Chapter 40 Ari
Ari
Ari was supposed to be heading to a celebratory team breakfast but instead she was sitting at the edge of her bed, replaying each scene from last night.
The sight of Drew holding flowers for her, the comfort she’d felt around his grandparents and how, for a moment, she’d allowed herself to forget that this was all just pretend.
But then she thought about how tense things had gotten when Thandie arrived.
The moment Drew had said this would never work out, and how she’d run out of the restaurant before she could let him say goodbye.
She’d made the mistake of allowing herself to imagine an unlikely world in which she and Drew did make it work.
She’d found whispers of it in the carefree laughter that came out whenever she was around him.
In the way he reached out for her hand at the exact moment she needed it most. And in how many times she’d glanced over to find him smiling at her with those bright, kind, warm eyes.
Because Drew wasn’t like the boys she’d dated before.
As she got ready to leave her room, she thought back to all the guys in her past.
Ari had a type: athletic, charming, and a little too intense.
She’d spent so much of her life managing every situation around her that she’d found herself drawn to men who did the managing, who took care of things, made plans, and made sure everything was under control.
But Drew was different. He never tried to change or direct her.
She didn’t feel like she was auditioning to be the other half of some sports power couple, nor did she feel like she had to curate an image of perfection to seamlessly fit into his world.
With Drew, she felt lighter, more girlish, almost entirely unburdened.
Usually, when she started seeing someone new, her brain went on high alert.
She was always looking for red flags and listening for alarm bells.
But Drew had put all his cards on the table that very first night.
So, instead of looking for signs that it wouldn’t work, she’d absentmindedly started looking for reasons why it might.
However, thoughts like that went against the terms and conditions of their arrangement.
She and Drew had always had an expiration date, and now it was over.
She wanted to go back in time, walk back into the restaurant, and tell him that she liked him for real.
But she couldn’t. So, instead, she put on her coat and left GB House to join her teammates for their quarterfinal-qualification breakfast.
Her phone started ringing as she opened the front door, so she patted herself down, trying to figure out which of the eight pockets in her puffer coat she’d put it in. When she pulled it out and saw that it was her mom, she answered immediately.
“Arikoishe, congratulations!” her mom said. She was on the other end of the phone, singing and ululating. So, her mom had heard about their win. Her congratulations were coming a day late, but Ari had always been quick to forgive.
“Thanks, Mama!” she said, stepping out into the snow. Excited to FaceTime with her mom and give her a play-by-play of the game. But she quickly realized that her mom hadn’t just called to congratulate her.
“Well done, but I wanted to call you to talk about your sister. She’s becoming a serious problem now, very unruly,” her mom said with irritation.
Ari felt deflated. She loved her mom. When Ari was a teenager, she, her mom, and her sister had spent every night snuggled up on the sofa watching TV, and every weekend walking around the shops.
Without their father in the picture, they were a tight unit.
A solid three-rope bond. And because of that, Ari had always been her mother’s closest confidante.
It had started in small ways, with her mom telling her about how stressful work was or telling her about the latest extended-family drama.
Then Ari became the first person her mom called whenever anything bad happened.
Her mom told her about her money worries, the relatives back home who blamed her for the divorce, and all the arguments she had with Ari and Anesu’s dad.
Her mom spent hours confiding in her, and on more than one occasion, her mom ended the night weeping in her arms.
At first, Ari had seen it as a sign that her mother trusted her and thought she was responsible enough to talk to about grown-up things.
But as she’d gotten into her later teenage years and started trying to build a life for herself, it became a burden.
She knew that she was the only person her mother truly trusted, but that responsibility had started to weigh down on her.
Her mom had so much going on that there was only enough air in their conversations for her issues. Now Ari was tired of it.
“Mom, when is my quarterfinal game?” Ari asked softly, coming to a pause in the middle of the path that led out of GB House. She sat in the silence that confirmed her mom didn’t know.
“Why did I break up with Harrison?” she asked, her eyes beginning to water as the silence continued.
“Arikoishe,” her mom said gently. “We can talk about that when you come home, but first we need to fix the wedding dilemma.” As Ari walked in the snow that morning, listening to her mother talk about how betrayed she felt by the situation, she realized she couldn’t go on like this.
She didn’t want to. So, she shook her head and took her gloves off to better handle her phone.
Getting her contacts up and tapping on the screen until she connected another call.
“Girl, I can’t talk for long. I have to head out in ten minutes,” her sister said as she appeared on her screen. She had half a face of makeup on, the lines of her contour still standing out against her neck and cheekbones.
“I think it’s going to take you more than ten minutes.” Ari smiled, then remembered that she wasn’t just calling to chat. She tapped a few more buttons until a third face appeared on the screen.
“Arikoishe, is everything alright?” said her dad, sounding panicked.
Ari rarely called him, and never without prior warning.
It was strange to hear his voice on the other end of the phone.
He still had a full head of hair, but it was speckled with strands of gray, highlighted by the sun pouring through the windows of his house in Harare, Zimbabwe.
She’d never visited him and had no intention of going to his wedding.
But on the two or three occasions a year when she called her dad, she always imagined what his home looked like.
She wondered whether he had any framed photos of his daughters, if he’d kept any of the clothes she remembered from her childhood, or if he ever walked the halls of his new place and thought about his family.
But instead of asking him that, she tapped a few more buttons on her screen until the call merged and all four of them were on the line.
“Mom, Dad, Anesu. I love you, but I’m gonna say this for the first and last time: You’re all draining the life out of me.”
“You’re being a bit dramatic,” said Anesu.
“What is he doing here?” asked her mom.
“Is everything okay?” questioned her dad.
No. Everything wasn’t okay. With them, or with her. But as snow fell in St. Moritz that morning, she realized that only the latter was her responsibility. They hadn’t all sat on a call together like this in years, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
“Is this an attempt to get me to change my mind? Because I’m not doing that,” began her sister.
Ari wasn’t there to change anybody’s mind. Or manage anybody’s feelings. Not anymore. She needed to say her piece and leave them to sort things out for themselves.
“Dad, you shouldn’t have left Mom to raise us by ourselves, and you shouldn’t have left Anesu or me trying to figure out how to get you to be involved,” she said bluntly. She heard her sister gasp. “You can’t fix a decade-long absence with plane tickets and a wedding invite.”
He looked startled by her words, but he didn’t have anything to say in his defense.
“Arikoishe, don’t speak to your father like that,” began her mom, who loathed her dad in private but tried to keep up appearances in public. However, Ari wasn’t done.
“Anesu, I’m not going to the wedding with you. But nobody should make you feel guilty for wanting to spend time with Dad. Going behind Mom’s back wasn’t fair, but it’s up to you whether you go or not,” she said softly.
Ari had given up on her relationship with her father a long time ago, but she hoped things would be different for her sister.
“And Mom, I love you,” she said, her voice faltering. “But you’re the mom. I’m your child, not your best friend. I don’t want to take on all your burdens and I can’t keep figuring everything out.”
Ari felt guilty, but she needed to admit the truth.
She’d been the fixer for so long that she didn’t know how to operate in her family in any other way.
But it wasn’t her responsibility to always ensure everyone around her was okay, especially when they seemed incapable of doing the same for her.
She needed to cut the umbilical cord and get them to figure out their own problems for once.
“Okay? Okay. I’ve got to go now, bye,” she said, leaving the call before anyone could draw her back in.
She expected the group call to drop, but the minutes ticked by, and the call continued without her.
The people pleaser in her was aching. She wanted to rejoin the call and stay on until everything was resolved.
But she was starting to realize that each time she fixed something, she stopped the people around her from learning how to do it for themselves.
Maybe her dad would stop inviting her sister to his gatherings after the wedding.
Maybe her mom would feel so betrayed that every family dinner for the rest of their lives would be met with dread.
Maybe her sister would get to know their dad enough to realize why Ari had tried so hard to keep her from disappointment.
Anything could happen. It could all crumble and fall apart.
But it wasn’t Ari’s job to be the glue that held her family together anymore.
She had to focus on being everything to herself, not to everyone else.
She didn’t know who she would become if she closed the tap, but she wanted to find out.
With that problem out of her hands, she couldn’t help but wonder what might happen if she took another leap.
If she found her way back to one of the few people in her life who had never needed anything from her.
The man who’d borne witness to her mess and complications.
Who’d sat on a roof at the edge of a party and talked to her as they waited out the night.
Because that moment had been too precious, too real, too important not to risk.
So, she put her gloves back on and started walking to the canteen, mentally composing a text message to Drew with each step.
But then, just as she was about to turn the corner, she saw a group of guys wearing white, blue, and red uniforms, donning fleeces, winter coats, and branded kit bags. It was the Team GB snowboarding team and Harrison.