Page 29 of Trouble in Love
Resisting the urge to slide the pillow from beneath her head and hold it over her face, I stood and paced back and forth in front of the large window overlooking the hospital’s perfectly manicured gardens. This private, double room was the best in the house. It also wasn’t the one Mum was given after surgery. But her frequent and loud complaints before the surgery—about the odors emanating from the man opposite her and the lack of natural light making her appear jaundiced—led to her being moved.
In what was certainnotto be a coincidence, it was also the furthest from the nurses’ station.
Maybe I should have spent an hour sitting with and listening to them rather than mum, especially when she was all kindness and praise for Holly and cold criticism for me. For years, I was as jealous of my sister as I was of Evie. That ended when the shit in my life hit the fan and Holly was by my side in a way I would have never imagined. Deep-rooted shame over my envy haunted me to the day.
Perhaps Mom felt a hint of that as well, as her expression softened, and she changed her approach. “Come sit next to me,” she said, tapping the mattress by her leg. “I won’t bite.” Doing as she asked, I took my place by her side and readied myself with a slow, deep breath. “I’m hard on you because I want the best for you, Plop. Now that you’re thirty, it’s time to quit the partying and—’
“Settle down … Yes. I know Mum. But what if that’s not what I want?” I snuggled closer, covered her hand in mine, and drew circles over her cool skin with my fingertips. “What if I don’t want to settle down. I want to travel? Work in a field, and place I love, and build a life bigger than the one you and dad had?”
In a heartbeat, her expression hardened, and her warming hand was whipped away, buried beneath her elbow as she crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, so not only was the car your dad bought you for your eighteenth—the one you refused to drive—not good enough, but our whole life, the one that paid for your fancy clothes, jewelry, and the deposit for your first house, isn’t up to your standard either?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Isn’t it? Pretty sure that’s what I heard.”
I bit my lip. Battling the urge to fight a war I could never win. “You and Dad gave me everything I ever needed. I know that. And I loved the car. But I wanted to buy my own house. It’s important to me to be independent. A lot of families would praise that, not condemn it.”
Mum waved her hand as if to shoo my words away. “Well, we aren’t a lot of families, we’re our family, and we do things our way. That includes showing respect for tradition and for your parents. From the day you began to talk, all you’ve done is resist and struggle against everything I advised and look where it’s got you. Barren and alone.”
Bit by bit, as her tirade continued, the glacial facade I tried so hard to maintain was chipped away. When she got like this on the phone, I could distract myself with meaningless tasks and pretend to listen. But here, right beside her, with her shrill voice bouncing off the sterile white walls, I could do nothing but absorb every word, and the worst thing was, she was kind of right.
As a child, my parents gave me everything. I was spoiled. Defiant. Arrogant. When I came of age, when Evie and Luke did what they did, the newly fostered fear of rejection and vulnerability fused with the same hubris Mum continued to berate me for and bred my craving for independence. If those I loved so much could cause such pain, no one could be trusted. Never again would I rely on anyone. It was rejected before rejection. Leave before being left. If I wanted something, I’d get it or do it myself.
The pricey therapist I paid to fix me helped me see I’d built those patterns to protect myself, but as the old lady so eloquently put it, where had that gotten me? Alone and barren.
The chiseled face of my Cowboy … of Luca … appeared before my eyes.Our night together meant something to me. You mean something to me.
He wouldn’t think that if he knew me. I said to myself. I was no one’s first choice, sloppy seconds at best.
“You’re not even listening, are you? You won’t even consider it, and I lie here on my deathbed.”
“What?” She was right. I’d completely spaced out. How I could do that in a hospital room so bright I could see my miserable reflection staring back at me on the floor, I don’t know. That was just the power of my mum. Out there laying guilt trips and killing brain cells like no one could. “Yes, of course I am.” I nodded.
“You are? So, you’ll do it then?”
“Ahh, Sure. Yep. I will. Consider it done.”
Her mouth twisted into a smile befitting Cinderella’s step mum, and I knew I’d irrevocably fucked up.
Polly
Man, I had monumentally fucked up.
It was official. Elias Giannopoulos, my gag-inducing—albeit four hundred times removed—half-cousin, was on his way, and I had agreed to not only meet him but be open to marriage.
From what my devious matchmaker mother had told me, Elias was short, fair, and handsome. A businessperson of his own making, he owned a chain of successful sporting goods stores and was involved in local charities that supported adults with disabilities. Much to my chagrin, he sounded attractive in a way I didn’t want him to be. If this guy turned out to be cute, not a loser, and philanthropic, I was screwed. And even whacked off her head on painkillers, Mum knew it.
Confident I could worm my way out of it, the panic didn’t set in for a day or so. But a day before Mum’s planned discharge from the hospital, her temperature steadily rose. Initially, she brushed it off as a nasty little cold, but we knew something was wrong when night chills became scorching fevers, and her surgical incision began to swell. Luckily, the nurses saw throughMum’s posturing and ran some tests, later diagnosing her with PJI. An infection in the tissue surrounding the metal screws connecting Mum’s femur and hip joint. Thirty minutes later, she had a drain sucking pus from her wound, two IVs pumping fluids and antibiotics into her, and a daughter who was resigned to her fate.
A few painfully long days ago, I refused to meet up with possibly the hottest guy alive. Now I was being flogged off to some desperate, gross loser who needed to marry a cousin because he was so gross and desperate. The fact that I, too, was deemed to be in the same positionandcould be assigned the same labels was neither here nor there.
Two desperadoes of the same genetic background being forced into marriage could never be a good thing.
Right?
Even so sick, she continued pushing the benefits of arranged marriages. “Your papou and yaya had an arranged marriage, and they lived together happily for forty magnificent years.”
“Mum. Yaya spent almost every Christmas and Easter chasing and walloping Popi with the spare spit skewer. She ran over two of his cats,andhe died of food poisoning, which I’m pretty sure we all agree she was responsible for.”
