A funny word called Love

Chapter 26

The phone dialed once before Otabek picked up and said, "Hi Yuri, how are you? How's your grandfather doing?"

"Hi, I'm fine," Yuri lied, and then honestly said, "He's doing better, I got to talk to him for awhile today. He's still really tired and it seems like he'll be in the hospital for a day or two more, but he's doing well with his recovery, even if he will have to start walking with a cane, but honestly that's not that big of a deal, even though I'm sure that he will complain about it constantly."

"Okay, good, I'm glad that he's doing better. But Yura, are you sure that you're fine? If you don't want to talk about it, that's alright, I won't pressure you or anything."

"I'm still pretty shaken. I had never thought about the possibility of him passing away before. Seems kinda silly now, honestly. He is pretty old. God I'm such an idiot. And, the nurse I was talking to said that those who had had strokes before were at a higher risk for having another one."

"I'm sorry. Thank you for telling me. And you are not an idiot. Don't get mad at yourself for this, it's not your fault."

"Thanks Beka."

Otabek, feeling like even if Yuri might not think that he needed to talk through everything, that he probably did, decided to try and see if he could get Yuri to open up a bit more, "Hey, just wondering, I've always known that you and your grandfather are close, but why is that?"

Yuri sounded taken aback but replied nonetheless saying, "Well, he raised me."

"How did that happen? Why didn't your parents raise you? I'm sorry, if you don't want to talk about this that's alright, just let me know."

Yuri was quite surprised. Everybody seemed to know to leave the subject of his childhood and his parents alone. Yuri was pretty sure that Otabek knew that too, but was asking anyways, which was quite odd. However, maybe it would be good for him to tell someone why his grandfather had raised him. He hadn't actually told anyone before, but if he had to tell someone, he'd like it to be Otabek, so Yuri said, "No, I'll talk about it. Maybe it will be good to say some of it outloud. But could we skype instead?"

"Sure, any particular reason?"

"I just like skyping more than calling," Yuri lied. The actual reason was that he wanted to be able to see Otabek's expressions. If Otabek started looking too worried or shocked or anything like that, Yuri would know, and he could either alter the story or just stop altogether, whichever ended up making more sense.

It took them a few minutes to get skype set up but when they did, Otabek calmly said, "Hi, feel free to start whenever you feel comfortable."

Yuri took a deep breath and started, "I never met my father. I heard from Grandfather that he was a very kind man, but I wouldn't know. The story that I've been told, be it the truth or not, I have no real of knowing. I don't even know his name for fuck's sake. But the story is that a few weeks before my birth he died. I don't quite know how he died. I have one memory of my mother saying that he got in a horrible car crash, and another memory of her saying that he was struck by a really serious illness and never recovered. I don't know what the actual truth is. Whenever I ask Grandfather about what happened to my dad he won't say a thing. Because of the two different stories that my mom had told me about my dad's death, I've always suspected that he isn't dead. But instead, that he had run away from my mother, which honestly makes sense. But when he allegedly died, he would've known about the pregnancy. And I would think that maybe he would've tried to contact me or something. Or maybe he had run away because my mother was pregnant. Either way, it's a whole lot easier to just say that he's dead and try not to think about it too much."

"I'm so so sorry Yuri..." Otabek said looking deeply saddened, "But no, I'm sure that it wasn't your fault that your father left, if he had left instead of died. What was so bad about your mother?"