Picture Perfect

1.

~Sam~

The only time my house is blessed with the beauty of lively ambiance is when my best friend and wife of my husband's former adversary and now teammate, Elijah, comes over with their almost 2-year-old twin babies.

Seeing Jamara and Jameis always brings an unexplainable amount joy to me. I think I want kids.  No, I do want kids, but do I think I'll have them with my now husband? No. We've been together forever but for some reason I just can't see us getting there.

I don't want us to, despite the immense amount of pressure from his parents and the public. But we have set our lives up in a way that burdens us with the obligation to be fruitful and multiply.

We were high school sweethearts, never took a break, even through college. I went to Michigan State, he went to UWM for two years and then got drafted into the league and we made it work. We were the exception. We are the exception.

At least this is what I want to believe because we had a lot of love. A lot of respect, honesty, trust, and faith. We had it all, and then he didn't have enough. He can never have enough, so I'll never be enough. But we still put on a good show and play like we are so happy and have everything we could ever ask for or dream of.

I'm tired of straining the muscles in my jaw to flash a fake smile for the cameras and tired of straining my voice to play supportive wife at his games. I want to trust that God will soon deliver the man I thought he blessed me with, back from the depths of hell, but he has yet to come through.

"Their birthday is December 13th mom, not the 18th. The 18th is just the date we have to have the party because Bari has a game that weekend and just about every venue here in Southern Highlands is booked on their birthday anyway." She looks at me shaking her head with an inaudible laugh.

Jamara crawls onto my lap to lay belly down and take a nap. Jameis gets up off the floor and walks over to me whining. Whatever his sister does, he wants to do. I spend more time with these kids than I do my own partner. I know them more than I know my man.

"Okay, where this nigga at?" Jabari comes back out from the bathroom. "I'm ready to eat, where you said he went again Sam? Cause he might just have to meet us there."

I shrug. "He told me he was going to play a round with Coach this morning but that he'd be back for us to go out at 2." I check the time on my phone. "It's going on 2:45. I guess we can head out without him, I'll just bring him something back." I speak over Jameis' cries.

Jabari grabs him up and kisses his cheek multiple times.

"What's wrong baby boy? My little cry baby. All you do is whine behind your sister." He smiles coddling his son and Elijah moves in behind him as she hangs up the phone.

"Stop calling my son a cry baby. He just has a lot of feelings is all."

Jabari laughs and mocks her playfully.

"He just has a lot of feelings." He repeats in a high pitched voice.

I have to admit, two people that I can really say I believe walk the way they talk are Elijah and Jabari. They're relationship has always been the subject of scrutiny being that Elijah used to work for him and is now his wife which has led people to thinking she plotted on him and he was stupid enough to fall for it.

She is also not shy at all when it comes to posting pictures of herself in the semi-sexy outfits she wears when the two of us go out, which people perceive as her marketing herself as available and consider disrespectful to her husband.

But that's the problem with social media, and news outlets, and journalists. They are always looking in from the outside. They judge us books by our covers and have no idea what our stories are really about.