“Ben already knows. Your brothers and sisters don’t need to worry about it either.” She made a dismissive snort. “Don’t get worked up over me. You have better things to focus on.”
My mom didn’t want me to get worked up over her because I had better things to focus on.
Raising both my hands up toward my face, I pressed the pads of my fingers to my temples and told myself to calm down. I told myself to. I tried to go over all the relaxation techniques I’d learned over the years to deal with my stress and… nope. None of it worked. None of it.
“I don’t want you to be distracted by me,” Mom insisted.
I swore my ears started to ring. “Did an ambulance have to take you to the hospital?”
She made an annoyed sound. “Yes.”
I pressed my fingers deeper into my temples.
“Oh, put your hands down and pull your thong out of your butt,” she tried to joke. “I’m fine.”
My ears definitely started to ring. For sure.
I couldn’t even look at her as I said, my voice sounding lower and hoarser than normal… not even sounding like it belonged to me, “You could have called me, Mom. If it was me in the accident—”
“You wouldn’t have called me either,” she finished.
“I—” Okay, maybe I wouldn’t have either, but that knowledge didn’t ease my anger even a little. If anything, it just made me madder. My hands shook so bad, I stretched my fingers long and lifted them up to either side of my face, shaking them. Mad, so fucking mad, I wanted to scream. “That’s not the point!”
She sighed. “You had a big day. I didn’t want to bother you.”
She didn’t want to bother me.
My mom didn’t want to bother me.
I dropped my hands and tilted my face up to the ceiling, because if I looked at my mom the way I wanted to, she’d probably smack the expression right off. And then I wondered where I’d learned to keep so many secrets. Holy fuck.
“It’s only a little concussion and a fractured nose, Grumpy. And don’t raise your voice at me,” she said for the second time, and for the second time, it had zero effect on my blood pressure. “I know what this year means to you. I want you to take advantage of it. You don’t need to worry about me.”
I replayed her last sentences in my head, and it nearly exploded. This sickening feeling swelled up from my stomach to make it to the back of my throat.
Maybe I was being dramatic, but I didn’t think so. This was my mom. My mom. The woman who had taught me by example how to get up every time I was down. She was the strongest woman I knew. The strongest, the smartest, the prettiest, the toughest, the most loyal, the hardest working….
My throated ached. Years ago, she had scared the shit out of us by saying they had found a lump in her breast that ended up being nothing, I’d heard or seen pretty much all of my brothers and sisters cry. I’d just gotten pissed off. And scared. I’d admit it. I’d been terrified for my mom and, as selfish as it was, for me. Because what the hell would I do without her?
Worst of all, I’d been a dick about the entire situation. But I blamed it on being a teenager—and on my mom being the greatest anchor in my life—on why I’d flipped the hell out and tried to blame her, like she could have prevented it somehow. Now… well, now I was pissed again but not at her.
Well, maybe at her, but only because she would have avoided telling me she’d gotten hurt if she could have, and… and because she didn’t want to distract me. Didn’t want to bother me. I balled up my fist, and if my fingernails had been any longer, I probably would have drawn blood.
“Ben met up with me at the hospital,” she explained, her voice slowly beginning to edge back into a calm, even tone. “You don’t need to get worked up.”
All I could do was stare at her.
“I want you focused,” she added. “I know how much this means to you. If the accident would have happened three months ago, I would have called you, but you’re busy again, Jasmine. I didn’t want to take away from it.”
Didn’t want to take away from it? If she had gotten hurt before I’d started training so hard again, she would have called me but now she wouldn’t?
I glanced up at the ceiling and undid my fist, stretching my fingers as wide as possible. I couldn’t find the words. I couldn’t pick them, choose them, find them, make them up. I was too stuck on her I know how much this means to you.
My chest joined my throat in the aching game.
Did she not understand I’d do anything for her? That I loved her and admired her and thought she was the greatest human being in the world? That I had no idea how she had raised five kids with my dad only being in the picture until I was three? That I didn’t understand how she could have been married three times before Ben, had her heart broken each time, but somehow she hadn’t given up hope and hadn’t let any of that stuff jade her?
There were a lot of things I didn’t let get to me. There were so many times I fell and hurt myself but kept going. But people had been assholes to me when I was younger, once, maybe a couple of times, making remarks and comments, and that alone had made me give up on strangers.
But my mom never let anything get her down for long.
How could I not think the world of her? How could I not love her, who raised me to think I was invincible, more than anything? How could she believe she wasn’t a priority to me?
“You don’t have to worry about me,” she insisted, casually. “I’ll be fine. When Ben and I go to Hawaii in a few weeks, I won’t let him take any pictures of my face. That way I have an excuse for us to go again,” she said brightly.
But it didn’t do shit for me.
This was my fault. This was all my fault. She thought and felt the way she did because I had told her a thousand and a half times how figure skating was what had made me feel special. What had given me purpose. What had made me finally feel like there was something I was good at. What gave me life, what made me happy, what made me strong.
But in reality, it was my mom—my whole family—that had given me the foundation for those things. I knew what all those emotions were because of them. Because of her.
I guessed I had just always assumed she knew.
But maybe I had just been too much of a self-centered prick to come to terms with realizing that until now.
My chest hurt even more, and my throat tightened so much I couldn’t swallow as I sat there, taking in the face that I loved with my entire heart. “Mom,” was the one and only thing I could get out.
It was right then that her cell’s ringtone started blaring. She didn’t even say a word to me as she reached for her phone and answered it. “Baby girl,” she said immediately, and I knew it was Ruby.
That was the end of that conversation. It was just how my mom worked. She was done when she was done.
And she expected, and for good reason, that if we’d kept talking about it, I probably would have gone on a rant. Under normal circumstances, at least.
This knot in my throat doubled in size as I stared at her as she talked to my sister with a smile on her face like she hadn’t just finished telling me being in a car accident was no big deal. Then implied that she wasn’t as important to me as she was.
Did I come off that heartless?
Something that felt an awful lot like a tear beaded up in my right eye, but I pressed the tip of a finger against that corner and ignored whether or not there had been some wetness on it, because my throat and my heart ached so bad, they overwhelmed everything else.
I sat there. I sat there and stared at my mom, and wondered what kind of person she really thought I was. I knew she loved me. I knew she wanted me to be happy. I was fully aware she knew all of my strengths and flaws.
But…
Did she think I was a selfish piece of shit?
My appetite disappeared, and so did my exhaustion. Kaput. Bye. Just like that.