“I wonder if the guy told Jas the pills would make her grow a chest,” Hil said.
“You’re an asshole, Hil,” Belle said.
“I might have to piss again, beauty,” Hil said. “Give me your bag.”
“I’ll cut it off,” Ash warned.
“Better get a chainsaw for that,” Hil said.
“While you two talk about cutting a log, I’ll figure this out,” I said. “Like I always do.”
I pushed by Hil and Ash and paused and looked down at Belle.
She smiled at me.
I nodded.
I made it ten feet away and my phone started to ring.
The number on the screen didn’t mean shit to me, but I decided to answer it anyway.
“Ulysses? Uly?” a sweet little voice said.
“Who’s asking?”
“I, uh, I need to know before I say anything…”
Her voice crackled a little. I pulled the phone away from my ear and checked the number again.
“I’m not in the mood for games, doll,” I said. “See you later.”
“Wait!” she screamed. “It’s… it’s Mara.”
“Mara?” I asked. “Who the hell is… Mara… wait. Mara?”
“Mara,” she said. “Paula’s daughter. Mara.”
“Shit, doll, sorry,” I said.
“Uly, listen to me,” she said.
I turned and looked at Hil, Ash, and Belle.
“What’s wrong, doll?” I asked. “You sound scared.”
“Uly, I’m really sorry, but your mother was just rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery.”
Chapter 2
I looked to the passenger seat for the tenth time.
It’s still fucking empty, Uly. What the fuck are you trying to prove?
There was nothing to prove. Nothing to do. There was only acceptance. And there I was, driving like a madman to get to my mother.
Mara was a little sparse on the details, but it didn’t help that I tore into her as though she made something go wrong with my mother. That was on me and I’d have to suck it up and apologize to her. Even if she was the daughter of the woman my mother paid to keep her house in order.
Even still… emergency surgery?
Shit.
To me that meant if Paula and Mara weren’t at the house…
I shook that thought away.
I hated that my passenger seat was empty.
We all went to the hospital when Belle’s mother was there, right? But it was Ash who jacked up her mother’s douchebag boyfriend for doing what he did.
And it wasn’t like Ash and Hil didn’t offer to come with me.
Belle too.
She ran from Ash to me, grabbing my hand, squeezing it tight.
I told her and Them to stay. There was nothing anyone could do anyway.
Plus, it was my mother.
Say no more, right?
I smoked two cigarettes and then focused on the road.
Windows down.
Music up.
My eyes constantly looking to my phone, just in case. And then looking to the passenger seat. Not just in case. But… just my reality.
“Ah, fuck,” I said to myself.
I had to text Lake.
Known as Miss Whitaker to those in BFH, she was always Lake to me. Not that she cared about my mother. The shit my mother did to her was terrible. Part of me never wanted to talk to my mother ever again, but after my old man died, I was down to one blood parent. It wasn’t like my mother did anything for me either. My father set everything up for her. She had enough money to live on for the rest of her life and then some.
My job was just to show up here and there to smile for a selfie that she could throw up on social media or show around to her friends.
They were all the same type of women too… divorced, rich, pretending they didn’t hate their lives, looking for young men to fool around with, throwing cash around for new noses, breasts, and whatever the new skin cream was that was going to make them look like they were eighteen again.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
My thoughts were rampant, borderline hateful, and my mother was under the knife. Getting something done. It could have been anything. Her heart? Her stomach? Her… anything.
When I got to the hospital, it was another goddamn two mile process to park the car, get inside, and find out where the fuck my mother was. I stood at the front desk, waiting for someone to give me a fucking answer when I heard someone say my name.
“Uly?”
The soft voice echoed around the big walls of the hospital.
I spun around and saw Mara.
Wearing a long-sleeved orange shirt with her hands tucked into the bottoms of the sleeves. White jean shorts that looked goddamn homemade. Which wouldn’t have shocked me at all. I had talked to Mara dozens of times on my pity visits to my mother. She and her mother lived a very different life than I did. And definitely different from my mother too.
She had sunglasses up on her head, keeping her hair from falling into her face. She had light brown hair with sort of blonde highlights in it. The words sort of made sense because a while ago she got the highlights but then never kept up with them or whatever, so they were growing out.
Why the fuck am I even looking at her like this right now?
I hurried toward her, taking my sunglasses off.
My necklaces bounced against my chest as I ran.
The fucking necklaces needed to go. The guitar pick and the ring with the missing diamond. I didn’t need the damn reminders anymore. Shit with Hil was on a decent wavelength and as far as I was concerned, the Penelope situation was so far in the past it was dead and gone for good. My heart was still scarred from Belle though…
“Where is she?” I asked.
I grabbed Mara’s arms and pulled her toward me.
Mara gasped. “She’s… she’s…”
“She’s what?” I snapped.
Mara looked ready to cry.
Fuck… tell me I’m not going to lose my mother now too?
* * *
“She’s okay.”
“Okay?” I asked.
“You’re, uh, kind of…”
I looked at my hands and let Mara go. “Shit. Sorry.” I ripped my beanie off my head and ran my hand through my hair. “Sorry, Mara.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I was freaking out too. I should have talked better or something. I mean, on the phone. I just… I never called you before.”
I looked at her eyes. They were green. Cool as hell too. I always told her that. Everyone thought blue eyes were so special, but I thought green eyes were more special.
Mara looked scared to death standing there.
“She’s out of surgery?”
“I don’t know,” Mara said.
“But she’s okay?”
“Yeah. Definitely okay. Fuck. Uly. I’m…”
I reached for her hand. “Tell you what. Let’s start over, doll.”
“Okay.”
“I’m in the hospital because my mother is here. What happened?”
“Right,” Mara said. “Let’s walk and talk so I can take you to the waiting area.”
“Works for me,” I said. “Can I smoke in here?”
“In a hospital?” Mara asked.
I grinned. “I’m joking, doll.”
“Oh. Right.” She laughed.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Mara said. “Just rattled. Frazzled.” She shut her eyes and shook her head. “Fuck, Uly, she fell down the steps and hurt her leg.”
“What?”
“Sorry,” Mara said. “I probably made this sound so much worse… I mean, it is bad. I didn’t… Mom heard her yell. Well, scream. She missed a step and when she went down, something with her ankle and knee twisted and popped or whatever.”
“Damn,” I said.
“I don’t know what actually happened,” Mara said. “I mean, what’s broken or torn or whatever. But sh
e was in a lot of pain, Uly. Mom yelled for me to call an ambulance. So I did that. They came and told your Mom that she needed to get to the hospital immediately. One of the paramedics I think said something about surgery. I don’t know. It all happened so fast. We followed the ambulance here and it was just…”
“What?”
We stopped at an elevator and waited.
“It was just chaotic,” Mara said. “The doctor took one look and started yelling orders and making calls. Said she needed surgery right then and there. Not sure if there was something else wrong…”
“Wait a second, doll,” I said. “So this could be bad? I mean, she’s in surgery, but…”
“I think the bone…” Mara cringed. The elevator dinged and the doors opened. “The bone like poked through…”
“Oh, fuck,” I said.
“I’m so sorry, Uly,” she said.
We got into the elevator and the doors shut.
I looked at Mara.
She was definitely freaked out by the whole thing.
It made more sense though.
If she saw it.
The bone…
“So they’re fixing her leg then?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Mara said. “I’m really sorry about the way I called you. When they rushed her away, Mom told me to call you. She has your number as a contact in case of emergency. So I used my phone but I got your number from Mom’s phone.”
“I get it,” I said.
The elevator stopped again.
The doors opened and Mara walked forward.
I reached for her hand again. “Hey, doll. I’m sorry I yelled through the phone. You caught me off guard. Hope I didn’t scare you.”
“No,” she said. “You’ve talked like that before.”
“To you?”
Mara nodded. She faked a smile and shrugged her shoulders.
She led the way to a waiting area that was dimly lit with cloth chairs and TVs in each corner hanging on the wall.
I saw Paula flipping through a magazine.
She looked up at me and smiled. “Ulysses.”
“Paula. Any word?”
“Not yet,” she said. “It could be a little while.”
I sat down next to her.
Mara sat far away.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Didn’t Mara tell you?” Paula asked.
“She did. She seems scared.”
“This kind of thing gets to her,” Paula said. “I didn’t help much. I panicked a little myself. I heard her yell and…”
“You thought the worst,” I said.
“Then I saw her leg. Ulysses…” Paula shook her head.
“She’s going to be okay though?”
“She’ll be out of surgery hopefully soon.”
I didn’t mean my mother… I meant was Mara going to be okay.
* * *
I sat down next to Mara. “Want to go smoke with me?”
She looked at me. “I don’t smoke.”
“Sure you do.”
“No, I don’t. I think it’s disgusting.”
“Do you like mustard?”
“Mustard? Yeah… why…?”
“I think mustard is disgusting,” I said. “Should I judge you for that? You mustard eater weird girl.”
Mara curled her lip. “What the hell is wrong with you, Uly?”
“I’m just killing time, doll.”
“Kill it somewhere else then,” she said.
She stood up and walked to another chair. When she sat down, she put earbuds in.
Talking to Mara went one of two ways.
Either I was a dick to her for no reason or she was a bitch to me for no reason.
She was embarrassed by what happened on the phone.
And I was a dick.
I looked around and saw a pen on a table next to me.
I grabbed it and put the cap on tight and then threw it at Mara.
She was face down on her phone and when it hit her leg, she jumped up and dropped her phone. It tore the cord from the earbuds out of her ears.
She looked right at me.
She showed me both of her middle fingers and then got her phone off the floor and sat back down.
I stood up and walked to the elevators to pace the hall a little.
I didn’t expect Mara to show up.
The second I saw her, she threw the same pen at me like it was a fucking dart.
It hit my cheek.
I hurried after her and grabbed her hand again and spun her around.
“Asshole,” she growled at me. “I’m nervous…”
“For what?” I asked. “She’s going to be fine.”
“Ten minutes ago you were scared too, Uly,” Mara said.
“And now I’m trying to breathe a little here,” I said. “I had no idea what I was walking into here.”
“Don’t throw pens at me, okay? I’m not some trashy girl or whatever. Got it?”
“Holy shit, doll, I never said that about you. I was just messing around.”
“Just don’t do it again,” Mara snapped.
She tried to move to go back into the waiting room.
I darted to block her path.
She quickly turned and hurried to the elevator and hit both buttons.
I folded my arms and waited.
The elevator opened, going up.
I jumped forward and got into the elevator before it shut.
I blocked the buttons.
“What the hell is your problem, Uly?” Mara asked.
“You’re really worked up right now,” I said. “Over a pen?”
“You were mean on the phone.”
“I’m always mean on the phone,” I said. “And I apologized. Plus, you’re usually a bitch to me.”
“Don’t ever call me that again,” Mara said, her eyes going wide.
They started to gloss over.
I looked behind me and hit the button for the top floor of the hospital.
“Mara…”
“Don’t look at me. Don’t talk to me. Ever again.”
She spun around.
I shook my head and turned her back around to face me.
A tear leaked from her left eye.
“Holy shit, doll,” I whispered. “What’s going on here?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“I’m sorry for what you saw back there,” I said. “It must have been bad, huh?”
Mara sighed and shut her eyes. “It has nothing to do with your mother.”
I touched her cheek and cleaned off the tear. “What do you mean?”
“Shit,” she whispered. “I feel like an idiot.”
“Why?”
“I’m stuck in an elevator with you, Uly. And I’m acting like a baby.”
“Not a baby. You’re upset. Pissed.”
Mara looked at me. “It’s personal stuff.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“Come on, doll. My day just got all sorts of fucked up. I need the distraction.”
The word distraction seemed to make her blush.
“You wouldn’t understand it,” she said.
“Try me,” I said.
The elevator stopped.
I looked back and hit the first floor button.
“Just shit I deal with,” Mara said.
“Someone bothering you?” I asked.
“Why do you care, Uly? You have your rich place to go to. Right? Where you’re the bad guy who gets what he wants. I’m on the bottom of everything where I am. Okay?”
“Meaning what?”
“I get called the maid’s daughter. I get asked if my mother wears the cliché maid’s outfit or whatever. And there’s this guy who-”
“A guy, huh? Who?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“He made you cry just now.”
“You’ve made me cry, Uly. How’s that?”
I swallowed hard. “Fair enough. He’s throwing stuff at
you? Makes you feel like trash? Because of what your mother does for a living?”
Mara nodded.
My nostrils flared. “You’re going to give me his name, right?”
“Nope,” she said.
I turned my head and hit the button for the floor that we needed to wait for my mother to get out of surgery.
The elevator stopped a few seconds later.
The doors opened and Mara started to move.
I stuck my right hand out and blocked her.
Then I pulled her toward me and I lowered my mouth to hers.
My lips pressed against hers for a second.
“Nobody should make you feel like trash, doll,” I whispered.
Mara pushed me away. “You smell like smoke.”
“You taste like mustard.”
Mara’s face was bright red.
She hurried off the elevator.
I turned and watched her run away.
The doors started to shut and I stuck my foot in the path of the doors to keep them open.
I just kissed Mara.
For no good goddamn reason.
Or maybe…
Maybe I kissed her to make sure she didn’t feel as shitty as I did.
Chapter 3
I was finally let into the room.
My mother looked groggy.
She looked at me. “Ulysses…”
“Mom,” I said. “Holy hell.”
“Oh, I just…” She slowly shook her head. “It all happened so fast…”
I got the rundown of the entire ordeal.
It was a nasty fracture that required immediate surgery to put the bone back in place, stabilize it, and then get everything stitched up. The words flew at me really fast. A laundry list of things to look out for. Which included swelling, pain, smell, and puss.
There were ten times I wanted the conversation to stop because this was Paula’s realm.
Not mine.
I wasn’t going to fucking take up a bedroom at my mother’s place and call it home.
Fuck no.
I’d pay out of my own pocket for nurses and caretakers to deal with the hell that was coming next.
My mother wasn’t allowed to drive, obviously.
It was going to be weeks before things would get back to normal for her.
My mother hated when a cloud blocked the sun.
This was going to be rough.
But not for me.
“Where’s Paula?” my mother asked me.
ULY (Bay Falls High - Them Book 1) Page 2