“Mama?” I bang my head on the bathroom wall.
“Your mom?” Jared hisses. He drops my dress and hastily zips his pants.
“Sí, Madre.” I’m blinking furiously, frantically righting my dress and running fingers through my half-up, half-down ’do.
“How do I look?” I whisper.
He grimaces, rubs a thumb over my cheek like he’s trying to remove a smear. “Like I already fucked you.”
“Banner!” Mama says. “I know you are in here. I can hear you!”
Dios.
“I’m coming, Mama.”
“So I heard,” she says, accusation lacing the words.
I open the door to face my mirror image, thirty years older, several inches shorter, and forty pounds plumper. Fire and condemnation blaze in the dark eyes that flick from me to Jared.
“Who are you?” she demands.
Jared shoots me a quick glance. “I’m—”
“Not Alonzo,” she snaps. “That’s who you are. Banner, your fiancé needs you.”
“Mama, you know we are not engaged,” I say wearily. “Is he okay?”
“Oh, now you are concerned?” Her voice is a whip biting into my flesh. “Dios mío! What have I done? Where did I go wrong to raise a puta, when Alonzo deserves a queen?”
The insult stings, but I don’t let it sink all the way to my heart. I know she will regret it later. I inherited my temper from her. I’m intimately acquainted with the remorse that comes with cooler blood.
“What did she call you?” Jared asks, anger pulling his features tight. “What did you call her?”
“She is my daughter. I call her what I like.”
“Not when I’m standing right here you won’t,” Jared fires back, undeterred and unaware that my mother is a brush fire in a fight and will burn you to the ground.
“Stop it, both of you.” I press a hand to my forehead. “Zo, Mama. Is he okay?”
“He was feeling lightheaded and tired.”
Lightheaded. The memory of him unresponsive on the bedroom floor splatters across my mind, and all my fears, all the wh
at ifs I hoped were behind us, at least for now, with the last chemo treatment, come rushing back.
“Oh, God.” I take off, jerking the hem of my dress up enough to shuffle-run from the bathroom.
I spot Zo standing a few feet away, surrounded by people who have no idea what is happening, but I know right away. The pallor of his skin. The sweat beading his brow.
“Bannini,” he mutters, eyes rolling to the back of his head. He sways like a giant redwood tree, reaching for me blindly before he falls and hits the ground.
“No!” It bellows from somewhere outside me. I can’t even place where that scream originated, even though my throat aches from the force of it. “Call 911! Now!”
I go down with him, cradling his head in my lap and counting each shallow breath. There’s usually medical emergency staff onsite at events like this. I pray I’m right.
“Zo, wake up.” I tap his cheek. “Come on. Please wake up.”
“Ma’am, we’ve got him.” A paramedic presses his way through the crowd. “What can you tell us?”