She’s the last one standing. There’s nothing left for her to hold on to in Ace’s life, but she won’t let go and she’s the biggest cause of my irrational anger because I’m being Angie’s lil’ wannabe daughter-in-law again. I thought the craving for her acceptance would fade, but it just gets stronger because I can’t get Ace’s quivering response to my confession out of my head:“I loved you before you even knew what love was.”
Love.
I fling the sheets off my head and sit up. “Baby.”
It comes out as a statement and not a question, just like all the other times, because there’s nothing left to question anymore.
He turns around with the toothbrush dangling from his mouth.
“I’m hungry,” I add, coaxing him down from his wide-eyed response to me popping up from the bed.
“Okay... we’ll stop and get something on the wa—”
“No. I wanna meet Cree for brunch.”
“But I wanna stop by the house and get Mom some clothes for when she wakes up today.”
“I’ll give you my key and tell you what to grab.”
His eyebrows wrinkle, and he twists his lips to the side while eyeing my face. “Mhmm. Okay. I’ll drop you—”
“I can Uber there.”
“Uber? Gus can take you and bring you to the hospital after.”
“No. I’ll Uber to the hospital too.”
“I don’t like this.” He glides to the bed, resting a knee next to me with his toothbrush dangling out of his mouth. “You need to go see your mom.”
He’s serious, but I am too. Mama would support my irrational anger. She’d understand that Angie didn’t plan for Ace to be a lone wolf on a planet that didn’t get him. Angie always meant for it to be me and Ace against the world, and she knew that even from thousands of miles away.
Cree chimes in from her side of the phone in loud Spanish. She sounds ready for us to meet and play sisters again like the world wasn’t crumbling around me and she wasn’t carrying around the answers to some last-minute questions I had before I sent her back to Los Angeles on that plane she keeps avoiding.
“We’ll make it quick. I just need some time to myself before I go back to that hospital.”
A part of it is true and makes me feel better for telling half-truths. I didn’t suddenly conquer my fears of hospitals and clinics. It was just buried underneath my adrenaline yesterday.
He nods with his arms crossed while I eye his nightstand behind him where Angie waits patiently from that picture Cree thumbed the night of the gala. She wants to see what her lil’ wannabe daughter-in-law will do to fix all the things for her son that she didn’t have time to.
“Okay.” He sighs. “But don’t be long, for real. She’s waking up today and I want her to see us when she does.”
Of course he did. He was a mama’s boy for an eternity—even for a mama he adopted as his.
* * *
Ace
CeCe looks like Mom.
Her lips are dry and cracked like Mom’s were the last time she told me she loved me, but she’s not awake to rasp out those same words.
Marcus peels his red eyes open when my shoes squeak across the floor in her hospital room.
“‘Bout fucking time.” He shifts around in the recliner, stretching his arms to the ceiling and kicking the empty Popeyes bag next to his chair. “Tell Phat to bring me a Coke from the vending machine downstairs.”
“She’s at brunch.”
“At brunch?” His eyes bulge. “Fuck she doing eating at a time like this?”
