Goodbye Michelle, it's hard to die

Things got very awkward with arranging the sleeping arrangements of the Master’s Suite. And a big part of that was because of how everything was set up. Nick had been anticipating Carly and Gina to be sharing his bed, but now Dani was here, too. And she absolutely wasn’t going to let Carly out of her arms for the rest of the night.

“Come on, do I have to sleep in the same bed as Mary?” Gina asked, the disappointment obvious on her face. But even as she said that, her tone was measured and moderated. She knew better than to make a big deal out of this, given what had just happened.

Several minutes prior…

It had taken a long while of crying before Carly could finally start to feel better. And then she was finally ready to listen.

“Carly.” Dani took her girlfriend’s shoulders and leaned in close so she was looking the cosplayer right in the eyes. “If you keep bottling this stuff up, then it’s just going to get worse,” she pointed out. “I’m begging you, in the future, if something is bothering you, please, just come out and tell us.”

“She’s right,” Nick said, trying to be as gentle as possible. Carly was a tough woman, but she was in a delicate place right now and he didn’t want to push too hard. “We’re all in this together. If you’re having a rough day, just tell us. Tell us what you want us to do. Even if the only thing you need us to do is leave you alone so you can grieve, that’s fine too. I’ve been there, Carly. I know what it’s like to not have the strength to lift yourself out of bed in the morning because you feel like everything’s come to an end. But it hasn’t. You have people who care about you and want to be there for you, if you’ll let them.”

Carly looked up at Nick, and her eyes started to water. “Thank you both so much,” she sniffled, getting up off the couch. She smiled a shy smile. “Sorry, Nick… but I don’t think we’re going to be having that orgy tonight.”

“It… it wasn’t an orgy!” Mary’s cheeks flushed.

Dani just blushed and shook her head slowly, not sure how to react. It was an uncomfortable topic to say the least.

“I think we’ve all had a really intense night,” Nick said, looking at the women around him in various states of emotional distress. “After a really, really long day. Let’s just try and get some rest. That’s what’s best for everybody I think.”

“Yeah, I think that’s the best,” Carly nodded. She was exhausted. Thinking about Emmy still made her feel sore, but she wasn’t as crushed as she had been before.

This was all part of healing, as painful as it might be.

“So how are we gonna do this thing?” Gina brought up. “I don’t think that bed is big enough for all of us, after all…”

Now…

“…You were the one who brought it up, remember?” Mary pointed out. She looked over at the other bed, where Carly was getting settled down, nestled between Nick and Dani.

“Besides, looking at them-”

“Yeah, I get it,” Gina said, cutting her off right there. Mary didn’t have to make her case. She wasn’t about to interfere with what was going on over there.

Frankly? Her own libido had seriously crashed after this whole mess. She couldn’t help but feel so bad for what Carly must be going through. It brought back so many painful memories of her own, and what it had been like to lose Dakota so severely like that.

And seeing how much Carly had loved her daughter… a little baby she never even got to hold…

Would my mom break down crying like that? If I died? Would she even care?

Those questions brought more questions that Gina didn’t want the answer to. She felt sick to her stomach and shivered, shaking her head.

“…I just had a bad thought,” she whispered to Mary, glancing back at the bed. She had intended to just push it down and ignore it, like she would have done normally, but after tonight? After everything that had happened, everything she had just seen with Carly?

It seemed so wrong.

Mary looked up at her with innocent eyes filled with concern.

“Yeah?” She whispered.

Gina glanced at the trio in the bed again. They were getting ready to sleep, and starting to look their way, wondering what was taking the two of them so long to go to bed themselves.

“Kitchen?” Gina said awkwardly, and Mary nodded.

The two girls made a hasty retreat to the kitchen, with Holly following them with her eyes. When they got there, Mary turned back to Gina, looking uncomfortable.

She could tell this was serious.

“What is it, Gina?” She asked. “Is it something you can’t tell Nick? Because after what just happened with Carly…”

“It’s not that I don’t want Nick to know or anything,” Gina interrupted the redhead. “I just didn’t want to draw attention to myself, you know? I mean… after what happened with Carly, to suddenly take the spotlight off of her, that just seems…”

She scratched her head sheepishly while Mary processed what she just said.

“That’s… wow. I guess you’re really becoming a more considerate person!” Mary gasped, holding her hand over her mouth. “Gina! I’m so proud of you!”

“Can you not phrase it like I just learned how to tie my shoes for myself?” Gina griped.

Mary blushed and nodded. Maybe she’d been a little too exuberant, but still! Gina was improving so much! Being thoughtful and kind? Plus the way she’d shown genuine care for what Carly was going through while the poor girl was crying…

If she could just be a little more careful about what she was saying, that would be some real progress made!

…Still, now wasn’t the time to think about that stuff.

“So what is it?” Mary asked. “It must be serious for you to talk about it.”

Gina scratched her head again. “Well… look, it’s not like I wanted to or anything… and I definitely didn’t want to talk to you about it,” she quickly made clear.

Mary frowned. “Gina…”

“But I have to, you know?” She looked back at the closed door, and imagined Nick, Carly, and Dani on the other side of it. Those three kept popping into her mind, no matter how much she tried to stop them from doing so. “If I keep bottling this stuff up… then it’s just going to get worse, right?”

Mary nodded, remembering Dani’s words. “Bottling what up?”

“It’s… my mom. Everything Carly was saying today, seeing her break down like that… I kept thinking about my mom,” Gina admitted. “And like, I hate thinking about my mom! She’s such a nag, and she cut me off! She kept trying to control me, trying to make me be something I’m not…”

Gina paced around fretfully as she kept listing off all the reasons she hated her mother, but her heart really wasn’t in it. Because on some level, she knew that she wasn’t being honest. With Mary, or with herself.

“…Okay… my mom… she doesn’t really hate me,” Gina finally admitted. “And even though she was trying to control me, it was because she was worried I was ruining my life.”

…Which she was.

“And that’s why tonight was so hard for you?” Mary asked. “Because of Emmy?”

Sharp as a tack, as always. Gina sighed and nodded reluctantly.

“I thought about what would happen if I died suddenly,” Gina said. “With the life I lived before coming here, it’s more than just a possibility, you know? I could have just wound up bleeding out in a gutter somewhere. And if that happened, would my mom mourn me the way Carly mourns her daughter? It’s like she’s got an open wound that keeps tearing, and even if she tries to hide it with a smile, it’s always there, under the surface.”

Gina knew what it was like to lose someone she cared about. Dakota’s ****, and her feelings of guilt over it, had instigated the downward spiral that had ruined her life.

But with Carly…

“I think those things are different,” Mary admitted, looking down. She rubbed her stomach without even thinking. “I’m pregnant… and I know that I love this baby more than anything, and I haven’t even met them yet. But with your mother, she loved you and nurtured you for such a long time, and even when she cut you off, I doubt that…”

Mary paused and shook her head. “…No. That’s not right. I know for a fact that she never stopped loving you, Gina.”

Gina winced, not sure how to feel about that. Could Mary be right?

“She… she didn’t?”

Did Gina even dare to hope that?

Mary firmly shook her head once more. “I may not be a mother yet… but I know that I will never stop loving this child. And I want to believe your mom feels the same way. Even if your relationship is strained, I’m sure she still cares.”

Her words ached in Gina’s ears as she remembered the last challenge and how painful it was to see her parents again… and how much it warmed her heart feeling their acceptance of her life choices.

No, fuck that, I’m not gonna cry! I’m not… I’m not! Gina could feel the tears coming, but if she broke down right now, that would just lead to Mary comforting her and trying to cajole her like what happened with Carly. The conversation would end there, and Gina couldn’t have that yet.

“So if… if I…” Gina’s voice broke, finding it too painful to go on. But she pushed through that because she needed to know what Mary thought. “If I had… died… do you think mom… do you think she would’ve been sad? Would she have been crushed like Carly is now?”

“Carly loved Emmy so much,” Mary said. “A little baby she never even got to know. Do really you think after everything you and your mother went through together, that she’d be hurt any less?”

That… it was so simple, hearing Mary say it like that.

Why couldn’t Gina have understood that?

“I’m… I’m the worst,” she muttered, leaning against the counter for support. It was like all the strength had drained out of her body.

Mary gasped. “Wh-what? No, you’re not the worst, why would you say that?” She demanded, rushing over to the other woman’s side. “Gina…”

“Because I could have died!” Gina exclaimed. “Don’t you get it? I… my life… it was horrible, awful, and I didn’t even care… I was just destroying myself because I hated everything, I did whatever I could to numb the pain, not even caring if it ended up killing me! And… and if it had…”

She remembered Dakota’s funeral in stark clarity. She hadn’t wanted to go, but her parents had insisted. She remembered seeing Nick there, and seeing how he broke down, and the guilt she felt, knowing that it was all her fault.

Then the vision in her mind warped, and suddenly it was Carly who was there and crying, mourning the **** of her dead baby. The image kept shifting until finally it crystallized on Gina’s parents, crying over her own body, dead of an overdose or a random act of **** or one of a thousand other things that could have happened to her had she never been taken to this island.

That’s what did it. Gina couldn’t hold back her feelings any longer, and with the image of her mother bawling her eyes out like Carly had, she collapsed into Mary’s arms and sobbed.

“Mary… oh… I didn’t know… I thought… I thought that I should be punished for what I did, but I didn’t realize… I didn’t know, I just… I…”

She’d never thought of the people whose lives she’d left ruined in her wake. Not just her family, but the friends she’d cheated and betrayed and squandered without care or consideration, not thinking about anything but getting her next fix. She’d wanted to be punished for her sins, and so she compounded them even more by being just about the worst, most thoughtless person she could imagine in her descent into self-destructiveness.

“I didn’t mean to…” She sobbed, clutching onto the one source of stability she could hold onto, the robust farm girl with a surprising amount of strength, being able to hold her up without backing down even slightly.

“It’s okay, Gina, I know you didn’t mean to,” Mary softly whispered into the other girl’s ear. “It’s alright… as long as you regret your actions, you can still find grace in the Lord’s love.”

Gina wasn’t much for proselytizing and definitely didn’t give a damn about religion after all the strain her family had put on her. But the comfort of Mary’s words soothed her immensely all the same.

“I want to be better,” she said, wiping her tears. “I don’t want to end up like that… I don’t want to make my mom cry like that, ever.”

For so long, Gina had hated her mother. She hated her rules, she hated her condescending judgment of her hobbies and interests, and most of all she hated that her mother had cut her off without a second thought. It had stung like no betrayal had ever stung before.

But… it wasn’t a betrayal, was it?

As much as it had hurt Gina to be tossed aside like that, only now could she see that it had never been a betrayal.

She loved me… she always loved me. And it hurt too much to see me throw my life away like that. That’s why she pushed me away. That’s why she cut me off. She didn’t want to keep funding my self-destructive urges, she couldn’t bear to watch me slowly killing myself. She had to do it, or she would have ended up just like Carly.

That… that made Gina cry even harder. But through those tears, she was slowly coming to a realization that she’d never had before.

If her mother really did love her… if she really had cut Gina off because she couldn’t handle the pain of her choices any longer… then…

Didn’t that mean that maybe, just maybe, there was a chance that things could go back to the way they were before?

Gina had blown through a thousand “second chances” already. After every stay in rehab she would always promise that this time she would turn her life around, and every time it had been a bald-faced lie. And after one lie too many, finally her parents had just had enough.

She shouldn’t expect another chance. Maybe she didn’t deserve one. Remembering her phone call with her father after coming to the island, and how disappointed and exasperated he’d sounded, like he had already given up any hope that she would ever change, that had crushed her.

But she felt even worse now.

“…Mary…” Gina pulled back from the other girl and wiped tears and smeared makeup off of her face. Feeling the warm look in Mary’s eyes reminded her of when she was a little girl, and her mother had doted on her so tenderly, and it made her yearn for home.

“Yes?” Mary asked warmly with a voice that just made Gina’s heart melt.

“…I want to be better,” she said. “I want… I want to be a good girl. For real.”

It felt like she’d said that so many times. Maybe it had lost all impact at this point. But all the times she’d said it, she never really had a firm grasp as to “why” that had been the case. There had always been some vague feeling in her heart like she needed to change, she needed to become a better person, but only now, after thinking about her mother, did she really understand.

“Gina, are you just saying that?” Mary asked cautiously. “Because you want to repair things with your mother?”

Gina shook her head. “No, that’s not it. Yes, I want to see my mom again… but I want to be the kind of person I can be proud of. I don’t want to be the kind of woman who hurts people and makes them feel miserable. I don’t want to live a wasted life.”

I don’t want that to be how I’m remembered. Gina was afraid of her mother crying over her body. Being mourned for a life cut too short and the pain she’d leave in her wake had been a very sobering realization for her.

But at the same time… she didn’t want to not be mourned, either.

“I’m afraid that if I keep going down this path, that eventually I’m going to ruin everything,” Gina confessed. “I mean, look at me. I’m the kinky girl who doesn’t take anything seriously, who says insensitive stuff without thinking, who makes everything worse. Is that the kind of woman anyone could love?”

“Gina, you don’t make everything worse!” Mary exclaimed, shaking her head. “You have your faults, sure, but that’s just part of being human!”

“But that’s just it. I don’t want to keep doing that stuff,” Gina explained. “Tonight, I hurt Carly with my thoughtless jokes. I don’t want to do that again!”

“But that wasn’t your fault,” Mary pointed out. “She was feeling that heartbreak without anything you said!”

On some level, Gina understood that. But she also felt that she was making a good point herself, that Mary was ignoring.

“Maybe tonight, it wasn’t a problem,” she muttered, shaking her head. “But tomorrow, it might be. The point is, I… I don’t know how long we’re all going to be together. A year? Ten years? Twenty? Fifty?! How long can you guys put up with me, before my behavior finally pushes you all away for good?”

Gina shook her head again. “Nick, all of you… you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, you know that? Coming here, being a part of this… it saved my life, Mary. Really, it did. And I don’t want to lose it. I don’t want to lose you… any of you. When you’re all thinking about me, when I finally pass away- which, to be clear, I want to happen a very, very long time from now- I want you to remember the good times. I want you to think of me as the cool party girl who made you all smile. Not some self-destructive mess of a person who can’t go one night without making an ass out of herself.”

This wasn’t just about her mother. Or how the others thought of her.

Gina wanted to become someone who she could be proud of.

Mary could see that, couldn’t she? She hoped she could.

“…Gina, I do care a lot about you, even with your faults,” Mary said, choosing her words very carefully. She wasn’t sure what she might risk saying that could send the other girl on a downward spiral. “At the same time, I think it’s very admirable to recognize fault in yourself, and be willing to take steps to improve as a person. It takes a lot of strength to do that. If there’s anything I can do to support you, I will.”

This wasn’t the first time Mary had this conversation with Gina. It seemed to be a constant factor in their relationship, with her trying to help the punk girl grow and become a better person, something that WAS happening.

But Gina had never seemed this… **** before. She needed someone firmly in her corner, and Mary once again affirmed that she would be that person, if that’s what Gina wanted.

And judging by the smile on the other girl’s face when she heard Mary’s pledge, this was a great next step down a long road of growth and healing, a road Mary was happy to walk down with her.