The Journey to Freedom: Path to WW3

Chapter LVIII

There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.

Malcolm X

"Eve? Are you ok?" I ask her.

She finished her beer and goes for a second one. I would try to stop her but I think its best if I don't, I don't want to make her angry, I just let her drink. I go for another beer and she gives me a look. I retract my hand and she continues drinking. She continues to her 4th beer and then her 6th. She finally stops halfway on her 7th. She looks at me and I could tell that she was buzzing.

"So let me get this straight? You had another set of girls that you forgot about? And I can understand that you didn't tell me because you forgot and it's very uncharacteristic of you, but you have 5 kids..." I cut her off and tell her 4.

She looks at me and continues, "Ok, 4. I can understand if they were children like the twins, but these are teenagers. They will be rebellious and they won't like me, Nicholas. This is a whole new set of issues that won't work out in my favor."

I stop her and ask her what whole new set of issues was she talking about.

"Your teenage daughters. See, think about it, if they didn't know anything about you, and they've been with their mother their whole life. And you just met them, it's a very delicate situation. They will probably not like you nor me. And that will cause a rift between us." She tells me while holding her beer.

I get up and walk to the door of the house and before I leave to go for a walk, Eve asks me where I was going. And I tell her for a walk.

But the moment I open the door, I turn and look at her and say, "You know I love you, I would do anything for you. But right now, you sound like my dad's girlfriend. She did everything in her power to get rid of me and my sisters so that his past was dead to him. And what's funny is that she succeeded. I never thought that I would ever have to encounter that all over again."

I step outside and take out the pack of smokes and light one up. I take a deep breath and I can feel the smoke going in me and my nervousness goes away. I start walking down the street and turn the corner and continue to walk until I get to a bar on the corner. I go in and ask for a Bud Light. The bartender gives me my beer and tell them that every time I had an empty bottle of beer, to get me another one. She tells me ok and I give her a $100 dollar bill.

"Problems huh?" She asks me.

I tell her my story and she tells me that it was a big issue. I tell her that I didn't know what to do.

She then gives me some life advice, "If your woman truly loves you and wants to really marry you. Then she will stay and support you, it's not like you had a choice in your teenage daughter's choices. She took that from you and you have to see that. But now that you are in their lives again, you can't start from the beginning, you can only start from this point and move on, this way they can see that you won't leave them and that you aren't the kind of person that they think you are. Maybe you should go home and talk to your future wife and resolve this. Drinking only makes you regret bad decisions."

I chug my beer and tell her to keep the change. I walk out and start walking to the corner and some guy tells me to give him all my money. I tell him that I had a bad day and that this was going to be the worst mistake he made if he decided to continue with this. Then from the shadows come out 3 more guys. One of them was holding a knife and the one that talked to me was holding an empty bottle.

Then out of nowhere one of the guys says, "leave this guy, look at what's coming down the street. We could really have some fun with that."

I turn around and see Evelyn walking down the street. She goes to the corner and yells for me to come home because she wasn't going to let something like this separate us. One of the muggers asks me if I knew her. I tell her that it was my wife. I then turn around and grab the guys' beer bottle and then smash it on his head, another guy rushes me and he bangs me against the brick wall. I stab him on the back with the broken beer bottle. I see that the guy with the knife was running towards me and I see Evelyn kick him in the face, she steps on his hand and he lets go of the knife, she kicks the knife away and kicks the guy in the face and knocks him out cold.