by Tracy Gray
“So then, here’s the million dollar question. If you loved me too much, too hard, why did you ever let me go?”
I opened my mouth to respond, but Reign wasn’t finished.
“When we had that meeting in my daddy’s office at church with him and your grandmother, you were determined. You basically went in on my daddy. We were thug niggas for life. It was us against them. I left that office ready to make forever with you, X. I was ready to be your wife, have your babies. I couldn’t wait for you to get back from training camp, so we could start our lives. What the hell happened between leaving my daddy’s office and you starting training camp?”
“My grandmother…”
“I know.” She cut me off. “But what did she say to you? What made you change your mind about me? About us?”
I was surprised to find out that she knew that it was my grandmother who had swayed me from my stance. I cocked my head to the side. “How’d you know it was my grandmother?”
“Auntie Bo. After your extended silence, she finally told me that your grandmother shared with her that she thought she had finally gotten through to you. What did she say that my father didn’t?”
Dismissively, I waved my hand. “Your father was coming at us with all of the usual bullshit. Laying down the law, telling us what he wanted, the fear mongering. It was so easy to come back at that, not lay down for it. Just a little defiance, some rebellion...the feeling of your hand inside mine.”
Wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but I felt like that made her blush a little bit.
“When I left your daddy’s church, I had no doubt that you were my future, Reign. I’ve never wanted anybody but you.” I stayed silent until her eyes looked up from the rug and found mine. “My grandmother listened to what your father said, watched how he moved, saw his failure. Then, she knew how to come. She came for what I loved. She came for you, Reign.”
“Came for me?” She repeated, her brown eyes piercing mine. “What do you mean?”
“She made it all about you. When we got home, she started talking about how you loved me too hard. Asking me to sincerely consider if I was being selfish - never letting you have a chance to experience your life without me, without my presence looming so large. She made me feel like me wanting you - needing you, was detrimental to you. That you loving me so hard was causing you to miss out on some aspect of life that was important to your development, as a well-rounded woman. She made me feel like I was robbing you. It was basically like, ‘all your life, you wanted someone to love you, Baby. Ask yourself, do you really love Reign, or do you love the idea that she loves you.’”
“Damn, she wasn’t playing fair at all.”
“Nah, and her little mind game fucked up my head for a while. I mean, I was already fucked up, so her bullshit just added to the trash that was already there.”
“You weren’t fucked up, X. The early years of your life were fucked up. You were perfect...considering.”
I didn’t acknowledge her words. “What she meant to turn me off of you, ended up turning me off of myself. Made me start questioning whether I was deserving of your love. Of love period.”
“Oh X.” She said. Our eyes met, and she stared at me for the longest time. I didn't break the contact, I stared right back at her, not hiding anything that I was thinking or feeling. Letting her see into my soul if she chose to do so.
No telling what she saw in my eyes, because before I could even think to react she was standing over me in the wing chair. Cradling the side of my head to what she probably meant to be her chest, but because she was so short compared to me, was actually her breasts.
Familiarity, not brain function led me to turn my face into her, planting my nose against her breasts and inhaling. My hands involuntarily went up to her back, holding her there with me. My body shook with unexpressed sobs of relief at having her in my arms again. The feeling of finally being at home after a long, unwanted absence causing me to shake. Couldn’t stop myself from standing up from the chair. My body had a mind of its own, and it wanted to hold her. Once I was on my feet, I pulled her even closer, trying to remind myself not to crush her by holding her too hard.
Common sense had left the building. I was on some primal instinct type stuff, because next thing I knew, I had her chin in my hand as my mouth hovered over hers.
“Reign.” I said, realizing for the first time that the tears I hadn’t shed had somehow ended up in her eyes and were pouring down her face. “Baby’s girl.” I called her by the nickname she had given herself back in high school. Since my grandmother and Miss Bo insisted on calling me Baby, she liked to refer to herself as Baby’s girl, a play on baby girl.
She gave me a small smile, which was my intent.
“Yo, I had to stop myself from kissing you just now.”
“Good call. Neither of us needs those problems.” She stepped out of my embrace with purpose.
“My bad. It’s just a habit.”
She eyed me. “Is it really a habit, though? I mean, we haven’t even spoken in three years. Hugging me up and kissing me shouldn’t be a habit.”
“Don’t shoot the messenger.” I shrugged my shoulders.
“Xavier.” She was shaking her head, but a smile was playing on her very kissable lips.
“I’mma get outta here. You straight?”
“Auntie Bo got me. She’s had me for all these years.”
I felt the shade, but I played it through. “And I appreciate her, but she doesn’t have to do that anymore...daddy’s home.”
This time, she couldn’t fight the grin. “You’re so damn arrogant, Xavier Mayhew.”
“So, tomorrow? We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“We still need to talk tomorrow?” The smile left her face, replaced by furrowed brows and a creased forehead. “What is there left to say?”
“Are you mine?” I asked her.
“Hell no.”
“Then, I guess that’s what we’ll be talking about. Later, Miss Bo!” I called, as I headed for the door without so much as a backwards glance at Reign.
Reign
As soon as Xavier left Auntie Bo’s house, I made my way to the kitchen to tell her that I would take a rain check on the tea. She wasn’t in the kitchen. Eventually, I found her in the dining room sitting at the table.
“Uhm, I thought you were making me some tea, Old Lady.” I teased looking down at her.
She scoffed. “You didn’t need any tea, you needed privacy. Did you and Baby get to talk?”
“Briefly.”
She moved her eyes upward, until she was looking into my face. “Do you feel any better about...anything?”
“Yep. Just from being around him. From having his attention on me.” I admitted with a shake of my head and an almost silent whisper to myself of, “pathetic.”
“What’s pathetic about it, Reign Bow? What’s pathetic about loving the person you were put here to love?”
My eyes felt like they were too large for my head with the way I was widening them. “The person I was put here to love?”
“I mean, I’m not God, Reign, so I can’t say that definitively. But what I will say, is that when you used to lay in my back bedroom moaning and crying, being miserable and depressed, I used to pray for you with fervor. My prayer was that if you weren’t supposed to waste your love or time on Xavier Mayhew that God would take the desire for Xavier away from you. I prayed that every hour of the day for more than a year, Reign. Do you know who touched and agreed with me on that prayer?”
“Miss Vera?”
“Joseph Champion.”
My daddy. “Oh yeah?”
“Oh yeah - and after a year of us praying that prayer, you were still as in love with Xavier as you were the day he left for training camp. So...we knew. We knew.”
I didn’t say anything for a long while, letting her admission sink in, ruminating on it, turning it over in my head. “So, you think that means that I’m...supposed to still be loving Xavier?”
&nbs
p; “Yes, I do...but I’m just Bonita Watson-Grandville. You, Reign Champion, have to decide what to do with your life - who you wanna love. You’ve never cared what anybody thought about your feelings for Xavier or about your relationship with him. I’m not trying to get you to start. I’m just telling you, the fact that you still loved that boy a year later as mightily as you did, gave me some perspective. And I think it gave your father some, too.”
“You don’t think I’m stupid for still loving him, after the way he left me and never looked back?”
“There are so many things wrong with that question, Precious. But no, I have never thought you were stupid. Regardless of what choices you’ve made or will make, I have never thought or will never think that you are stupid.”
“I’m going home now.” I announced.
“You’ve had a long day.”
I nodded my head and left her house, bugging out when I saw how I had pulled my truck to the curb. It was a wonder that nobody had come down the block and torn off my entire rear end.
I felt my phone vibrate in my purse. I climbed into my car, locked the door and pulled my phone out of my purse.
Him: Yeah. It was fucked up how you “parked.” I was tripping on that, too.
I looked around, not wanting to have to text him asking him where he was.
Him: Stop looking for me.
I chuckled. Me: Ain’t nobody looking for you.
Him: Well, if you were looking for me, I’m sitting over here on my porch.
I looked over at the house that sat directly across the street from Auntie’s Bo’s place. The house that was like a second home to me growing up, until it wasn’t. Sitting there, camouflaged by the darkness of night, because he was wearing black denim jeans and a black t-shirt that hugged every muscle in his upper body, was Xavier.
Don’t do nothing stupid, Reign. I told myself, before I exited my truck and headed towards him. I wanted to be able to resist him, the same way he resisted me when I was waiting for him to come back from training camp his rookie year, but it was so hard for me to resist him.
He stood up from the top stair where he had been sitting and started heading down them towards me. He met me halfway, like he had done so many times before. The only difference was that he didn’t pull me into his arms for a hug, like he used to do. Instead, he stood there, towering over me, hands at his side, looking down at me while I looked up at him.
“What are you still doing here? Thought you were heading to the hotel or whatever.”
“Yeah.” He looked off over my head, one way, then turned and looked down the block the other way. “Ay, let’s step on the porch.”
I nodded, and followed him on to the porch, taking a seat on the top step. He sat next to me.
“This weird for you?” He asked me.
I chuckled a little. “Actually, it’s mad familiar.”
He nodded. “I’m looking at you right now, and all I see is you in your school uniform, your hair in a ponytail.”
I laughed, shocking myself, because surprisingly sitting there with Xavier reminiscing about how we used to be didn’t make me cry, make me ache or kill me.
He grinned at me, but didn’t say anything else. We just sat there, in the dark on the porch, like we had done a million times before.
“So, since you refuse to work on this project for me, I kinda need you to give me some references. Who would you recommend?”
“I don’t know off hand, Baby.” I realized my slip the second it left my mouth, but he played it through and didn’t mention it, so I kept talking. “I’ll have to do some research. I’m not real familiar with the top designers in Portland, Oregon.”
Even in the darkness, I could see the expression on his face morph into confusion. He cocked his head to the side. “What?”
“What?” I parrotted back to him. “Aren’t you trying to get me to design your place in Portland?”
Confusion transformed into a bright smile. “Damn, if only. If I could get you to Portland, Reign, I swear ‘fore God, I wouldn’t let you leave.”
I waved him off. “Stop playing. Your assistant was talking about me coming to Portland.”
“My assistant is on maternity leave. The person I have working for me is a temp, and she’s...lacking.”
“Okay. Then, what’s the project?”
He jerked his thumb behind him. My mouth fell open.
“Are you serious? Y’all are gonna sell Miss Vera’s house?”
He shrugged his huge shoulders. I couldn’t help noticing that they looked almost twice as big as they looked when we were dealing. “Thinking about it.”
“Is that why you and your brothers are in town?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow.” I dragged the word out in my state of disbelief. “Does Auntie Bo know?”
“She knows now. We told her at dinner. Well, Busy told her at dinner. You know he’s the official family spokesman and shit.” He gave a light chuckle.
“Wow.” I repeated. “Somebody else is gonna be living here. I can’t even imagine that.”
“It’s the end of an era.” He agreed softly. “Anyway, it needs work. It looks almost exactly the same as it looked when she moved us in here all those years ago.”
“So, we’re gonna take the job.” I told him on a sigh. “I’m saying, there’s no way I can know that y’all are redoing the house to sell it, and I’m not gonna be the designer.”
“Word?”
“Yeah.” I stood up from the top stair, and brushed the dirt - real or imaginary off my butt. “Can you and your brothers be over here tomorrow morning, like around 9:00? We’ll do a walk-through, see what y’all want, need done. We’ll talk money and timeline.”
He stood up, the smell of him, sweat and the masculinity of Xavier Mayhew wafting over to my nose. “Straight like that, huh?”
“Straight like that.” I assured him. I looked up at him. “So, I’m about to head home. You ready, or you spending the night over here?”
“Nah.” He shook his head. “To keep it a buck, I was sitting over here waiting for you to leave outta your aunt’s place. Wanted to make sure you got to your truck okay.”
“Walk me over to my truck, then.” I said, and headed down the stairs, not waiting to see if he followed.
When I made it to my truck, Xavier was on my heels. He backed me up against it. My back pressed against the cool metal of my Rogue, his body in front of mine, about a centimeter away from touching me. He leaned down, I stood frozen in place. With his lips as close to my ear as they could be without touching it he whispered to me. “See you in the morning.”
“See you.”
Reign
4
Xavier met River, River’s assistant Ayla, Trinity and me at the door of his grandmother’s house the next morning, greeting all four of us with a hug. I didn’t think it was a coincidence that I was the last one he greeted, or that I also received the longest hug. While he was still holding me he whispered in my ear.
“Thank you for agreeing to do this.”
The good manners instilled in me by my parents almost made me wave off his words, but then I remembered that he was right. Up until about two days prior, I didn’t fuck with him...at all. But thanks to a little bit of perspective and some well placed, well timed words from trusted loved ones - there I was, doing him favors. So, instead of waving his words off, I nodded my head in agreement, and broke the embrace.
“What’s good, Reign drop?” Xavier’s oldest brother, Maddox asked while simultaneously scooping me into his muscular arms.
Maddox (who I almost exclusively referred to as “Busy”) and I had a special relationship, due to the nature of his relationship with Xavier, and my relationship with Xavier. Busy wasn’t only Xavier’s older brother, he was like the father figure in Xavier’s life. Xavier’s hero. By proxy, when Xavier and I were dating, I became a surrogate little sister to Busy.
I returned the hug with intensity, because I had nothing but love for Busy.
After he released me, I gave a brief hug to Brandon, the middle Mayhew brother.
“So,” River said, once all of the pleasantries had been exchanged.
I’d called her after I left Xavier and told her about the project. She wasn’t at all surprised that I’d accepted the project not only sight unseen, but without her input, because she would’ve done the same thing. It was Miss Vera’s house. The house where we’d spent half of our childhoods.
“What are y’all thinking? Major overhaul? Kitchen and baths? Refresh?”
I let my eyes quickly sweep over the area of the house that I could see from where I was standing in the foyer. I could see directly into the living room - a formal space featuring oversized furniture, dark wood floors and built-ins. Miss Vera had covered the windows with weighty drapes and the floor with plush, intricate area rugs that still looked good.
I could hear Miss Vera’s melodic voice imploring us to pick up our feet as we walked across her rugs. As a kid, I always thought that was annoying. Rugs went on the floor. Floors were meant to be walked on, but there was clearly a method to her madness, because the rugs on her floor looked nowhere near as old as I knew they were. The room was heavy, though. It definitely needed to be lightened up.
“In looking at the space, it’s very traditional and…” River began.
“Dark?” Brandon questioned, looking around, his face frowned up a little. “Old fashioned?”
“Heavy.” I supplied.
Xavier grinned at me, his deep dimples on full display. I liked everything about Xavier’s face, but I especially liked his dimples. Standing there watching him flash them at me, I couldn’t help remembering how I used to stick my fingers in them every time he smiled at me.
Busy ran his hand over his kinky fade, which was a family habit. I had seen Xavier do that move enough times to know that Busy’s mind was probably racing. “Yo, we need to keep the aesthetic of the place, I don’t want it to look like a brand new house. But it definitely needs to be updated. Kitchen, bathrooms are probably total gut jobs, bedrooms might just need paint.” He heaved out a sigh. “I don’t know.”
