Billie Girl

Chapter Twelve

Tova and I were talking, sitting on my bed. It was afternoon and the sun was out for the first time in weeks. I was telling her that Blake and I had not made firm plans for New Year's eve.

"What do you mean, you didn't make plans for New Year's? That's sacrilegious," she said, slapping my knee.

"He may go out of town again," I said.

"Why don't you give him an ultimatum? Tell him either you two spend the most important holiday of the year together, or it's over."

"Neither of us wants this to be over."

"Well, at least you and I can have some fun together. What do you want to do? And no, I am not going on a midnight walk with you. I'm not as crazed as you are."

"No, I won't be going on those walks anymore. I promised Dr. Moody that I wouldn't."

I loved Tova like she was my sister. In fact, I listed her as my sister on Facebook. Yet my heart still sank at the prospect of spending New Year's without Blake. Then, on a whim, I called the office of Dr. Moody. I heard his voice on a recording, and I left a message asking him to call me as soon as he could.

Tova and I just lay around in my room, reading, sleeping, talking, listening to Rave dance music, and then Dr. Moody called. I told him about my dilemma. I told him I was teetering on the edge of just maybe breaking up with Blake, even though he was clearly my soul mate.

Dr. Moody listened and then said that I had to stop looking at the bigger picture and to just take things not just one day at a time but one hour at a time. He said to look at my love affair with Blake as a learning experience, and to watch each development as it happened and respond according to how I felt. In other words, he said absolutely nothing but said it absolutely eloquently, and most of all he listened to me ramble for roughly ten or fifteen minutes before I even gave him a chance to talk. But I was grateful to him for that most of all.

So then came the darkest days when Blake and I did not talk at all after our argument. I was left with Tova who suddenly was acting like she was my Mom. In fact, she asked my mother if she could cook us dinner, and she made us pasta with meat sauce. Mother allowed us both to have some red wine with our meal.

It was New Year's Eve, and Tova and I had no money to speak of so we went into my room and both sat at the window and looked out at the street and wondered what probably every girl our age was wondering.

Who was next?

Tova owned a can of mace which her father had bought her. She said that this whole thing was putting a real damper on her sexuality in general. She didn't want to dress in the way that she was accustomed to. Like provocative, or slutty, or cheap. She liked to emulate the dress code of Kei$ha who was bringing the whole "devil may care" look back. The whole ripped jeans and tattered sexy tee-shirt thing was very in, and Tova took full advantage of it.

We played a game of apples and oranges, and Tova asked me if I would play on my steel string guitar for her. I had recently started singing again since Blake showed up in my life. But this was common for me when I met a guy. I would want to write songs for awhile, and then the feelings would wane and my guitar didn't seem to come out of its coffin case anymore. It would lie there dormant and dead and soundless until the next guy came along. But my need to write songs was sticking with me this time, and I thought, who knows? Maybe my original songs could really go places.

But I had to face the fact that I was living in Michigan, not LA or Nashville or New York. But then Tova and I got this idea to video me singing on my phone as I strummed out my newest ballad called, "Sweet Kill."