Love Is Overdue (17 page)

My eyes flew open in a
flash. “What happened?”

He sighed, running his
fingers through his hair. I could tell he was just as out of it as
I was. “We fell asleep,” he said simply.

“
Oh shit.” I sat
up suddenly, panic setting in faster than I knew possible. “What
time is it?”

He leaned over the edge of
the bed and reached for his jeans, pulling out his blackberry.
“Shit...” I heard him mutter under his breath.

“
What?” I
demanded.

“
It’s three
am.”

“
Oh fuck. Shit!”
I was really panicking now, and for good reason. “Where’s my
phone?”

Ben sat up and reached for
his boxers. “I don’t know – where you leave it?” He slid them on
quickly and stood up.

I racked my brain for a
quick moment. “Shit. In my purse. In the kitchen.”

I slid off the edge of the
bed and started gathering my clothes.

“
I got it,” Ben
said and took off downstairs.

By the time he came back to
the room I was fully dressed and I grabbed my purse from him
quickly, making a mad dash for my phone. It was still on silent. I
had shut it off during the video shoot and I had all but forgotten
about it since then. That was nearly ten hours ago.

“
Fuck, fuck,
fuck...” I was losing it.

Ben didn’t say anything. He
picked his jeans up off the floor and started to get
dressed.

I stared at the screen.
Eight missed calls. I bit my lip, checking for the caller ID. Two
calls from my home number. The other six from my aunt. Oh fuck. The
panic and the fear and everything else just took over my whole
body.

“
What is it?
What’s wrong?” Ben was looking at me, pulling a t-shirt up over his
head.

I was still scouring my
phone. No voice mail. What did that mean?

“
No, no,
no...okay, I need to call a cab. Can you call me a cab?” I couldn’t
focus. I was in such a daze from sleep and sex and sheer
terror.

“
Baby, you don’t
need a cab – grab your stuff and let’s go. I’ll drive you.” Ben
tried to snap me out of it.

“
Wait. Hold on a
sec...” I pressed callback and dialled my home number. It just rang
and rang and rang. Shit. I dialled my aunt. Nothing again. “Oh
fuck!”

Ben grabbed his keys from
the table in foyer. “You coming or what?” He snapped me back to
reality and I followed him out the front door to the car park and
his waiting Escalade.

“
So what’s going
on?” Ben wanted to know as soon as we got onto the road. “Your mom?
I thought you said your aunt was stayin’ with her...”

I shook my head furiously,
feeling the tears start to well up in my eyes. I just shook my
head, not able to get any words out, my voice just catching in my
throat.

Ben looked over at me, his
expression quickly turning from concern to genuine worry as he saw
the look of horror plastered all over my face.

“
Hey.” We were
stopped at a red light and Ben reached over and touched my
hand.

“
I...” I tried to compose myself. “My mom...she’s being doing
so much better this past week and she told me she’d be fine
tonight, I should just go...I went out last night with Tony and it
was no problem, I kept calling and checking in on her and I got
home and everything was fine...she said to just go...she just feels
so guilty all the time, I know this...and my aunt, she’s just being
a bitch lately, telling me how selfish I’m being, that she’s
my
mother and she can’t be on beck and call for this shit like
she’s some kinda nursemaid and I...” My voice trailed off. “I’m
sorry...I should have never done this two nights in a row...what
the fuck is wrong with me? I just shut my phone off – I didn’t even
think about her once, instead I just… Fuck...” I wiped at my tears,
trying desperately to pull myself together.

I could tell Ben was still
watching me out of the corner of my eye. “Gabriela...” His voice
was so slow and steady. “It’s gonna be okay...”

I shook my head, though, not
saying anything. Because something deep inside me told me that
things were far from okay...

Ben slowed down in front of
my house, pulling me out of my thoughts. We had driven the rest of
the way in silence, but now that he had stopped the car I forced
myself to look back over at him.

“
I’m sorry,” I
just said again, not really able to think of anything else. “Thanks
for...the ride.”

But Ben just shook his head
at that. “Am not leaving,” he said simply. “Am waiting here until
you come back out and tell me everything is okay.”

I didn’t have time to argue
with him so I just opened the door and bolted over the sidewalk,
threw open the gate and ran up the steps of the porch, all the
while madly digging through my purse for my keys.

I flung the front door open
and stopped dead in my tracks, as I looked over and saw my cousin
Diego passed out on the living room sofa. I ran over to him and
tried to shake him awake, and when that didn’t work, I kicked his
leg...hard.

It took him a moment or two
until he finally focused in on me and then sat up slowly, rubbing
his eyes. “Hey...shit...sorry, Gabby...”

“
What happened?”
I demanded. I didn’t have time to play any guessing
games.

“
Where the fuck
have you been? Mom’s been blowin’ up your phone for hours
already...”

“
What happened?”
I nearly shouted.

“
They took her to
the hospital,” he said then, his tone softening a bit. “She
fell...Mom said she was trying to take a bath...she’s there with
her now.”

My head started spinning
faster and faster. “Where?” I found my voice.

“
VGH,” he said,
getting up slowly. “I got the car, I’ll drive you.”

I nodded slowly, trying to
figure out what the fuck I was going to do. Just the thought of it
was starting to make me sick.

“
I’ll be right
there,” I told him, as he headed to the back door, and I raced back
out the front.

Ben’s Escalade was still
waiting on the street in front of the house. I headed over to him
and then opened the passenger door. Ben looked over at me, the
concern still written all over his face.

I composed myself as best I
could. “It’s okay,” I told him, keeping my voice as steady as
possible. “She was just...she was just having trouble running a
bath so she called my aunt and...now my aunt is just super pissed
off and she needed to make me know how put out she was. I’m sorry
for freaking out like that on you.”

It surprised me, how easily
the lie slipped from my tongue.

Ben just eyed me closely. I
could see that he still thought something wasn’t right with me. He
was not a stupid man – obviously – but right now I just needed him
to leave so I could go deal with the giant mess I had made. My
mother was all I had. And I was all she had. And I had left her to
go be with a man. I had most likely been fucking him when she fell
– thinking of only my own, selfish needs – instead of being there
for her. Where I belonged. In the end, it didn’t matter how lonely
I got really. I imagined her and the prison she lived in and I knew
where I needed to be. Nothing else mattered. Least of all my raging
libido...if that’s all it really was... But I wasn’t convinced of
that, though. At least not anymore.

“
Where is she
now?” He was testing me. I knew it. And I hated it.

“
Sleeping,” I
lied again.

“
And your
aunt?”

“
She’s just
getting ready to go. So I need to get back.”

He didn’t say anything. He
just looked at me. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. “I’m sorry, Ben.
It just shook me up really bad, that’s all.” I just needed him to
let me go...

“
Come here.” He
looked at me with so much tenderness and such genuine concern that
I couldn’t help but slide into the seat next to him.

He reached out and pulled me
close to him, kissing my forehead softly. “I’ll call you later,” he
said then. “I’m sorry I let you fall asleep.”

The tears just started
free-falling from my eyes then. I couldn’t believe what was
happening. I just needed to get to my mom. And yet sitting here
with Ben, trying my best to lie my way out of everything, he still
managed to affect me so deeply.

I knew he had no idea what
really happened, or why I was sobbing uncontrollably in his car, in
the middle of the night, when apparently everything was fine...or
so I’d told him. And considering I had lied to him so masterfully
and convinced him it was all one big false alarm, I would have
thought my tears would have just confused him to the point of
excusing himself awkwardly and driving the fuck away from me as
quickly as possible. But that wasn’t Ben. And I should have known
that by now.

He stroked my face gently,
wiping back my tears. “What is it? You can tell me...”

“
It’s okay.” I
lied through my teeth again. I planted a quick little peck on his
cheek, wiped my eyes, and reached for the door. “I’ll be
fine...I’ll call you, Ben.”

I shut the door behind me
and ran straight back to my house, refusing to look
back.

Chapter
Eight

Ben called that afternoon.
Just past noon. I didn’t pick up my phone. After Diego had dropped
me at the hospital I found my aunt, who explained to me that my mom
had fallen and broken her hip. Her stay in the hospital was
indefinite.

“
What is wrong
with you, Gabriela?” She nearly shouted, and the contempt on her
face stung so deep. “How do you think she even made it to the
hospital? By miracle?”

I swallowed. “She called,” I
whispered. “She had to have.”

I knew my mother always took
the cordless phone with her wherever she went – or so she always
promised me.

“
She didn’t call
me!” my aunt spit back at me. “I happened to check in on her – she
mentioned you were going out when we spoke earlier. I found her,
Gabriela.”

I collapsed down on a chair
in the stark, cold waiting room outside the ICU. I was
shaking.

And then the doctor
appeared. His words were a fog but I heard what I needed to hear.
After closer examination, they had found that the cause of her fall
was not her illness. It had been the quadruple dose of sleeping
pills that had been found in her system. They managed to pump her
stomach, but now the higher concern for her mental state,
considering women with MS were at an increased risk of suicide,
prompted them to assign a psychiatrist to conduct a thorough mental
evaluation.

Suicide. I was numb. I felt
nothing anymore.

Ω

“
Mama.” I reached
out and grasped her hand. She was finally awake.

“
Gabriela.” She
blinked at me, recognizing me instantly. “Why are you looking at me
like that?” She spoke to me in Portuguese.

“
You’re...you’re in the hospital, Mama. What happened?” I
needed to know.

“
I...” her voice
trailed off but I could see it in her eyes. She knew exactly what I
was asking. I could tell she was having a hard time speaking. The
painkillers they had her one were affecting her speech.

“
Mama, why?” I
demanded. The tears were streaming down my face.

She squeezed my hand. “Stop,
Gabriela.”

“
They said you
took too many pills! Why? Why would you do that?” I was desperate
to know.

“
This is not the
life I wanted for you...and this is not the life I wanted for
myself.” She was struggling with her speech but there was nothing
strained in her words. She meant every word. “Your brother has let
go. Now it’s your turn. Let go, Gabriela...”

I had never heard her speak
this way. “Mama, why are you saying this?” I was struggling hard to
keep my composure. This was not my mother. Whatever medication they
had her on, I would make sure they took her off them. I would make
sure they fixed this – all of it.

“
You
remember when you were a little girl,
and you used to ask me why men were never nice to
me...?”

I shook my head slowly,
covering my trembling mouth with my free hand.

“
Well, I know why,” she told me softly. “Because I was trying
to live my life too fast. Maybe I knew I didn’t have much time, or
maybe I was just impatient, or maybe I didn’t know any better...but
I was a stupid woman.” She took a breath, her eyes piercing mine in
that way they always did when she needed me to listen to her. That
look had been there since I was a child. “But you are far from
stupid. You’re strong. You have the biggest heart. You make me so
proud. You’ve given me much more than I have ever given you. But
there is still one last thing I can give you.
Yourself.”

“
Stop it.” I shook my head over and over again. My rational
brain was trying to take over and I almost felt like telling her to
stop her fucking pity party and snap the hell out of it already.
But I couldn’t. She looked so fragile...so calm...so
resigned
. It was scaring the hell out of me.