Page 11 of Tight Ends & Tiaras
BEN
A suffocating,twisting blackness spreads through me as I stare at this woman I once loved.
Love. What a fucking joke.
People who love each other don’t do this to each other.
Before I put my hand through the wall, I count down from a hundred. I’m at fifty when she whispers, “Say something.”
“What’s there to say, Janelle? You passed off my kid as another man’s for, what? Two years? Almost three if you count the pregnancy. What do you want? For me to say it’s all right? Because I’m fucking far from being all right at the moment.”
Somehow I manage to grit out those words in a whisper.
“Ben, I promise I didn’t know. Not for sure. Sometimes love makes you see things that aren’t really there.”
I can read between the lines. She loved Ernest and not me and wanted the baby to be his.
My whole body is wound so tight, I’m surprised my jaw doesn’t crack from clenching it. Once my legs work again, I pace the room, all the while watching my daughter sleep.
When I’ve calmed down enough to be confident I’m not going to flip any tables, I ask, “What’s her name?”
“You don’t know?” Her eyes are wide.
“This might come as a shock to you, but I haven’t spent the last three years stalking you. When my family starts talking about you, I practice football routes in my head. When I know you’re visiting, I wait until you’re gone to trek home. When our friends from high school hang out, I make sure you’re not joining them before I show up. Is that plain enough for you?”
She starts to cry.
Christ. Not this shit.
“Why are you upset? You broke up with me, remember?” Her blocking my number was the wakeup call I needed. I should thank her for that or who knows how long I would’ve pined after her. “I would’ve followed you to the ends of the earth. You did this to us.”
I’m being a bastard, but I have zero fucks to give.
After another few minutes, she eventually calms down. At the sight of her swollen eyes and red nose, shame worms its way into my chest, and the reality strikes me like a hammer to an anvil.
Like it or not, Janelle is my baby mama. I chose to sleep with her in high school. I’m the one who let my guard down enough to be devastated by her. That’s on me.
Never again.
Never again will I be such a fucking sucker.
With a sigh, I stare up at the ceiling. The past is done. There’s only moving forward.
“Why did you call me out of the blue? What do you need? Money? You want me to take her on the weekends? What?”
She nods slowly and motions for me to sit down. This can’t be good.
I drop into a chair by the TV, and she perches at the end of the bed.
“Her name is Liliana,” she says, and I grind my teeth. Liliana, the name we came up with one night when we were talking about the future. We’d decided we’d both attend Lone Star State. She’d become a nurse, and I’d work for my family’s construction business if football didn’t work out for me professionally. She wanted three kids. And I wanted to name one Liliana, which was my mother’s middle name.
My unease grows. Did my uncle know the truth all this time? Tío Julio has never been shy about wanting me to get back together with Janelle, but was it more than just hoping I married his best friend’s daughter? Did she use this name wanting me to figure it out?
I keep this to myself. I need to be vulnerable with Janelle the way I need a shotgun hole to my head.
When I don’t respond, she keeps going. “My ex, Ernest, is pissed at me right now. He, uh, he found out she’s not his, and I think he might be unhinged.”
For once in my life, I have an ounce of pity for the man.
