The Chefs Cashier - The Bear

12

The call came in the middle of the night. The call that Maia dreaded, of course would come when she was sound asleep next to Carmy.

Carmy was the one who woke her up. She was nuzzled by his neck arm around his chest. He contemplated getting up or waking her up. She just looked so peaceful next to him, he had no idea how badly he would ruin that.

He just wanted to stay like that forever, but even he knew middle of the night calls could only leas distress. He gently shook Maia causing her to hmm in response.

"Hey, Mai. Your phones ringing."

"Who?" Is all she murmurs.

He gets up from the bed and reaches for her phone to see it was from the hospital.

"Shit Maia... I think it's your mom..."

It was as if something snapped inside of her, she shot up and she immediately became awake. She takes the phone from his hands and answers it weakly.

"Yes?"

"Is this Maia Linden?"

"Yeah, what's wrong? Is-is she..."

"No, but something did happen... we think you should come here and see for yourself."

"Fuck..." she mumbles as tears start to form in her eyes.

Carmy looked at her worried and felt helpless. He couldn't hear the conversation but he knew it was bad. He tried to listen in but she must of had the sound on the lowest.

All Carmy could do was look at her and hold her close to him while she talked on the phone. He immediately regretted waking her up. He wanted to go back to cuddling, he was selfish. He wanted her happy for just one more night.

Maia ended the call and neither of them spoke for a minute.

Carmy out of respect waited for Maia to say something. She gets out of his embrace, and starts to change into her clothes shakily sighing.

Carmy gets out of bed too, wanting to go where ever she was going. He started putting his clothes on too while eyeing Maia down.

Maia turns to look at him and sees he was putting his pants on. She looked up into his eyes and shook her head.

"I have to go Carm... my mom tried to kill herself... again." She whispers the last part.

Carmy buttons up his pants and walks over to her and holds her in his arms again. She places her head on his chest and just sobs.

"I'm so sorry Mai... What are we going to do?"

"We?"

"Yeah, we're in this together Mai. You make the calls, I'll be right by your side."

"I'm going to the hospital to go see her, you don't have to come... I know it's late, and you got the restaurant to attend to... so."

"What? No, Syd's got this under control, I'm going with you."

Maia pulls away from him and nods her head as he wipes away tears from her eyes.

"I love you." She says as he looks at her broken eyes, if he looked beyond her eyes he would see the broken girl she truly was just like him.

Instead of saying it back he just kisses her, he lets go a few seconds later. Silva coming out of their mouths and Carmy licked his lips to get the salty tears from his mouth.

"It's go." Carmy says as he goes to put on a shirt and Maia does the same.

"Oh and Carmy?"

"Yeah?"