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Well, if she needs someone to lean on, she’ll lean on me.
I usher my wobbly friend to the elevator and down to the lobby. Daphne is waiting by the entrance with Layla’s car.
“I’m so relieved to hear that he’s okay,” Daphne is saying as Layla buckles the baby into his carseat with quivering hands.
“Yeah,” I say, slipping into the front seat and immediately connecting my dead phone to the charger.
Finally. I roamed the hospital hallways last night, trying to charge my device but I couldn’t get my hands on a charger. And since I don’t know Mason’s phone number by heart, I couldn’t call him from Layla’s phone. I know he must have been worried but I couldn’t figure out how to reach him.
“It was a stressful night,” I say to Daphne as I buckle up, “but luckily, the little guy only has an ear infection. Nothing the prescribed ear drops won’t fix.”
At last, all the drama with the baby has been resolved. In the heat of the moment, it provided a worthy distraction from the shitload of problems that I left behind me at the clinic yesterday. But the fact remains that I have a world of trouble waiting for me now.
Kissing Mason in front of my brother was like striking a match in a tub of gasoline. When those ambulance doors closed in Mason’s face yesterday afternoon, I virtually left the man I love in the middle of a dumpster fire. He had to face the fallout all alone while I got to hide away at the hospital and clear my head.
I just hope that Felix didn’t overreact. I hope that I’ll be able to make things right. Because last night as I sat in the hospital waiting room, I had a lot of time to think. I was finally able to get my head on straight. I know what’s important to me.
Mason. I love him. And I want all his love for me. I want to experience it. I want to swim in it. I want to bask in it. I want to live in it with him.
Regardless of what anyone thinks. Felix included.
I can’t wait to get to Mason so we can talk this out and move forward, once and for all.
But first, I need to make sure that Layla and Sky are okay.
Layla doesn’t say much as Daphne carefully pulls away from the curb and crawls onto the main road. The exhausted mother only hunches over her son, protectively clutching his carseat. Tears leak from her closed eyes as the car goes.
She’s being so hard on herself. She blames herself for what happened with Sky, which is ridiculous. Baby’s get ear infections all the time. And the way Razor handled the situation was not her fault.
As a mother, she had every right to trust that she could leave Sky in the care of his father for a few hours. It was a perfectly reasonable assumption to believe that she could rely on Razor to keep their kid alive while she was at a damn job interview.
I wish I could find the right words to help her stop blaming herself. But the guilt is visibly eating away at her as she sits here.
My phone soon comes to life and I discover that I have over a dozen missed calls from Mason. My stomach instantly clenches. Shit. This can’t be good. I try calling him back immediately but now, I’m the one being sent to voicemail.
Looking out the windshield, I silently will Daphne to drive faster. Still safely, of course. Just faster. My anxiety rises with each passing second. I silently will every red light to turn green. I will every pedestrian to safely hustle their ass across the damn street. Because I need to get home and speak to Mason.
When we finally pull into Layla’s yard, Daphne and I help our friend get inside the house with the baby. And what a disaster it is in here.
In the midst of the usual baby bottles, dirty clothes and empty beer cans strewn all about, I catch sight of Razor’s shit-stained tighty-whities sitting in the middle of the coffee table.
I vomit in my mouth.
And Layla fucking loses it.
An enraged battle cry tears out of her chest, shaking the house. “Fuck…you…Ansel!!!”
She thrusts Sky into my arms and she charges into the kitchen. Before I can decide whether to intervene, Layla stomps back out with a fistful of garbage bags in each hand and a determined look on her face.
Yup. Razor has officially pushed my sweet friend over the edge.
She charges into the bedroom and in a second, we hear knocking and crashing sounds spilling out the door.
Daphne and I lock eyes. She gives me an owlish look. “Should we go after her?” she mouths.
I creep over to the door and poke my head inside to make sure she’s okay. I see Layla aggressively hauling Razor’s clothes out of closets and drawers, stuffing them all into garbage bags. “I’m done…” she’s muttering to herself. “This time, I am fucking done with that piece of shit. I’m done. I want him gone.”
“No. She’s got it covered.”I respond to Daphne. Layla deserves to get this out of her system without interruption.
