after all these months away from each other, but the reminders of the endless nights I spent alone curled up in bed, crying myself to sleep, were painful enough to make it known that nothing was okay and perhaps it will never be. Something in the pit of my stomach told me that I had lost the love of my life.
Yet, I knew I couldn't run forever.
Sooner or later, I had to go back and face what made me run away. The only thing stopping me was that I wasn't entirely sure if I was mentally ready to see the person that broke me and who I also happened to still be in love with almost every day. Seeing Evan with Taylor would be a constant and painful reminder of how I'm not meant to be happy, and I couldn't deal with that right now or perhaps even ever.
I have spent most of my life moving from place to place following my parents around the world, never knowing what a permanent home was or even felt like.
I grew up with the belief that nothing was permanent. To me, every country and city I was forced to live in was just another brief stop. After a couple of moves, I stopped trying to make friends or become too attached to anything because I knew that eventually, I would have to say goodbye and start all over again somewhere new.
That belief changed entirely once I moved to California.
When I had no other option but to move to Los Angeles, I only saw it as another temporary place where my time was limited, a place I was forced to move to. Another place to leave my past and monsters behind, but slowly everyone that surrounded me every day at work and the people I temporarily shared a roof with showed me what a real home was meant to feel like for the first time.
Home is where the people you love are, and even though I have people I love here in Texas, my real home was back in California. As cliché as it sounded, my entire heart was there. I could go anywhere I wanted to escape, but it would never feel like home.
Being away from my dad, the 118, Theo, and Daisy has been one of the hardest parts of moving to Texas. I have tried extremely hard to settle in this city with Marjan, TK, and even a therapist's help, but no matter what I do or don't do, this place has never felt like home to me in all the months I've been living here. I haven't felt like I've belonged here, not even once.
