Carla Krae - [My Once and Future Love Revisited 02]

by Betrayed (epub)

  “Elizabeth.”

  “Don’t. Not now.” Tears and adrenaline fighting for dominance, she was trembling, and she didn’t want to regret what she did or said next.

  “The door’s unlocked.”

  She wouldn’t look at Mom. “I’m going back to school.” Hell, they were at UCLA Medical Center. The bus would suit her fine.

  Mom didn’t argue; a testament to her guilt. She would’ve ordered her in the car if she felt she had a leg to stand on.

  Soon as Beth got in her dorm room, she called Jacob. Didn’t matter what time it was, today of all days she needed him. The line connected.

  Laughter was the first thing she heard. Husky, alto, female laughter. “Jake’s place. He’s in the shower so he can’t come to the phone right now.”

  Had to have dialed wrong. Beth looked at the phone display.

  “Hello?” the woman said.

  Beth glanced at the clock. 6:10PM.

  “Hello?”

  That meant it was two in the morning in London. Two in the morning with a sexy-Irish-accent-voiced female answering her boyfriend’s phone while he was in the shower. On a Saturday. Meant she went home with him from a gig.

  “Is anyone there?”

  No…oh, God, not today…not today…

  Beth curled in a ball on her floor and sobbed.

  There’d never been such pain. Words couldn’t describe the feeling of breaking apart—of literally breaking into pieces inside. The phone buzzed with the dial tone then started putting out the, if you’d like to make a call message. Her hands couldn’t be bothered to shut it off.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  Her chest was hollow.

  She had no sense of time until morning light shone through the window.

  Michelle was the only person she told about that call. “God, Beth, I’m so sorry,” she said after Beth blubbered all over her shoulder. “That bastard. What are you going to do?”

  “F-forget. My family comes first…and I’ll need all my…my extra to pass my classes. I can’t deal with…with…” She fell apart again.

  Michelle wrapped her arms around her. “You don’t have to. From now on, he’s He Who Shall Not Be Named. Except he no longer exists in this sphere. And if he bothers you, hand him over to me.”

  “Thanks…”

  Losing Mom and Jacob…she didn’t know how she got through the week. Probably looked like a zombie.

  When Jacob left one of his “hey, sorry I missed you” messages, the tears started to well again and she deleted it. When he started to say “hey, why haven’t you called me back” she threw out the answering machine.

  She couldn’t hear his excuses…not now.

  Chapter Eight

  Beth went to every oncologist visit and took notes. Never again would she trust her mother with relaying all the necessary information. The doctors might hate seeing her come through the door with all her questions, but hell or high water, Mom was beating this if Beth had to do it for her.

  They started Mom on radiation and chemo right away. Beth cut out everything she didn’t have to be doing to focus on her mother and made sure Andrew was in the loop, too. He was coming to L.A. as soon as he could.

  She wanted to take a leave of absence, but Mom wouldn’t hear of it. “I will not be the reason you don’t get a degree, Elizabeth Lawson.” She was propped up in a hospital bed, tubes everywhere. Her weakened immune system had allowed her to catch an infection they were treating with IV antibiotics.

  The infection scared Beth even more. Thousands of people died from hospital infections every year. “But Mom—”

  “Honey, please. Be young, live, have fun. Call Jacob.”

  “I can’t do that. You need me.”

  “Let me know my kids are going to be okay when I’m gone, will you?”

  “Don’t talk like that. You’re going to beat this.”

  She coughed, and wiped a little blood from her chapped lips. “You heard the doctors, Elizabeth. And I’m okay. You and your brother are wonderful adults, and your father and I had a lot of great years.”

  “Years he honors by not being here.”

  Ever since the doctors upgraded her cancer stage, Dad had taken every business trip offered to him, and when he did spend time at the hospital, it wasn’t long. He brought her flowers and left again.

  “He’ll come when it’s time. Until then, try to understand, Beth. This is very hard on him. Maybe harder than it is for me.”

  “Aren’t families supposed to support each other in times of crisis? Andrew’s on a plane right now.”

  “Elizabeth, please. Enough.” She sounded close to tears.

  Guilt struck Beth’s heart. “Yes, Mom. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m going to get some air.”

  She nodded and closed her eyes.

  Despite Mom’s chemo treatments, they discovered it was spreading.

  They practically lived at the hospital after that. She wouldn’t forget seeing her mother bald and skeletal. Just like she knew she’d never forgive her father if he wasn’t here if she died.

  When.

  Her throat closed up at the thought of that word. She knew what she saw…the degradation, the sympathy on the doctor’s faces, the calm acceptance her mother recently showed… She knew it was when, but God…no one wanted to admit it.

  No one wanted to say they were going to lose their mother at eighteen. She was firmly stuck in the Anger stage of grief, if for no other reason than it was easier than Despair.

  The platitudes and sympathetic smiles…school was a sanctuary. Her professors knew she had a family emergency, but only Michelle and Chris knew what was really going on. She stopped socializing outside of classrooms and study groups. Anything frivolous got cut from her life. Free time gave her room to think and she just couldn’t handle that.

  In June, two weeks after Beth’s nineteenth birthday, Mom slipped into a coma. Sometimes she opened her eyes and babbled incoherently, but she never showed signs of recognizing they were there. The cancer had invaded her lungs and nearly everything else and it was only a matter of time.

  The three of them surrounded her bed when they shut off the machines. She’d been out of it for a while, the machines and tubes the only things keeping her alive the past week. Andrew held Beth’s hand. Dad stood next to the doctor as she flipped the switches and all the beeps and wheezes and hums fell silent.

  Beth kissed Mom’s cheek while she was still warm.

  At the hospital they settled in to wait. That was what you did in hospitals. You waited. People went past and you watched but you didn’t. Instead, you focused on the wall, on trying to decide what the exact shade of paint was and wondering if the people in the room knew your mother just died.

  They made the choices for her funeral as a family, but Andrew and Beth were the ones voicing them. Her father seemed to have gone numb. Normal, she guessed, but not helpful. Andrew and Beth opted for a closed casket. Most of Mom’s friends had last seen her before it got bad, so they chose a good picture and had it blown up to set on an easel at the mortuary.

  Days passed. She knew because she kept crossing things off her checklists.

  She did things. She drew lines. She kept going. Mom needed her to finish this.

  It was a lovely service and Mom had many friends, but if Beth had to say “thank you for coming” to one more person, she would have screamed. Was there a list somewhere of Approved Things to Say to the Bereaved? "I'm so sorry for your loss" seemed to be right up there. At least it was heartfelt, even if the words were empty. "She'll be missed" was another, and usually from someone who couldn't possibly miss her more than Beth did.

  Mom was fine before. Better. Things were...and now they’d never have hot chocolate again, and laugh, or go shopping. She'd never come home with another story about a gallery, or greet Beth when she came home for the weekend.

  She was gone. Really, really gone and Beth never got to say enough.

  It was only after the funeral, aft
er packing up Mom’s things, after returning to school, that she realized she’d forgotten Jacob entirely for months. She never called or wrote him about what was going on.

  Beth managed to pass second semester.

  She changed her major to Business Administration for sophomore year, something safe and employable. Put away her camera, and Mom’s. The darkroom equipment went in the garage. She couldn’t think of standing behind a lens without her heart breaking all over again. Had to take some summer courses since she switched focus, but they’d be easy enough.

  She did make one friend on her new path. It started as another tutoring job. Nathan was friendly, driven like her, and really smart. She explained the concept he wasn’t getting and figured that was the end of it, but he kept coming back.

  Then he asked her out.

  “I don’t date, Nathan. I’m sorry.”

  “Come on, Liz.” He liked calling her Liz instead of Beth, for some reason. At least he never called her Bethie. “It doesn’t have to be a big deal. Pizza, a movie…we have a nice time hanging out, don’t we?”

  “We do, but Nathan, no…sorry. And I’m not feeding you a line. I really don’t date.”

  Not anymore. Not ever, if the stabbing pain she felt whenever she thought of her ex was going to stay with her. She couldn’t trust another man like that again.

  “That’s your final answer?” He really was cute, with his sandy brown hair and coffee-colored eyes.

  “That look doesn’t work on me. Yes. That’s my final answer. I’m only interested in friends.”

  He sighed. “Okay. I can deal.”

  Nathan had big goals and big dreams, but it wasn’t like it was with…her ex. She had no doubt he’d succeed eventually, but he had this quiet intensity that ran under the kind of geeky yuppie thing he had going on. Being the near opposite of J—her ex was the only reason he was a male friend.

  And they never talked about personal stuff.

  Where her ex was tall and gorgeous, Nathan was only an inch taller than her and boyishly decent-looking. Where the ex had flirted, Nate told jokes. He was a former nerd with a head for numbers and research. Conservative, yet competitive. He was from the East Coast and had his first business at ten, trimming lawns. There wasn’t a single thing about him other than his gender that reminded her of…that guy.

  They had nearly the same schedule and competed for grades. It helped her focus and focus made the hurts scab over.

  She didn’t move back home for summer break in 2004. Her father wasn’t there for Mom, or for her, in her eyes and she had no interest in seeing him. She went by the house when she knew he wouldn’t be there. Andrew thought she was being harsh, but he avoided home for years before this, so she considered his judgment tainted by Mom’s death.

  Vivian still sent clippings about Jacob’s band from the newspaper. He graduated this summer. After the manager ran off with their profits, his band broke up before he was out of college, but he secured a solo record deal soon after graduation. Her letters sounded lonely sometimes. Beth knew how that felt, but she couldn’t write her back, didn’t want to open that door again even though what he did wasn’t her fault.

  She and Michelle lost touch over the break. She’d pulled away, of course, so she guessed Michelle got tired of reaching out. They hadn’t had classes together since she switched majors, removing the excuse to chat regularly.

  Beth only noticed once she was back for junior year for a month and hadn’t had a call for Friday movie night.

  Going into her third year at college, she was caught up for her business degree, and she and Nathan got more competitive. They annoyed the hell out of their profs trying to spit out the answers first.

  Beth turned twenty-one a couple weeks before finals and they took a night off to celebrate. It was a bad, bad idea.

  “Come on. You can’t spend your birthday hiding in your room again.”

  “Why not? It’s cozy and I have leftovers.”

  Nate pulled her toward the off-campus bar and grill. “Well, tonight you’re having real food. My treat.”

  “Darn right. You make more than me.”

  They ordered some burgers and she soaked in the atmosphere of happy co-eds blowing off steam. When was the last time she was out around people?

  He told their waitress it was Beth’s twenty-first birthday and that got her a free drink, something sweet that tasted kinda like a milkshake. So avoiding thoughts of you-know-who, it didn’t cross her mind what happened the last time she had alcohol.

  She woke up partially undressed and confused about where she was. Didn’t know who made the first move, but they were both pickled. Maybe Nate still held a secret crush on her. Maybe she just wanted to be touched for the first time in years.

  Her stomach rebelled and she ran to his bathroom. She had sex with Nathan by the light of a lava lamp. I think?

  “You okay?”

  “Why didn’t I remember why I don’t drink?” she moaned. She could barely remember anything…did they go all the way? Use a condom? Was he clean?

  “Yeah, tomorrow’s gonna be a hangover morning for me, too.”

  “Did we…?”

  He was wearing boxers. His brow furrowed. “I don’t know.”

  “Let me know if you remember.”

  “You’re welcome to stay the night, Beth.”

  Beth. Not Liz. Not good. Stay? In a bed with another person? No-no-no...I was never doing that again. She couldn’t even look at the bed in her room at her parents’ house.

  Dad’s house.

  “I, uh… I should go. Once the room stops spinning.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” He sounded disappointed.

  God, she felt so guilty for it, that she couldn’t turn her heart to the guy who wanted her.

  She made the Walk of Shame as soon as she could, made an appointment at the university clinic, and ducked Nathan for a couple days after. He didn’t know what to say and she didn’t either, so they said hello in the halls and good morning in the classes they shared, and she looked over the occasional paper for him.

  When they came back for senior year, it was alright, though they never hung out in a private space again.

  Beth graduated with honors in ‘06 just ahead of Nathan, and found an assistant’s job shortly after graduation. The hours were long and tedious, but she had an apartment alone and food in her belly. It was a tiny place she could barely afford, but it was hers and had no memories attached. She even put a new bed in it.

  Andrew kept nudging her to move out to Virginia. He didn’t like the thought of her being alone if she was going to keep Dad out of her life, and he and Darcy were getting married.

  Six months later, she moved up to an executive assistant position, though she was still pretty broke. Thank God she never had extravagant tastes or she’d never be able to make it in Los Angeles or any of its suburbs.

  Everywhere she went, she heard Jacob’s singles on the radio. The songs were good…well, the sound. Paying attention to the lyrics would be caring what he had to say, and she didn’t. Four years post break-up, she finally didn’t feel pain in her chest when she saw his picture.

  She considered that good progress.

  Even so, did he have to be everywhere?

  Chapter Nine

  February 2003

  Every morning, Jacob touched a kissed fingertip to Beth’s photo on the way to his caffeine fix. Barely had a free moment these days, and definitely not enough sleep, but it was all for her. If he was going to transfer to an L.A. school for senior year he needed cash. He constantly needed to be reminded what day it was, but runnin’ twenty-four-seven would all be worth it if they got a record deal.

  If.

  If not, he might sleep all summer.

  He passed his latest roommate sleeping on the couch. She shared a couple classes with him and handled their merchandise table…when they had a table. Like always, he didn’t mind helping out a friend as long as they chipped in.

  Jacob called Beth back ever
y time she left a message, but he never seemed to reach a time in her schedule when she was home, or not asleep. The time difference was on a sticky note next to the phone, but hell, he could barely keep track of his own schedule, let alone hers. Might be his lack of touch with time lately, but she seemed to be out more this semester, too. Was it the classes, or had she met new people?

  He tried to recall if she’d mentioned new names.

  “Hey, Jake, that’s us!”

  “Yeah.” He slung his guitar on and walked onstage. The crowd roared. After two months they were becoming a well-known bar band.

  One more concert with Beth in his heart.

  The set would’ve amped him up last summer, but all he wanted now was his bed. Every gig left him exhausted as he put his all into giving the crowd the best damn show they’d see that weekend on the off chance a scout was in the back. Their manager kept saying big things would happen soon.

  If he survived that long. Carrie drove him home.

  March

  Jacob stormed into his mother’s house. “Maybe you can tell me why Beth won’t return my calls!”

  She set down the newspaper and arched a brow. “Good morning to you, too. What did you do?”

  “Nothing, Mother! I called back after her last messages and I’ve left messages since, until today the phone only rings and rings like she disconnected the machine. I have no bloody clue what’s going on.”

  “Darling, I’m as in the dark as you are. We converse by letter and I haven’t received one in days.”

  “Well, maybe she’ll pick up the phone for you.”

  “I’ll ring when it’s a suitable hour, but Jacob, we don’t shout in this house.”

  “Yes, Mum.” He sat in the chair across from her. “I’m scared…what if she’s been in some horrible accident?”

  “Have you tried calling her parents’ house?”

  “No… I could worry them for nothing.”

  She sighed and moved next to him. “Do you want me to send you back to California?”