I guess my belief that I wasn’t worth a second chance made her believe that I thought she wasn’t worth an explanation.
I’ve imagined running in to Amari a million times. I’ve thought about every word I would say. How I would get on my knees and beg her to forgive me for being stupid. Beg her to take me back.
I’ve even thought about what it’d be like for the most important women in my life to meet. How I would introduce her to my daughter… introduce my daughter to her. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that it would actually happen. Ironic that the two most important women in my life met without me even having anything to do with it.
I wonder what that’ll be like for Amari. She’s the principal of my daughter’s school. She’ll see my daughter in the halls and think of her as a reminder of why I left her every single day without understanding it.
I bet she didn’t figure something else out. She probably didn’t realize, likely blinded by her anger at me, that she and my daughter have similar names. That I named my daughter after her. It was probably not the most sensitive thing to do, for Ari’s mother, but I was given a choice and I went with it. Amari and Ari.
My mind travels to the memory of when I decided what I would name the baby girl who would become my life. “What do you want to name her?” Katie asked me while I worked on setting up a crib in the nursery. Her room was the only room that had anything inside of it at that point. I didn’t come from money and having to figure out a place to live was the first problem I faced. I didn’t want to live at my mother’s house. If I were enough of a man to bring a child into the world, I needed to be man enough to make that work without relying on my mother. Once I got a place, I couldn’t furnish it all at once. Unlike me, Katie came from money, but her parents wanted no part in her future with me. It’s not like they needed to contribute anyway because Katie wasn’t going to live with me. My daughter would though, even though I hadn’t known it at the time, and I would make sure she had everything she needed.
“You want me to name her?” I asked Katie, a little baffled that she’d give me that privilege. She was almost due and it hadn’t been the easiest of pregnancies. She screamed at me. Resented me. I knew deep down she hated me for putting her in that predicament. I hated myself too but for different reasons.
She nodded. “Yeah, I don’t really have any idea. It’s not like I was planning to have a kid at nineteen.”
Neither was I. “Let me think…” I hadn’t thought about any child names. I didn’t think I’d be the one naming her. Then again, sometimes I felt like I was the only one who cared about the kid we would soon have. I guess, in the end, I was right.
“Take your time,” she told me as she watched me assemble the crib. Her ankles were swollen, her eyes tired, and her belly was so big I didn’t think it could get any bigger. Our daughter was only a few weeks away, so the name thing wasn’t really something we could keep pushing off.
“What about Ari?” I asked. Katie didn’t know anything about Amari because they never met. They didn’t run in the same circles and didn’t go to the same schools.
“Ari? Like Ariana?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Not really.”
“Like Ariel?” she asked, once again trying to figure out where I was going with this.
Ari, like Amari, is what I wanted to say. But I didn’t think it would fly to get the girl I impregnated to name our child in honor of the girl whose heart I broke, the girl I loved. “Just Ari.”
She shrugged. “Sounds good to me. What about a middle name?”
“That one’s up to you,” I told her. She’s the one who’ll be doing all the hard work when it comes to labor, I don’t want to take away from her the ability to name our kid.
“No middle name then,” she stated and then pulled out her phone, effectively ending the conversation.
Ari Cole. That’s my daughter’s name. The daughter I wished I’d had with Amari instead.
It was supposed to be our family.
Amari Cole.
Ari Cole.
Christian Cole.
White picket fence and all. But that isn’t the reality I’m living. Instead, I find myself sitting at my desk ready to bang my fist on the table because I can’t forget the way Amari looked at me with disgust.
She didn’t let me speak.
She didn’t want to hear what I had to say.
How the hell am I supposed to leave her alone knowing she’s this close to me?
She’s back at Forest Pines.
I always expected her to come and visit them when her parents lived here, but she never did. She left this town and didn’t come back for six years.
When her parents left, all hope of her returning to this town went with them. And now, unexpectedly, she’s back. They never did sell their house, so she’s probably living there now. In the same house I snuck into numerous times without her parents knowing. The house where I stole kisses and made her mine.
The memories assault me and my breath shortens when I realize how much I want her. How much I’ve always wanted her. Not just want but need. Six years have passed and yet my feelings for her have remained the same, if anything, they’ve gotten stronger. Despite the distance, seeing her again today was like I’d never stopped seeing her at all. It makes me want to pick up right where we left off. Well, a few days before then.
I love her just as much now as I did back then, if not more, and that realization scares me because now that she knows Ari exists, now that I have nothing to hide, I don’t know that I’ll be able to stay away.
I need her to give me a chance to explain it all. And maybe more than just explain.
I don’t deserve a second chance, but damn it all if I don’t want one right now more than anything.
The problem is she wants nothing to do with me.
She hates me. And I can’t blame her for it because it’s not her fault… it’s mine.
13
AMARI
I roll over in my bed and the moment I do, my face meets the ground with a loud bang. Opening my eyes in shock and pain, I realize that the reason I fell is that I didn’t actually fall asleep on my bed. Nope. I knocked out on the couch.
That makes perfect sense considering the moment I got home, I planted my ass in front of the TV and never got up. I stay on the floor for a few more seconds, laughing at the irony of falling. I’ve hit bottom before and while I thought I was in the up and up, falling unexpectedly and crashing down on the floor is exactly what my life feels like right now.
I groan and finally get up from the floor when my alarm starts ringing. Reaching for my phone, I shut it off. Letting my eyes adjust to the light creeping in from the living room window, I check my phone for anything I’ve missed.
Selfishly, my heart wants there to be something from Christian. A message. A call. Anything that explains to me what happened. That assures me I was wrong. That what I think happened isn’t true. I know that’s never going to happen. Not only because there’s no way he could explain himself out of the fact that he has a daughter but also because I changed my number.
I waited by my phone for months after the breakup. Years even.