Heading over to the kitchen, I look through the liquor cabinet and find an unopened bottle of scotch. I don’t read the label further than the fact that it’s scotch. I don’t even notice the name of the brand. I notice the dust in the bottle and decide to run the water to clean it.
Grabbing two glasses from the cabinet on the left, I fill each cup with a heavy pour.
With the drinks in hand, I return to the living room where I find my best friend sitting down on the couch I vacated a few minutes ago. Best friend… I hope after this conversation, I can still call her that.
“Alright, here are the drinks,” I tell her, setting them down on the table.
“Sit with me,” she says, tapping the cushion next to her.
I sit down a few inches away from her. “Can you just take a large sip first before we start?” she asks nervously. The buildup to this is driving me mad.
Instead of arguing with her, I pick up my glass and drink some of the scotch, feeling it burn as it makes its path down my throat. I set the glass down and immediately Emely picks hers up. She takes a huge gulp of the scotch and I watch, waiting for any sort of reaction from her; she gives me none.
“Are you ready?” Emely asks.
Yes. No. I don’ know. “It depends on what you’re going to say.”
“I’m going to tell you everything… from the beginning.”
“Okay,” I reply bracing myself.
“So Christian…” she starts and I feel my heart drop to my stomach the moment she utters his name.
21
CHRISTIAN
“Keep pushing, you can do this!” I cheer on one of the football players, Atkins, as he finishes his last lap. He told me his personal goal is to get faster this year and I told him as long as he keeps pushing he can accomplish that. He just has to keep trying.
“Keep pushing!” I tell him when he runs past me again running yet another lap. My encouragement isn’t just for him. It’s for me too. I’ve gotta keep trying. I’ve gotta start from the ground and build my way up with her again.
My goal is to get Amari to forgive me or to look me in the eyes and tell me she doesn’t love me anymore. Either of those things will work for me. If she forgives me, then maybe I can conquer her heart again. If she tells me she doesn’t love me, then I’ll know there’s no hope. I know that whatever we had is buried in the past.
We’re done here. Those were the words she said while she once again kicked me out of her office. After she said that, I realized that there was still hope. That the window I had seen become cracked the moment she finally agreed to get in the car with me was real. She wasn’t able to look at me and tell me she didn’t love me, which means that she still does.
But love isn’t enough.
Not when I hurt her as bad as I did.
I told her I made the choice that I thought was right. At the time, I believed in what I was doing. I wanted to be her hero. I wanted to save her from the evil that was also me.
But I could’ve done things differently. I should’ve done things differently. Maybe it would be she and I raising Ari together this whole time. But maybe it wouldn’t have been. Maybe she would’ve left me after some time. Maybe she’d be with me while hating me. A million things could’ve happened and there’s no point in wasting time thinking about what could’ve been.
I have to earn her trust.
Because although she may still love me, it’s obvious she wants nothing to do with me.
“Alright, that’s that!” I tell Atkins when he passes me a third time. His teammates next to me clap as I announce the time. “You shaved twenty seconds off since last week,” I inform him.
My announcement is met with cheers from his teammates.
“Way to go!” one of the players congratulates him.
“They won’t see you coming!” another player shouts.
“Alright. That’s practice for today. We have a game coming up soon, so be prepared to practice harder in the coming days!”
A few minutes later, all players have left the locker room and the last one of them vacates my office. Gathering my things, I look at my phone to see if I have any missed calls. When I look at the screen I notice I have a text message from Emely.
Emely: I’m almost there.
That message came in about an hour ago, so I assume she’s there already. There being Amari’s house.
Christian: Okay, thanks again for letting me talk to her first.
I didn’t think she’d let me. When Emely, who has been Amari’s best friend since I’ve known them, tore me a new one a day after I broke up with Amari, I didn’t know what to do or how to react. I mean, she cursed me out and I deserved every last word. That was the last time she spoke to me until this Tuesday.
Getting a message from her warning me to stay away from her best friend was unexpected but not entirely surprising. I assume Amari told her all about running in to me. Emely told me she’d cut me into tiny little pieces if I hurt her again.
I called her back. I don’t know why I did it except that I needed someone to hear me out. Someone who knew Amari and me back when we weren’t broken. Someone who knew how much she loved me and saw how much I loved her.
I walk to my truck recalling the conversation I had with Emely.
“Hi Emely,” I greet her when she answers the phone.
“Why are you calling me?” she asks, her tone indignant. She needs to line up because the list of people I pissed off in my youth is never ending.
“Amari is back,” I tell her, like she doesn’t already know. She wouldn’t have warned me about staying away from her best friend if Amari were still living six hours away like she had been for six years.
“I know you’ve seen her already,” she tells me. “Why are you calling me?” she asks again and I honestly admire the way she talks to me. She doesn’t care much for me and I like that about her. She’s a real friend, one who would fiercely defend Amari. She’d fight just about anyone for Amari, including me. I’m glad Amari has her in her corner.
I clear my throat. “I know you want me to stay away from her.”
“I’m not asking you for a favor. I’m telling you, you need to stay away from her,” she says, cutting me off.
“I can’t stay away.” Not anymore.
“Why? You managed to not call her for six long years. Why can’t you stay away from her now when you could so easily break her heart?” Staying away from Amari would’ve been impossible if she had stayed in this town. The only reason I haven’t seen her since she left was that I was too much of a coward to knock at her door in her apartment. I drove six hours. Six long hours and thought about every little thing I would say to her when I saw her. Then, I arrived at her apartment, finding out where it was with a little help from her parents. I was getting ready to step out of my car and knock at her door when I saw her. She looked as beautiful as ever and my heart was beating out of my chest. I saw her with her backpack hiked on her shoulder and a book in hand. I saw the smile on her face and that convinced me to stay in the car. Her smile got me to drive away from her that day.
I left her for a reason.
She needed to follow her dreams, to live her own life. I didn’t want to get in the way of her happiness.
But she’s back now and it was her choice to come back.
“You have no reason to believe me,” I start.
“You got that damn right,” she says, cutting me off once again.
“I messed up,” I tell her, trying to get her to listen.
She scoffs. “Doesn’t take a genius to realize that.”
“But I want to fix it,” I add.
“Fix it?” she asks, surprised I’d even utter those words. “How the hell do you plan on doing that? Don’t you think it’s too late?”
For my sake, I really hope it isn’t. “I’m trying to figure out how.”
“And you called me because?” Emely asks impatiently. I’m surprised she hasn’t already hung up on me.
I take a deep breath and let it all out at once. “Because… I need your help.”
“I would never help you.”
“That’s fair.”
“More than fair,” she responded and then hung up on me.
It’s a good thing she changed her mind.
22
AMARI
“So I hung up on him,” she tells me. She’s been meticulous with every detail and regardless of how many question I have, I don’t ask them. I want the full story first before I start picking it apart. Before I start asking her why she didn’t tell me any of this before. I don’t understand why she would hide this information from the person she calls her best friend.
I breathe in the betrayal with every word she utters, but I school my expression to appear as neutral as I possibly can. I need to know the full story before I let my emotions dictate my actions.
She looks at me as if waiting for me to respond, to say something. I look at her expectantly and she catches the fact that I’m telling her to proceed with my eyes instead of my words. When I told Emely about Christian, she said we could discuss it in person when she came up. By the sounds of it, she didn’t need me to explain what was going on. She was figuring it out all on her own. Well, not on her own, with Christian’s help.
“He called me back right back though.” Two calls in one day to my best friend and I knew nothing about them until this second and only because I practically forced her to tell me after she slipped. I grab the glass of scotch from the table and take another sip. At least Emely wasn’t wrong about the fact that I’d be needing a drink to accompany this conversation. It makes it an easier pill to swallow or at least lets me focus, for a moment, on the burning sensation of the scotch instead of the feeling of another broken relationship.
She watches the glass in my hand, tracking my movements. I can tell she desperately wants to know what I’m feeling and I’m proud of myself for my ability to become unreadable. I guess the last week has taught me something after all. “What happened then?” I ask, feeling like if I don’t usher this conversation along, she’ll never get there.
“He called me to tell me that he had a daughter.” I’m shocked that he would reveal that to her so easily, yet I had to figure it out for myself. “Told me she went to your school and that you knew.”
“He felt awfully comfortable telling you a lot of things,” I quip, unable to stop myself.
Her head drops in shame and I feel bad for saying what I said. Then she starts speaking again and my regret disappears. “I wanted to hang up on him. I wanted to yell at him.”
“So why didn’t you?” It would’ve been easy to do.
“Because he seemed sincere in what he wanted to do.”
“What did he want to do?” I ask.
“He wanted to apologize to you.” Apologize? My best friend hid all this from me because Christian wanted to apologize.
“And that made it all okay?”
“No, it didn’t. But he told me that you thought he’d cheated on you. He explained to me why he left.” I’m stuck on the fact that my best friend got an explanation about the reasons he left me before I did.
“And what? That made you his best friend? You think him breaking my heart like that made sense?!” I yell, rising from the couch in a fit of anger.
“No, not at all,” she says, getting up and walking toward me.
“Did he tell you he got someone pregnant right before he started dating me?”
She nods.
“Did he tell you he left me because he thought that was what was best for me?” I ask again, my voice growing louder.
Again, Emely nods.
“And he told you all of this on Tuesday?” I know she already said this, but I can’t help asking again.
“Yes, he did. Well, he also told me he finally talked to you on Wednesday. That’s when I learned about your car breaking down.”
A humorless laugh escapes me as I start pacing around the small distance of my living rom. I didn’t know hearts were so strong until now because mine just continues to break and yet it hasn’t stopped beating. My best friend and the only guy I’ve ever loved both betrayed me. “So you knew before I knew and you didn’t bother telling me?”
“He told me not to.”
“And that was enough to get you to keep that from me?!” I scream, staring back at her with anger in my eyes. “Him saying don’t tell your best friend, the girl you saw shattered into a million pieces the moment he broke her heart, the girl who is still trying to pick up the pieces and you’ve helped try to figure out where they belong along the way, that was enough to get you to keep that from me? Him asking you?” I ask in disbelief. Tears are streaming down my face and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m hurt or because I’m angry. I bet it’s a mixture of both.
Emely tries to get closer to me, but I move away from her quickly. It’s almost like I don’t recognize the girl standing in front of me. Her phone buzzes and we both turn toward the coffee table.
Christian
That is the name displayed across the screen and seeing it brings my anger to new heights.
“You need to get that?” I ask her, pointing at her phone so she knows I’ve noticed.
She shakes her head. “He wanted to be the one to explain it to you. He felt he owed you at least that. I wanted to tell you, but he said he would be telling you the next day. I told him if he didn’t, that I would,” she tries to explain her reasoning.
I don’t know if her reasons make it better. “You should’ve told me, anyway.” The second she knew she should’ve called, texted, emailed, sent a damn courier pigeon. Anything.
“Would you have told me?” she asks, crossing her arms in front of herself in challenge.
“The fact that you’d even ask that question says enough about our friendship.” Hell yeah I would’ve told her. I wouldn’t have even given it a second thought. If I had seen Emely fall apart because of a guy and knew she was hurting even more because she thought he had cheated on her, because he had a daughter, because she didn’t know what to believe, I would’ve told her.
She steps closer to me again and I don’t move back this time. “He wanted to talk to you. I thought he deserved that.”
“I’m glad you thought he deserved a chance to explain himself more than I deserved the truth.”
23
CHRISTIAN
My phone rings and I step away from the kitchen and toward the dining room. Looking at the caller ID, I realize Emely is calling me, which isn’t a good thing considering she’s supposed to be with Amari right now.
“Hi,” I answer, concerned.
“Hey…” she starts and I sense something in those words I can’t necessarily place. “Amari kicked me out,” she adds. There it is.
It’s my fault. “Shit, really?” I look around the room to make sure Ari wasn’t down here to hear me swear.
“Do you need me to pick you up?” I ask, not knowing how else to be helpful.
I walk back to the kitchen and check up on dinner. “Oh, absolutely not. If she saw you pull up at her house to pick me up she’d never forgive me. Plus, I rented a car, so I’m good.”
“She knows, huh?” I ask, unable to stop the guilt from hitting me in the gut.
I hear the sound of what’s likely her car turning on. “I slipped up about her car being messed up.”
“And she connected the dots?” I ask. Amari’s always been smart. “Then made you tell her everything?” I add.
“Yup,” Emely says popping the p. “At least she didn’t smack me, though I could tell in her eyes she wanted to. I’ve never seen her this mad at me.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeat, not knowing what else to say.
“It’s not your… well, actually, it is. But not entirely your fault. I should’ve told her the moment you told me everything,” she replies. I’m shocked that she isn’t yelling at me.
I take a seat at the kitchen table. “I asked you not to.”
“
You’re not my friend, she is,” Emely adds and I nod. “I shouldn’t have listened to you.”
“I’m glad you did though.” I think Amari needed to hear the truth from me.
“Me… not so much,” she says with a sigh.
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to stay at my aunt’s house. She still lives here. Then, I’ll grovel and see if Amari forgives me. I swear the disappointment in her eyes made me feel like the worst person in the world.” I know that look and feeling well. I shouldn’t have involved Emely. I bet Amari is even more pissed at me now that she knows I confided in Emely before confiding in her.
“I’m sorry.” I sound like a broken record, but there’s really nothing else I can say. “I shouldn’t have asked you to keep my secrets.”
“I’m not telling you this to make you feel like a jerk,” she pauses, then adds, “actually, I think I am a little.”
“I don’t blame you. I’m the asshole who came between you and your best friend.”
“You’re also the asshole who hurt my best friend,” she adds.
“I’m also the asshole who still loves her,” I confess. “The asshole who never stopped.”
“You’re the asshole who will do whatever’s in your power to make it right,” she says. “It’s not a question, by the way.”
“Trust me, if there’s a way to make it right, I won’t stop until I find it.” I think about a question I want to ask but wonder if I should. If I even deserve the answer or if Emely will bother giving it to me. I decide to go for it because what’s the worst that can happen? “Do you think there’s a chance I could fix things?” I ask.
There’s a long pause on the other side of the line. All I can hear is the sound of the wind as I assume she starts driving away from Amari’s house. “Do you want me to be honest?” she asks and my heart sinks at what I expect her answer will be.
Just Because of You Page 11
