Love Is Overdue (18 page)

“
You
can’t leave me,” I whispered, the fear ripping through me all over
again.

My mother just looked at me,
squeezing my hand so gently. “Gabriela...I left you a long time
ago...now you need to let me go.”

Ω

I sat in the
waiting room fuming, as I dialled my brother’s number. It was a
three hour time difference. For him, it would have been around
dinnertime. He, his wife, and his whole stupid family would have
been sitting down to eat.

“
Hey Gabby –
what’s up?” The lighthearted tone in Laz’s voice made me want to
punch him in the face.

“
Mom tried to
kill herself.” It was straight and to the point.

Slight pause.
“What?”

“
Yeah. She downed
four times the amount of sleeping pills the doctor prescribed her
and she passed out on the bathroom floor. So she has a broken hip
and she’s been placed on suicide watch.” There. That was easy
enough, I realized bitterly, feeling lighter already.

It took him a moment to
digest my words. “What?” he just said again. Fucking
coward...

“
I just figured I
would let you know.”

“
Shit...” I heard
him let his breath out, taking everything in. “What can I do?” he
asked then. “Do you need anything?”

I
shut my eyes, swallowing, feeling the tears well up. “No. I don’t
need anything. I just thought you should know because she’s
your
mother
.” And I just clicked off my phone, the tears
beginning to spill out again. I just buried my face in my hands and
let myself cry.

Ω

Ben texted me
that same night. I opened the message as I sat in the hospital
cafeteria waiting for Tony to come back with our
coffees.

make sure you ok. Am thinkin about you. Something don’t feel right
about last night.>

I closed my phone and held
my head in my hands.

“
Double-double!”
Tony knocked me out of my thoughts. He slid my coffee across to me
and stared me down for a good moment. “Gabby, you need to go home
and sleep.”

“
I
can’t.”

“
Yes you can. The
doctors told you everything under control – there’s nothing you can
do here. Your mom’s in good hands. Plus...no offence, but you look
like shit.”

Of course. I could expect no
less from Tony...

“
Thanks, but...”
I picked up my coffee and took a sip. “This is good enough for
me.”

“
Well, why the
fuck you call me over here if you not willing to listen to my
advice?” And Tony was back. In all his glory...

“
You’re just
supposed to support me, you idiot,” I said, spelling it out for
him. “And not tell me what the fuck I’m supposed to do.”

He rolled his eyes.
“Whatever...but anyway...I’ll come stay with you. Tasha is ridin’
my ass too much lately anyway...”

I shook my head. “It’s
okay.” I sighed deeply and ran my fingers through my hair. “He
texted me.”

Tony just rolled his eyes at
me again, shaking his head in exasperation. I had already given him
the whole run-down on the previous night’s events, leading up to my
mother’s “accident”.

“
Why don’t you
just text him back?”

“
Because I don’t
know what to say! I already lied to him about too much shit and I
can’t keep it up anymore. I fucked up so bad...”

“
Yeah, but fuck
it – from what you told me about the guy, I think he would
understand. Why you always runnin’ away from whatever good shit
comes your way? You owe yourself. Especially now. Remember one
thing, Gabby.” He looked at me seriously. “Your mom is safe
now...they gonna help her...it’s time for you to help
yourself.”

Ω

As much as it ate at me, I
just couldn’t take Tony’s advice on calling Ben back. He did,
however, finally convince me to go home and once my head hit the
pillow I slept deeper and sounder than I had in years.

I tried not to
let it, but thoughts of Ben kept creeping back into my
subconscious. Thoughts of his body, his voice, his smile, his
mouth, those eyes, those expert hands of his... He had consumed my
every waking thought for weeks already – I had become so completely
infatuated with him in every possible way – but I couldn’t help but
blame my neglect of my mom on my obsession with him.

I could have called him. I
could have reached out to him. I could have taken every single kind
of comfort in him...but I also knew that once he was gone, I would
be exactly where I was right now. Alone.

I called in sick on Monday
and slept the entire day away and when I did finally get up I saw
the missed call. Ben. He’d tried again. I wanted so badly to talk
to him and I was on the verge of calling him back when my phone
rang again. This time it was my aunt, though, tearing into me yet
again. My mom was sleeping and the doctors were requesting that she
have no visitors for at least another twelve hours. They were
keeping her heavily sedated as they monitored the fracture in her
hip.

I collapsed back onto my bed
and stared up at the ceiling. My phone was showing I had a waiting
voice mail. I took a deep breath and played the message back,
listening to his smooth, sexy beautiful voice fill my head again.
“Hey...I don’t know what’s up with you right now...you know if you
need me, am here, but am not gonna just keep blowin’ up ya phone
like this either...so...call me back.” Click.

I rolled over and willed
myself back into another deep, numbing sleep.

Tuesday morning I repeated
the process, calling in sick, leaving the message on the
after-hours voice mail before anyone got into the office, so I
wouldn’t have to speak to anyone. I curled up on the sofa in the
living room and channel-surfed, watching mind-numbing daytime
television for hours and hours as the clock just ticked on. But by
five pm I finally forced myself up and showered and dressed, and
headed out the door to go to the hospital to see my
mother.

I got off the bus near
Broadway and Oak and stepped into a coffee shop to clear my head. I
was only a few blocks from his house, I thought, realizing for the
first time how close Ben lived to the hospital. I sat on a stool at
the window counter with my extra-strong cup of coffee staring out
across the street. As much I tried to force myself to cross the
street and head to the hospital I just couldn’t do it.

I pulled out my phone and
opened up the message screen.

I hit
send.

His
reply came about two minutes later.

<
Yeah, that’s
it.>
Send again.

His
next reply came almost immediately.

Send.
There. I’d said it.

He wasn’t about to let that one go.

Send.

wit me Gabriela.>

In some ways the impersonal
nature of text messaging made some things so much easier to say. I
didn’t have to see his face.

I
should have continued before I hit send again but I just couldn’t
bring myself to do it.

I held my face, wondering
what the fuck was wrong with me, as the brief seconds ticked by one
by one and his response was not as immediate.

I felt my phone buzz in my
hand. I clicked it open.

He
was playing it safe, I figured. He had never told me her
name...

I typed my reply before I
could stop myself. Just spilled it all out in one rambling text
message.

to attack him when we saw the two of them at the mall, but I
stopped him just in time. And then I saw Angela again at the
drugstore and she asked me to have coffee with her but I said no.
And I never told you any of this because I couldn’t bring myself to
admit that when I saw the two of them together I thought it was you
and I almost started crying my fucking eyes out which is why Tony
tried to jump him. I couldn’t tell you because this was over a week
ago already and how could I admit that the thought of you with
another girl after just one date with you could make me slobber
like a baby. .. But now you know.>

Send.

And then the seconds that
were ticking by turned into a good five minutes, so when the reply
came it damn near shocked me right off my stool. I took a deep
breath, and braced myself for his response, knowing full well as I
opened the message that this may be the last text I ever got from
him.

right. That is messed up. Where are you right now?>

It was the last thing in the
world I expected to hear and I sat there dumbfounded for a good few
minutes.

Send.

doin there? Waitin for me to come home?>

I let my breath out. Why did
this man not hate me?

can’t bring myself to walk in there. That’s the other thing I lied
to you about. The night we were fucking at your place she tried to
kill herself.>
Send.

Ω

Ben slid down onto the stool
next to me about twenty minutes later. Neither of us spoke for a
good few minutes. I just kept staring out at the street, the
traffic, and all the people passing by, almost in slow motion, as I
waited.

I glanced over
at him finally. “That was fast.” I attempted a little
smile.

He was staring out the
window right along with me, but turned to me then and met my eyes.
“Yeah, I can be. If I have to be.”

I sighed deeply. “I fucking
hate hospitals.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, me
too...but you know what I hate more?”

“
What?”

“
Something –
anything – having a hold over me like that,” he told me. “You gotta
face some shit sometimes, baby, you can’t run forever. Nobody
can.”

“
Easy for you to
say. You’re not the one dealin’ with a sick, suicidal mother who
wants to die and leave me all alone.” I stopped talking, letting my
words sink in a moment. “What the fuck...” I didn’t even know what
I was feeling anymore. Pain...fear...anger? It was all one giant
numbness.

Ben didn’t say anything
right away. He was thinking. “I don’t think that’s it,” he said
finally. Seriously.

“
No? Then what is
it?”

“
Well...I think
maybe she thinks you’re alone right now. And she can’t bear
it.”

I raked my fingers through
my hair, letting my breath out deeply. Then I looked over at him.
“I’m surprised you’re still talking to me.”

Ben sucked his teeth,
staring back out at the street. “Why? Because of what happened with
my brother and his woman?”

“
Yeah...that.” I
found it interesting that he referred to her that way.

Ben sighed. “Gabby, you
cyber-stalked me after a half-hour drink at my restaurant, and I
still asked you out. You also made it clear your best friend is a
drama queen with some serious anger management issues. And you’re
also not the first person to mistake me for my brother, so none of
this shit you telling me comes as much of a surprise, so why you
trippin’?”

I let my breath out. “Well,
I guess if you put it that way…”

He looked at me, looking a
little puzzled. “Why did she want to have coffee with
you?”

I looked down, playing with
my empty coffee cup. “I don’t know...I think maybe she figured I
was your girlfriend and I would be able to have some influence over
you...”

Ben still looked confused.
“Influence me to do what?”

I looked at him. “Fix things
with your brother.”

His eyes went wide, but then
he just turned away and sucked his teeth again. “You know what?” he
said, after a few moments of silence, turning back to look at
me.

“
What?”

“
I think you need
to head over across the street and spend some time with your
mother. And after you done you should come over and spend some time
with me.” He gave me that little lift of the eyebrows that I just
couldn’t resist. “You want me to walk with you?”

I just nodded.
There was no resisting him anymore.

Ω

He told me he would be home
from the restaurant by eight o’clock so it gave me just over two
hours to spend with my mother. But when I got to her room the nurse
stopped me before I entered.

“
Just give me a quick minute,” she said gently, and then ducked
into my mother’s room and emerged a few minutes later, just shaking
her head slowly, giving me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry...she
doesn’t want any visitors.”