Page 11 of Teach Me to Laugh

“She lost the one person she loved. The person who showed her how to live,” Raina continued. I felt my spine straighten painfully in my back. “Maybe you need someone brave enough to show you how to live. How to love.How to laugh, Mar.Maybe you need someone strong enough to show you that life isn’t about being safe. It’s about taking risks and letting your heart love so that you can be loved in return.”

When I finally turned around to reply, Raina was gone.

I didn’t see Raina for the rest of the night, but I didn’t actually look for her either. After powering through the cart of books Joss left for me, I cracked my books and got down to my homework. I finished just before we closed.

Now I was walking through the door of the condo I shared with Beckett, which was within walking distance to work and the university—something I never could have afforded before him. My heart was feeling heavy and I had to fight myself to keep from texting Raina with an apology.

I’d eventually have to face the words I’d thoughtlessly said, but doing so through text would be low and I’ve let my low fall as far as I can. I knew Maddy’s story. It was the kind of story you want to read about because it would remind your heart to live. It’d revive your stagnant soul and remind you to take thatmoment to stop and smell the flowers. It was the kind of story that inspires and breaks your heart in the same sentence. The kind you want to read about—but not the kind of story where you want to know the main character in any personal sense of the word. It’s not the kind of story you wish upon anyone, not even someone you dislike.

And as much as I hated to admit it, I loved Maddy.

I dropped my bag onto the couch as I shuffled into the kitchen, watching Beckett the entire time. He never even lifted his head. He was hunched over a mess of books and papers that stretched across the island.

“Hey,” I greeted and his gold eyes flicked to me.

He looked exhausted and I thought back to every other night this week. I’ve come home from work to find him just like this. He’s always hunched over his books at this counter. I’d have a bubble bath with candles and a good book before bed, and he’s still hunched over this counter when I crawl between my sheets. I didn’t have the faintest idea when the man actually called it quits.

“How was work?” He tipped his head from side to side, cracking his neck.

I cringed. “Should you be cracking bones? Aren’t you in med school now? Isn’t that like a call for arthritis?”

“Myth,” he replied. “And med school blows.”

“I have to agree there.” I said in response to his med school comment. “You’ve been pretty busy with homework.”

“And studying. How my parents did this is beyond me.”

“You’re doing it.” I shrugged, trying to sound encouraging as I opened the fridge. And that’s when I saw it. The raspberry juice. I finished off the last glass this morning and had meant to pick some up at the store on my way home from work.

I couldn’t believe he thought of it with everything else on his mind.

“It’s hard as balls, though.” He mumbled, watching me pull the juice from the fridge.

I didn’t acknowledge his gesture as I poured a glass. That’s just not the girl I was. “You want some?”

“Sure.” He was looking back down at his papers when I slid the glass toward him. “So happy tomorrow’s Friday. I don’t know how you’re working and going to school.”

“I get most of my studying done on shift. That’s what happens when you’ve got kickass bosses.” I replied, sipping my juice. “Besides, I highly doubt my courses are anything like yours.”

He grunted and I took that as my hint that our conversation was officially finished.

I turned with my juice in hand and made my way to the bathroom where I would prepare a hot bath with bubbles and candles. Some people sought others as a source of therapy for past pains. Me? Not so much. I found long ago that there weren’t many pains that couldn’t be healed when submerged by hot, softly scented waters.

I inhaled the deep scent of lavender as I stripped off my clothes, letting the fabric fall to the center of the floor. When I sunk deep into the bubbles, I let my eyes close as I rested myhead on the lip of the tub. And where I usually discharged with the happenings of my day, I instead thought of Beckett.

Unlike the masochistic psycho I lived with, I didn’t work out in the morning when I was still half-dead with sleep. I preferred to kick my own ass with punching bags and running track after I’d been awake for, well, around nine hours or so. That was why I was running, my feet pounding hard against the green track as sweat coated every inch of my flesh with Kaiden by my side, at four-thirty.In the afternoon.

I’d been trying to get my ass up at the crack of dawn with Amara, (it was worse on days we had class than on the weekends) but I just couldn’t do it today. Today, when my alarm sounded only four hours after I’d fallen into bed, I thought I’d die. No joke, I seriously thought that was it for me. Kapoosh. I was done. Toast.

Thankfully, two and a half more hours of sleep and mismatched socks later, I was in class on time and feeling—well, I didn’t feel quite so dead to the world.

I even made it to my evening workout, which was something I hadn’t been feeling I could do with the workload I was taking home every night. Being that it was Friday, I had the whole weekend to kill myself with studying. I could take the evening to work the tension from my muscles.

The beginning of September had been rough, but now, with the middle of October coming to a close, I was beginning to learn the definition of agony.

Agony: Med school.

The two went hand in hand. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

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