Alpha Billionaire Series
Loving the One I Should Hate Chapter 1

MANDY

For a song called "The Sound of Silence," it was awfully loud as it blared out of my cell phone and filled the lecture hall. All eyes turned to me with lots of glares and as many eye rolls. That wouldn't have been so terrible had I been the lecturer. But I wasn't. I felt embarrassment burn my skin with a bright red blush. "Sorry sorry sorry," I said as I scrambled to shut my phone off. I sank down in my seat and tried to fade away.

I forgot I had cranked the volume all the way up over the weekend while I went out with friends. We wanted a last night of unbridled fun before it was time to buckle in for the crunch of finishing thesis papers and compiling research data. Finals were a thing of the past once I hit graduate school. What I wouldn't give for a test with definitive answers I could study for. Now it was all case studies and statistical analysis. But the end was in sight.

I glanced at the caller ID as I turned my phone off. It was Mom. She was probably calling to chat about graduation plans. I had booked hotel reservations for them at the very beginning of the semester, but I left travel arrangements and car rentals up to them. The last time we talked, neither had been made. I knew exactly why they were dragging their heels. Mom.

She hadn't been well. That was the polite way of saying she had cancer, and the chemotherapy treatments were killing her just as much as the disease itself was. She was sick for days, unable to keep anything down after her treatments. Her hair had been gone for some time now. But she was supposed to be done with this round of chemo soon.

She would start to feel better, and then it was graduation.

I was so ready to be done with this program. Ready to move back home and start work at the little company Dad had found when I was just a kid.

The lecture ended and I darted from the hall, avoiding any lingering glare for having interrupted. Once outside in the fresh spring air, I dug my phone out from the bottom of my bag. I found a bench and parked myself.

A cacophony of sound erupted from my phone with notification after notification of voice messages and missed calls. What the hell?

I thumbed through the missed calls. Every last one of them came from Mom's phone.

"Oh shit!" I scrambled and hit redial.

"Please don't be Dad, please don't be Dad," I prayed as the phone rang. My parents were older, and I worried about them, especially when they blew up my phone like this.

"Mandy," my dad answered. He sounded tired, nervous. Why was he answering my mother's phone? "Daddy?"

I managed to be back in Chicago in less than twenty-four hours. I went straight from the airport to the hospital. I had been home for the week of Spring Break. Dad looked to have aged another ten years since then. My backpack, my only luggage, sat on the floor next to the door. I sat on an uncomfortable wood chair while Dad had the only slightly more comfortable recliner.

We didn't talk. We mostly stared at Mom. She looked so fragile. Her skin was gray on the verge of blue. Her eyes were sunken in her skull. She had looked almost healthy the last time I had seen her. Her skin had color, she had energy. She had a vibrancy. Now she mostly slept.

The various machines whirred and made a soft steady beeping. I willed that beeping to not stop. As long as I was there it wouldn't falter, it would continue, and as it continued it would grow stronger. That beep became my mental representation of Mom's health. "Mandy," Mom's voice sounded like dry tissue paper. "You shouldn't be here."

"Neither should you. But since you are, I am too. You don't get to scold me on this one."

"Ralph," Mom whined. "Make her go home. She needs to get some sleep. She hasn't slept since she got here. She's awake every time I open my eyes."

I stood and leaned over Mom before I forgot I wasn't allowed to be so close. No kisses, and no breathing on her. Her immune system had tanked hard, and the doctors didn't know why she suddenly was critically low on white blood cells. I sat back on my b**t without kissing her cheek like I so badly wanted to.

"You don't get to send me away." I crossed my arms and pouted.

Dad held Mom's hand and stroked her brow. "Amanda isn't going to listen to me. She's made up her mind. She's going to do what she decides."

Mom looked up at Dad. I had never seen her eyes look so big. I had never seen my dad so beaten down. Not even when tragedy struck before. Dad was always larger than life. He would take it on the chin and laugh in the face of the storm, daring it to come at him again. "Tell her she smells; she needs a shower."

"Mom!" The indignity of it. I ducked inside the collar of my t-shirt and sniffed. I wasn't flower fresh, but I wasn't rank either. "If it will make you feel better, I'll go home, take a shower, and take a nap before coming back here."

"And eat some real food. Vending machines are not real food."

I stared at Mom and hesitated. I was afraid to leave, afraid that if I wasn't there to remind that machine to keep beeping steady and strong it would falter, and...

I couldn't believe it. I wouldn't. I refused. Mom was going to be fine.

"I'll still be here when you get back," Mom said as if she could read my mind. "And when you get back, we can gang up on your father and make him sleep in a bed tonight."

She closed her eyes and breathed heavily. All that manipulation and talking, well... the talking was wearing her out.

"Sounds like a plan," I said. "You hear that, Dad? You're next to get banished."

I swung my pack onto my shoulder and headed out. It took less time to get home than I had remembered. I tossed Dad's keys on the table by the front door. The house was quiet. After having lived with multiple roommates always coming and going, this seemed almost surreal.

There should have been noise. Mom singing along to some Tom Jones song in the kitchen, Dad yelling at a game on TV, noise. I didn't like it. The silence felt like a foreboding of doom. I turned the radio on in the kitchen. Something that sounded like the early seventies' idea of pop music flowed out. Whatever it was, Mom would have loved it and known all the words.

I dumped my pack in my room and took a long hot shower. I was curled up in the base of the tub sobbing when the water finally ran cold. Pulling myself together, I climbed out of the shower and wrapped myself in a handful of towels.

I didn't bother to change. I simply burrowed under a pile of blankets and pillows and cried myself to sleep. I managed to sleep for almost eight hours. It was dark by the time I returned to the hospital, clean, rested, and fed. Mom would be proud.

Back in the hospital, I walked through the maze of halls and as I got closer to Mom's room, I saw Dad having a deep conversation with one of her doctors. I wanted to butt in. It didn't look good, and frankly, I didn't know if I'd be able to handle the bad news. I know it wasn't fair to expect Dad to shoulder the burden on his own, but I needed him to be my Dad, and protect me right then. I would replace my strength and take care of him soon enough.

Mom was asleep when I stepped into her room. The beep was still there, still marking time, still being present.

"Hey," I said when Dad returned. "What was that? Is everything okay?"

Dad let out a heavy breath. He looked as if he would collapse for the sheer weight of it all.

"There's a treatment," he started.

"Then why aren't we doing it?"

He shook his head and held up his hand to slow me down. "It's new, barely considered experimental. And it's expensive."

"Insurance." I shrugged.

He shook his head. "It's all out of pocket. We've tried one round already. We need to do another round."

I looked at my fragile mother with tubes going up her nose and coming from both arms. "How much time before we need to make a decision?"

"Soon."

I sighed. "I can start looking for a job tomorrow. We'll get this figured out."

Dad put his hands on my shoulders. "You're right, we will get this done, but you are not going to get a job. You have to finish school."

I wrapped my arms around him in a fierce hug. I'd let him think that I'd finish school for now. I wasn't going to let my parents shoulder this burden on their own.

"Well, you have to go home and sleep," I said.

He looked down at Mom and chuckled. "She'll be so mad if I stay." He kissed me on the forehead before leaving.

I stood in the middle of Mom's room for a while staring at the door after Dad walked out.

"He's right," Mom's thin raspy voice said from behind me.

I turned and saw her looking up at me from her bed. "You need to go back to school."

"You, big faker," I teased. "You were awake?"

She nodded ever so slightly. "Don't throw away all your hard work. I won't be able to come to see you graduate, but I want pictures. I will be here long enough to see you in that cap and gown." "Mom," I started whining.

"Your father has worked hard so that you can get a good education. I am so happy to see you, but you need to go back to Chapel Hill and finish. Do it for me."

I sat and reached out, picking up her hand. Her skin was cool and dry. "I will, I will."

When I woke up the next morning, Dad was back and on the phone. He spoke in hushed tones. I assumed not to disturb Mom; she was still asleep.

"You need to give me six more months. Yes, yes. I'll sign the paperwork."

When he made eye contact with me, he quickly ended the call.

"Are you doing business from the hospital? I never expected you to embrace working remotely," I said with a yawn and a stretch.

"It's just a phone call Mandy, nothing to concern yourself over."