by Tiana Laveen
She took his hand and squeezed.
“You love him,” he said after a while.
“Yeah.” She pushed her half-eaten sandwich aside and sniffed.
“When’s the last time you spoke to him?”
“Three days ago.”
“Just give him a little time, Promise. He really cares about you. This isn’t going to keep him away.”
“How do you know? He was pretty pissed off. Rightfully so…”
“Because he and I talked when he was at your apartment for your promotion bash.” That piqued her curiosity. “He pulled me aside and told me he loves you, that you talk about me all the time, and he wanted to formally introduce himself because he planned on staying around for a long time.”
Hope welled within her chest.
“He loves you, Promise. Like I said, just give him some space. You two need to talk. He’ll come around.”
“You like him, don’t you?”
“Yeah. From what I’ve seen and observed, I definitely do.”
She pulled her plate back towards her and started munching on the tender chicken sandwich again.
“I’m surprised you haven’t made one snide remark about him being White.” She smirked.
“I thought about it.” He shrugged, then laughed. “But I’ve seen you date pretty much all brothas, and more times than not, they did you greasy. There are good and bad men in all races. I’ve been on the force long enough to know that shit is true. Evil comes in all shades. Besides, blood comes before my camaraderie with a man just because we’re the same sex and race. At the end of the day, not all skin-folk is kinfolk.” She nodded, definitely agreeing with him. “I want you to be happy, and if that happiness comes in the form of a man who doesn’t look like me or our father, I can put any prejudices aside and just look at him as a person. One who’s going to treat my sister right—because as sarcastic and hard-headed as you are, you deserve nothing but the best.”
“I think that was a compliment.” She chuckled, curling up closer to him as she slurped the last of her water through the straw. After a few moments, she felt a wave of sadness return. He knew her so well, for he gently pulled her arm and forced her to look at him.
“It’s going to be okay, Promise.”
“I miss him. I know it’s only been three days, but with our future in the balance like this, I feel… empty. I feel weak for missing him… wanting him. But I do. Not a day goes by when he and I didn’t talk, even if the conversation was only five minutes long. I’ve never loved a man like I love him, Westley. He stole my heart… It’s gone.” The tears stung her eyes again, and she found herself holding tighter to her big brother. She could hear the crackle of his radio, smell his cologne, and feel the slight bulkiness of his bulletproof vest.
“You are afraid of being afraid.”
How profound. He patted her shoulder, then kissed the top of her head. She let the tears keep falling this time and didn’t wipe them away. Years of trauma, frustration, and pain came to the forefront.
“You are afraid of being like Mama,” he added.
She nodded in agreement. Mama was always afraid of new things, new people, and new places, and it frustrated her so.
“You know, you’re not alone, Promise. I’ve always been afraid of being like our father. Not his addiction to runnin’ the streets, but the way he treats women.” She lifted her head and looked at him. His eyes sheened over, and her heart broke. “I never want to get married. Scared I’ll fuck it up.” She’d never heard Westley admit such a thing, but it made sense. He seemed to run from commitment as if it were the walking dead, and he was the lone survivor.
“Not everyone is meant to get married, but you were definitely made to be in love and have a positive, healthy relationship.” She kissed his cheek.
He smiled woefully, as if not fully convinced. Soon they were laughing, cracking jokes at each other’s expense, ordering dessert, and talking about other things going on in the world. In that moment, she felt okay again. When he drove her back home and she was alone, the pain would return, but right then, Westley was doing what he always did, and what she at times did for him: being a haven. A bandage for an emotional wound, a salve for a troubled spirit. Her brother became the human safety net—a hug to be had, a smile to be granted, and brotherly love—the kind she wouldn’t trade for the world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
No, I’m Not Okay…
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Gutter felt as if he’d been living in the bowels of Hell, and those intentions didn’t make the scorching hot journey any less miserable and maddening. Nevertheless, like most disappointments in his life, he decided to wear a mask, to hide his hurt behind the music, reel that rage into the next hit song.
He sat on a rickety chair listening to tune after tune playing from his father’s radio in the man’s big kitchen where, before him, hung the calendar still featuring last month’s best laid plans. ‘Bridge over Troubled Waters’ by Simon and Garfunkel came on the air. How apt.
Taking a swig of his beer, he suddenly admitted that drowning his sorrows in more alcohol wasn’t the answer. His lingering thoughts were like old, skunk liquor, antagonizing him and making him drunk with obsessive contemplations of her, and all the words he wanted to say were somehow stuck within him, sewn together with dried blood and pulsing pain. Don’t speak of it.
He pushed his worries aside while in the company of his father, but he’d return to his feelings of misery soon enough.
Dad’s kitchen smelled like spaghetti, juicy beef meatballs and fragrant garlic bread—the ingredients of the lunch he was making. The aroma competed with the stench of defeat within him. Almost covered it like dirt over a grave. He, Gutter the giant, had been taken down by this fucked up shit called love. Love’s name was Promise… but Promise was now invisible.
Invisible yet oh so real.
Like God.
He ran his bruised and cut hand over his face, the sting from the abrasions along his knuckles fresh and tender. He’d scrubbed Jenny’s bedroom of the dried paint he’d found on the walls, did her dishes, and fixed a broken door, when a couple rusted nails at the bottom tore into his flesh.
“Glad you made it back from Maine okay. When’s the next tour?” Dad asked as he set the big spoon down onto the counter, adjusted his shirt over his beer gut, and sat down across from him. The faded navy-blue tattoo of a fire hat on his forearm was hard to see through a forest of hair and freckles. It had been there as long as he could remember. Probably before he’d even been born.
“I don’t know yet. Will has some dates, but who knows?” He shrugged, “We’ll see. My new album comes out soon. I’m focused on that right now.”
“That’s good. I know you’ve been working hard on it. How’d your mother’s doctor’s appointment go this morning?”
“I guess it was all right. Same ol’. First, it’s the questions. Then, the exam. Weight check. Jenny laughs and smiles even though she feels like shit. More pain medication. Offers for psychological therapy that she doesn’t accept. She doesn’t see the point. We sometimes stop ’nd get coffee or pick up some food on the way back to her house. She hugs me, kisses my face… I hate that. I kinda love it, too. She smells like perfume from the 1990s, the cheap shit that was always in the front of the store for five bucks, but I now like it. Sort of. It reminds me of her and smells better than cancer. Yeah, cancer has a smell. I make a joke about that cheap perfume to her, or something else, like how messy she is, or how she’s stuck in the 1980s from the way she dresses. I call her a hippie. She laughs. After I leave, she sometimes calls me in the middle of the night cryin’. I say nothin’. Just listen. Different day. Same prayers. All the emotions.”
Dad sighed loudly and grunted.
“Owen called me. He was drunk.” He coughed into his hand, then rearranged some papers that were lying around on the table.
“And said what?”
“That he was gonna press charges on ya for kick
ing’ his ass. Said he lost a tooth.”
“He’s lying. Not about losing the tooth, but he’s not calling anyone. I told him exactly what would happen if he did. He doesn’t want this smoke. That pussy isn’t going to do shit. That’s his way of trying to scare someone.”
“I told him to not call my damn phone again, or I’d be visiting’ him too. Bum knee and all.”
“Dad, he beat her ass, so, I beat his. Plain and simple. I took pictures of her, and her doctor knows about it now, too. He’s pissed because she got a lawyer, started the divorce paperwork, moved out, and got a new number. He tried to come up to the school one day and got escorted off the property by security. She doesn’t go to her car without having someone with her, and I told her I didn’t want her going out by herself for a while, either.”
Dad nodded in agreement.
“He probably doesn’t even remember he called, inebriated as he was. He knows he’ll end up in worse shape than he is already. If I didn’t have a bum knee, I woulda joined ya.” Dad smirked. “I would’ve loved to have seen the look on his face while you were giving him what for. Hitting on my little girl… Piece of shit.” Dad’s blue eyes darkened. “You okay? You’re quieter than usual.”
“Nah, I’m not okay. I thought about saying that I was, but I don’t want to lie to ya. I’m having a problem.” He picked up one of the magazines on the table, an old Playboy, and began to roll it up as if in preparation to whack a fly.
“Yeah? What is it?”
“My love life. It went from amazing to crap within seconds. My girlfriend lied to me about something important.” He paused, swallowing past a lump in his throat. “I haven’t spoken to her in almost two weeks. Maybe it’s my ego that won’t let me at this point, I don’t know,” he shrugged, “but I’m kinda hurtin’ here.”
Dad regarded him with a raised brow.
“Do you want some advice, or you just wanna vent?”
Leaning back in the chair, Gutter rocked back and forth.
“I guess advice.”
“Well, what did she lie about?”
“Some shit she did a long time ago. I wasn’t on the scene. We weren’t together. It’s not what she did that got me all pissed. It’s that she kept it from me, didn’t trust me enough to tell me when she had plenty of chances, and put me in a bad predicament career-wise.”
“I need to know what she did, Zake, if you want good advice.”
The man sometimes had a way of saying shit he didn’t like, but if it was the truth, he was cool with it.
“She made some adult movies…People I know have seen them.”
Dad drummed his fingers on the table, as if mulling that tidbit.
“I don’t know Promise. Only met her that one time. She seemed like a nice girl. Nice girls do things they shouldn’t sometimes, Zake. She’s human.”
“I’m not mad about what she did. I already said that.”
“You are mad about it, and until you get honest with yourself about that, this is gonna be even harder for you to deal with.”
Gutter clasped his hands and stared at the floor.
“I used to look at porn all the time. I liked it. I’ve dated women who were in one way or another involved in things like that. It didn’t bother me, so I’m telling you it’s not that. For real.”
“It’s not the same. You didn’t love them.”
“Now you sound like her. That’s what she said.”
“And she was right. It’s one thing to look at the pussy, tits, and ass of someone else’s girlfriend, wife, daughter, sister on a screen, right? It’s quite another when that pussy, tits, and ass belong to someone we care about. You don’t want to share her, but it’s too late. You’re sharin’, involuntarily of course, and it pisses you the hell off.”
“If she’d told me earlier though, I wouldn’t have gotten bent out of shape. That’s the truth. I’m being honest.”
Dad regarded him for a while, then nodded.
“All right, that might be true, Zake, but it still would’ve made you angry. You’re possessive when you love someone, son. You’ve always been that way.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It started with your mother.” He glared at him. “When you were still a baby, for God’s sake, you’d watch me kiss your mother from your crib, and start crying and screaming. You couldn’t stand for anyone else to touch her. Then, when ya got older, if anyone gave Zina a hard time, you’d beat tha living shit outta ’em. Same thing with Zach. You spent many days in detention for stickin’ your nose in fights that had nothing to do with you, but involved one of your close friends, or brother and sister. You had this thing about people bullying and individuals touching people that you think belong to you… I don’t know where ya got it from, but it was always there. Your first girlfriend… Forget the girl’s name. Same shit. You were like thirteen, and before I knew it, the damn police were at my door because you beat up a guy who pinched her ass at the skating rink. You practically tore his face off. I had to pay his hospital bills, and you had no remorse. You were completely enraged. It wasn’t a normal response. None of it was.”
“How do you remember all of this pointless shit?”
Dad waved his hands about.
“Your guess is as good as mine. I suppose I squirreled it away, for moments just like this.” ‘Rhiannon,’ by Fleetwood Mac, started to play on the oldies station.
They both sat there, bobbing their heads to the music for a while.
“Zake, you have to ask yourself a few questions.”
“Which are?” He stroked his beard.
“One, is this worth losing her over? Two, does she love you? And three, is she trustworthy? This situation aside.”
Gutter thought about his words.
“I can’t change the past.”
“No, ya can’t, Zake. Today is all we’ve got. We’re not promised even the next minute. We have no right to yesterday. The past is already written. There’s no eraser or time machine to help us out.”
“She’s mine.” His jaw tightened as soon as the words left his mouth. He balled up his fists. “People are saying things… trying to hurt me by talkin’ about her. I want to kill everyone involved. I wasn’t prepared.”
“Well, ya can’t go around killing people. Secondly, I’m not doubting you’re angry that she didn’t tell you sooner. She should have. But I know how you are, Zake.”
“You know how I am? What are you referring to?”
“Don’t play dumb with me.”
“I’m not!” He laughed, throwing up his hands in resignation. “What are you talking about? How am I?”
“You don’t like big things sprung on you. It makes you upset. I’m the same way. Just saying, if you can answer the questions I gave you with the right responses, then that’s all you need to know so you can make a good choice for yourself. Zake, you already get flack for who you are, and how you carry yourself. Now, you’re datin’ this Black girl—Black woman, my apologies,” Dad shook his head, “and you know with the way things are in the world, you’re going to get people gunning for her because they’re pissed that you two are even together. I know you work with a lot of different artists, but at the end of the day, you’re still a White man dating a woman that some people say shouldn’t be with you, because of her race. Now they’ve got this as ammo, too. I get it. They’re jealous and racist.”
The man paused to drink from his glass of orange juice.
“I told you this years ago because you don’t give a shit about who you date, which includes about every race under the sun. This means you bring more attention to yourself. You have a type, but it’s not based on race. People are like, ‘Who the hell does this guy think he is?!’ Dad laughed mirthlessly. “He’s already got the music world by the balls, now he’s fucking our women!’”
Gutter burst out laughing.
“I’m serious… I read. I see and hear what’s said.”
Dad got up to pour himself another glass of orang
e juice, then sat back down.
“I like what I like—and I like her. I love her.” He busied himself playing with his thumb cuticle. “That’s what upset me the most. I’m dealing with stuff online, every damn day regarding this shit now. I got into a fight at the studio about this too, and it’s escalated ever since. Now, people who know I don’t give a shit about what they say about me are saying things about her, knowing they’ll get a rise out of me. It’s backhanded compliments, mainly, sent to my DMs. I had to put my profile on private again. Assholes from New York… my own people, saying shit that should honestly get them shot.”
“Can you handle it?”
“Of course, I can.”
“Then fine. Be with whoever the hell you want to be with. I’ve never told ya to stop. Even if I had, you wouldn’t have listened. I just want you to be happy. If she makes you happy, and she’s good for your heart… if she’s been there for you, and you can count on her, then you’ve got to be fair with yourself. And her. All I know is that you called her right before they took that slug out of you, and she was there so fast it was like she flew in. She stayed with you until they kicked her out and was right back the next day. She fed you, helped you… I watched. She cares about you. I can see it. She used to be a nurse, right?”
“Yeah.”
“She was doing more than the nurses in the hospital, and then you said she was even helping you once you got out. Making calls about your truck window, talking to your manager when you were asleep on bed rest. You said she’s really busy at work but was still making sure you were fine. She was respectful to me, had manners… she’s a real pretty girl, too. Woman… I call all young women girls.” He chortled. “You know what I mean. Seems like she has some things going for her. A good job. She has an education. You said she got a promotion not too long ago, and your mother likes her a whole lot from what I understand. They talk on the phone quite a bit. A little strange how ya two met, but that’s all right. So… Okay, she made some dirty movies.” He shrugged. “Not exactly good Catholic girl behavior, but it happened. She’s not still doing it, is she?”
