“Do you remember Draft Day, four years ago? You couldn’t go, but Mom and Jack were with me. I had spoken to possibly four teams that wanted me and had no idea where I’d end up. I was swept up in the press; all the sports talk interviews, the magazine articles, my picture was on a billboard in Times Square. I was paraded around the city with the rest of the number-one class. People shouted and screamed at us like we were celebrities. It was surreal.
“The minute Jacksonville called my name and mom hugged me, it all sank in. When I got to that stage and shook the commissioner’s hand with my new team jersey over my arm, my mind flashed to two people, Dad and Ari. Not Mom, not you, not any of my coaches, or teammates, just Dad and Ari. I became a multi-millionaire that night. We celebrated with the best champagne we could order. I partied around the city before catching a flight to my new home and team the next day.”
“Oh my God.” Cara’s voice cracks.
“Yeah, now let me tell you another story about that same day. A brokenhearted twenty-one year old Arianna sits on the sofa in front of the television. She makes her best friend Luke stay with her all day watching the footage surrounding the draft. She’s roughly seventeen weeks pregnant, put college on hold, and has moved home. Her life is in shambles and she holds onto her stomach everywhere she goes to protect her baby.
“So she watches me all day strut around New York City with a smile on my face and women screaming for me. When my name is called, Ari watched me hug mom, fist pump with Jack, and head to the stage to start my new life. She loses it. Her heart swells and breaks again at the same time. She watched the man she loved so much achieve his dream and at the same moment move on without her after promising her the world.
“So she’s surrounded by Luke, Sophie, and her grandma now and is inconsolable. Her tears soak through her best friends shirt and sobs shake her body. For the first time in a while, she isn’t holding her stomach to protect our baby, she is too stricken. Her grandma noticed the blood first. Ari was bleeding and they were concerned she was having a late miscarriage. She refused any sedative in the ambulance and became stoic. She thought she killed our baby. Thank God, she was okay, but she was put on bed rest for a while and also given a mild anti-depressant. The doctor wanted her to see a psychiatrist, but she declined. She vowed to everyone in her life she would get better and be the best mother to our child. She later told Luke, she knew when my name was announced, our lives and dreams had been a fairytale she would never see come true and she hated herself for believing them. She never really questioned where my supposed girlfriend was because of the idea of an open relationship.”
“That is devastating.”
“You think that’s bad? Let me finish up this little bedtime nightmare for you. Ari did get better. She read books about parenting and healthy pregnancies. She did everything in the world to keep my baby alive after almost losing him, which she found out could have resulted in hemorrhaging and killing her too. But even though she was taking care of herself, she shut down emotionally. No one could get through to her. Her grandmother had a stroke and begged her to find me to let me know, but besides the draft, Ari’s last memory was of me taking a girl into my room when she showed up at my apartment to tell me about the baby. So when my son was born, he had only one parent listed on his birth certificate, and it isn’t me. My own flesh and blood is legally listed as having a mother only.”
I finish my beer and reach for another. My run is going to suck in the morning, but hopefully Ari will go easy on me. We sit without saying anything, but Cara cries quietly. When she starts to hiccup, I can’t take anymore.
“Go back to your hotel, Cara. I’ll drop Mom off after brunch.”
“Where does this leave us?”
“Right now, there is no us. I’ll let you know if I’m ready to talk.”
I leave her outside on the porch and lockup the house. I turn off the small lamp and watch Cara walk around the house in the darkness. The engine of mom’s car starts in the driveway and I listen as she pulls away.
Jack’s watching TV in the small den, he looks at me and sits up when I walk in. “I heard your conversation.”