From Lukov with Love

by Mariana Zapata

  Of course I ignored her. “What happened to you?”

  My mom’s blue-blue eyes didn’t even move over into my direction as she said, word for word, right before taking another sip of what I knew was tea, “I was in a car accident. Everything is fine.”

  She was in a car accident and everything was fine.

  I blinked at her as she picked up her phone from the counter like everything was no big deal and started reading something on the screen. Me on the other hand, I just sat there and tried to process her words and their meaning… and wasn’t able to. Because I understood what an accident was. What I didn’t understand was why the hell she hadn’t called to tell me about it. Or at least send a fucking text.

  “You were in a car accident?” The words were out of my mouth, as slow coming out as they’d been going in for me to process them.

  She had been in an accident. My mom had been in a vehicle and it had been bad enough that she looked like hell. That’s what she had said without even looking in my direction to do it.

  What. The. Fuck?

  My mom still didn’t look at me. “It isn’t a big deal,” she went on. “I have a concussion. They set my nose again. My car was totaled, but the other driver’s insurance will cover it because he hit me and there were witnesses.” Then, the woman who even with two black eyes didn’t look like she’d given birth to five kids, and definitely didn’t look like her youngest—me—was twenty-six years old, finally did glance in my direction. My mom was totally unfazed as she pursed her lips in that way I’d become familiar with as a teenager when I’d talk back to her and she’d almost whooped my ass. “Don’t tell your brothers or sisters.”

  Don’t tell my—

  I grabbed the paper towel sitting beside my plate and held it under my chin as I spit my rice into it—wasting precious food and not giving a shit—as my heart rate and blood pressure racked up so fucking high, so fucking fast, it was a miracle I was just as healthy as I’d ever been in my life at that point… minus some physical stuff… because anyone else would have had a heart attack right then. At least anyone that gave half a shit about another person—and I gave a massive shit about my mom. My heart wasn’t supposed to be beating that fast while I was technically resting.

  Mom groaned, sitting up straight, just as I set the paper towel beside my plate. “No, no. Don’t you spit your food out.”

  I didn’t bother thinking about the last time I’d spit my food out; I didn’t need to get more pissed off. “Mom,” I said, my voice higher and squeakier than ever, sounding not at all like me and, maybe, a little like a teenager on the verge of throwing a temper tantrum.

  But this wasn’t a tantrum. This was my mom being injured and not telling me about it. And not wanting me to tell anyone else about it.

  The woman who had practically raised me on her own tipped her head to the side and made her eyes go wide like she was trying to tell me without words that I needed to scale back on the drama. But the thing that mostly caught my gaze was the fact that she didn’t even set her mug of tea down as she basically hissed, “Jasmine. Don’t start with me.”

  “Don’t start with you?” I spit back at her, more alert than I’d ever been after a practice. Here I’d been just a minute ago, staring into the stone countertop of the kitchen island, thinking about how badly I wanted to get into the shower and go to bed… not even thinking about practices and figure skating and the future… and now, now I was about two seconds away from losing my shit. Just like that.

  Because. What. The. Mother. Fuck.

  “Don’t start with me,” she demanded again, taking a sip of her tea, just as easy as can be, like she wasn’t telling me to blow off her accident and concussion and broken nose, and that I couldn’t tell my siblings about it for whatever reason she had in her head. “I’m fine,” she said before I ignored her don’t start with me BS and leaned forward, blinking at her, like I had the worst dry eyes in the world.

  “Why didn’t you call and tell me?” I asked, using a tone that would have definitely gotten me grounded ten years ago, as anger twisted my guts. Why hadn’t she?

  My hands had started shaking.

  My hands never shook. Never. Not when I was mad over getting screwed by people I had slightly trusted. Not while I was waiting to skate. Not after I skated. Not when I lost. Not when I won. Never.

  Mom rolled her eyes and focused on her phone again, trying her best to be dismissive. I knew what she was doing. It wouldn’t be the first time. “Jasmine,” she said my name just forcefully enough for me not to make another smart-ass comment. “Calm down.”

  Calm down. Calm down?

  I opened my mouth, and she shot those blue eyes, the ones I’d be able to pick out of a color wheel with my eyes closed, in my direction once more. “I’m fine. Some dumb-dumb stopped paying attention as he exited the freeway and rear-ended me. I crashed into the car in front of mine,” she went on, and I knew why she had thought about keeping it to herself. “It isn’t worth getting worked up over. You don’t need to get mad about it. I’m fine. If I could have hidden it from you of all people, I would have.

  “Ben already knows. Your brothers and sisters don’t need to worry about it either.” She made a dismissive snort. “Don’t get worked up over me. You have better things to focus on.”

  My mom didn’t want me to get worked up over her because I had better things to focus on.

  Raising both my hands up toward my face, I pressed the pads of my fingers to my temples and told myself to calm down. I told myself to. I tried to go over all the relaxation techniques I’d learned over the years to deal with my stress and… nope. None of it worked. None of it.

  “I don’t want you to be distracted by me,” Mom insisted.

  I swore my ears started to ring. “Did an ambulance have to take you to the hospital?”

  She made an annoyed sound. “Yes.”

  I pressed my fingers deeper into my temples.

  “Oh, put your hands down and pull your thong out of your butt,” she tried to joke. “I’m fine.”

  My ears definitely started to ring. For sure.

  I couldn’t even look at her as I said, my voice sounding lower and hoarser than normal… not even sounding like it belonged to me, “You could have called me, Mom. If it was me in the accident—”

  “You wouldn’t have called me either,” she finished.

  “I—” Okay, maybe I wouldn’t have either, but that knowledge didn’t ease my anger even a little. If anything, it just made me madder. My hands shook so bad, I stretched my fingers long and lifted them up to either side of my face, shaking them. Mad, so fucking mad, I wanted to scream. “That’s not the point!”

  She sighed. “You had a big day. I didn’t want to bother you.”

  She didn’t want to bother me.

  My mom didn’t want to bother me.

  I dropped my hands and tilted my face up to the ceiling, because if I looked at my mom the way I wanted to, she’d probably smack the expression right off. And then I wondered where I’d learned to keep so many secrets. Holy fuck.

  “It’s only a little concussion and a fractured nose, Grumpy. And don’t raise your voice at me,” she said for the second time, and for the second time, it had zero effect on my blood pressure. “I know what this year means to you. I want you to take advantage of it. You don’t need to worry about me.”

  I replayed her last sentences in my head, and it nearly exploded. This sickening feeling swelled up from my stomach to make it to the back of my throat.

  Maybe I was being dramatic, but I didn’t think so. This was my mom. My mom. The woman who had taught me by example how to get up every time I was down. She was the strongest woman I knew. The strongest, the smartest, the prettiest, the toughest, the most loyal, the hardest working….

  My throated ached. Years ago, she had scared the shit out of us by saying they had found a lump in her breast that ended up being nothing, I’d heard or seen pretty much all of my brothers and sisters cry. I�
��d just gotten pissed off. And scared. I’d admit it. I’d been terrified for my mom and, as selfish as it was, for me. Because what the hell would I do without her?

  Worst of all, I’d been a dick about the entire situation. But I blamed it on being a teenager—and on my mom being the greatest anchor in my life—on why I’d flipped the hell out and tried to blame her, like she could have prevented it somehow. Now… well, now I was pissed again but not at her.

  Well, maybe at her, but only because she would have avoided telling me she’d gotten hurt if she could have, and… and because she didn’t want to distract me. Didn’t want to bother me. I balled up my fist, and if my fingernails had been any longer, I probably would have drawn blood.

  “Ben met up with me at the hospital,” she explained, her voice slowly beginning to edge back into a calm, even tone. “You don’t need to get worked up.”

  All I could do was stare at her.

  “I want you focused,” she added. “I know how much this means to you. If the accident would have happened three months ago, I would have called you, but you’re busy again, Jasmine. I didn’t want to take away from it.”

  Didn’t want to take away from it? If she had gotten hurt before I’d started training so hard again, she would have called me but now she wouldn’t?

  I glanced up at the ceiling and undid my fist, stretching my fingers as wide as possible. I couldn’t find the words. I couldn’t pick them, choose them, find them, make them up. I was too stuck on her I know how much this means to you.

  My chest joined my throat in the aching game.

  Did she not understand I’d do anything for her? That I loved her and admired her and thought she was the greatest human being in the world? That I had no idea how she had raised five kids with my dad only being in the picture until I was three? That I didn’t understand how she could have been married three times before Ben, had her heart broken each time, but somehow she hadn’t given up hope and hadn’t let any of that stuff jade her?

  There were a lot of things I didn’t let get to me. There were so many times I fell and hurt myself but kept going. But people had been assholes to me when I was younger, once, maybe a couple of times, making remarks and comments, and that alone had made me give up on strangers.

  But my mom never let anything get her down for long.

  How could I not think the world of her? How could I not love her, who raised me to think I was invincible, more than anything? How could she believe she wasn’t a priority to me?

  “You don’t have to worry about me,” she insisted, casually. “I’ll be fine. When Ben and I go to Hawaii in a few weeks, I won’t let him take any pictures of my face. That way I have an excuse for us to go again,” she said brightly.

  But it didn’t do shit for me.

  This was my fault. This was all my fault. She thought and felt the way she did because I had told her a thousand and a half times how figure skating was what had made me feel special. What had given me purpose. What had made me finally feel like there was something I was good at. What gave me life, what made me happy, what made me strong.

  But in reality, it was my mom—my whole family—that had given me the foundation for those things. I knew what all those emotions were because of them. Because of her.

  I guessed I had just always assumed she knew.

  But maybe I had just been too much of a self-centered prick to come to terms with realizing that until now.

  My chest hurt even more, and my throat tightened so much I couldn’t swallow as I sat there, taking in the face that I loved with my entire heart. “Mom,” was the one and only thing I could get out.

  It was right then that her cell’s ringtone started blaring. She didn’t even say a word to me as she reached for her phone and answered it. “Baby girl,” she said immediately, and I knew it was Ruby.

  That was the end of that conversation. It was just how my mom worked. She was done when she was done.

  And she expected, and for good reason, that if we’d kept talking about it, I probably would have gone on a rant. Under normal circumstances, at least.

  This knot in my throat doubled in size as I stared at her as she talked to my sister with a smile on her face like she hadn’t just finished telling me being in a car accident was no big deal. Then implied that she wasn’t as important to me as she was.

  Did I come off that heartless?

  Something that felt an awful lot like a tear beaded up in my right eye, but I pressed the tip of a finger against that corner and ignored whether or not there had been some wetness on it, because my throat and my heart ached so bad, they overwhelmed everything else.

  I sat there. I sat there and stared at my mom, and wondered what kind of person she really thought I was. I knew she loved me. I knew she wanted me to be happy. I was fully aware she knew all of my strengths and flaws.

  But…

  Did she think I was a selfish piece of shit?

  My appetite disappeared, and so did my exhaustion. Kaput. Bye. Just like that.

  “Oh, baby, you shouldn’t be doing that….” My mom trailed off as she shoved her stool backward, gave me a grin that must have hurt her face, and then headed out of the kitchen, to what I could only assume was the living room.

  Anger flooded my veins as I sat there with a basically full plate of food below me, the sound of my mom’s low laugh just loud enough for me to hear. She was fine, and that’s what should matter.

  But…

  My mom really thought figure skating was more important to me than she was.

  I loved it. Of course I loved it. I couldn’t breathe without it. I didn’t know who I was without it. I didn’t know who I would be in the future without it.

  But I couldn’t breathe without my mom either. And if I’d ever have to choose between both, there wouldn’t have been any competition. Not even a little bit.

  It was my fault for being a shitty daughter. A shitty person. For not opening my mouth and telling her the things she needed to hear. More I love yous and less sarcasm. For being so heartbroken over Paul leaving me that I didn’t appreciate enough her and my siblings trying to pull me back into a real life even when I was a moody, angry little bitch.

  All they had ever wanted was for me to be happy. For me to win because that’s what I had wanted. Always.

  And I hadn’t given them shit. I hadn’t made them proud no matter what. I had nothing to show in exchange.

  It was my fault for choking. For overthinking. For being obsessive and a little difficult.

  The knot in my body tripled, choking me, suffocating me.

  God.

  I couldn’t sit here and act like I was fine when I wasn’t. All I’d wanted was to sit at home and relax while eating before I started to wind down, but now… now there was no way I could do that. No fucking way in hell.

  I was such an asshole.

  God, I was such a fucking asshole, and it was all my fault. If I were a better person, a better athlete, maybe this would all be different. But it wasn’t.

  I had to do something.

  Sliding back my own stool, I almost headed straight toward the front door, ready to get out, but I paused for a second, wrapped my food in plastic and set it in the fridge.

  And then I grabbed my keys, and I was fucking out of there, something that sure tasted like guilt and desperation filling my mouth, making me restless… making me feel like shit.

  I didn’t know where I was going.

  I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do.

  But I had to do something, because this… shit… inside of me was growing and growing and growing.

  My mom was my best friend, and she thought figure skating was more important to me than she was.

  Did everyone I love think that way? Was that the impression I’d left on them?

  Figure skating made me the happiest, but it wouldn’t mean anywhere near as much to me without my mom and siblings supporting me, giving me shit, caring and loving me even while I was at my worst
. When I didn’t deserve it.

  My throat and eyes burned as I drove, and my mouth went dry as I kept on driving. Before I knew it, before I let myself do more than have my throat ache and my eyes tighten, I pulled my car into the parking lot of the LC. I didn’t even realize it until I was there.

  Of course I’d go back.

  It was the only thing I had other than them. And I sure as hell didn’t want to talk to Ruby or Tali or Jojo or Sebastian about any of this. I wasn’t ready to feel worse, and that’s what would more than likely happen if they tried to console me or tell me it was okay.

  Because it wasn’t.

  I had to make all the sacrifices that had ever been taken for me worth it.

  And this was the only way I knew how.

  In no time at all, I was out and heading toward the front doors, on a mission to go to the changing room. I’d left my bag at home, but I always left my last pair of skates in my locker as backup. I wasn’t wearing my favorite clothes to train in either, but… I needed this. I needed this thing that had always taken my mind off everything… even if it was the one thing that destroyed my body and made my whole family think they were second best.

  The realization that I shouldn’t have left my mom after she’d admitted something so big finally hung in my brain, but… I couldn’t go back. What the hell would I say to her? That I was sorry? That I didn’t mean to make her think she wasn’t important?

  The changing room was almost empty by the time I made it inside; there were two girls that were younger than me, but not by much, talking, but I ignored them as I put in my combination and opened my locker. In record time, I’d taken my shoes off, grabbed the extra pair of socks I always left in there, and stuffed my feet into them and my skates, ignoring the fact that I might regret not putting on the bandages I usually wore that protected my skin from the top edge of the boot that was well broken in.

  But I needed to burn some energy off. I needed to clear my head. I needed to make this better. Because if I didn’t… I didn’t know what I would do. Probably feel more of a piece of shit than I already did. If that were even possible.