A few hours passed, and Chris still hadn’t come home. I put the girls to bed and talked to Pops some more. I tried to explain what had led me to cheat. I didn’t tell him because I was trying to justify my infidelity or because I wanted him to understand. I just felt like I needed to hear myself say it out loud to gain a better understanding of why I had done it. Pops listened without interrupting me, but his face was emotionless when I finished. I couldn’t read his expression to get an idea of what he was thinking. I was not sure if I wanted to know. He didn’t say if he agreed or disagreed, if he understood, or if he was still confused. He just apologized for Chris not being there and headed home.
I sat in my living room, staring at the ceiling, wishing I could restart this long, shitty day.
Chris
“I knew that bitch was cheating!” Lou yelled.
After I sped away from the gym, I stopped by Will and Lou’s place. They owned a two-family house in Dix Hills. I parked my truck six blocks away from the house because I didn’t want Karen to find me there.
“I’m not a fan of Karen right now, but she’s still the mother of my kids. You need to chill with the name-calling,” I said.
Lou nodded. “My bad, brother. I apologize, but I knew something was shady by the way she was smiling in that dude’s face that night in the club.”
“There was more than one guy . . . There were two of them,” I revealed.
“Damn!” they said at the same time.
Will’s and Lou’s jaws dropped, and their eyes widened to the point where I thought they were going to pop out of their faces. They shook their heads in disbelief.
We were sitting on the couch in Will’s living room, watching the Yankees game and drinking Coronas. I had met Will and Lou during my freshman year at Adelphi. At the time, we had all been studying business and had convinced each other that we were going to be the next great African American billionaires. We’d made a pact that we would move in together one day and be successful bachelors. They’d kept up their end of the deal. They were successful investment bankers on Wall Street now. My life had gone in a different direction.
“That’s fucked up, man. What happened? Start from the beginning,” Will said.
I told them about mixing up cell phones this morning, seeing Karen’s text message history with Tyrell and Raheem, calling Tyrell, and fighting with Raheem.
“Be honest, Chris. With all the bullshit she’s been putting you through over the years, you never thought about stepping out on her?” Lou asked.
“Nope.”
Lou tilted his head. “Why?”
“My parents were the perfect examples for me. I always wanted the type of relationship that they had. Love like theirs took work, and my dad would never cheat on my mom and vice versa. I figured that in order to have that same type of love, I had to be the same way. After this, though, I don’t think I’d ever be able to have that type of love with Karen.”
“I get what you’re saying, brother, but we don’t live in that era anymore. Nowadays everyone is out for themselves. Karen is a prime example of the modern-day woman. I’m always going to do my thing. I would rather have one up on a bitch than find out later that she was fucking around on me,” Lou said.
I didn’t respond to his statement.
“Anyway, I need to be away from Karen and my Pops for a while. Do y’all mind if I spend a few nights here?” I asked.
“Hell nah, we don’t mind, brother. Now things can be like how we planned them in college,” Lou said excitedly.
During college Will, Lou, and I had saved money to buy a spacious three-family house. At the time, Karen had hated the idea, because she’d felt like she wasn’t in my long-term plans. She had questioned what future we had if I wanted to buy a house where I would be living with my single friends.
“So, will you finally divorce this bit . . . this woman now that you know what you know?” Lou asked.
“Right now, yeah, but I don’t know. It could all change. I have kids to think about.”
Both of them ignored the last part of my statement and celebrated, high-fiving each other.
Neither Will nor Lou had made it a secret that they didn’t like Karen. They thought she was too needy. And Karen wasn’t fond of them, either. She thought they were womanizers. So, seeing them high-fiving and laughing when I told them that I intended to divorce her did not surprise me.
This was not the first time I had contemplated leaving Karen. Back in the early days, Karen and I had fought constantly. I’d been on the verge of breaking up with her when she told me she was pregnant. Even though I’d felt she wasn’t totally right for me, I’d thought that would all change once we had a family together. And for the most part, things had changed. Starting our family had made me love Karen even more. Motherhood had made her more mature and more responsible. She had built a great career, had been a good role model for our daughters, and had become a good, nurturing mother.
We had had our fair share of arguments and quirks. All marriages did. At the end of the day, I was still a man. But while I’d looked at the occasional ass and breasts whenever a hot woman would walk by on the street, I’d never acted on it. I hadn’t even entertained the thought of straying. When it all came down to it, I took my wedding vows seriously, and no woman was worth losing my marriage and my kids over. I had thought Karen felt the same way, but I guessed I was wrong.
“You can crash in one of the guest rooms,” Will offered.
“Cool,” I said.
“I hope you don’t mind hearing me sexing my loud-ass women at all times of the night,” Will joked.
“I remember the routine from college. I’ll be okay,” I assured him.
“We got to make up for lost time, Chris. If Karen wants to do her thing, you need to do yours too,” Lou said.
I nodded, not in approval but in acknowledgment of his statement. I had no idea what the future held for me. I wasn’t sure if I could work things out with Karen, but I couldn’t ignore the possibility that we might get divorced. It looked like that could soon be a reality.
* * *
The odor of cigar smoke was strong in the black and pink private room. My naked ass was stuck to the cushion of the warm black leather chair, while my pants were down around my ankles. My hand was on top of the stripper’s reddish-brown hair. Her head was bobbing in perfect rhythm as she went down on me. Her thick lips and honey-colored complexion reminded me of Karen, which was why I had picked her. It felt good. I felt good. And although it wasn’t right, I tried not to care. I was at J’s Gentlemen’s Quarters in the Bronx with Will and Lou. Will was sitting in a similar chair across from me with a Hispanic stripper with sienna-colored hair. She was riding him, reverse cowgirl, while he held on to her massive ass. Lou was with a white bleached-blond stripper. He was standing up, hammering her doggy style, while she knelt in his chair.
We’d hung out every night for the past week, meeting and fucking all types of nameless women. In all honesty, at first, a part of me felt validated by what I had done. By going through with it and sleeping with other women, I felt like I was getting payback for Karen ripping my heart out and hurting me all these years.
To Will and Lou, this was living. At this stage in my life, it was exciting, but I didn’t want this anymore. We used to do this type of stuff in college. They hadn’t changed. This lifestyle wasn’t for me anymore. I missed my family. I hadn’t seen Karen or my kids the whole week.
The nameless stripper quickened her rhythm to break my drifting thoughts. Her deep light brown eyes were focused on me, and she looked determined to please me. Beads of sweat dripped down my forehead, my mouth was dry, and my body tensed up. I tried to will myself not to cum too quickly, tightly squeezing my shaft to cut off the sensation, but she quickly moved my hand away and used hers to jerk my dick up and down while she simultaneously sucked me off. I couldn’t hold back any longer. I shouted, “Karen,” and came in her mouth. She swallowed every drop and continued sucking on the hea
d of my manhood to make me squirm.
“Really, dude? You got this badass stripper slobbering your knob, and you’re calling out your wife’s name?” Lou said, shaking his head. He hadn’t missed a beat while screwing his stripper.
The stripper I was with got off her knees, straddled my lap, and said, “Don’t worry. When I’m finished with him, he won’t remember her name.”
“Oh shit. That’s what I’m talking about,” Will said excitedly as he bit his bottom lip and slapped his stripper’s ass.
“What’s your name?” I asked her.
“You can call me Cinnamon, baby.”
Cinnamon kissed my neck and stroked my dick to keep me hard. I was still sensitive from cumming, but she kept me turned on. Cinnamon’s skin had the same cucumber-melon scent as Karen’s, and she wore chocolate-brown lipstick, just like Karen. Her hair had a similar texture and smelled of coconut, like Karen’s did. I dug into my shirt pocket and handed her a condom. She opened the wrapper with her teeth and slowly rolled the condom onto my dick. Cinnamon spread her thighs. Her eyes were closed as she took my manhood inside her. She gripped my shoulders and bounced rapidly on my hardness. I grabbed her ass and moved my hips upward. She leaned forward, drowning me with her huge breasts.
“Damn, baby,” she moaned.
“Yeah, get that shit, Chris!” Lou yelled.
I was getting into it, but as I watched her face and saw she was enjoying it, I thought about Karen riding Raheem. I pictured her enjoying getting fucked like this stripper. I lifted her off me. Her eyes lit up. She gave me a sultry look as she licked her lips and caressed my arms. I guessed she was turned on by my strength.
I turned her around and took her from behind so I wouldn’t see her face. I pounded her. Her ass vibrated heavily from the impact. Her skin took on a reddish glow. I felt the heat coming from her skin. The harder I fucked her, the more she enjoyed it. She held the top of the chair with one hand and massaged her clit with the other. Her hand worked energetically. Her knees shook, and her body writhed in pleasure. Her vagina tightened around me. Her moans of pleasure echoed off the high ceilings in the room as she came loudly. Her body went limp for a moment, but she gathered her composure and backed up onto my hardness. My palms were moist from our sweat. I grabbed her hair and came hard. I panted as I pulled up my pants. Cinnamon moved so I could sit down, and then she sat on my lap.
Will and Lou had finished banging their strippers sometime while I was fucking Cinnamon. They had enjoyed watching me have a good time.
“We’re just getting started. You wasted years with Karen. While you were out being faithful, she was fucking other dudes,” Lou said.
Cinnamon and the other strippers looked at each other. I knew what he was doing. He wanted me to stay angry. He wanted me to keep those thoughts alive so my conscience wouldn’t eat me about all the women I’d slept with this week. Will and Lou were my boys. In their own twisted ways, I knew they thought they were helping me, but was this the solution to my problems? Would sleeping with other women in return negate the fact that Karen had been sleeping around for years? I felt lost.
* * *
I completed a long-ass day doing construction on a residential building on West Fifty-Seventh Street in Manhattan. My late-night partying with Will and Lou, along with my work schedule these past two weeks, had me exhausted.
Will and Lou didn’t know how long I’d be staying with them, so they had put money together to get me some clothes and things they thought I might need so I could avoid stopping by my house and getting into another heated argument with Karen. But I had made it an absolute requirement that I talked to my kids every day. The first night I called them had been the hardest.
“Chris, can we please talk?” Karen had asked.
“I don’t have anything to say to you right now. Just put the kids on the phone.”
“When will you have something to say? You see, even after everything I said to you, you’re still not listening to me—”
“This is why I’m not coming home. I don’t want to fight. I just want some fucking peace until I can calm down and figure shit out.”
Karen sucked her teeth. “Pops thinks you need to come home, and I agree,” she said.
I sighed.
For a while, Pops had called me every day, but I had sent him straight to voice mail each time. I didn’t feel like being chewed out over my decision to stay away. When he’d realized I wouldn’t answer his calls, he’d resorted to texting me at least three times a day. He’d write things like “I raised you better than this, son. Be a man.” And “A man handles his problems like a mature adult. He doesn’t hide and cower from his issues like a child.” One I always thought about was, “Your responsibilities are to those kids. Be the father I raised you to be.”
“I’ll come home when I’m ready. Put the girls on the phone,” I told Karen.
“What if I say no? What if the only way you’ll talk to our girls is if you come home?”
“Haven’t you done enough damage? You being spiteful like that would only hurt me and the girls more. Just give them the phone.”
There was a long pause. Finally, Karen called the girls to the phone.
“Girls, your dad is on the phone. He wants to talk to you two.”
In the background, I heard the girls running excitedly to the phone.
“Daddy, when are you coming home?” Jocelyn asked.
“Soon, baby. Daddy has just been working a lot.”
“We miss you, Daddy,” Jaclyn said.
“I miss both of you too. I promise I’ll be home soon. I want you both to know how much I love you.”
“Love you too, Daddy,” they said in unison.
“All right. I’ll talk to you girls soon. Love you.”
I ended the call.
Most nights went like that. Others ended with me hanging up after I talked to the girls, though Pops wanted to give me his two cents. I missed my kids like crazy. I missed my family in general. I had never wanted to be away from them like this. Karen and I had our problems, but I hadn’t known that they were this bad and that it would come to this. I hated being away from them, but I was still embarrassed and upset and wasn’t sure when I would go home.
While I still wasn’t ready to go home, I knew I couldn’t stay with Will and Lou anymore. That lifestyle wasn’t for me. I didn’t know if I’d go home, sleep in my car, or stay in a motel, but I knew I needed to get away from partying and having meaningless sex every night. So before I left for my construction job in Manhattan this morning, I thanked them for letting me stay, then packed the few belongings I had there and put them in my truck.
So, like I said, I was exhausted after putting in a full day’s work on that residential building on West Fifty-Seventh Street. While I was stowing away the last of my tools, Nadine walked up to me.
“Hey, Chris,” she said.
“What’s up? Are you doing anything tonight?”
Nadine looked taken aback for a moment. “Nah. I’m free. What’s up?”
“Do you want to get dinner with me?”
She nodded. “Sure. Where do you want to go?”
“How about Lucky’s Famous Burgers on Twenty-Third Street?” I said.
“Sounds good.”
Nadine followed me in her car to the restaurant. After searching for what felt like an eternity, I finally found parking and met her inside the restaurant. We ordered, and I treated her to dinner. While we were eating, we talked a little bit about work, but the conversation eventually got to the topic of what was going on in my life.
“Chris, you know I enjoy hanging out with you, but what’s going on? Before today you never wanted to have dinner with me after work. What’s the deal?”
I didn’t know how to answer that question. She was right. In the past, we’d shared a quick snack at work, but I wouldn’t have dinner with her. I’d thought it wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what to think anymore. Maybe I needed a friend, a female friend, who’d give me a
woman’s point of view. Will and Lou were great, but I needed a friend who wouldn’t tell me to fuck my pain away. So I told her everything. When I finished, she held my hand and looked deeply in my eyes.
“Chris, despite everything, do you still love her?”
If she had asked me that question two weeks ago, there would have been no hesitation on my part, but after everything that had happened, I honestly wasn’t sure anymore. Karen had hurt me deeper than anyone ever had. I didn’t think I could ever again love and trust someone as blindly as I did her, but despite everything, I didn’t hate her. Karen was the mother of my children. We had a history together. I knew it would be hard to forgive her. In my heart, I knew I loved her, but I wasn’t sure if I could love her the way I had before she cheated on me.
After a few moments I said, “Yeah, I still love her.”
“Then go back to her. Try to salvage what’s left of your relationship.”
“Do you think she was justified in cheating on me?”
“I don’t think it’s right for anyone to cheat, male or female. I was cheated on, and it devastated me. I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone.”
“Thanks for listening, Nadine. I really appreciate it.”
“Chris, you can talk to me anytime. I’m always here for you. You give me faith that there are still some great men out there.”
Listening to Nadine gave me the strength to talk to Karen. She made it seem possible that we could work things out with our marriage. Nadine and I finished our meal, hugged, and said our good-byes.
I got a room for the night at the Americana Inn in Farmingdale. I didn’t sleep well. I kept thinking of my conversation with Nadine. Talking to my children a few minutes a day wasn’t cutting it anymore. I missed my kids, and even though I didn’t want to admit it, I missed Karen. By five in the morning, I was up, showered, dressed, and headed back home to face my demons.
Karen
“I want my Daddy!” Jaclyn cried.
“Where’s Daddy?” Jocelyn screamed.
Love and Happiness Page 12
