angel baby (heavy editing)

20.5

(A/N: hiii I apologize for disappearing...again. Life caught up to me this  past week but I'll try, I'll try :'( )

"Are you feeling better, honey?" Lia slowly stroke Kathy's buzz cut hair. She was feeling a little weak and Lia would be lying if she said she wasn't scared.
What if they didn't find all the tumor?
She shook her head in an attempt to rid off all bad thought. Kathy was just tired. The doctors said it might happen. Lia thanked God every day that the tumor was discovered relatively early or it would have been a whole different story.
Kathy manged a nod before turning to the other side. She wanted to protest but thought it would be better to leave her alone.
At that moment, she heard a knock on the entrance door. Kathy groaned in protest.
"Why did they knock so hard?" She groaned out, her speech slurring. They didn't but swallowing a dozen pill would do that to someone.
Lia immediately stood up to get it before they knocked again. She wondered who it might be. She didn't have any friends but she refused to dwell on her pathetic life. She thought it might be Lena and her heart danced at the thought. She hadn't seen the woman she'd been smitten with since the hospital but they frequently texted back and forth.
Lena hoped whoever was at the other side wasn't someone unpleasant. As she opened the door,
Speak on the devil and he shall appear.
With the intent of slamming the door at the intruder's face, Lia saw red. Just before she could slam it, the arm of the intruder was caught between the door.
"Fuck", the manly voice groaned out in pain. Lia fought to urge to continuing closing the door, his arms be damned. How dare he?
"Lia, hear me out, please"
"Leave, Andrew! I do not care about the state of your arm"
The last time she had seen it, he had a broken arm in a sling and a for a moment she hoped to God it wasn't the same arm wedged between her door. She quickly dismissed it concluding he deserved it.
"How did you even find where I live? Have you been stalking me? I don't want to see you, Andrew. Is that not clear enough?"
She opened the door a bit more, enough for him to remove his hand. She proceeded to slam the door in his face but his next words stopped her.
"I teach Chris at his school. I'm his science teacher. I deserve to know if he's my son"
She opened the door wide.
"No he's not, now fuck off" She lied. Well it technically wasn't a lie. Oliver was.
Oh god.
She was going to be sick. She couldn't deal with this.
She wanted to close the door again but,
"Lia, Lia, please hear me out. Please"
Lia wanted to scream. She didn't need that right now. Chris...Oliver.
She felt nauseous.
Slowly, she opened the door facing her ex best friend and one time hook up.
That night should have never happened.
He looked the same, except he was older and more muscled. If someone looked close enough, gray was starting to show on the hair at the side of his head.
Fuck, they had grown up.
"You have five minutes", she finally said.
"Can I come in?"
She gave him a death stare and a scowl.
"No". She hated the twinge in her chest when he gave her a pained look.
Screw him.
"My daughter is in there, asleep. She's had a rough week", she explained further, hating and cursing herself.
"Kathy, right? I heard she heard surgery. How is she?"
She fought to snap, scowl and yell at his face. She mentally shook her head. It wasn't worth it. What happened happened 19 years ago. It wasn't like they were dating but they were friends. Kathy considered them best friends. And when one's best friend ups and leaves without prior warning, it was messed up and when one night of messing around leads to pregnancy, it was incredibly fucked.
"She's fine. Why did you leave without saying anything?" He wanted to reply but her next question interrupted him before he could.
"Did you even look for me?"
"I did, Lia, I did. I went back but you had left. It wasn't my intention to abandon you. I admit, leaving without saying a word was very shitty of me but I was embarrassed. I felt like I took advantage of you after what happened"
Lia looked at him in confusion. That was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard. Sure, Andrew was about six years older but when they got together, she was nineteen. She wasn't a fucking minor. She fucking consented.
"Andrew"
"You confided in me about things, about what happened with your parents"
Oh, that was what it was about. Growing up, Lia watched her father hurt his mother. He left, then came back apologizing to her mother who would take him back and it happened multiple times until her father overdosed. His death broke her mother and about three years later, she passed away.
Lia vowed she would never depend on a man for her wellbeing because her mother depended on her father too much which empowered him to treat her the way he did. She vowed to make something of herself. She thought if she had enough power and independence, a man wouldn't think to hurt her. Look how that turned out. She might have not depended on anyone, man or woman, raising her kids but it was so difficult enough for her to want to end it.
"I'm sorry Lia, for everything, for taken advantage of your vulnerability. You had it hard enough. You didn't need me breathing down your neck"
Lia fisted her hand upset at herself and him. Back then, she had a plan, one that didn't involve a man and one that definitely didn't involve a child. Back then it had made sense. She hated herself for pretending to have had a strength she definitely didn't possess. She needed help. She needed him.
"My mother needed help back home in my father's workshop so I went home and helped. I put myself through school and-" he trailed off and Lia felt like he was bragging. She got angry again.
"It's time for you to leave. Chris will be back from school soon and this will confuse him"
"So he's my son"
"Andrew"
"Mom"
Well shit.