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STEFAN
My phone rings, but it’s late, so I just let it go to voicemail. Work wouldn’t be calling me at this hour. The room is dark, and silent. It rings again, and I turn on the lamp to the bed, and look at my phone.
“Mom, is everything okay?” I answer, my heart beating a million miles per hour. “Is dad okay?”
She is crying on the other end, and my eyes start to water. Something bad has happened.
“Talk to me. Deep breaths. What’s going on?”
“She’s been hurt. You need to get to Grapevine now!”
“Who, mom?”
I’m not awake, and my anxiety is riding high.
“Angela. I just saw it on the news. She was on a call and the house collapsed while she was inside.”
Fuck! I jump out of the bed, go to my closet, and start grabbing clothes. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
My heart is racing and I don’t know what to do. Hendrix isn’t going to want me anywhere near his family right now, but he won’t have a fucking choice. Our conversation earlier can’t be the last thing I said to her. Angela thinks I don’t want to be with her and I do.
I throw on my grey sweatpants, white t-shirt, tennis shoes, and run downstairs, collecting my keys by the front door. My mother didn’t mention how bad of shape she is in, so has she not been at the hospital? Hendrix isn’t going to answer my calls, so I dial Leslie.
“Hello?” her voice cracks as she answers.
“Please tell me she is going to be okay?”
The gate opens, and I pull out onto the street only minutes from getting on the interstate. Normally, I don’t speed, but tonight I am.
“She is unconscious right now. They say she has some swelling in her brain, and this might be why she hasn’t woken up yet.”
No one knows about Angela and me, so they are going to wonder why I am on my way to Grapevine in the middle of the night. Is the fact we have known each other for over twenty years not enough?
“I’m on my way. Call me if anything changes. See you soon.”
I speed onto the on ramp of the interstate, and luckily, there isn’t a lot of traffic. That’s one good thing about it being almost midnight. All I can think about is what if that’s my last conversation with her? Why am I pushing away Angela when we have both been waiting since childhood to be able to take a chance? It’s here, and when she voiced it, I got scared and made work the excuse.
The company is not always going to be around, and sometimes I need to prioritize my well-being over the companies. I deserve to have a life and a woman that adores me. Some guys prefer to be single and lonely, but not me. All my adult life, I have never found someone who makes me feel the way Angela does, and that means something.
Without the traffic, the drive should only take about twenty-minutes given my speed. If anything happens, I want to be there. Angela needs to know I care. This is my opportunity to show her that I’m here for the long haul.
This has opened my eyes to the fact that we aren’t going to be alive forever, and every day I push her away and focus on work only, the less time I get with her. How is that fair?
My phone rings to the Bluetooth in my car. It’s Hendrix.
“Listen, I know we aren’t friends anymore, but I just thought you would want to know my sister is in the hospital.”
“My mother called me and I’m on my way to Grapevine now. Friends or not, you know how much I love your family.”
“Are you driving?” I ask, hearing the engine in the background.
“About ten minutes out. Let’s put this thing between us aside for now and focus on Angela. My family doesn’t need to be pulled into our drama, especially in a situation like this.”
For the first time in a while, he is making sense. He is putting someone else ahead of himself, and I never thought I’d see that day.
“Understood.”
I hang up and speed up a little bit more. There have been no cops on the interstate so far, so might as well take it up a notch.
