Some Boy (What's Love? #1) (3 page)

And just then the door opened.
 

“Izzy!” I hissed, simultaneously yanking Brendan’s hand out of my pants, and floundering with the blankets to cover us up. I wasn’t very successful.

But the fact that Izzy hadn’t yet made a joke or laughed or even raised an eyebrow had the alarms ringing in my head, and my stomach clenched. I wriggled myself out from under Brendan’s body and sat up.

“What is it?”

“Your phone was out in the kitchen and it rang. I answered it.” Her forehead was creased. “It was the hospital. It sounded serious.”

I was on my feet, buttoning my jeans and then trying to jam a shoe onto the wrong foot. “What did they say, exactly?”

“Just that you should come now,” she said.

“But why? What did they say, Izzy?”

“Nothing. They’re not going to tell me anything, are they. Just that you should come.”

The transition from lust to panic had been startling, and I’d obviously jumped up too fast. I had to squat, then, holding on to the edge of my desk until I stopped feeling like I was going to faint.

Then I took a deep breath and got up. This time I sat in a chair and focused on putting my shoes on properly, trying to breathe evenly.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Izzy was saying.

“No, it’s fine.”

“Sure? I can just come on the bus ride with you, but not come in?”

“I’m just going to drive,” I said.

“Kat.”

“What?”

“You don’t have your car.”

“Shit.” Of course I didn’t. My car was getting repaired. That was the whole reason I needed to go to the hospital right now.

“I can drive you.”
 

I looked at Brendan. I’d almost forgotten he was there. At some point he’d put his own jeans on and was standing by the bed.

“You have a car?”

“I’ll meet you on Clarendon Road, just down behind here in five minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. There wasn’t a question of me refusing the offer. It would take me at least half an hour to get the bus. Barely ten minutes by car.

He left, and I found the nearest clean jumper and scarf, without even looking at whether they went together.

Izzy gave me a hug and handed me my phone and my purse. She had a million questions in her face, mostly about the guy I had never mentioned to her who had just been in my bed and was about to drive me to the hospital, but even she knew it wasn’t the time.

And I’d barely stepped up to the side of the road to wait, when a car pulled up in front of me. A sleek silver BMW just like the one my dad drove.

I stooped down to check it was actually Brendan. And when I slid into the passenger seat, I turned my face to him and opened my mouth to ask him about it, but then shut it again, thinking twice.

It didn’t seem polite to admit to him that I hadn’t expected him to own anything so expensive. His jeans had been in my room for two days — I’d looked at the label. I paid more for dinner most nights than those jeans would have cost.

And then I felt like a brat for even having those thoughts, especially since he was driving me to the hospital where I feared my mum was dying. Why was I even thinking about money?

Because I was my parents’ daughter, that’s why. My dad hadn’t even ended his business trip early when I’d called him about the accident. He’d just spoken to the doctors on the phone and, convinced it wasn’t urgent, said he’d be back as scheduled. And asked me if I needed the credit limit on my card increased, like being able to buy new shoes was what I needed right then.

And then I was crying. Or at least my eyes were leaking. I didn’t make any sound. And I wasn’t sure if it was overflowing fear or anger causing it, because I felt both in equal measure. Before I turned my face to the window, I saw Brendan glance at me. But he said nothing, offered no platitudes, didn’t tell me it was all going to be okay. And I loved him for that.

He just put his hand on my thigh, squeezed it, and then took it away again. And drove me towards whatever shit was coming.

“K
ITTY
-K
AT
,”
MY
mum cooed. “Did you bring my robe from home yet?” My mouth had dropped open, cartoon-like, as I stood in the doorway. “Katherine,” she said, in a more pointed tone, and tapped on her own chin. I snapped my mouth shut.

“What happened?”

“Hmmm?” she had gone back to flipping through a magazine, and barely looked at me. “Come sit down, honey. What’s the matter with you?”

“The hospital called. It sounded urgent,” I said, taking one uncertain step towards her. Everything seemed strange — but strange because absolutely nothing seemed wrong. I’d been preparing myself for something horrible, but everything was calm. There was golden afternoon light bathing the room through the slatted blinds, hitting the flowers on her bedside table in a way that cast beautiful contrasting shadows over the petals of the rainbow bouquet.

It was all so serene and lovely, it was surreal. I actually dug my fingers into my leg just to check that I hadn’t fallen asleep on the car ride over.

But, no, I was awake. Brendan had dropped me off and I had run up three flights of stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. I had started to feel weird from the moment I asked a nurse where my mum was and she had pointed me sedately in the direction of her room. Of which, of course, I already knew the location. I had just been expecting something bigger to be going on.

Or
anything
to be going on at all. Instead, my mum was just reposed peacefully in her bed looking better than she had since the accident happened, asking about the silk robe I was meant to bring her from home. Which I had forgotten about.

“Well, I don’t know what that was about,” my mum was saying. “I’m a model patient, they say. I’ll most likely be going home tomorrow.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I might still hire a nurse for a few weeks, though. Your dad won’t want to be waiting on me hand and foot, and it’s not like I can make my own cups of tea for a while, is it.”

She was running her good hand gingerly over the cast on her broken arm, managing to sound both pitiful and accusatory at once.

“Or get groceries. God, could you imagine me going out like this?” And then she actually picked up a little hand mirror off the side table and examined her face in it, pursing her lips and tossing her hair a little. “What a mess.”

I refrained from mentioning that she had not once done the grocery shopping in at least the last five years. Probably longer. That we already had a housekeeper who did it, and made her tea.

Basically, life would go on as normal for my mum, just without the salon appointments until the bruises on her face healed enough to be covered with makeup.

“I’m sure Abby would do a house call,” I found myself saying, referring to her hairdresser. And my tone was snarky. But she didn’t seem to notice.

“What a brilliant idea. I wonder if she’d come to the hospital? My hair is a sight,” Mum said, giving herself a last once over, then replacing the mirror. And then she looked me up and down. “So, no robe?”

And I saw her look twice at my purple and pink floral scarf where it clashed against the kelly green of my sweater with a moth-hole in one elbow, something I usually only wore at home. Or on late night runs to the takeaway curry place.

“Sorry, I forgot,” I said. “Like I said, the hospital made it sound important so I just rushed over.”

“Did they,” she said. Her tone was flat, the disappointment at my forgetfulness plain. “Oh, well. Now that you’re here, could you go down the street and get me a decent latte? The muck they have here is unpalatable.”

She smiled at me, then went back to reading her magazine. I was dismissed.

And I walked back downstairs and out into the street in a daze. My mum was fine. I should have been relieved. Yesterday when I had visited, she’d seemed in so much pain, telling me that she might have to have an operation. I hadn’t extracted from her ramblings exactly what sort of operation, but she’d been so overwrought that I hadn’t pressed it. I’d just comforted her and held her hand like she was small child until she’d fallen asleep.
 

It was so unlike her. The nurse had told me she was on pain killers and not herself, but still, it had frightened
 
me and I had gone home and cried myself to sleep, thinking that I’d destroyed her.

And now she was sending me off for coffee like she was at a day spa and I was a waitress.

So, business as usual. Just another drama to tell her friends over drinks and cards. I didn’t know if I was more annoyed at her or at myself for wasting energy worrying about her.

But I felt guilty for even thinking that. It had still been a nasty accident. And I had been driving. Even though it was the other guy’s fault, the other guy who had run the red light, I felt responsible. We had only been on that street because she was going to buy me a new phone.
 

And the car had hit her side, not mine. I knew I didn’t need to feel responsible for that, but I did.
 

So if she wanted her silk robe and an expensive coffee, well, I’d do that and stop thinking like an ungrateful brat.

I checked my phone now — my old one, since obviously we never got to the shop to get the new one. There was nothing at all wrong with this one. I’d never dropped it in a toilet or smashed the screen on a night out like Izzy had with hers. And even she had kept that one, just with tape over it to hold the cracked part of the glass together. Her parents made her wait until her contract ran out before they’d get her a new one. To teach her to be more responsible, she’d informed me, with a dramatic roll of her eyes.

There was a message from Izzy on my phone now. Asking how I was doing, if everything was okay, did I need anything? And it was only then that I remembered that it had been Izzy who answered the phone call from the hospital. In the frenzy, I was thinking it had been me, almost creating the memory of an urgent sounding nurse on the other end.

“For God’s sake, Izzy. Way to give me a heart attack,” I muttered to myself and laughed — drawing a quizzical glance from a well suited man passing me on the street — then I punched in a short reply to her message telling her everything was fine. I’d tell her about it when I got home.

I took my mum her coffee, then left her to it, telling her I’d visit her tomorrow, either at the hospital or at home depending on where she was by then.

“Don’t worry yourself, darling. Your father will be home tomorrow morning, and Ellie will be at home. You should be focusing on your classes. Lord knows, we’re paying enough for them,” she had said. “And speaking of money, do you have enough? Do you need some new clothes?”

I had stammered to justify my appearance, to assure her I wasn’t normally so mismatched. And then I’d walked out with a weird mix of feelings swirling in my gut, none of which I could name.

I thought of Brendan then. And the events that had been interrupted by the false alarm. And it was only when I took my phone out to text him that I realised I couldn’t — I didn’t even know whether he lived on campus or somewhere else, let alone have a number to call him on. So I texted Izzy instead.

Break out the vodka.

But this was Izzy, and she knew what my mum was like. She probably already had.

*-*-*

Izzy had the vodka out
and
had already started without me. Her eyes were bright and wide when I walked into the kitchen.

I plonked myself down on a stool at the bench with her and she pushed a glass with the clear alcohol already in the bottom. I picked up the orange juice and watched it swirl into my glass as I poured in silence.

Then I took a gulp and sighed.

“So what happened?” Izzy breathed. She was staring at me. And then I laughed.

“Shit, Izzy, nothing happened.” I laughed again at her screwed up face.
 

“Fuck. I thought your mum was, like, dead or something.” Izzy breathed out dramatically, dropping her head back in relief. Then she reached over and slapped my arm. “You could have told me. I was worried sick.”
 

“I sent you a message.”

“Oh. My phone went flat and I plugged it in, in your room ‘coz I can’t find my charger.”

“Of course,” I said, then I frowned. “Anyway, you’re the one who took the bloody phone call and made
me
worried sick.”

Izzy stretched her mouth into a kind of contrite grin and retreated behind her glass to sip more vodka.
 

“What exactly did they say on the phone, Iz?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Just the general gist — why did you think it was urgent?”

“Well, why would they be calling you to come in if it wasn’t?” she protested, thunking her glass a little too heavily on to the bench. Juice and vodka splashed out in little droplets.

“Because I asked them to. When I was in earlier, she was in X-rays and stuff, so I went home and they said they call me when she was back in her room.”

“Oh. Shit. Sorry.”

I gulped the rest of my drink and started pouring another one, shaking my head. And then I started laughing. Izzy giggled uncertainly.

And then I laughed harder and had to put the orange juice bottle down.

And by the time Justin walked into the kitchen to investigate the commotion, both of us were clutching our stomachs, and gasping for air while tears streamed down our faces.

We tried to sober up when he looked at us, but when he raised his eyebrows it just set us off harder.

“What’s the gas, girls?”

“Huh?” Izzy said, and then relapsed into spasming laughter.

“What have I missed?”

“We thought… Kat’s mum… was dead,” Izzy gasped.
 

Justin’s eyebrows nearly met his hairline. “Alright…”

“But she’s… not,” I assured him, trying to catch my breath. “She’s just a spoilt bitch.”
 

We were off again. Izzy fell off her stool and we cackled like insane hyenas while Justin started cooking some rice and shaking his head, tutting.