by Mark Anthony
Meagan didn’t close the letter with her name or anything. She just ended it as she did. I opened up her second envelope and I looked at the paper and I was floored. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. But at the same time it was like I could feel something lifting off of me.
“Wow!” That was all I could say.
Chapter Twenty-two
The day after I got Meagan’s letter I went straight to the hospital and I took an HIV test of my own. And the funny thing was I wasn’t nervous. I was totally at peace because I knew that whatever the results were that I would be all right. But as God would have it, my results were negative.
Right after taking my test I took a cab over to my mom’s house and I asked her if I could borrow twenty-five hundred dollars until I got my next royalty check. And without hesitation or asking why I needed the money, she gave it to me.
And what I did was I took the train to New York City’s diamond district and I purchased a princess-cut diamond ring, which was similar to the ring that I had purchased for Nicole years ago.
With the ring I hopped on the Long Island Railroad and took it to the Great Neck station and ultimately I ended up at Nicole’s house.
“Who is it?” she asked as she came to the door.
“Baby, it’s me,” I said as I stood in the January cold.
“Lance? It’s freezing out there! How did you get here? You should have called me first. What if I wasn’t home?”
“I knew you would be home,” I said as I came in.
“We need to talk,” I added.
“You okay?” she asked.
I didn’t know exactly what I was gonna say to Nicole but I knew that I was gonna speak from the heart.
I told her everything that had happened with Mashonda, Layla, the white girl at the club, and with Meagan.
“Nicole, something in me is broken. It’s been broke for a long time and it was the reason I did what I did. I’ve ruined your life and I’ve ruined our marriage and I’ve taken away your son,” I said as I started crying.
“Lance, stop it,” Nicole said. “I’m fine, Lance, and I’m not gonna let you keep saying that you took LL away from me because you didn’t. Have you made some of the most bonehead decisions that have affected me? Absolutely you have. But you have to forgive yourself for what happened with LL and try to move on.”
“I know, baby, I know,” I said and I began crying again. “Nicole, I don’t have anything. Literally, I don’t have nothing but I borrowed twenty-five hundred dollars from my mother so I could buy you a ring... .”
“Lance!”
“No, please, Nicole, just hear me out. This isn’t game on my part or anything like that. But Nicole, I realized that you have always loved me more than I loved you because everything you ever did for me was at the expense of yourself and everything I ever did was done at your expense. And everything God ever does, like you, he does it for us but at His expense. And I wanna change, Nicole. I wanna do right and I will do right. Like Jesus, God’s son, gave his life so we could live, how ironic is it that LL, my son, gave his life so that I could live? Nicole, I would never dishonor my son’s death and spit on his grave by being unfaithful to you again. I promise that. So if you would take me back I’m gonna get on my knees right now and ask you ... Nicole, will you marry me again?”
She looked at me and smiled and then tears came to her eyes.
“Nicole, springtime always follows winter. The wintertime in our lives is over. And just like spring we can start over again and rebuild and make things like they were supposed to be.”
Nicole grabbed me and she held me so tight.
“Yes, Lance. Yes! Of course we can get married again. I love you more than you could ever know.”
Nicole and I embraced and kissed and then we made it to our bedroom and we made love to each other like we had never done before.
Epilogue
Lance and Nicole flew to Hawaii and on a private sunset wedding ceremony on the beach with just the two of them, a minister and one witness, they renewed their wedding vows.
They eventually had two more children, a boy and a girl.
Lance studied to become a paralegal and then he began working with Nicole, helping her to build her law practice and within five years Nicole and Lance had built the second largest female lead minority law firm in the state of New York.
With their money they set up a scholarship fund in LL’s name to help inner-city males go to college and they also built a qualified and capable team of lawyers and support staff, which freed them up to focus on their new passion and that was working at their nonprofit company called His Desires Her Desires where they helped repair and save literally thousands of marriages.
And yes, Lance did continue to honor his word, his vows, his marriage, LL’s legacy, and most importantly he honored God and remained faithful to Nicole.
Lance took to heart something that his pastor from Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn told him that remained with him for a long time. It helped him keep things in perspective and it also helped him to stay grounded and that was the following saying: In life, whatever we fail to truly repent of we are bound to repeat, only with greater consequences.
And with that being said, Lance was finally cured of his Dogism... . .
Urban Books, LLC
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Still A Dog Copyright © 2009 Mark Anthony
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
ISBN: 978-1-6228-6002-9
This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living, or dead, or to real locales are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.
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