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Her voice was so small and she trembled against me. All I could do was hold her closer to me.
“Malysh, please do not cry.”
“You know how much he wanted a grandson. I want to keep the name,” she said. Her eyes studied mine. “Unless we should name him after you.” She paused, then said, “We should probably do that. How about we make one long name?”
Cupping her head, I pulled back so I could look in her eyes and ease her thoughts. Her heart was pounding against my chest.
Her teary-eyed gaze met mine. Adrianna sank into me and I held her as she sobbed softly in pain.
It was only around the holidays when Frank became nostalgic. He took pride in his family and tended to ingest a little too much alcohol, like we all did during this time. Our holiday dinners ran late into the evening, sometimes ending with Frank and me having a cigar. In a roundabout way, he would tell me he was thankful seeing his daughter so happy after a long and grueling decade she went through.
When my mother passed away, I separated myself from the only family I knew. I was the son of an uncle who raped my mother, and I wanted nothing to do with them after how her family treated her. That was not family in my eyes.
Adrianna and my daughters were my only family until Frank and I put our differences aside as much as we could. We would always agree to disagree, but at least Sophia and Frank were family now too.
Later that night when my wife and kids were long asleep, I took out my journal and penned my thoughts for an hour or so.
I lined the pages with words of how I saw her with our daughters and the way they adored her. It was beautiful and I never wanted to forget the feeling they gave me or the look of utmost love in their eyes. Each daughter had their own journal that Adrianna and I wrote in. It was something we would present to them when they got married one day. Some people had pictures to capture memories, we wrote letters.
Adrianna had all my journals. Every single one of them. Even the ones before we were officially a couple.
She also had the very first one, then the one I gave her before she left for Oklahoma.
During the first year she was gone, I wrote in my journal nearly every day, baring my soul until I was drained. There was only so much vodka my liver could handle. Writing my feelings out was the only form of therapy that resonated with me. I was raw and honest under the assumption that no other eyes would ever have the chance to read my most private, deepest thoughts that I never held back. With my divorce being finalized, Frank dropping the charges, and World Cup out of my hands, it was a rough fucking year alone, and I was not proud of how dark my feelings could run. I had needed an outlet, and this was it.
New Year’s Eve, I had reminisced on the past, wishing she were still with me. There was this need vibrating through my blood to remind Adrianna that I never stopped thinking about her, not even for a day. The nagging in my gut had only grown as the evening went on and the memories became more vivid. I made a rash decision.
A week later, the three journals I had filled during the fifteen months after Adrianna left arrived in her mailbox with a letter.
It had been the one and only form of contact we had after we parted ways.
When the second year had come to an end, I took a chance again and sent her four journals that time. She now had eight of them. No one, not even Katja, had been privy to my thoughts the way she was.
I was a man still in love with someone I had no right loving. If she had said jump on the next plane, I would have.
Adrianna never contacted me, not that I expected her to. For all I knew at the time, she had never received any of the journals.
Still, I wrote. I had to.
Watching her compete on television for the first time since the Olympics had been a poignant experience. Blue ink filled page after page, noting her expression as she waited for her score to appear and the way her coaches high-fived her after a stuck dismount at times. The comradery she shared with her team was a beautiful thing. Every time she appeared on the television screen her smile was plastered across it. I had no idea I could be so emotional. It was a point in my life I would never forget.
I had struggled with my need to run to Adrianna. I wanted to, but I knew inside I needed to let her live too.
I became immersed with following her collegiate career as she competed with the University of Oklahoma. I wanted to be there with her, and it killed me that I could not. The rush of feelings seeing her walk onto the floor with her team made my chest tight. She was a warrior in my eyes and her story needed to be remembered. I wrote as much as I could, trying to preserve those priceless memories.
Adrianna was thriving. I would never have guessed she was sick. She appeared happy with her teammates, yet I often felt like there was something missing in her eyes the moment she turned away, unaware the camera was still rolling. It had tugged on my chest. The way her smile would falter, like something sad crossed her mind, or when the light hit at the right angle and the dark circles under her eyes would show. I had no way of knowing of her health or if she’d had surgery on her Achilles, aside from what I had learned on the internet. It had been a daily struggle to hold back from her, but I could not bring myself to interrupt her life either. She needed that time and I had to give it to her.
By the end of the third year, after watching Adrianna grow as a woman and athlete, my journal entries had turned personal.
I turned to look at my sleeping wife, who was curled up to my side, thinking back to all those years ago.
Being away from her as long as I had been, I missed her deeply and often wondered if I made a mistake allowing so much time to span between us. I could have come to her after the first year, but she was in a good place and I did not want to fuck that up. The second year, she was even better. She was shaking up the gymnastics world again, and I was so fucking proud of her. I never doubted she would not. She had this contagious charisma that followed her everywhere one could not look away from. When the third year was rounding out, I questioned if I should bother sending her my journals after a photo of her with a guy from the men’s gymnastics team circulated the gym web.
Adrianna had a boyfriend.
That was when I decided to drink myself into oblivion for days on end as I sorted out what to do. I was sick to my stomach and could not get rid of the constant tender ache under my chest. I told Adrianna I would come for her, but after seeing that picture, something had stopped me.
She looked happy. Really happy. And I didn’t want to be the reason to strip that from her.
