He said, “That’s because she died giving birth to him, remember?”
I knew that the word ‘mom’ had both of us on edge. It wasn’t so much the idea of Carlton’s mom, but more our own. I’d forgotten that she died giving birth to Carlton.
My brain was fuzzy this morning though, so that wasn’t surprising. We’d intended to go to the party for a little while, have some fun, then get back home. That’s now how it went, obviously. We’d both got wasted and ended up sleeping in a guest room. Trent passed out before even getting to the bed, and I couldn’t summon the ability to drag his wasted ass to the bed, so he’d slept on the floor.
“I should call Vicki,” Trent said, and part of me wondered if he was asking for my permission, until he pulled out his phone from the side pocket in the door of the car and found her number quickly. So it was more of an afterthought rather than asking for permission.
We knew better than to carry our phones into the party. We’d done it so many times and lost our phones nearly every time. Trent was convinced that one time, someone stole them. Either way, it didn’t matter, because we weren’t making that mistake ever again. Luckily with the Tesla I had a bracelet with the key in the shape of the car which I wore all the time; so, I never had to worry about losing the key.
“Why does me calling Vicki bother you?”
I shook my head, “It doesn’t. I just need to talk to you about something, and I’d prefer that we get to the diner and talk there.”
“Ok, but you never mentioned it before. It was only when I said that I wanted to talk to her that you started to pick up the speed as if we’re in a race.”
I denied it, but I looked at the speedometer and saw that before I was cruising at a safe speed, but now I was speeding. I shook my head because I didn’t do it on purpose, it was a subconscious thing.
“Call her!” I insisted as I felt guilty about him not making his phone call. One that he felt the need to make but now, for some reason, he didn’t anymore.
“No,” he shook his head, and stuffed his phone in his pocket. Was he really fucking pouting? Maybe it was just the hangover, I muttered to myself and glared out of the windshield.
I took a deep breath as I thought about the conversation that we were about to have, and it wasn’t going to be easy, and the anxiety that I was feeling was making me feel like throwing up.
I slowed down for the rest of the drive to the diner, and we arrived at the parking lot safely. I knew what Trent’s reaction would be, even though he had no idea what I was going to say. I didn’t know if I could handle his reaction, when I did tell him, and I wondered if this was a good idea. His phone rang and he picked it up. No doubt it was Vicki. I left the car and entered the diner. I didn’t want to know what she had to say, because I didn’t know if she’d rescued me from confessing what was on my mind or saved Trent from doing something that he would regret?
I was so hungry that as I sat and waited impatiently for a few minutes, I decided to go ahead and order the coffee and the pancakes with bacon that I had been craving ever since I suggested that we came here to eat. It was strange, pancakes used to make me think of this place, but now all I could think about was Vicki. But I didn’t get the craving that Trent did, and I hated myself for not feeling that way about her.
I looked out of the window and sighed with frustration when I saw that Trent was still on the phone. I could have waved to him and told him to join me because the food that I’d ordered for us was in front of me. Instead, I smirked, I indulged myself as if I hadn’t eaten for a week. Usually, Trent was the one with the big appetite, but it was as if I’d run a race today as I started to dig in.
“Is it me, or do these pancakes, and bacon look better every time that I come in here?” I asked the middle-aged waitress. That was another thing that never changed, the staff. There was something about going to a place and seeing the same servers time and time again, that made you want to go back for more. It was as if their loyalty to the place gave you a sense of security. If the foods good, and the servers want to keep working there, then it attracts you to a place. Everyone else came in and out of my life like the wind, including our parents. But the staff here were always the same.
“Thanks for the compliment. I didn’t think that you were a regular? I haven’t seen you in here before, but then again my memory isn’t as good as it used to be.”
I nodded as I replied to the waitress, “We used to be, we haven’t been here for a while. Last year, we were in here nearly every weekend. We used to party, come here, sleep, and then come here again. At times you would find us in that corner over there falling asleep, and you’d wake us up. We’d order breakfast, then fall asleep again, and you’d wake us up, so we’d order lunch too. ”
She hair that matched with her pink uniform. The color made her look as if she was fun when she was younger. She was nodding as if she knew exactly what I was talking about.
“It’s nearly three, so you missed the breakfast, and lunch hours,” she started to laugh as I continued to stare at the bench which was vacant, and visualize those with Trent, Sarah, Claire and I at the back. We’d all be laughing about the state we were in and all the crazy things that we did the previous night.
“It must be fun to be young these days. I’ve almost forgotten what it was like. Well, I hope that the party was worth it, seeing as it kept you out for most of today too.”
I smiled, “It was, thanks, and my brother is on his way. I think that he’d like the same.”
“Twins! I bet you guys have all the girls after you.”
She didn’t wait for an answer, because she knew the answer to her own question, and I couldn’t hold the conversation any longer because I was dying to eat.
I closed my eyes as I took my first bite, and Vicki popped into my head. Immediately it was that day in our suite with her pancakes again. I felt bad about Trent feeling that he couldn’t talk to Vicki, because he thought it would upset me.
He sat down, and he looked as if he was about to burst at the seams, “Mom wants us to come, and see her at some point today.”
I nodded, “It was her on the phone? I thought that it was Vicki.”
“No.”
“I ordered for you, same as me.”
“Good.”
He was on the phone for a few minutes, so I knew that there was more to the conversation, but I wished that he was on the phone to Vicki. Somehow it felt simpler with her being on the phone, than Mom.
“I’m not sure if I can handle going back,” I confessed to Trent, and he stared at me for a second, probably worried about my little confession.
“If you want to act like a coward, I’m good at doing that and have no issues with doing it today. I don’t want to go back either. Most of the time she was talking, I just wanted her to get the fuck off the phone, which is why I hung up a couple of times, but then she’d call me right back. We had a good night; we fucking deserve having some fun. We’re eighteen for crying out loud, not fucking eighty. We were going back to study, everything was going to be normal, and we were going to ignore what happened on Monday. Pretend that it didn’t happen, and then she calls to remind me that she’s around, that she’s even more fucked up than we ever believed she was or even thought was possible.”