Had To Be You

Dinner's ready | Ch: 24

"Are you joking or something? It has been awful enough for me to not be able to see him or even call him. And you think I'll ask him to ditch me. Like purposefully? In what universe does that make sense." This absolutely makes no sense. Why would I ask him to leave me? Not giving me a straight answer was different, but blaming me for Liam's surprising leave was beyond limits.

"He ditched you? Why would he ditch you?!" He twitches his eyes and shakes his head "Wait. I meant, that wasn't you the one who asked him to go see mom and dad. He's never willing to go there and I thought maybe you convinced him to go see them since I told you that I was gonna go."

I squeeze my eyes close, in embarrassment. Why didn't that come to my mind? That makes complete sense. "Right. Right. I did ask him to go see your parents. Since you told me that they were not doing well. But why isn't he taking my calls?"

"I don't know.... Even mom and dad aren't taking my calls. Maybe somework's going on. It's barely a town. There's often construction going on. But he wasn't supposed to stay this long. Maybe with everything getting worse he might just have stayed to look after mom and dad."

"Getting worse?" That doesn't sound good. Liam never talks about his parents. I wonder how bad his parent's condition is.

"Yeah. It's because of the water. The place we lived previously was not the 'typical city kind'. A bunch of factories were built a few years ago. And it wasn't until the end of last year that we realized the drinking water was getting intoxicated due to the piping system. The pipes through which the water flowed were not made up of good materials." Austin continued leaving me speechless. "Most of the people who had other health issues got sick really quickly, really badly. Including dad." His voice starts shaking by the end of that sentence.

Shit.

And here I was accusing Liam of ditching me. It's partially because mum got under my skin.

"So now that you're here, why don't you admit him to a hospital? Our town's got good health care centers. With the most skilled doctors. "

He looks down at his feet and sighs with a smile. I suppose that was a smile of regret and helplessness. "It's not that easy. We can't move dad, his condition is really critical and...." he paused then looked at me and said, "Well, it's not your burden to bear. With Liam not being here for so long, I'm sure you terribly miss him. Given what I heard last week."

He said with tears in his eyes and a chuckle on his face. And his words made me smile as well.

"Well, I just want you to know that I'll be by your side. And promise me that you'll tell me if I can ever be of any help to your family." I say, with a heart full of guilt for thinking that Austin was hiding something and that Liam used me.

As much as I was blaming mum for making me believe that Liam would do that to me, I was the same amount of stupid.

"Sure" he says with a little smile on his face. I can see that the smile is forced. Not because he didn't mean it, but cause even with or without my help things are at a really bad place.

"So I hope you're coming to the fundraiser with Leo?" I had to say something to lighten the mood.

"I hope so.... Leo's been pretty busy catching up with his studies" Austin looks down at his feet, waving his palms restlessly. It clearly portrayed that he wasn't very happy with Leo's routine lately. "Especially after that meeting with Hyde he has been awfully quiet."

I won't disagree. That meeting with Hyde made him act really weird. "Leo loves parties. He'll be there, I promise. " I say, reassuring him. I don't know why. Because I have no idea myself if Leo was gonna come to the party or not.