~~~**~~~

Chapter 17: Secrets and Assumptions

February 24th

9:00 AM

"So how did it happen?" Collins asked, sitting down in a char beside Aimee's hospital bed.

It had been a rough night for all of them. Everyone except Mark had stayed until nearly dawn, finally agreeing to leave when Mimi fell asleep sitting on the waiting room floor. Mark had spent the entire night restlessly prowling the halls of the hospital, trying to imprint all the sights into his mind since he hadn't had time to bring his camera.

"I don't feel like talking about that right now," Aimee answered defiantly.

"You have to talk about it sometime."

"Fine. I got mugged. End of story."

"Aimee. . ." Collins sighed and tried to take her hand. "That's not all that's going on here and you and I both know it. If it was just one incident, maybe I'd believe you. But you came to stay with me for some secret reason, you've been getting hurt for the last two months for some secret reason and now you nearly died and you won't tell me how the hell any of this is happening!"

Collins took a deep breath, surprised that he'd been shouting.

"Come on, Aimee, why are you hiding things from me?"

Aimee laughed bitterly.

"Why am I hiding things? What about you?"

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

"You! The way you left! Just left. Mom and Dad would never tell me what happened. You were too damn selfish to stay with us and the family fell apart when you left. It's you fault!" Aimee screamed back at him.

Collins stared at her in shock, completely taken aback.

"You think I left because I didn't want to stay? I'll tell you something, I wanted to stay. Mom and Dad threw me out."

"You expect me to believe that? You were their perfect son. What did you do, run off with some whore?"

Collins snorted.

"Hardly."

"Then what. I want a damn good reason here, Tom."

Collins looked at her for a long, awkward moment, then cleared his throat.

"They um. . .they found out. . .about my boyfriend."

Aimee stared at him in shock.

"You-you mean you're. . .gay?"

Collins nodded.

Aimee continued to look shocked for a moment, then shook herself and shrugged.

"So?"

"So. . .that's why I left."

"Figures. Mom and Dad seem to have a chronic phobia of anyone or anything that doesn't fit the specified mode of normality."

Collins smiled slightly.

"So then. . .you mean you don't. . ."

"Have a problem with it? No. People are people. Some of them are different. Some of them are narrow minded and stupid. I'm not one of them."

Collins sighed in relief, then suddenly turned serious again.

"Okay, I told you my secret. Now you tell me yours."

Aimee stared at the bed sheet in front of her.

"My boyfriend, Jake. Or I should say ex-boyfriend. He pretty much ruined my life, although I did love him. I left home because I got pregnant. And things. . .pretty much went downhill after that. Jake got into drugs and alcohol . . .then he started. . .last night. . ." she trailed off, starting to cry. "Don't hate me."

Collins hugged her gently.

"It's okay. I love you, you know that?"

"Yeah," she said softly.

"But no more secrets, okay?"

"Okay."

~~~**~~~

March 3rd

2:12 PM

The Loft

Mimi carefully rolled up her sleeves and opened the closet door, preparing to face the task of cleaning it out. Neither she nor Roger was much concerned with keeping things neat, but she'd decided that if she was going to be raising a child in the loft, things had to change. She bent down and pulled out one of the boxes that had never been unpacked from her move to the loft and began rooting through it, throwing random pieces of junk on the floor.

An old fake flower, several pairs of Roger's dirty boxers, a sculpture that a very drunk Collins had made out of bobby pins, a pack of rainbow condoms. She stopped as she came across the old pair of shiny blue stretch pants she'd been wearing the night she met Roger, smiling fondly at them and folding them onto the bed. She was nearly down to the bottom of the box when she saw it.

Mimi stopped and stared at it, her entire body frozen in fear.

An old, rust covered needle leered up at her from the very bottom of the box, as if it had been placed there by some unseen hand, to remind her that she would be punished for her mistakes.

Mimi reached forward, staring at her own hand in fascination and horror, and picked it up very carefully. She held it up to the light and examined it closely, utterly repulsed by the sight, wondering how she'd managed to inflict these things on her own skin for years.

"Mimi! What the hell are you doing?!" Roger's voice made her jump and she dropped the needle back into the box as if she'd just been burned by it.

"Roger!" she leapt to her feet, trying to shake the feeling that she'd just been caught doing something forbidden. "I was. . .cleaning. You know, for the baby."

"Like hell you were. Damn it, Mimi, how can you think you're going to be a good mother when you can't even take care of yourself?"

Roger sounded more hurt than angry and she hated that more than anything.

"Roger, I told you," she pleaded, "I was cleaning. Looking through all this shit that we never went through after I moved in and I just—I just found it. I was going to throw it away!"

Roger pushed her roughly aside, grabbed the needle in his fist, walked across the room and flung it as hard as he could out the window.

"There. Now it's thrown away."

He glared at Mimi.

"You never are going to trust me, are you?" she asked quietly.

"Not when you act like this!"

"How do you even know what this is?" Mimi snapped back at him.

"I know what I saw."

"No you don't! You only know what you wanted to see. That's your problem, Roger. You're so damn selfish you refuse to even listen to anyone else. It always has to be your way."

Roger just stared at her for a moment, then turned and walked out, slamming the bedroom door behind him.

~~~**~~~

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