Joe's POV
I was sitting on the outdoor sofa, watching tv. Jeff has some of everyone over. Friends, coworkers, and family were all here for this party. We had people, drinks, games and dancing everywhere. Tom (Baron Corbin) and Adam (Strowman) were barbecuing, basically having a cook off. Jeff was flirting with every woman he hasn't had sex with yet and here I was, just chilling on the couch. The music was loud but so were the thoughts in my head.
I haven't talked to Ammika since the night I dropped her off at her place, which was exactly one week ago. I've texted and called her, and I got no response. I even dropped by her house twice and she didn't answer. I understood why she was mad at first but I thought I fixed the problem when I told her that I would make everything public today. But I don't think that was the issue, I think it was something else but she wouldn't talk to me to let me know what was bothering her. I guess it just wasn't meant to be.
It's not like I'm super bummed over the lost relationship, I just wanted to know what went wrong. I think we had potential, and we were so into each other. It's crazy, but oh well.
I hear a bunch of people get loud, yelling, saying hey, just excited to see whoever just walked in. I turn around and it's Jessica.
Why the hell is she here? Well, Jeff or Adam probably invited her. I guess I should say hi, I don't want to be rude. I sit there for a few minutes, letting her make her rounds and then after a few minutes, I get up and head over to her.
"Jessica, can I talk to you for a minute?" I say as I approach her. She turns and looks at me surprised to see me, like I don't live here, like this isn't my house.
"Well hello to you too, Joe!" She says sarcastically. OK
"What's up. Come with me."
"Um, okay. I'll talk to your guys in a minute." She says to the group of people.
We walk off into the house, walking to towards the front door.
"What's up?" She asks, "As soon as I walked in you swooped me up. What's going on?"
"Have you talked to Ammika?"
"Yeah, I just got off the phone with her why?" She asks
"You've talked to her?"
"I just said yeah. What?" She asks, looking at me confused.
"Call her."
"Okay, but why?"
"I haven't talked to her in a week."
"Oh. I hadn't talked to her either, but she called me today."
"What did she say? Where has she been?"
"Oohhhh Joe...." she says looking sad. "Sit down with me."
We walk over to the living room and I sit on the sofa and she sits in the chair.
"I've called and texted her many times and I haven't gotten any response."
"Joe...Ammika does this sometimes. I hate to be the one to tell you this, and I hate that she did this to you, but she's been doing this for a while. I'm told she's been doing it since her teens. Every now and then she'll get really stressed, or overly worked up about something and she would just disappear."
"What? Don't you think I should've been informed? What did she say to you?" I ask
"She didn't say anything. When she comes back, it's like she never left."
"And no one seems to think this is a problem?"
"Of course we do, but she's a grown woman, there isn't much we can do about that."
"That's not okay." I say upset. This girl disappears and no one seems to worry about where she is? There is something seriously wrong with these people. What the hell does her parents do when she does this? What did they do and she was a teenager?
"What does her parents have to say about this?"
"From my understanding when she was younger her dad would go out and look for her. Sometimes he would find her, sometimes he wouldn't. Now, They don't really take it too seriously. And right now they don't even know because they're not even in the country."
"And when you hadn't talk to her for a couple of days, you didn't think that she was doing one of her disappearing acts? And when you finally did realize it, you didn't think to call me?" I'm so pissed that I'm just now finding this shit out.
"I didn't think to call you. You know, I have a life of my own and I have a 10-year-old son. I don't have time to chase behind a grown ass woman. In my mind, I know she'll turn up soon. That's what she always does." She says nonchalantly.
I can't believe what I'm hearing. She didn't even care. This is supposed to be her best friend and she didn't even care that her friend was missing for a week. What kind of friend is that?
"I'm sorry. I'm completely disgusted with this situation and the way you handled it."
"Well she has issues that you don't even know about and when you're tired of dealing with it, you'll react the same way as us. We've been dealing with her for years and we're used this." She says
"That's no excuse to just disregard what she's doing, or whatever she's going through. You guys are supposed to be her friends and family, you're supposed to be there for her when she needs you. I promised her that I would be there for her and I would give her the security and stability she needs and I plan on following through with that regardless if we're seeing each other or not."
"Well good for you. You'll learn." She says like she doesn't care. I'm floored at how she's acting right now. Oh my god!
"HEEEEYYYY!!!" Jeff comes in yelling, beer in hand, "What's up?" he says, sitting next to Jessica, on the arm of the chair. His smile fades away when he sees the seriousness in my face. "Man, it seems heavy in here. I feel the tension. What's going on?"
"Nothing man." I say
"Don't tell me nothing, oh it's something."
Adam and Tom comes strolling in, Tom sits on the other side of the sofa with me, and Adam sits on the chase.
"What the hell is going on in here?" Adam says, sipping his drink.
"I know right, we having a meeting?"
"I said it's nothing." I say
Now that we have an audience, we have to dead this conversation for now.
"You know what, let me ask you a question, Adam." Jessica says
"If you have a friend who always does crazy shit, wouldn't you eventually start to not take them seriously?"
"I want to say yes, but it also depends on what it is." Adam says
"Let's say they like to disappear for days, or even weeks at a time. They do this shit all the time and they always turn up perfectly fine. Would you take that seriously?"
"If they always turn out fine then I will see what the big deal is?" Adam says
"But that's fucked up. What if the one time when you decide not to give a fuck they turn up dead somewhere?" Tom says
"Exactly." I say, "I rest my case."
I am so pissed off over this whole situation, I don't even want to look at Jessica.
"Who are we talking about?" Jeff asks
"Nobody." I say before Jess can say anything.
"Your surprise is here!" Jeff says looking at his phone, smiling big.
He gets up, walks over to the front door and opens it. He steps outside for a minute then comes back in Drew (McIntyre) and two woman, one on each arm.
"I know you're birthday isn't for another month, but happy birthday!" Drew says
I start laughing, "What?"
"We got you twins!" Jeff says excitedly
"Nah, man." I shake my head from side to side.
"Oh yeah!!" He says guiding the girls towards me. They sit next to me, one on each side, and I don't know what to do.
"Hello." I say to both of them. This is so uncomfortable. It's nice, but uncomfortable.
"Hi." One says, putting her arm around me.
"Joe, you're single. Live a little." Adam says
"I've been living for 34 years." I say
"And you were with one person for 15 of them." Jeff say, "They're here for your entertainment, if you know what I mean."
"You guys are disgusting." Jess says
Drew was standing in the foyer and the doorbell rang.
"It's a party going on, who the fuck rings the doorbell?" We all laugh
"Who is it, Drew?" I ask
He turns around and looks out of the side window. "Someone hot!"
"Open the door!" Jeff says
"Damn, since they're hot they can come in?"
"Hell yeah!" He says with a serious face, "That might be my future ex wife."
We all laugh and Drew opens the door, in walks Ammika.
"Woooooow!" Adam says surprised, "What's up?"
"Long time, no see!" Jeff says
"Hey!" Ammika says closing the door, then stands there. She looks at me, then looks at the two women sitting on the sides of me, then back at me and we lock eyes.
It was silence for a few seconds, "Well, this is different." Tom says
I couldn't believe she just walked into my house. I haven't heard from her, I wasn't even sure if it was her for real. I snap out of it, get up and walk over to her. I didn't take my eyes off of her and when I got in arms length of her she reached for me. I wrapped my arms around her, picking her up at the same time. She wrapped her legs around my waist and hugged me tight.
"Hey guys, lets go in the kitchen, give them a minute." I hear Jessica say from the living room.
"Isn't that your friend?" Adam asks her.
"Men and twins, lets go into the kitchen." She says slower and I'm assuming they all got up because I didn't hear them shortly after that.
I was holding her as tight as I could. I thought I wasn't going to see her again. I had one arm around her and the other on the back of her head, in her hair.
"Hey daddy!" She says
"Why did you leave?" I ask
She pulls away and smiles, while I let her down back to her feet.
"It doesn't matter I'm here now, baby." She brushes a few stray hairs out of my face.
"But it does matter. Why did you disappear for a week?" I ask
"Joe—."
I cut her off, "Answer me." I say sternly, looking into her eyes and I can tell my tone got to her because she took a deep breath and looked away. She looks as if she's in trouble with her parents. Well, she is in trouble with her daddy.
"I don't know, I just did."
"Why?"
"You have so much going on, and I just doing know how I can compete with all of that."
"No one is asking you to compete with anything. Do I not make time for you?"
"Yeah."
"So why now all of a sudden you're worried about all the things I have going on? You weren't really worried before. This has something to do with me being a wrestler. You were fine before I told you about it. What's the problem?"
"Your life is a lot, and you're not who I thought you were. You're this big deal and you're perfect in every way imaginable—."
I cut her off again, "You're making excuses. I'm the same person I was before I knew you and when I met you. Nothing has changed. I kept that life away from you and you didn't even know it. Now that I tell you you want to back out? If you don't want to be with me, just tell me."
"But I do."
This girl is confusing. She says she wants to be with me, but disappears for a week. She says my life is too much, but she didn't have a problem until I showed her what I did. She's making excuses, and I don't know how to handle her right now.
"Ammika, what do you want?" I ask somewhat irritated.
"I want for you to stop grilling me right now and let's just move on." She says
"But—."
"Let's move on, daddy." She smiles, running her hands up my chest, to around my neck.
I hesitate for a few seconds, contemplating if I should drop it or not. She's pulling this daddy card right now to get what she wants and it's working. I decide to leave it alone and if this comes up again, she won't get off so easily.
I smile back at her, "Fine." I take a second to get my mind together, then I speak, "I missed you, mama."
She hugs me, "I missed you too, daddy!"
"So were telling them?" I ask
"If you want to."
"Okay, come on." I grab her hand and we walk into the kitchen.
Let's see how this goes.....
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