No Love Is Unconditional
Chapter 11
By: Erynn*Alice
Benji had his arm secured tightly around her waist so she could lean on him for support. It had been three days of hospitalized care, and Luxx was finally home, but not better. The doctors hoped that she would get to return home with the blood donation that was needed, but she wasn’t so lucky. Out of all the donations that had been made, not a single one met the requirements. Benji brought his fiancée home with only the faint hope that they’d be returning soon to get the right donation.
She laid her head on his shoulder as they maneuvered between boxes and furniture to get to the living room couch. She was still a little light headed, and Benji wasn’t about to let her take another fall again.
“Do you need anything?” Luxx was lying down on the couch and he bent down to be eyelevel with her. She shook her head no. “Are you sure?”
“Come lay with me, Benj,” She whispered and held an arm out to him. He squeezed onto the couch, lying behind her and holding her waist. “We haven’t spent probably more than two hours together in this apartment.”
“And it’s all your fault. You just had to go and get sick, faint, whatever.” He said jokingly.
Luxx laughed a little and turned her head so that their noses were almost touching. “I’m so glad you can finally joke. You’re finally lightening up.” She turned back and settled against his chest. “You were a mess that first day.”
He moved his lips to her ear and whispered, “I still am.”
“What am I saying, Benji? You’re always a mess,” She laughed and elbowed him in the stomach gently.
“I should make you pay for that.” He kissed her neck and she moaned at the feeling of the metal piercings against her skin. The feeling of his piercings had become one of her favorite feelings.
“Oh, but I’m so weak.” She said in her best southern accent. He moved his lips up to her jaw line, showing no mercy. “I love you, Benji.”
“I love you, too, Luxx.” His lips were against her ears and the words echoed in her head. “I could never stop loving you, Luxx, never.”
The ringing of the phone in the kitchen met their ears. Luxx felt Benji pull his lips away and silently curse. “You don’t need to answer that.”
“It could be one the doctor, Luxx.” He climbed over her and walked into the kitchen to get the phone. “Hello?” He answered.
“Benjamin, it’s me, Mom.” He turned his back to the living room as if he was trying to conceal something. “I know you’re probably a little angry at me, Benjamin. I was a little harsh that night, I really lost my temper.”
He grunted. “I think you were a little more than harsh, Mom. And, yes, you did lose your temper.”
“I just didn’t know how to get my point across to you. I just, I was so frustrated, Benjamin.” She sighed. “I’m your mother, okay? I want the very best for my children, for you. I don’t think that Luxx is the very best.”
“Mom, if you’re calling to try to convince me that I shouldn’t marry Luxx, you’re wasting your time.” He turned around and looked at his fiancée who was resting peacefully on the couch. “I’m marrying her. I love her. You can’t just choose who you love, Mom, it’s not like that. I can’t stop loving someone just because you don’t like her. I can’t do that, I won’t do that.”
“I’m not calling to convince you to not marry her, even though I don’t want you to.” She paused. “Joel called me and told me what happened with Luxx. I’m sorry to hear about that.”
“Oh. Well, they let her come home today. We’ll have to go back, though. She didn’t get the donation.”
“This happened to me when I was pregnant with Josh; I know what she’s going through,” She sympathized. Benji smiled. He was glad that his mother finally found a way to relate to the woman he loved. “I have the kind of blood that she needs.”
His head snapped up and words vanished from his mouth. “What? What do you mean, how do you know?”
“Oh, I could go into all the technicalities, Benjamin, but that would take forever. The important part is that she’ll and the baby will be alright.”
A smile spread across his face and he wanted to scream with excitement. “Mom, you don’t know what this means to me!” He spun around in a circle and ran his hand down his face in disbelief. “When can you come out? I’ll pay for the ticket and the hotel, everything. You have to come out as soon as possible, Mom!”
She let out a bit of a laugh at the excitement of her son. “I can come out whenever you can get me a flight. I just need you to do me a favor, Benjamin.”
“What is it? I’ll do anything.”
“After I give the donation and the doctors tell you that everything is alright, I want you to never see Luxx again.”
Benji felt his heart plummet to the floor and his hands start to shake. He pulled a chair out from the cluttered kitchen table and sat down. “I…I…I don’t understand.”
“If I do this for you, I want you to never see her again.”
He felt tears well up in his deep brown eyes and the joy that he had felt just a minute ago be replaced with a deep sorrow and fear. He shook his head, trying to imagine a world without Luxx. It pained him to even think about deserting the woman he loved so much. He stood up with shaky legs and walked slowly into the living room to sit on the coffee table and look at the sleeping beauty on the couch.
Benji couldn’t imagine a world without her, but he also wanted her to live and his child to live. He brushed her hair out of her face, knowing that it was going to be one of the last times he would ever touch her skin and feel her warmth at his finger tips. He didn’t want to leave her, and he didn’t want to pain her.
“Mom,” He murmured his voice barely audible. “Mom, I’ll do it. Just make her better.”
He felt his heart shrivel and break into a million pieces as the tears rolled down his cheeks. In the end he decided it would be better if Luxx and his child were alive, even if they could never see him.
[“and it's the saddest song you'll ever hear/the most pain you will ever feel/but you grit your teeth because it don't get better that this (know this)/and you'll try to explain as the blood leave all your veins/and you can't think of anything that you would change” Streetlight Manifesto: “The Saddest Song”]