I liked listening to the words of songs, and the words in this particular song were thought-provoking. The artist kept saying, don’t disturb this groove; all I need is just me and you. I couldn’t help but wonder if Jeff felt like that. And maybe if he did, then this baby was intruding on our lives, in his opinion. Maybe he thought this baby would somehow ruin things between us. Or maybe I was just reading too much into it.
The next song was a little faster and sounded like it was probably the same group. The words echoed in my head -- you’re in my system. Jeff was definitely in my system. I really liked both songs. I had to get my hands on this CD to make sure the DJ had it for our reception.
The songs were a big difference from the Led Zeppelin we had listened to the last time we were in his car. Whole Lotta Love, Kashmir, and All of My Love replayed in my head for days. He had a vast collection of music.
I stole glances at Jeff’s handsome face. He seemed pre-occupied. I would have given anything to know what he was thinking right then, but I wasn’t about to ask him. He ran his fingers through his hair and seemed like he was deep in thought. He never looked over at me the whole drive, or at least not that I noticed.
We were seated right away once we arrived. The waitress brought us water and gave us the menus. I was immediately hit with the sobering reality that I had to be extra careful what I ate from now on. I couldn’t get my normal stack of pancakes, eating as much as I could before I felt like my stomach would burst. I had to eat like a rabbit. I had to make sure I fit in my gown when the wedding day came around. There was no way I wanted anyone to do alterations to it and ruin it. I also didn’t have time to drive to Atlanta or anywhere else to find another dress just because I had let myself get too big to fit into my perfect gown. How the hell was I going to manage this over the next couple months?
“Are you guys ready to order?” The waitress held a small pad of paper in one hand. Her face was down as she dug in her apron pocket and pulled out a pen. Once she found it, she never made eye contact, she just put the pen to paper and was ready to write.
“Yes, I’d like the simple-and-fit two-egg breakfast, scrambled egg whites, and wheat toast with the butter on the side, please.”
“Anything to drink, hon? Would you like some juice or coffee?”
“I’ll have a black coffee and a refill on the water, please.” The coffee was going to be horrible black, but I had to eliminate calories from wherever I could.
She turned her head and raised her eyes up from her notepad, and her mouth fell open when her gaze landed on Jeff. She must have missed his gorgeous face when she came by the first time. “And you, sir, what can I get for you?” Her voice became sultrier as she shifted her weight onto her right foot, turned her body toward him, and flipped her flowing red hair. He looked up and smiled at her, which probably made her day.
“I’ll have the stack of five pancakes with the butter on the side, and a garden omelet made with egg whites and no cheese.”
“No cheese, got it. Can I get you some coffee, orange juice or …” I was waiting for her to finish the sentence and offer herself as a menu item.
“A glass of orange juice and another glass of water would be beautiful.” He stretched to see her name tag. “Ann.”
Her cheeks became rosy as her smile widened. “Thank you. I’ll be right back with your drinks.” She collected the menus and walked back to the kitchen.
Jeff reached across the table to my folded hands and held them snug in his. “What else are we going to do today? Any ideas?”
“Whatever you want. I’m open.”
“Ah, my favorite position for you.”
We were interrupted by our waitress and the tray full of drinks she was delivering. He let go of my left hand, but maintained his hold on my right hand near the syrup containers. The waitress disappeared and returned in a matter of minutes. Our food was placed before us and he let go of my right hand.
We ate, settled the check, and walked out.
“I want you to meet my mother,” Jeff said quickly after we got in the car.
“Great, I’m really looking forward to it.” I was excited. I had been wondering when we would meet.
“Today, baby.” His voice was full of urgency. “Now.”
“Okay.”
“But before we get there, I need for you to know some things about her.” He wiped his hand across his forehead and then over his chin. “The past six years have been very difficult for her, since my dad passed away. They’ve been difficult for me, too, but far more so for her.”
“Is something going on with your mom?”
“Well, she’s ...” Jeff’s voice cracked as he spoke. He tried to disguise it with a cough. “I mean, she’s better than she was, but she’s …” I watched him swallow hard. I didn’t like the feeling I was getting from him. Good news is never this hard to get out.
I reached over and rested my left hand lightly on his arm. He inhaled deeply, then removed his left hand from the steering wheel, reached across his body, and held my hand in his before he released his breath. He sniffed a couple times, not a cry sniff -- just a regular sniff, as he drove in silence for a few more minutes before he began talking again.
Jeff
When we sat in IHOP, I asked Nikki what she wanted to do. I knew I wanted to take her to meet my mom. I had to take her.
I hadn’t taken anyone to Mom’s house since she’d had her stroke. No females, anyway. I wasn’t ashamed of her. I loved my mom more than life. But there was no way I wanted to subject my mother to meeting someone who really meant little to nothing to me one week, then when she asks about her, she finds out that woman was out of my life for good.
It was different with Nikki. Nikki was my fiancé, though, and it was time for them to meet.
I made sure Nikki didn’t have anything she wanted to do before I sprang my plan on her.
When she replied she was open, my cock jumped. It registered the words before my mouth could reply. She left me in a quandary. Should I take her home and fuck her or go see my mother? I decided going to see Mom was the more important thing to do at that time.
We sat and enjoyed our food, then, after our waitress brought us our check, we got out of there. It was once we reached the car that I got up the nerve to tell her, “I want you to meet my mother.”
“Great, I’m really looking forward to it.”
“Today, baby.” I had butterflies; that super nervous feeling. “Now.”
I started the car and the CD jumped to the next song on the playlist. It was one of my favorite groups, Foreigner. My eyebrows scrunched as I listened for a few minutes. I dropped my head and sighed. I ran my hands through my hair while listening to them sing. It all felt surreal at that moment to be in the car with Nikki, my fiancé.
I hoped mom wouldn’t be upset that we were dropping by unannounced. I hadn’t given her any notice that I was going to bring someone by to meet her. I hadn’t even told my mother much about Nikki at all. I had only told her I was dating someone when I got the old ‘will you ever settle down and get married’ question a month or so ago. I just knew they needed to meet now. I didn’t want to wait any longer to do this, and Nikki had already said she didn’t have anything else she wanted to do. Plus, I knew the longer I put it off, the more likely they wouldn’t meet until the wedding. That would be a total asshole move by me.
“Okay.”
“But before we get there, I need for you to know some things about her.” I wiped my hand across my forehead and then over my chin. I turned off the radio when the song finished. I couldn’t have any distractions or interruptions while we talked. “The past six years have been very difficult for her, since my dad passed away. They’ve been difficult for me, too, but far more so for her.”
“Is something going on with your mom?”
“Well, she’s -- I mean, she’s better than she was, but she’s …”
I took a deep breath and swallowed past the lump in my throat. She reached over and
rested her left hand lightly on my arm. After taking in maximum air and releasing, I held her hand in mine. Fucking shit! This was the reason no one except my male friends had ever gone to see my mom. I could tell them just enough, and they didn’t ask questions.
I was sweating fucking bullets. My heart was jack-hammering in my chest. It felt like it could have broken a few of my ribs. Retelling this story was the worst. The absolute fucking worst. But she had to know. She had a right to know because she was going to be joining our family.
I drove in silence for a few more minutes before I began talking, again.
“Seven years ago, my father had a heart attack.” I stopped for a second when I heard her catch her breath.
“It was mild, or so we thought.” I paused a few seconds, making sure I could get the words out. “Dad hadn’t had any health problems that we knew about before that day. When he was in the emergency room at the hospital, they ran quite a few tests on him.”
Breathe, Jeff, breathe. I squeezed her hand gently when I paused for a few seconds before continuing. “They found one of his arteries was ninety-nine percent blocked, so they rushed him up to the cardiac wing and put two stents in to open the passageway. He was put on cholesterol medication and blood thinners immediately.”
My emotions had begun to choke me up, all-fucking-ready. “He was supposed to get out of the hospital two days later, but the morning he was going to be discharged --” I stopped. “He …” I choked back my tears and swallowed hard. “He went into cardiac arrest.”
I couldn’t look at Nikki. I wanted to, but I knew our eyes meeting could do one of two things; either make me shut down completely or fall the fuck apart … completely.
The blood was rushing through my veins, pumping hard. I could feel the pounding in my ears. No one knew what that day or what that whole ordeal had done to me.
No one.
Absolutely no one.
That was the second worst day of my life.
I had been on my way to the hospital with Mom to pick Dad up and bring him home when she got a phone call. I remembered Mom was talking, and then screamed. It was a blood-curdling wail so loud that I swerved the car over to the side of the road, nearly getting us hit. Fucking people were honking and screaming out their window, flipping me the bird. I guess, looking back on it, I’d deserved it. I had nearly caused an accident, after all. She scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know what was wrong. I had slammed on the brakes, and we sat at the curb. I asked her what was going on. She sobbed so hard and was saying some gibberish I couldn’t understand. She finally told me to just drive to the hospital, and that it was Dad. By the time I parked the car, she finally told me what happened.
“They told us it was a good thing Dad was still in the hospital or he wouldn’t have survived. He was only fifty-six, and no one expected that, not even his cardiologist. He wasn’t overweight or anything like that; he was in pretty good shape for his age.” Uttering those words, reliving the events and the fear of losing him on that day made my stomach ache.
I caught Nikki clasping her hand over her mouth when I told her about Dad going into cardiac arrest on the day he was supposed to be discharged. I pulled my hand from hers and began twirling and wringing my wrists. Jesus, fucking hell. I hated reliving this fucking nightmare.
“We waited for him to come out of surgery, again, just like the first time. Nothing prepared us to see him like he was as he lay there in recovery. He had tubes and machines hooked up everywhere. His skin was ashen, and his face was expressionless. He didn’t even look like my dad; he looked …” The word wouldn’t come out of my mouth. I couldn’t force it out past what felt like a tennis ball-sized lump in my throat. I could only think the word. Dead.
Dad had looked like he was on life support, with a slim chance of survival. I tried so hard to be strong for Mom that day, but I couldn’t stop my own tears from falling that day. I had failed her, and failed miserably.
“Every sleepless night we spent in the hospital by Dad’s bed for the next week while dad was still in the hospital was spent wondering, and hoping he would wake up the next day.”
I was nearing failure at holding it together telling Nikki about this part of my life. It was so hard to swallow. My throat was dry, like I had tried to swallow a handful of sawdust. All of my emotions had collected in my esophagus. My eyes had begun to ache as they filled with tears that I struggled to fight back.
Nikki’s soft hands trailed up and down my arm. She made little squeaks, but never said anything. She just listened.
“After Dad got home, he went to cardiac therapy or whatever they called it. He went there for a month and exercised while they monitored his heart. He was supposed to get back to working out at home after that month, doing more cardio, and he did, for the first couple of months.” I inhaled deeply. “But I think he got depressed, and just stopped when the doctor wouldn’t release him to go back to his job. They told him it was way too stressful.”
I sighed, slowly releasing the breath I had inhaled.
I shrugged my shoulders, holding them up tight around my ears, then, after releasing them, I cracked my neck on both sides. My breaths were hard to take in. I could feel my world collapsing around me, again. It felt almost as bad as that day.
“I tried to get him to work out with me, but most days, he said he was just too tired or he would give me some other excuse.” I knew I should have pushed my dad and found a way to force him to keep working out. It was partly my fault that he’d stopped. I didn’t push him like I should have. What the fuck was I thinking? I knew he needed to work out. It was my fault. I was every bit as much to blame as he was. It was all my fault. The more I talked about my dad, the closer I was to falling apart. He was everything to me.
“So, anyway.” I coughed. “About two months after his fifty-seventh birthday, not even a year after his first episode, Mom ended up rushing him to the hospital. She told me he began complaining to her about having chest pains.” My nosed itched. I scrunched it up and ran my finger just under it hard, then sniffed.
“I don’t know the whole story, and I probably never will now, but, Mom said she took him to the emergency room right away.” A tear slid down my cheek, but I decided to ignore it. “The doctor who saw my dad said they more than likely didn’t come right away like she had told us, but he couldn’t say exactly what the timing was without getting more information from my mom.”
“What did your mom say?” Nikki scooted over closer to me as another tear trickled down my face. Her closeness soothed me. I could smell that body spray and her raspberry shampoo. It was comforting to have her near me. She was a good listener.
I took the exit off the highway to get over to Mom’s.
The next part of the events changed my mood from sad as fuck to mad as fuck. My blood boiled, and I could have sworn I felt steam rise from my collar, burning up my neck when I blurted out, “She said she gave him those fucking pills, those fucking nitroglycerin pills, to make sure it wasn’t a heart attack, like the cardiologist instructed. But I don’t know why she didn’t just call an ambulance as soon as she gave him the first one. That’s what she was supposed to do.” Nikki pulled back from me slightly.
I sniffed again. “Or she could have called me, for fuck’s sake!” I was beyond fucking mad as the words escaped my lips. The tears burned my skin as they rolled down my face. It was like it had been just yesterday. I could have punched a hole through the fucking windshield, but instead, I tapped my hand on the steering wheel, trying not to hit it too hard. I was so enraged, I could have ripped the fucking steering wheel clean off the car. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. Fuck!
“Do you want me to drive, baby?” I hadn’t even realized Nikki had slid over closer to the passenger door, away from me, at that moment. I wanted to let her drive, but what kind of a pussy would I have been? No, I’d drive. We weren’t that far away. And I needed her to listen to me, not worry about getting directions to Mom’s. I needed to tell her thi
s.
Because this day I was telling her about was the worst day of my life.
“No, I’m fine.” I wiped the tears from my cheeks, inhaled, and slowly exhaled, hoping to release some of my rage with my breath.
“My mom had decided driving Dad to the hospital made more sense than calling for an ambulance. By the time she pulled in, and they got my dad on a gurney, he had already passed away. They told me his heart failed and his brain had suffered from a lack of oxygen…” I slammed my fist into the door. I was so mad. My dad didn’t have to die. He shouldn’t be dead. “…at some point before he even arrived.” I turned off the engine, and we sat there in Mom’s driveway. I gasped for air through my sobs as my body heaved.
My head was throbbing. My body was shaking. Nikki was trying to rub my arm, but I felt like a caged animal. I wanted to get out and run through the woods behind my mom’s house. At the same time, I was exhausted from reliving all of this. The anger was trying to resurface as I told Nikki about everything. I just had to be careful not to direct it toward her. I needed her.
“I’m so sorry, Jeff.” Nikki scooted back to me and wrapped her arm around my stomach. It felt really good having her there. I reciprocated and wrapped my arm around her back, then pulled her in tighter to me. I could tell by her movements that she was crying with me.
I never wanted her to be sad or upset about anything, including hearing this.
I couldn’t stop myself from letting my feelings and thoughts out. They had been bottled up inside of me for six long years, and now, they were spilling out my mouth like that science experiment where you put baking soda and vinegar together in a bottle.
“My dad …” I whispered, then coughed to clear my throat. “Dad was my best friend. I never even got to fucking say goodbye, Nikki. I never got to tell him how much I loved him that one last time.” Tears were streaming down my face as if it had just happened yesterday.
Fuck, fuck, fucking shit! I felt like I'd been punched in the gut and jabbed in the jaw a few times.
We sat in silence, and her grip tightened on my arm. She didn’t say anything, and I didn’t expect her to. What was there to say? And she’d only heard half the story.
Jaded By Desire (Lust, Desire, and Love Trilogy Book 2) Page 2