Roxy Muñoz (![]() ![]() @ 2018-12-26 14:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | #november 2017, mila, mila x roxy, roxy |
Who: Mila and Roxy
When: Monday, Nov 27th, late afternoon
Where: Mila’s place
Status: Complete
Roxy felt like her stomach had been in knots for years instead of the week or so it had actually been. After her conversation -- and kiss, which kept cropping up in Roxy’s thoughts and once or twice in her dreams -- with Spence, she’d somehow managed to act mostly normally around Caden. The holiday kind of helped in a weird way, with the distraction of cooking and entertaining Mila and Aaron. She didn’t exactly feel happy on Thanksgiving, but she felt neutral enough that she could fake it. It also helped that the boys got engrossed in football almost immediately after dinner. She hadn’t dared bring anything up to Mila with Caden in the house, but Roxy kept promising herself that she would. She had to.
She’d started making some plans, continually glad that her and Caden’s finances weren’t tangled up together. He couldn't see what she was doing with her money, moving funds out of savings in case she really needed to disappear. Roxy had also driven to Bangor to buy a gun, a small .38 that could fit in her purse, just in case. She didn’t really know how to use it, but she was sure someone could teach her. Spence, probably. Roxy hadn’t packed anything obvious yet, but she had tucked a couple of boxes of stuff from the closet into her trunk.
Monday was never a busy night at the bar, so Roxy wasn’t on the schedule, but Caden was. She knew he would be there late, and she’d spent a lot of the morning at war with herself on whether or not she should run that night. She didn’t feel ready, and yet part of her did. Everything was just so tumultuous inside of her, she didn’t feel like she’d taken a full breath in over a week.
The scheduling at least gave her an opportunity to talk to her best friend privately, so Roxy made her way over to Mila’s place, glad that only her vehicle was in the driveway. She stepped up onto the porch and knocked, shooting a paranoid glance around like Caden could read her mind and appear right behind her at any second.
Mila had just gotten out of the shower, having taken a hike to the tunnel after Aaron left for work and returning home a bit muddy from the trek. She was just tying her damp hair into a ponytail out of her face when someone knocked at the front door. Mila paused in the bathroom, staring at herself in the mirror, her heart tripping in her chest. It wasn't the first time someone knocked at the door when she was home alone. The front door. The bathroom and bedroom doors. No one was ever there. It was her imagination fucking with her again, like the breathing in her ear, and the muffled voice inside her closet. No one is there. She swallowed hard and then forced herself to leave the bathroom and walk down the hall to the front room, and the door.
Holding her breath, Mila peered through the peephole and released a soft noise from her throat when she was Roxy. Relieved, and with shaking hands, Mila unlocked the door and pulled it open for her friend.
"Hey," she greeted with a small smile. "Did we have plans?" God, had she forgotten? It wasn't unusual for Mila to show up at Roxy's, or vice versa, just for the hell of it, but still. Roxy looked a little unnerved herself, so Mila waved her inside quickly.
If there was a weird vibe around Mila -- which seemed to keep happening, off and on -- then it was flying over Roxy’s head today. There was too much else on her mind. “Hey,” she said a little breathlessly as she stepped into the house. Roxy moved out of the way so Mila could shut the door, her hands finding one another in front of her body to start fidgeting and wringing together. “No, uh ... no. But I’m glad you’re home, hi.” Impulsively, she leaned in to give Mila a tight, quick hug. “I need to talk to you about something. Can we sit?”
Mila blinked a bit when Roxy hugged her and she realized belatedly that she ought to hug her back, so Mila did, patting Roxy quickly on the back before releasing her. She motioned to the sofa and walked over to sit down. "It doesn't sound like you have anything good to tell me," she said, watching Roxy closely. "What's wrong?" It was Roxy's demeanor, the tone of her voice. Mila knew she ought to be concerned, and she was trying hard to put the proper expression on her face, but there was a spark of anticipation in her chest, like she was ready to embrace something horrible.
“Well, I dunno,” Roxy muttered as she sat with her best friend. She was hardly looking at Mila’s expression, her nerves clanging too loudly for that. Telling Mila was going to make it all Real, and she was pretty sure Mila was going to fully support her and encourage her to go, but there was still part of Roxy that wasn’t sure if that was what she really really wanted. Fuck. She licked her lips and checked her phone quickly to make sure she hadn’t butt-dialed Caden or something before she put it on the coffee table. “I’m uh ... I’m going to leave Caden.” Roxy met Mila’s eyes, nibbling on the corner of one lip.
Mila's brows shot up in surprise and she stared at Roxy for a moment, feeling the laughter start to bubble up in her throat. She was still mindful enough to resist it, instead releasing a soft sort of strangled noise that didn't sound the least bit humorous. She studied Roxy for a moment, her hands clasped together between her knees. "I kind of wondered if this would happen," Mila said finally, "after Spence moved back. I mean, he's probably not the only reason why but..." She left the question lingering between them, eager to hear Roxy's excuse for such a huge move.
“Of course he’s not the only reason,” Roxy hurried to say, a bit of her stress coming through her tone. She took a sharper breath and swallowed. “There are a million reasons.” And Mila knew the worst of them; unfortunately the worst times left the marks that were hardest to hide. Even if Mila didn’t try to talk to Roxy about each one, she wasn’t oblivious to the knowing looks she’d gotten over the years. From a lot of people, really. As stubborn as she was, she had to admit now that they all had a point. “... but Spence is a part of it, yeah. We’ve uh ... spent a little time together. And I just ... he reminds me of everything I’m missing, and I can’t do this anymore.” Roxy cleared her throat, her eyes a little watery as she looked around the room.
"Oh, don't start crying," Mila said, looking terrified at the possibility that Roxy might. If Roxy was going to leave Caden, that meant Caden was going to be more of a shitty person than usual. What would Aaron say? Honestly, he probably wouldn't give it a lot of thought. But who knows. He surprised her sometimes. "Are you sure this is what you want to do," Mila continued, "because this isn't high school Roxy. For all you know spending time with Spence is just reminding you of that and if you two start something up, you might find it's not exactly what you remembered, or wanted." Mila paused briefly. "But if it's what you want to do, I'll help you. If that's why you're here."
It was a little jarring to be told not to start crying by her best friend. Roxy had cried to Mila plenty of times before, even if she tried to avoid it. The rest of it was the kind of hard truth that she appreciated, even if it stung a bit. She’d asked herself those same questions a million times in the past week, as she struggled to act normal in front of everyone. She took an unsteady breath and wiped her thumb under each eye. “Even if that turns out to be the case, even if we don’t even get together at all ... I need to do this,” she said, meeting Mila’s gaze again and managing to sound pretty steady about it. “It’s been shitty for years, you know that as well as anyone. I’ve ... I dunno, I’ve turned into my mother and I fucking hate it.” She heaved a little sigh. “I will need your help, I’m sure. I don’t quite know how yet, I haven’t figured out how I’m going to do it, but ... you’re the only one I fully trust, and I wanted to tell you first.”
"You just do it," Mila said, sounding confused by Roxy's uncertainty. "I mean, get your shit and go. You don't share money. Get a place to stay first. Fuck Caden. What's he going to do? If you think he'll try to stop you in a bad way, we'll kill him." It was a simple solution, if you asked Mila. Of course she had only had brief internal fantasies about it. Caden. Aaron's dad. Sometimes Aaron. Sometimes herself. Dark moments that left her shaking and confused and like she might vomit. It felt like a bug had infested her brain, digging into all of the rotten places normal people never came close to touching. "But you know, maybe he'll let you go and be pissed but get over it," she added, since she didn't think Roxy would want to hear about all the potential spots to bury a body in the woods. "Do you need money?"
Roxy’s brows drew together as she looked at Mila, and there was real surprise in her eyes at the words ‘we’ll kill him.’ It was something offhanded you would say to make someone feel better, a joke, but there was nothing light in Mila’s tone. It sent a little chill of weirdness down Roxy’s spine that she didn’t like. “I think I’m okay on money, I took some out of savings. Spence offered to let me to stay with him,” she said after a pause, trying to re-focus. “Which ... might be a better idea than a hotel, at least at first. Until I figure out exactly what I’m doing.” It would be easier to hide her car in an apartment complex parking lot, and it wasn’t a place he would think to look for her first. “I don’t think he’ll let me go easy though.” Honestly, the thought of Caden just shrugging off her disappearance made her want to cry all over again. Roxy swallowed and shook her head.
Leaving one guy to go shack up with another seemed like a terrible idea, but Mila wasn't going to say so. If Aaron wasn't living with her now, she would have offered to let Roxy stay there. But Mila didn't know how Aaron would take this news, if he would understand or be pissed off on his brother's behalf. Aaron knew what a dick Caden could be though, so maybe he would think this was all for the best. One could never tell with men. "I think you should have someone there when you do it," Mila said after a moment. "Even if it's just outside waiting. That way if he loses his shit, you'll have some backup. When are you going to tell him?"
Roxy was just thinking about hiding. Caden didn’t know about Spence, didn’t know he was back in town and they’d been talking again. Hell, she was pretty sure he didn’t even know or care about her previous dating life. There were only so many hotels in the area, and after he determined that Roxy wasn’t at Mila’s, those were probably the first places he would look. ... if he looked at all. The possibility he wouldn’t hadn’t even really occurred to Roxy, but now it was there and making her question if Caden would even care she was gone. Maybe he would be happy that she was leaving, maybe he truly did hate her. She didn’t know why pondering that made her feel worse. Roxy nodded a little at Mila’s words, wishing her brothers gave enough of a shit to come up and help her. “Will you? Keep an eye out, I mean? I don’t ... I mean, I don’t want to put you in the line of fire, but if you can be outside and ready to call the cops if it gets loud ... I want to have my stuff moved out before I tell him, one day when he’s at work for a while. So ... soon. Within a week.”
Mila nodded. "I'm not scared," she told Roxy. She wasn't. A part of Mila wanted Caden to start shit so she could intervene. Draw some blood. "Do you want me to keep this from Aaron," Mila asked, aware that Roxy would probably not want any of the Lucases to know what was going to happen. "I won't tell him if you don't want me to. But... he might be willing to help you move some of your stuff, Roxy. Aaron knows what Caden can be like." A week was soon. Things were going to get rough before Christmas, but that was life. If Roxy was happy somewhere else, so be it.
Part of Roxy wondered desperately what was wrong with her because no one else seemed at all concerned about Caden’s capacity for violence. And access to guns. Spence wasn’t scared, Mila wasn’t scared -- and she knew him! Was Roxy just crazy? Was she making too big of a deal of all this? Did she even need an escape plan? Was she just weak and a coward? Was that why she just couldn’t stick it out with Caden? Roxy tried to push all that self-doubt down and actually think about the question Mila was asking. “I don’t ... I don’t know,” she said finally, honestly. Roxy’s hands were wringing each other again in her lap. “Do you think he would help? You know him better ...”
It was possible Mila would have been more concerned had she been feeling more like herself. She was probably too thrilled with the prospect of Caden getting violent so they could hurt him to care much about anything else. And yes, there was a part of Mila that realized this was wrong, and that something wasn't right, but it was too hard to concentrate on that when she had Roxy there. "He might," Mila said after a moment of thought. "Let me talk to him. I won't say anything specific, but I'll try to get a feel for how he might react to things. If I think he'll want to defend Caden, I'll just let it go. But you know Aaron. He has a good heart. I don't think he would be an asshole about this."
Roxy knew Aaron enough to know that he did have a good heart, probably the best heart out of the bunch of them. She also knew that he seemed to put his brothers on a pedestal and that Caden knew exactly how to manipulate Aaron. So she didn’t know which direction his loyalty would sway. Roxy could already hear Caden’s wild accusations about her cheating on him with Aaron if he found out, but if he wanted to run that risk for her ... “Okay,” she said, giving a little nod. Roxy reached for Mila’s hand then to give it a squeeze. “Thank you, I really appreciate it.” She was sure she would say that a million more times, but it was true.
Mila knew Aaron's brothers could manipulate him, but she wasn't worried. She felt like he would listen to her, more so than he would listen to Caden. Maybe she was being presumptuous, but maybe love was its own form of manipulation. "You don’t have to thank me" Mila murmured. "We'll get this figured out. I know it's probably scary for a bunch of reasons, but I think you're making the right choice. Just... I mean, as long as this is what you really want, then I'll do what I can to help you." Mila returned the squeeze of Roxy's hand. "Have you eaten? Are you hungry? I can order a pizza or something if you want to stay a bit."
Things felt too mixed up in Roxy’s head for her to say for absolute certainty that this was what she really wanted. It was more that it was something she knew she needed to do. Because abusive situations only got worse as time went on, that’s what she’d always heard, and things with Caden were already bad. Maybe some distance would help her get her head on straight so she wouldn’t end up turning into her mother. Hearing Mila say she was making the right choice helped a tiny bit, and Roxy felt a little emotional at the offer of food and company. She’d been kind of avoiding both this week, in spite of the holiday, and pizza with her best friend would maybe make her feel like a human again, however temporarily. “That sounds amazing,” she admitted with a weak smile. “As long as we can watch something stupid and funny, too.”
"I have a lot of stupid and funny at the ready," Mila assured her, releasing her hand so she could stand and find her cell phone to call for a pizza. "Go ahead and turn on whatever you want to watch and I'll order the pizza. Aaron won't be home until late, so you can stay as long as you want." Maybe the company would be nice and helpful for Mila too. A way to keep her head on straight. It sort of sounded like something they both needed at the moment.