I Won't Take Much of Your Time

Beep Beep - Beep Beep

The ringtone seemed to go on forever. 

Beep Beep - Beep Be- *click*

"Hello?" His voice sounded dead. Dead, sad, toneless, beaten. 

"It's me... I- I guess I was just worried about you. I hadn't heard from you in such a long time."

"I'm alright." She swallowed at his cold tone. He sounded so angry, like he would never ever forgive her. She closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, swallowed and spoke again.

"I won't take much of your time, I... I just... I need your help. I was never there for you. I never accepted you and now that you're gone... It's suffocating me. Sometimes I cannot sleep because I suffocate."

Her words touched him, undeniably. He still cared about her a lot, after all; he had spent his whole childhood searching for her approval, never getting it. Nevertheless, when her words touched him, it was hurting as if she had just ripped open an old wound that wouldn't heal. 

"I... after you moved out, things just got a bit lonely around here... Not that I blame you! No, don't think that. It's totally understandable... But I started taking a glass of wine now and then and it sort of... got out of hand. I need your help Anthony. You're all I ever need. I know I have treated you terrible. 
I deserve for you to turn away, I was afraid to speak your name." 

A tear rolled over his cheek as he remembered the day at Starbucks. 

***

"Size?"

"Grande," his mother had answered. 

"Name?" A second of hesitation. 

"Anna." She did not look Anthony in his eyes, did not even look at his face. Did not see the tear on his cheek. And there were so many more situations, like the day he moved out and went to boarding school. 

***

"Name?" 

"Anna." Anthony was sitting next to her, head tilted down. 

"Please," he whispered. His mother did not respond, but looked straight ahead at the headmaster with a thin smile plastered on her face. 

***

"You can cry all you want to, I don't care how much you'll invest yourself in me, we're not working out. We never have, after all, you don't get to choose family, right?"

The last part was said almost ironically. He had heard her mutter the same words so many times. 

"You should have raised a baby boy!"

"You should have been a better daughter!"

She swallowed, hastily smoothening her voice.

"I'm sorry, I did not mean it like that."

"No, you're right." His tone was icy again, free from emotions.

"Please listen to me, this is as good as I can be. This is all that I can be." Her voice was nothing but a whisper. He felt a sadistic satisfaction from breaking her down like this, destroying her just like she had destroyed him. A tiny, evil voice in his head told him that he had let her destroy him, that he was master over his own misery, but he did not want to listen to that voice. 

"I'm trying to let you know how much you mean to me. Try to love me back while you can. As long as you do so, you know I'll never leave this place."

Silence was all he wanted to say. She could impossibly indicate this to him. She could impossibly indicate... She could impossibly. She could...

"I won't take much of your time...
Just enough, for you to save me."