STONE: Her Ruthless Enforcer: 50 Loving States, North Carolina

by Theodora Taylor

  But it isn’t. At least I don’t think it is…

  Rock’s sudden dumping of me chimes like death knell in the back of my head.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to them, over the bell’s ominous chime. “He just…he just left.” My voice gives out, and “left,” comes out of my mouth as little more than a choke.

  Then I rush up the stairs without saying anything else. What else can I say? Stone was here, and now he’s gone.

  I was so excited about telling him that I was pregnant tonight, but we never even made it past the first course.

  The room is half empty when I walk in. No more suits in the closet. No more overnight bag sitting on the suitcase rack. He didn’t bother to close any of the drawers he yanked open while packing his bags, so now I can see clearly how empty he left them.

  He’s gone…Oh God, he’s really gone. And I’m still not sure why.

  I wake up in my going out dress the next morning, to the sound of rain pounding against the windows. North Carolina’s first spring rain. They always make spring rain sound so airy and cute. But the world outside the bedroom looks miserable. And the darkest gray.

  Like my mood put in a special order with Mother Nature.

  In the distance I hear the baby calling out, “Dada! Dada!” screaming it, because we’re off routine. Usually Stone gets her up in the morning. By now, he’s usually sexed me, gotten in a work out, and grabbed a bottle of breastmilk for her from downstairs.

  I need to get up. Go to her.

  But I don’t. I just lie there wondering how…why… I let myself get played like this again. Gave yet another person my all, only to get dumped.

  Too Nice Naima…you stupid, stupid idiot.

  “Dada! Dada!” Garnet cries out.

  Okay, okay, Almonte. You’re not some young girl, living in a rom com. You’ve got a baby and a job and you’ve got to get up.

  I haul myself out of bed, both my body and heart aching. It feels like I’m dead…but walking around anyway.

  That walking dead feeling never quite goes away as I drag myself through my work day.

  Amber texts to confirm our J.R. Ward book club talk, and I text back that I’m busy at work.

  The “I told you so” part of me says I should tell her she was right in her first assessment of Stone’s and my relationship, then ask her for recommendations for divorce lawyers who are just as vicious as her, but licensed in North Carolina.

  But the Naima I was trying to be is just too sad to do anything more than get through the day.

  Which is why my heart slams into the front of my chest when I come home to find a dark Cadillac, sitting in front of our house. Oh, God, he’s back!

  Not even bothering to grab my purse from the passenger seat, I rush into the house.

  Only to find two men in dark suits, nodding to Aunt Mari politely as she pours them coffee.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” one of them says. He’s young, tall and built, while the older guy sitting across him is short and wiry.

  “We surely appreciate it,” he says, eyeing Aunt Mari with another kind of appreciation.

  She eyes him right back. “You’re welcome. And call me Mari, please.”

  “What’s going on?” I demand, too confused to be polite.

  The older guard stops making flirty eyes with Aunt Mari to answer, “We just wanted to knock on the door to introduce ourselves, seeing us how we’ll be watching the house from our car until further notice. Mari was kind of enough to invite us in for some coffee.”

  “Watching the house?” I repeat. “You mean, like guards?”

  “Yeah, exactly like that,” he answers. “So if any of you are going anywhere, just come out and tap on the window. One of us will go with you. You should let Camille know that, too?”

  “I sure will,” Aunt Mari promises him, setting a carton of half-and-half on the table. “And that will come in so handy when I’m getting the groceries.”

  “Aunt Mari!” I say.

  “What?” she asks. “You try carrying in enough groceries to feed a family of six. Eight now that Nick and Joey will be joining us.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to feed us, ma’am,” the younger one says.

  “Handsome men are not allowed to call me ma’am. Mari, I insist,” she tells him, like this is all some kind of joke.

  Before he can respond, I demand to know, “Why are you here? We never needed guards before.”

  “Ah…” the two men exchange quick glances. “Extra security measures while Stone’s out of town.”

  “He’s out of town?” I ask, alarmed because he’d made a big deal out of the fact that he wouldn’t have to return to New York until July on the plane ride back.

  “Yeah, he had some business,” the older one answers, his expression a bit wary.

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?” I swallow down all sorts of pride to ask, “If he’ll be coming back here?”

  “Stone doesn’t share his personal calendar with us,” he says with an apologetic look. “Maybe you should ask him. You could send him a text or something.”

  I try that as soon as they leave, but receive no answer. And when I pick up my phone to check my messages the next morning there’s a “Not Delivered” and a circled exclamation mark next to my question.

  “It’s not delivering,” I say, holding the phone up to Nick and Joey, when I come out of the house for work. I’m still not sure which one is which. “Do you have another number for him?”

  Another exchanged look. Then instead of answering, the older one says, “We’ll have to get back to you about that.”

  Something breaks inside me and I ask harshly, “So he doesn’t want to be with me anymore, but he sent you guys to protect me?”

  The older one just looks at me blankly, like I’m talking in Greek.

  “Don’t follow me,” I tell them before stomping away. I know it’s petty, and it’s not their fault that Stone did what everyone does to me.

  But I’m not going to lie. It hurts. It hurts so much.

  Chapter Forty

  All my texts to Stone fail to send, and I get a “Not in Service” message when I try to call. Nick and Joey honor my request not to be followed. But a few days into my supposed freedom, I notice a dark car with tinted windows in my rearview. And I sight the same car, sitting across the street from the agency when I come out at the end of the day.

  I know it’s one of Stone’s men in my gut, and I try to cross the street to ask him the same questions Nick and Joey refused to answer. But he speeds away as soon as I step off the curb.

  I hate this. Hate Stone for claiming to love me, then doing what I knew he would from the start. When my parents left, I threw myself into work. When Amber killed the plan, I went back to my real life job again, grateful to wade through all the backed up case files. When Rock dumped me and died soon after, I transferred all of my attention to finding a new job in a new state, and beginning a new phase of my life with my unborn baby.

  But this time, none of my old coping mechanisms make a dent in my sadness. Not throwing myself into my job. Not trying to focus on Garnet. In fact, it feels like the harder I work to accept his leaving, the more I ache for him to come back.

  Why did he do this? I keep asking myself. Why did he go back on the pills and ruin everything?

  Somehow I drag myself through the rest of the week, but when the weekend comes around, I just give out.

  I thought getting dumped by Rock was bad, but this is on a whole other level. Without a job to go to, I can’t find a reason to get out of bed. No more tears left to cry. No more give left to give. I’m too hollowed out to do anything but stare at the monitor.

  “Dada! Dada!” Garnet cries out, making it even worse. Even after several days, she refuses to get with the new feeding program. Or forget the man who used to deliver her morning bottle.

  Eventually Aunt Mari takes over. “Ssh, mija! Titi is here, and I’ve got your bottle,” she says in Spanish on the other side of the monitor
. “It’s okay. Everything is okay. Your mai and pai are having some trouble and that is making her a little sad.”

  Did I say I had no more tears left to cry? Not true. Not true at all. I find that out when I begin weeping at Aunt Mari’s words.

  It feels both like the whole world has stopped…and that time is rushing by too fast for me to catch up.

  If I was living out a romcom, I might have spent the whole day in bed. Eating ice cream and crying over a man that did me wrong. But I’m lactose intolerant and Dominican aunties are the worst.

  Aunt Mari makes sure the toddler she still calls “the baby” is happy and fed. But she leaves me in my room to starve. And she must have put Cami and Talia under strict commands not to visit me, too. The rain stops and the sun sets without one person coming to my door.

  But when I finally come downstairs late in the evening to root around for something to eat and drink, guess who’s sitting there? Aunt Mari, big as day, at the kitchen table.

  Cami’s there, too, eating straight from a bag of Doritos while obeying Aunt Mari’s hard and fast rule that food only be eaten at the table.

  “Oh, mija, what happened to the blowout I gave you? You look like you just got done whoring at the docks!” she tells me upon seeing me, with the affectionate tone only a Dominican auntie can pull off.

  “What are you two still doing up?” I ask, not bothering to acting happy to see them.

  Usually on a Saturday night, Cami would be out with her boyfriend and Aunt Mari would be snoring under a sleeping mask, thanks to St. Lunesta.

  “Well, we noticed you were kinda sad…” Cami begins carefully over her chip bag.

  “So we decided to wait down here until you came down for something to eat, then pounce and do an intervention,” Aunt Mari finishes in a much harsher tone.

  Then proving she really doesn’t know the difference between an intervention and an interrogation, she demands, “What happened? What did you say to your man to make him go and stay away so long?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t her fault.” Cami waves a bright orange chip as she comes to my defense. “He’s the one who packed up all his stuff and wouldn’t even tell any of us why!”

  Aunt Mari dips her head, her eyes going as intent as a telenovela heroine finally figuring out that her identical twin sister is really a duplicitous schemer, who’s trying to steal her man. “He’s probably decided to go live with whatever cuero he was keeping back in New York.”

  “What’s a cuero?” Cami asks.

  At the same time I demand to know, “Why do you think he has a mistress?” Great, this is exactly what I needed. Another possible scenario to obsess over.

  “A cuero is a slut, Camille,” Aunt Mari answers Cami in an educational tone. “In this case, the kind of woman that fool’s around with a married man, knowing good and well he has a wife at home. And as for why I think that…”

  She turns back to look at me, her eyes judgmental and all-knowing. “Of course, he was going somewhere else to get his needs met on those days he was away in New York. That’s what men do! That’s why you have to put more effort into your appearance, mija. Straighten your hair and keep it that way. Wear more makeup. Make yourself beautiful, like I keep on telling you!”

  Cami, who’s wearing her hair in two messy afro puffs squints at Aunt Mari as she points out, “Straight hair and makeup don’t make you beautiful or keep somebody from leaving you.”

  “It helps!” Aunt Mari insists, her voice pitching high with outrage. “I mean, look at her!”

  Cami glances over at me, and backs down with a cringe.

  Yeah, I imagine the slept in blowout and wrinkled pajamas look isn’t one of my best.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you two to deal with Garnet today,” I tell them, feeling like an f-up in every way.

  “It wasn’t any problem,” Cami assures me.

  At the same time Aunt Mari says, “You should be sorry! Why are you all day in the house moping, when you should be on the first plane to New York to get your man? Whoever that other woman is, I bet she isn’t Dominican. That means you can beat her ass!”

  “Tia Mari!” Cami and I gasp at the same time, our mouths dropping open wide.

  “What? I am just saying if it was me, I would be at the Vietnamese salon with my cousins, getting my nails done up nice and sharp…” Aunt Mari answers, sweet voiced until she finishes with, “so I could scratch that cuero’s eyes out!”

  Cami leans back in her seat, her expression totally impressed. “Forget Nicky and Joey. If anyone ever tries to cross me, I’m coming to you.”

  “You better,” Aunt Mari says, pointing at her. But then her razor sharp gaze swings right back to me. “And as for you, mija…”

  “As for me, nothing!” I cut her off, swiping a hand across my body. “That’s not how life works. I can’t just beat up the reasons Stone left me. Even if one of them is walking around on two legs...”

  At the thought of the hypothetical woman Stone might have replaced me with, my anger fades, leaving a sad bitterness behind. I bet she’s perfect. Perfect and normal and easy. Just like Rock wanted.

  “I’m sad…really sad,” I tell Aunt Mari and Cami. “But there’s nothing I can do. He’s obviously going through something. Something I can’t fix. Something he’s no longer interested in fixing.”

  “Nothing you can do?” Aunt Mari repeats. She waves a hand at Cami. “Do you think if this one had said the same thing about getting back her sister, she’d be sitting here right now? Eating junk food she didn’t pay for, even though she barely picked at the pollo guisado I made for dinner?”

  Cami freezes, then puts down the bag with a guilty look, before trying to defend me to Aunt Mari.

  “You have to understand. Naima’s not like us,” she says, casting me a sympathetic look. “She doesn’t know how to fight for stuff. Plus, she has a kid to think about. She can’t just get on a plane and tell Stone he has to come back. That’s just not who she is. It’s not in her nature.”

  Cami is exactly right, but her words shrivel something inside of me. No, I’m not the type to gather all my cousins to fight over a man. I tend to play a more sympathetic role with the people I love, encouraging and nurturing them, then finding it within myself to understand when they leave.

  And Stone’s left me. Despite the promises he made to me in his therapist’s office, he left. There’s nothing I can do about it. Only an old school thinker like Aunt Mari would blame a mother for making do the best she can with the cards she’s been dealt instead of getting on a plane, like some kind of desperado.

  But something about Cami’s pitying assessment of my character doesn’t sit well with me. “Do you really think I’m that weak?” I ask her. “Like, I’m completely incapable of defending myself or the people I love?”

  Cami quickly looks away, too polite to answer my question. But Aunt Mari says, “Well, we’re not sitting in your apartment right now, are we? And from what I can see, Stone’s been calling the shots in your relationship this whole time. He doesn’t care what you want, and I guess you don’t either. Because you’ve already given up.”

  With an aggrieved, huff, Aunt Mari snags the bag of Doritos off the table. “You’re right, Cami girl. She just don’t have it in her to fight for her man.”

  All my defenses go up at her words. “I shouldn’t…I shouldn’t have to fight for somebody who doesn’t want to be in a relationship with me—”

  A sudden memory stops me cold in that moment.

  I shouldn’t have to fight for a love you ain’t willing to give. But I’m doing it. And I’ll keep on doing it. I don’t care how fucked in the head that makes me. I’ll keep fighting for you as long as it takes.

  Stone….he’d said that to me. The exact right words to get me to believe in him. To believe in us.

  Hot tears spring to my eyes. I can be a bitter woman. Sometimes it feels like I’m all sugar on the outside with a sour nugget. But in that moment, disgust replaces my bitterness. And
the disgust isn’t directed at Stone—I’m disgusted with myself.

  He fought for me for months and months. And when he dragged me into Dr. Nouri’s office, he was nowhere close to backing down.

  But when he pushed me away, like I did him all those months, did I fight? No….

  I know. I know in my gut and my heart that there’s something wrong with Stone. A reason he’s back on his pill crutch. But instead of fighting to figure out what made him fall off the wagon, I went back to work. And instead of dragging him out of the cotton, I wasted a whole day of my weekend holed up in my room, feeling sorry for myself.

  But that all ends now.

  “Give me that! I need something for the road,” I say, snatching the bag of Doritos out of Aunt Mari’s hands.

  “No, don’t eat that when there’s some perfectly good dinner available!” Aunt Mari snatches the bag back from me, as if I’m a child who’s accidentally opted for rat poison.

  But then she stops and asks, “Hold on, where are you going?”

  “To get my man back!” I declare. “If he doesn’t want to be with me, I don’t care. I’m his wife and he’s my husband, and it’s going to take more than an embarrassing restaurant fight to get rid of me!”

  Chapter Forty-One

  “Are you serious?” Cami asks. “Are you really flying to New York right now?”

  “Yes, she is,” Aunt Mari answers for me, her voice practically singing with approval. She hops out of her seat. “But hold on, let me warm you up a plate. You can eat it on the way to the airport!”

  Okay, I can tell as hard as Aunt Mari was being with me, it probably killed her to leave me in my room all day without once offering of food. But as I wait in the living room for her to bring a bowl out, it feels like I have a revving engine inside of me.

  “What’s taking so long?” I call back into the kitchen after what seems like an eon has passed.

  “Just need about ten more minutes. It’s still heating up on the stove!” Aunt Mari calls back.

  What, seriously? “Can’t you just heat it up in the microwave?”