Chapter 1 #2
The driver tucked her head slightly, though I could still see most of her face in the rearview mirror. Then suddenly, her identity smacked me in the face.
“Cherry?”
“Hey, Ocean.” Her eyes closed briefly before she gave me a weak smile in the mirror. “Sometimes, people want to pretend they don’t know the drivers if they recognize them. I usually wait until they acknowledge me.”
“Understand.
She glanced at the passenger seat. “I hope you don’t mind riding with my daughter. Need to drop her off at a friend’s house, after I take you where you need to go.”
“Didn’t realize we had company. It’s cool.
” I pulled out my cell to check my texts, wondering what I would get into tonight after I get my car back.
Maybe meet up with my frat, Romeo and see if we can for the umpteenth time convince Enforcer to join us at the Flight Club and shoot darts.
Then again, calling him Enforcer probably wasn’t appropriate anymore.
Elijah hadn’t been the same since his wife ghosted him and left him by text.
These days, he doesn’t do anything but work and take care of his daughter.
Further solidifying my decision to not have children.
Parenthood forced you to make sacrifices whether you wanted to do it or not.
Or I could spend time with a woman. Maybe call Tracie who’s been blowing up my cell lately. She’s always down for dinner and smashing. I had options to ease the small sting of Soraya’s rejection, though ironically the woman from my past transporting me to my car wasn’t one.
More out of politeness than genuine interest, I asked without looking up from my phone, “How you been?”
“Okay. I live here now.”
“Everybody is moving here. Traffic is a beast more than ever.” I chuckled, placing my phone face down on my lap. “How long?”
Cherry glanced at me through the mirror and refocused on the road.
She seemed different. Quiet and reserved.
Not the aggressive, loud, fun woman who kicked it with me while I was in Charlotte at my fraternity conference some years ago.
A one-night stand that ended up being a weekend of fucking until we were sore.
We both knew what it was and left without sharing contact information.
I assumed Cherry wasn’t her real name and she’d only known my line name.
She was still an attractive woman, though smaller than what I recalled.
Funny how I felt no attraction as I stared at her through her rearview mirror.
“Going on four years. Didn’t really want to come back home.”
“I didn’t know you were from here.” I must have been really drunk that I didn’t even remember we were from the same city. Then again, she might have told me. It had to be eight years ago, given that in two more years we would be celebrating another decade of our regional conference.
“We didn’t do a lot of talking the last time we saw each other.” Our eyes locked in the rearview mirror. She looked away first to pat her daughter’s jean-clad knee.
“No, we didn’t.” I smiled. It was a good weekend of catching up with my brothers and lots of drinking, getting high, and sex. The type of weekend I didn’t do anymore.
“Mommy, I’m hungry.”
A small hand touched Cherry’s thigh, and my heart almost leaped out of my chest.
“The fuck?” I muttered and stared at my left wrist. The café au lait mark shaped like the California coast matched the one on her left wrist.
Cherry’s gaze darted to the rearview mirror at my confused one. “Can you watch your mouth?”
“Yeah…yeah…sorry, Cherry,” I mumbled.
“Mara.”
“Mara.” I amended and leaned forward. “What’s …um…her…your daughter’s name?”
“Jussica. Jessica with a ‘u’. wanted to call her ‘Justice’ but thought that might be too pretentious and a hard name for her to live up to.” She chuckled as she slanted an adoring gaze at her daughter.
“But I should have, the way this one argues with me about everything, especially if she feels she’s been wronged. ”
My stomach clenched tighter at the description I’d heard my whole life. “How old is she?”
“I’m seven. Eight on July 8. See, I remember,” The little girl replied.
“Shh,” She admonished.
“He asked how old I am,” Jussica retorted.
Explaining myself even after my mother told me to be quiet was definitely something I would do when I was her age.
I remember hating when adults talked around me like I wasn’t there.
Shit. It had to be a coincidence. Just because we might have had sex eight years ago doesn’t mean that the girl directly in front of me is my blood.
“And I told you to be quiet.”
Jussica sighed loudly.
Unsure exactly how to get to the heart of the matter, I asked quietly, “Did you get married since we last saw each other?”
“Something like that.”
“She’s divorced,” Jussica added.
Mara pinched her daughter’s arm, and she promptly yelled louder than the actual pain, I’m sure she felt.
“That hurt, Mommy.”
I tried to catch Mara’s eyes again, and she refused to look at me now. In fact, I spotted beads of perspiration next to her baby hair that she’d carefully brushed down to frame her rather angular face.
Picking up my cell, I checked for her name on my Uber request and searched for her on Instagram. Bingo. Nothing but pictures of Cherry…Mara and her daughter. A daughter who had striking eyes, as I did. Brown eyes that glinted lighter in the sun. My mother’s eyes. Fuck me.
I quickly messaged her with trembling fingers.
Please be honest with me. Is your daughter also mine?
Her phone, attached to the console, buzzed. She glanced at the phone before attending to the road. My trip would end in three minutes, and my soul wouldn’t rest until I knew without a doubt what my gut screamed at me.
“Might want to see what it says.” I practically growled.
“I don’t look at my cell when I’m driving except for directions.”
“Un...huh…you look at your cell lots,” Jussica contradicted.
If I wasn’t about to freak out, her daughter’s honesty was actually hilarious, and I understood more why I annoyed my mother when I was a child.
“The light is red, please check it,” I instructed more firmly and tapped the back of her seat with my fist.
She gripped the steering wheel when we stopped at the light. Her hand shook slightly as she reached for the cell. My breath caught when she texted something.
I looked down at my cell.
No.
Her response only brought on more questions and not the relief I expected. When she slowly pulled in front of the Mercedes dealership, where my EQE SUV model waited to be picked up. I stared into the review mirror, daring her to give me eye contact.
When she kept her gaze downward, I added, “I need to speak to you.”
At her continued silence and her refusal to look at me, I warned, “We can either talk in front of the little one, or you can open my door, and we can talk right there.” I pointed to a spot near enough for her to keep an eye on Jussica and far enough for her not to hear our conversation.
I pretended for the sake of Jussica that I couldn’t open my door.
I didn’t trust her not to simply drive off if I exited the car while she was behind the wheel.
“I believe the child locks are on. Please let me out.”
She clenched her jaw but got out of the car and opened my door.
“Mommy, where are you going?”
“Baby, I’ll be right there. He’s an old friend.”
The little girl immediately peeked over the seat to smile at me, and my chest burned painfully.
I never fantasized about how my children would look or if their personalities would match mine.
I didn’t care if I saw myself in someone I created or longed to have a legacy.
I never wanted children. Never wanted the wife, the 2.
5 kids, or the picket fence. Loved the single life of never having to answer to anyone except my conscience.
Yet, my heart painfully squeezed at the pretty brown face with one missing tooth.
A face unmistakably mine. I’d long ago observed that girls often look more like their fathers than their mothers, as this one did.
And whether I’d ever wanted a child didn’t matter.
She was my kin. My flesh and blood.
I wouldn’t walk away like my father.