Love Is Overdue
Page 13
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.
His reply came about two minutes later.
His next reply came almost immediately.
Send. There. I’d said it.
Send.
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.
I typed my reply before I could stop myself. Just spilled it all out in one rambling text message.
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.
It was the last thing in the world I expected to hear and I sat there dumbfounded for a good few minutes.
I let my breath out. Why did this man not hate me?
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.”
“Well, that’s cool, I’m her daughter though,” I said as if that would explain everything. “Just tell her Gabriela is here.”
She looked uncomfortable for a moment and then just shook her head again. “She specifically said she doesn’t want to see you.”
My mouth fell open.
“Honey, it’s not you,” she apologized quickly, as if it would comfort me. “She’s just fallen into a pretty deep depression, her doctors are working on figuring out the best dose of anti-depressants to get her started on and we’ll just have to give it a few days to see how she responds -”
I didn’t wait for her to finish. I just turned and walked away, and I didn’t stop walking until I got all the way home.
Ben’s number popped up on my phone at a few minutes to eight. I was in my living-room chain-smoking.
“Hey you...am leaving now...where you at?”
“I’m home,” I said quietly.
“You home?” He seemed surprised. “Why? What happened at the hospital?”
“She refused to see me. I guess she’s just completely washed her hands of me now.”
“Don’t say that.”
I sighed deeply. “Ben, I’m...”
“You’re what?”
I glanced around the dark, smoke-filled messy living room full of all our dingy old second-hand furniture and my mother’s ugly-ass walker just parked in the middle of the room like a rotten coffin.
“Can you please come pick me up?”
Ω
I quickly ran and brushed my teeth and washed my face, pulling my messy mop of hair into a pony-tail. I knew I looked like shit. This was not the dolled-up version of me that I was used to showing Ben. I was wearing a pair of black tights, an over-sized hoodie and a pair of flip-flops. I couldn’t believe I’d already let him see me like this at the coffee shop.
His text popped up on my screen.
I had no time to do anything about it except apply some lips gloss and a splash of body spray. I was really fucking losing it, I thought as I dashed out the front door to Ben’s idling Escalade. I couldn’t have gotten out of there fast enough...
Ω
“Sorry, this place is a mess,” Ben apologized, kicking Barbie’s pink Corvette lightly across the hardwood floor as we stepped into the foyer.
I had to smile to myself as the evidence of his daughter finally reared its cute little head. “That’s cute...does she have the matching Dream House with the attaching garage?” I teased. I leaned over and picked up black Ken from under the table where Ben had dropped his keys and he smiled as I held him up. “I wish I had a black Ken when I was little...he’s so handsome.”
“You like that, huh?” he teased me. “His name ain’t Ken, though...it’s Darren.”
I laughed. “So I take it she was just here?” I asked, following him downstairs and into the kitchen, noticing some dirty dishes in the sink, some papers spread out across the kitchen island, along with a colouring book and some crayons strewn around...a few on the ground. His place finally looked lived-in. I liked it much better this way.
“All day Sunday,” he said, opening his fridge and studying the contents. “You hungry...thirsty..?”
I shook my head slowly. “No. I’m okay...but you...”
He looked up at me.
“You don’t have any weed, do you?”
That made him laugh. “You startin’ to read my mind now, aren’t you...”
Ω
We sat together in the living room while Ben rolled us a fat joint out of a stash he kept in the back of his refrigerator. I watched him in silence as he rolled it so expertly, leaning over the coffee table, the t-shirt he was wearing showing off his sexy arms. He flipped on some soft reggae music – an artist I didn’t recognize – before bringing the joint to his lips and licking the seal. The sight of his tongue sent a rush through my body as I remembered what he had done to me three nights earlier.
I reached out and gently pulled at the knot he had at the back of his head and watched at his locks fell down over his shoulders, as he turned to look over at me. He raked his fingers through his dreads and shook them out briefly. He was so fucking sexy. It made me smile again.
“Here you go, baby.” He handed me the beautifully rolled blunt to light.
I took it from him and lit up slowly, taking a deep pull, the air around me filling up with the sweet aroma, the music humming in the background so gently. He was watching me.
“So who are we listening to?” I nodded toward the stereo.
Ben smiled. “Desmond Dekker. Original ska music, baby…” He took the joint from me and took a deep pull. “I used to cover a lotta his stuff back when I was in the band…The Slickers, The Maytals, Skatalites, Jimmy Cliff…stuff like that…”
“I like it. Sounds like reggae…”
“Well…yeah…reggae evolved out of ska music…along with alla da spiritual aspect an Rastafarianism…but back in the day of ska they still knew how to dress and everything – clean-cut dudes in their three-piece suits and ting…original rude bwai, y’know…” He chuckled softly. “That’s how I used to roll,” he teased me, nudging me lightly with his shoulder, passing the joint back over.
I laughed. “Oh really?”
“Nah, not really,” he admitted. “Back home when I was a kid it was all Bounty Killa, Buju and Beenie Man blowin’ up in the dancehall and everything but when I moved to Canada all the white boys I had to start hangin’ out with, like Adam and his whole crew – they was all into the ska scene of the late 90’s, like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones…Sublime…sure that’s what you think of when you think ska, right?…So yeah. The token black guy gotta assimilate the best way he can.”
I laughed at his explanation. “So you were the token black guy, Ben?” For some reason it made a little sense. “Guess that’s how you lost your accent,” I teased him.
He sucked his teeth at that. “Cha…wah yuh ah talkin’ bout, gyal?” He lay it on thick for me. “But it was easy for me, y’know, because…for a buncha white boys tryin’ to start up a ska band, when a Jamaican kid shows up outta nowhere fresh off da boat, so to speak, and he can sing too, that’s kinda like hittin’ the jackpot…” He laughed to himself for a moment. “So, yeah, it was cool for a while, y’know…but eventually I just evolved too…just like my hair.”
“So...” I exhaled slowly, blowing the smoke back at him teasingly. “Are you a Rastafarian?”
That made him smile as he reached out and took the joint from me. “What do you think?” he tested me. “What do you know about Rastafari?”
I shook my head slowly. “I don’t know if you are...I’ve seen you cook pork on youtube.”
He sucked his teeth at me, a little amused look on his face.
“Plus you’re cool with gay folks,” I added.
He let out a little laugh. “Wow...” He leaned back and looked at me for a few moments. “Well...I don’t know what to say about that, Gabby...” He was still chuckling softly. “I have a lot of respect for rasta people, though...back home it do a lot of good for a lotta people...you know, da real dreads dem dat live up in da bush and live off da land and alla that...” That sexy accent picking up again… “But lotta them bald-head rastas turning to crime and violence and alla that – they call themselves one thing but live the life of another – I hate that fuckin’ shit. So for me, this here -” he tugged on his locks, “- this is just me being natural and just being me. Nothin’ more, nothin’ less.”
I smiled at that, reaching out and touching his locks. “It’s beau
tiful...”
He met my eyes. “Am glad you think so.”
“So how did you get to be so wise?” My voice was betraying me again.
My question seemed to puzzle him. “Am I wise? I don’t know about that...maybe one day...when I’m old and grey.”
I smiled. “Well...someone did something right with you.”
Ben smiled and then reached out and stroked the side of my face. “I love the shit you say sometimes...” He took another pull of the joint we were sharing. “You know why I really like you, Gabriela?”
“Why?” I was curious as hell.
“You’re so real,” he said simply. “There’s nothin’ pretentious about you either.”
I laughed. “Just like your food.”
“Exactly,” he agreed. “I mean, you can play the game and everything, if you want to – you can be that girl that turns heads when you pass by on da street and ting but...the real you ain’t about all that. Truth is, since I been single, you the first beautiful girl I meet that I ever wanted to do more to than just fuck...” He was still watching me so closely. “So when you said that shit to me about feelin’ you are out of my league or whatever – you right, it pissed me off – but the more I think about it and everything, I start sayin’ to myself, in a way...you kinda right. ‘Cause you the type of girl I would have been with five or ten years ago – before I ever get alla this shit I have now – back when I was just me, not the me that has money. ‘Cause back then I knew women that wanted me for me – the real me – and I miss that. So you...you remind me of that.”
I let my breath out, not really believing what I was hearing.
“You don’t hide yaself from me, y’know?” He went on. “And even when you try to...you can’t...just like today. I’m just tired of girls that try to be somethin’ they’re not, or someone that they think I want, instead of just bein’ real wit me.”