27. Amina Black
Amina Black
We were inside of an indoor truck storage warehouse.
This is where he would keep his truck when he was in Miami.
It was nice in here. I’m talking those shiny epoxy floors, bright LED shop lights were overhead, and just about every other truck that was stationed in here looked as if money was invested into them, just like Gemini’s.
It was a little after midnight. I wasn’t too tired because honestly, I did so much sleeping today on the truck.
Gemini removed all of our bags out of the truck. We had a lot of things. You would think that he would have allowed me to get on the truck with him, so that I could help carry the bags out, but he didn’t. He told me to just wait for him, while he handled it.
“No. I’m emotional right now,” I was honest.
Granted, I knew this day would eventually come, but standing in this warehouse, with all our bags pushed to the side, seeing Gemini do the final walkthrough, and knowing that we were back in Miami, it’s like that’s when it hit me.
The road trip was over. All that fun I had on the road with him was done. I was going to miss that.
Never in a million years would I ever believe that I would say that I would miss living on a truck for two months.
I didn’t think that I would miss the truck stops.
The showers at the truck stops. The random gas station stops.
The laundromat stops. I was going to miss all of that.
I felt like I was goofy as hell for standing here, getting emotional about it, damn near on the verge of tears.
“Why you emotional baby?” he asked, standing right in front of me, with his arms crossed, and legs spread a little bit, so that he could be leveled with me.
When he did that, I reached my hands out, holding onto his arms, while looking at him with watery eyes.
“I don’t know. I just hate it when things come to an end.
I feel like that phase that we just went through, being on the truck together is over, and I’m going to miss that.
We shared so much on that truck. I cried on that truck with you.
Laughed with you. Slept with you. Probably watched every episode of Martin with you.
Baby, we fell in love on that truck, and I’m just going to miss it,” I was honest, allowing the tears to slip after I finished.
Gemini smiled once I was done, and like he always did, he wiped my tears away.
“This not the end though, bae. It’s just the end of the trucking part. Yeah that part is over, but now that we’re home, this is where the real commitment starts with us. This shit just getting started. We’re in love, and we’re married. This is just the beginning, aight?” he asked me.
His words did help to calm me down, so I nodded my head towards his question. He kissed me multiple times on the lips, my cheeks, and my forehead, then he pulled away.
“Let me get my chargers, and phone out of the truck. Ima call the Uber when I’m done to take us home,” he let me know.
I nodded my head, watching him as he went back for the truck. He was only gone for a minute. I watched him as he closed the door once he was out and then walked back over to me.
“Aight. That’s it for real this time. I got everything out,” he said to me.
“Not everything. I think you might have forgot one thing,” I said it to him with a smile on my face.
“What you left?” he wanted to know.
“Look in the overhead compartment above the bottom bunk. I left something in there,” I told him.
I knew it wasn’t a spot that Gemini would have checked to look unless I told him.
The specific cabinet that I was referring to, I would store my toiletry items there, and he never went in, looking at my things.
Knowing that, he looked at me strangely, but he did walk back over to the truck, opened the door, and stepped inside.
I stood back, with my hands to my side, rocking my body back and forth, waiting to see when he came out of the truck.
All it took was seconds, and I could hear him rushing out of the truck before I saw him.
He didn’t even take the steps down. He jumped down.
He was holding it in his right hand. The thing that I told him I left.
It’s usually my eyes that are watery because I loved to let out a good cry, but this time, it was him.
When he smiled, and a tear fell from his eye, it made me emotional, so there I was, dropping a tear of my own.
There wasn’t an ounce of fear on his face.
He didn’t look hesitant, or uncertain. I saw a man that just went through a phase of feeling pure overwhelming joy, and that’s why he dropped a tear.
His reaction confirmed all the things that he’d been telling me all along.
All the talks that we had about marriage, children, and setting that foundation wasn’t just all talk.
He truly meant those things. Somehow, seeing the man that I loved deeply, cry because here was his shot at fatherhood… it broke me too.
“For real, baby? You pregnant?” he asked, walking over to me, holding the positive pregnancy test in his hands.
“I am,” I told him, and he lifted me up, picking my feet off the ground. Gemini had to put over a hundred kisses on my face in a matter of one minute.
“That’s what your grandma whispered to me when we were leaving her house.
She whispered in my ear, telling me to take a test. I have no idea how she knew that.
I had a couple tests in my purse from the doctor’s appointment.
The doctor gave me some tests because she told me that after removing the IUD, it was a chance that I could become pregnant almost immediately.
I took the test in the restroom at the truck stop after we left your grandma’s house,” I let him know.
I told him these things because I knew that Gemini was the kind of man that would want to know every single detail, so here I was, doing that.
“Damn baby. I’m so happy. You got me out here crying and shit,” he said to me through laughs, as there were still tears falling from his eyes.
“I know, baby. I’m happy too. There’s no one else in the world that I would want to be doing this with,” I had to let him know.
He pulled me into him after I said that.
He allowed my head to hit his chest, and he wrapped an arm around me.
He told me the things that every woman would want to hear, after revealing a pregnancy to her husband.
He made me feel so safe. So comfortable.
So loved. He made me feel like I wouldn’t know what isolation was when it came to this pregnancy.
I believed him when he told me that he was going to be the best husband to me, and the best father to our little one.
God, I’ve taken my fair share of exits in my life.
Some exits led to heartbreak. When I went through that phase of my life with Jacob, having him call off the wedding just a week before, that was an exit that came with some mountains that I didn’t think I would be able to climb.
The turns, the detours, and the stops that I went through, made me feel like I was losing my damn mind.
There I was, in my weakness, and self-doubt, coming off that exit, and God sent me the man that He wanted for me.
A man that had me sitting on a truck with him, going to God, praying that what we had was real.
Praying that he was the one for me and that I would be able to give him the child that we dreamed about.
I went through all those other exits, so that I could be prepared for us.
I don’t even have to say this, but out of every exit that I’ve ever had to take… Us was the best one. Exit: Us.