“She’ll have a burger and fries.” I know that was rude and she could be a vegetarian or a vegan or something but Ellie would want her to have a burger and fries. If there was one thing Ellie did right, it was eat, and she did it as if she were going to die the next day. Which she did—she had an entire Cheese pizza and two orders of fries the night before Olive was born. She knew they weren’t going to let her eat anything at the hospital and early labor had already started. It was her last pre-mommy wish. The woman got what she wanted and it made her night; thankfully, since it was her last.Talk about a last meal.
“Hey,” she croaks out.
“Are you a vegetarian?” I ask pointedly.
“No,” she laughs.
“Burger and fries it is, then. Same for me, please.” This helps the waitress speed up the process, leaving us back at the top of the roller coaster. “You knew Ellie? I know you made mention of it in one of your last letters, but hearing it out loud stuns me again.”
She avoids my gaze as tears pool in her eyes. I give her the moment she must need as I watch her fingers weave tightly together, forcing the whites of her knuckles to glowing under the hanging table light.
When she refocuses her attention on my face, there’s a reflection in her flooding tears, showing a disfigured version of my facial features. I wonder what the look on my face is right now. I feel so many different things, none of which I’ve ever felt before. “I was her student teacher two years before she passed.”
“Student teacher?” I’m not sure why I’m asking this since I knew she had several of them over the course of the four years she taught but she never mentioned any of them in particular to me. “I don’t understand,” what one thing has to do with another.
“I was dying,” she says as the tears dry. Her words sound sour coming from her mouth, but also rehearsed as if she was forced to look in the mirror and tell herself over and over again that she was dying.
“From what?” I should assume. I am assuming. But I need to hear it all.
“Congenital Heart Failure. I wasn’t supposed to make it past twenty, but I did,” she explains. Her explanation makes my breath catch in my throat. Ellie was always one to come home and share heart-breaking stories with me. She always had an idea on how she could fix the world single-handedly. It was never a matter of explaining a person’s situation with pity. She always had a solution. Why she never mentioned Ari to me is baffling. “She wanted to help me.”
“That was Ellie. She considered becoming a nurse but she has—had—an aversion to blood and a teacher was the next best thing when it came to helping people, so that’s what she did. She also had a thing for little kids—born to be a mother, I always thought.”
Ari pulls in a quivered breath as her lips curve into a small smile. “She told me if it was meant to be, I would receive my heart—meaning if her heart were to outlive her brain before I passed away, I would be pretty damn lucky. The kindness of Ellie is something that has been infused within me; it has remained in her heart. But her telling me I would be lucky didn’t seem so clear until I found out the heart was going to be mine. I wouldn’t consider her death in exchange for my survival to be very lucky.”
I wanted to hear every last word Ari just said but my mind is hooked on one particular statement that I can’t move past. “I’m sorry,” I shake my head. “What were you saying about her heart surviving her brain?”
Paleness encompasses her cheeks. “That’s what she said to me,” Ari simplifies.
“But why would she consider that possibility?” A cold sweat is creeping up the back of my neck and it’s making me dizzy and weak to the point where I just want to put my head down and rest for a minute. Instead, I try to hold my ground and ask the questions that need to be asked. “You must know why she would say something so random?” I hear my voice becoming louder and more aggressive, but as much as I want to tame my outburst, I can’t figure out how to. Ari looks taken aback—slightly frightened even. It feels as if the restaurant is closing in around me, closing me into this hollow bubble where everyone is looking in at me, talking about me in whispers as if I can’t hear them, which I can’t. I can only hear the thoughts in my own head, fighting with each other, battling it out for one simple understanding.
Ari looks to the side, taking in the staring gazes from the tables surrounding us. I should feel bad for making her uncomfortable but instead, I’m concerned about imploding.
“She said it was her destiny to give life. It was God’s plan for her,” Ari offers.
“No. There was more,” I reply, doing my best to keep my volume down.
“This is not my place,” she says. “I don’t feel right about this, which is exactly why I have kept my distance over the years. I didn’t come here tonight to tell you things Ellie confided in me. I came here to end the pain I’ve presumably been causing you, which is evident now.” Ari looks down to the bench she’s seated on and gathers her purse and coat, scooping them up into her arms. “This was a terrible idea.”
She’s leaving. No way. She can’t leave. Not after all of this. I grip her arm as she passes by, holding her in place, not allowing her the freedom she deserves. “Don’t leave me,” I stammer.
“Let go, Hunter.” She pulls her arm from my loose grip and continues for the door.
I reach into my back pocket and pull out a fifty-dollar bill. I toss it onto the table and grab my coat, slipping out of the booth to follow her. I expect to find her locked in her car by the time I make it outside but she’s sitting down on the curb in front of the restaurant, slouched over, holding herself tightly.
For a moment, everything inside of me eases, but I’m not sure if it’s because I’m temporarily not afraid of losing control or if I’m overly hopeful for a confession that I deserve to know.
“Ellie and I kept in contact over the years. I knew when you found out you were pregnant with Olive. I knew when she went into labor. I knew when she died. In fact, I saw you in the lobby of the hospital,” she explains delicately.
“How did you know who I was?” I take a seat beside her on the curb, instinctively placing my arm around her as a peace offering, trying my hardest to understand that I’m not the only one who has felt pain, regardless of my confusion surrounding Ari’s friendship with Ellie. Why had I never heard of her? I truly thought Ellie told me everything.
Ari combs her fingers through her hair again, a habit I have been noticing over the past few times I’ve seen her. She exposes the profile of her beautiful face, which is now glowing under the orange street light and the creamy moon. She sniffles softly and pulls her hands up to her chest, shivering against the cold breeze. “She loved you so much,” she says through a soft breath. “Like more than I’ve ever seen anyone love a person. She would show me pictures at school, like stupid insignificant pictures to an outsider, but she wanted to show off a certain smile you had when you were painting a room or the look you had after you just burnt a meal you spent three hours making.” None of this rings a bell to me, but I want to hear more.
“Ellie was madly, senselessly, in love with you,” Ari continues. “Every decision she made somehow revolved around your life, and while I never met you in person, I felt as though I knew you from the amount she spoke of you.” My heart aches with contentment, listening to her words, her explanations for a reason I may never fully understand. I needed to hear this. I’ve needed this so badly.
“I knew it was she who died when I was called about the donation. I was told to come to the hospital immediately. I was filled with a combination of heartache, despair, and hope. I had never felt so many intense feelings at one time. Selfish luck was one of those feelings, the one I’m most ashamed of. I wanted to pretend Ellie wasn’t the donor and she didn’t lose her life, in turn giving me a future I wasn’t meant to have. I tried my hardest to put it out of my mind as I walked into the hospital that day.”
Ari stands up, still clutching her hands over her chest. Walking into the middle of the parking lot and up to her blue hybrid, she stops to lean against the back of her car. “I saw you the second I walked into the hospital. I thought my heart was going to give out before I had a chance to accept the donation. You were propped up against a wall beneath a payphone, your knees were pulled into your chest and your eyes were inflamed, your cheeks were red and stained with a constant flow of tears. You don’t usually see the moment a person breaks down or loses the love of his life.” She breathes heavily from her overflow of words. “But if you did, you would feel sorry for him or her, regardless of knowing their story. And I knew your story. The guilt that found me in that one particular moment has remained frozen within my head.”
