Commitment

by Forrester, Nia

  Strip poker. Dirty dancing in nightclubs. Suddenly, Tracy’s whole objection to the ‘lifestyle’ men in the entertainment business lived was coming into sharp focus.

  “Riley!”

  Lorna was calling her. Riley went down to the kitchen, immediately searching Shawn’s face as she entered, hoping to read on it some clue of what the conversation had been about.

  “Here’s some coffee,” Lorna handed her a mug and she took it, her eyes still on her husband.

  “We’re driving back tonight,” he said.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  Lorna’s face was impassive. It didn’t look like they’d had an argument, but one never knew with Lorna.

  “Everything’s fine,” Shawn said, attempting a smile. “I just need to take care of business, that’s all.”

  “Well, there’s nothing for you to do until the grand jury, right? So why . . .”

  “I mean business,” Shawn said. “I need to meet with the Arista team. Let them know they need to back off while I work this out.”

  So Lorna had given him the pep talk.

  Riley relaxed and took a sip of her coffee. “And I guess I need to go back to work and clean out my desk,” she said after a moment. That would be hard. Leaving Power to the People after all this time and under these circumstances.

  Both Lorna’s and Shawn’s heads jerked upward at the same time. She hadn’t told them, she remembered now.

  “I quit,” she said, avoiding their eyes.

  “You did what?” Lorna was the first to speak.

  “This whole thing isn’t going to fall conveniently into my days off. I thought it would be better if . . .”

  “All that does is make it look like you’re ashamed of me,” Shawn said. “Like you can’t face anybody or something.”

  “You know that’s not it, Shawn.”

  “Yeah but that’s what it looks like.”

  Riley looked at Lorna and she nodded. “That was pretty drastic, don’t you think?”

  “This whole thing is pretty drastic. I want to be there—for every hearing, every meeting with Doug. Everything.”

  Shawn sighed. “Can you go back to them and tell them you changed your mind?”

  “I don’t want to,” she said more sharply than she intended. “This . . . this woman is not just screwing with your life Shawn, she’s screwing with mine too. I’m not going to go to work and sit behind a frigging computer and act as though it’s business as usual.”

  “Well then you’re giving her exactly what she wants—the chance to disrupt your life,” Lorna shrugged.

  Riley looked from her mother to Shawn. Who would have thought the time would come when they would be on the same side opposing her?

  “So you think I should do what? Go back and say I made a mistake?” she asked incredulously.

  Shawn nodded. “It’s not too late, right?”

  Riley heaved. “I don’t know.”

  “Go in on Monday. Talk to them. Maybe tell them you need a leave of absence instead.”

  “Fine,” Riley said, defeated. “I guess I could do that.” She looked at Shawn. “You’re ready to go back?”

  “I can’t hide out forever.”

  “We’ve been here only one night,” she pointed out.

  “We have to go home, Riley.” Shawn’s voice was firm. “I have to handle this.”

  Riley looked at Lorna for support but she only raised her eyebrows as if to say, what d’you want me to do?

  “Okay,” she said finally.

  They left shortly after six, with Shawn in the driver’s seat this time. He didn’t talk to her too much, but instead of the morose silence of earlier, he now seemed determined. His jaw had that rigid stubborn look—the one he sometimes got when they were fighting. The one he got when he refused to back down.

  “I’ll drop you off at home,” he said when they were on the West Side Highway close to their exit. “I have to go by Brendan’s real quick.”

  “I’ll come with you,” she said, already knowing he would refuse.

  “I won’t be that long,” he was trying to reassure her, but there was still a certain tension in his voice. “I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

  “Why can’t I come?” Riley persisted.

  “It’s not that you can’t come. You don’t need to come.”

  “Shawn you want to tell me what’s going on? What you’re thinking about?”

  “I’m thinking about keeping my ass out of prison. That’s what I’m thinking about.”

  Riley sighed. She could understand him being testy, but why the hell was he shutting her out all of a sudden? What the hell had Lorna said to him?

  “So am I,” she said quietly. But she leaned back in her seat again, realizing that arguing would be futile.

  So eager was he to get where he was going that he dropped her off in front of the building and she lugged the bags upstairs on her own, dumping them in the living room. The voicemail indicator was blinking like crazy but Riley ignored it, going into the bedroom and switching on the television. Nothing interesting was on, and MTV thankfully had stopped running news about Shawn’s arrest for the time being. Instead they seemed to be playing his music videos on a loop, the way they did when someone died.

  She dialed Tracy’s number and waited through the three rings that always preceded voicemail. But instead of a recording, Tracy picked up.

  “Hey,” Riley said dully. “What’re you up to?”

  “Hey!” Tracy sounded surprised to hear from her. “Where are you?”

  “Home. Shawn wanted to come back.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Better I guess. He’s at Brendan’s. I was barred from going with him so who knows what they’re up to.”

  “Look. Riley. I’m sorry about what I said before . . . about Shawn dragging you down. I didn’t mean it.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Riley said. “Even if you did mean it.”

  “No. I didn’t mean it. I really didn’t. You need some company? I can be there in twenty minutes.”

  “Please.”

  She arrived bearing a half gallon of vanilla bean ice cream and an apple pie. Riley could have hugged her. Just what she needed—comfort food. They sat in Shawn’s den watching a corny love story on Lifetime and eating apple pie a la mode, talking about anything and everything except for the whole sordid mess with Shawn and Keisha. They were well into their second movie and drifting off when Riley looked up to find that Shawn was standing at the door to the den and they hadn’t even heard him come in. Brendan was with him, carrying Chinese take-out. Tracy took the bag from Brendan, and they both headed toward the kitchen.

  “How’s my husband doing?” Riley asked.

  Shawn smiled. “How’s my wife?”

  She shrugged. “Okay I guess.”

  He walked toward her and extended a hand. She took it and he pulled her up from her position cross-legged on the floor, wrapping his arms about her.

  Sometimes she loved him so much it was like actual physical pain. She could feel her heart swell, her chest tighten and her throat constrict all at once; she was so filled with feeling. Shawn’s face was still smooth from when he’d shaved late in the afternoon, and there was a tiny nick, a spot of dried blood, on his chin from the too-sharp disposable razor he’d used at her mother’s house.

  “So what’d you and Brendan talk about?”

  “Just business stuff. About the record label and all that.”

  “Is everything going to be okay?”

  Shawn released her and shrugged. “I don’t know yet. I meet with them Monday. I’ll find out then.”

  “What do you think they’ll say?”

  “I think they’ll let it ride.”

  “Are you saying that to make me feel better?”

  “No, I’m saying that to make myself feel better,” he joked.

  Riley tried to smile. If his career went south because of this, Shawn would fall into a funk the likes of whi
ch he might never recover from.

  “Did you see some of the dancers on MTV?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Talking about the parties and the strip poker and all that?”

  Riley nodded.

  “It was dumb shit. The kind of stuff that you do when you’re on the road and you’re bored. It didn’t mean anything.”

  “Forget it,” she said, a little too quickly.

  “No.” Shawn held her face in between his hands. “That’s the last time you’ll ever hear anything about what I did, or might have done, from anyone but me. Never again. I promise. Ask me anything you want.”

  After Brendan and Tracy left together around midnight, they went in to bed, and though Shawn lay perfectly quiet and still, Riley could sense that he was awake even as she slipped toward sleep.

  g

  Chapter Eighteen

  He was already up and in the kitchen on the phone when she got up the next morning. He was talking to Doug and sounded more like himself – taking charge and throwing out ideas. But from his responses to whatever Doug was telling him, it seemed like his lawyer was having a hard time convincing him that this was one situation over which he had absolutely no control.

  “You need to talk to Mike,” Shawn was saying forcefully. “He was the one who told me she was planning this.” He paused and listened for a moment then sighed exasperatedly. “Yeah, I get that . . . yeah . . . I know.”

  He listened for a moment then sighed impatiently once again. When the call ended Shawn came back into the bedroom, bare-chested and barefooted. Riley rolled over onto her stomach and searched his face, trying to guess at his mood.

  “You feel like taking a trip?” And when she raised her eyebrows, he laughed. “To Jersey. To Chris’ house.”

  “Oh. Sure.”

  “What did you think I meant?”

  “I wasn’t sure,” she admitted.

  “The court has my passport,” he said over his shoulder, as he headed for the bathroom. “So escaping to Argentina just ain’t in the cards.”

  At least his sense of humor was intact.

  When after a moment she heard the shower, Riley followed him in. She watched him for a moment through the glass. Just when should she start preparing herself? When would it be wise to start thinking about the possibility that he might go to prison? She shed her nightshirt and got in with him, wrapping her arms around his waist from behind. He leaned backward and into her embrace. At first he didn’t speak, and when he did, it was as though he’d read her mind.

  “I was talking to Doug about contingency planning,” he began carefully.

  When she tensed, he turned to face her, gently pushing her backward so that they were no longer standing under the stream of water.

  “We don’t know what might happen. He doesn’t know what might happen. I need to make sure you’ll be okay.”

  Before he finished, she was already shaking her head, but he refused to release her, holding her face gently but firmly, so she would look at him.

  “You already put this off once. We can’t avoid talking about it forever.”

  “Not forever,” Riley said. “Just let’s not right now.”

  “When?”

  And when she couldn’t answer, he pressed his lips to her forehead and held them there for a moment.

  “Let’s get out of the shower at least,” she murmured.

  Later, as she sat in the kitchen in her bathrobe drinking her coffee, Riley’s eyes opened wide when Shawn finally joined her with an impressive stack of papers in his hands.

  “What have you done?” she asked, gripping the edge of the counter.

  “Baby,” Shawn reached across the breakfast bar and touched her hand. “Relax.”

  “What is that?”

  “Information you should have. Or at least know how to find.”

  Riley said nothing.

  “You already know we’re rich,” Shawn began. He was obviously trying to lighten the mood but Riley didn’t smile, so he continued. “But you don’t know exactly how much. And where.”

  She shook her head. No. She didn’t know and had avoided knowing, in fact. Once, when she and Shawn were still just casually hooking up, Tracy had tried to force her to look it up online, but she’d refused.

  “So K Smooth’s net worth, as of January 1 . . .”

  “Stop that,” Riley said, touching her forehead and looking down.

  “What?” Shawn sounded confused.

  “Referring to yourself in the third person. This is your money, not some fictional character’s money. Even if you say ‘K Smooth’ it doesn’t make me feel like it isn’t real. It doesn’t make this whole messed up situation not real.”

  He stopped and stared at her for a moment, searching her face.

  “Don’t pretend you’re only half-assed taking this seriously,” she went on. “Like we aren’t talking about the possibility that you might be . . . in prison.”

  “C’mere,” Shawn said, shoving the papers aside.

  Riley felt the tears come, as though out of nowhere and then she was sobbing uncontrollably. She hadn’t cried about this before. There hadn’t been time.

  “C’mere,” he said again. When she didn’t move, he reached for her, pulling her around and onto his lap. He buried his face into the back of her neck.

  “If you cry,” he said. “If you’re not okay, I won’t be able to do this; you know what I’m sayin’? I need to stand up like a man and take whatever comes to me. And I can do that. But if I know I’m hurting you like this, then shit . . . that’s more than I could . . .” He stopped.

  Riley wiped her eyes with the back of her hands and turned so she was sitting astride him. She nodded.

  “Okay,” she said quietly.

  “It’s not fair. I know it’s not,” he said. “After all the crap I already put you through. To ask you not to cry.”

  “It’s okay,” Riley said. “It was a moment. It’s passed. Let’s talk about how rich you are.” She tried to smile, but what surfaced had to have been a poor substitute.

  “Nah. Let’s just head out to Jersey,” Shawn said, reading her face. “You’re right. We can talk about this later.”

  Chris’ house in Short Hills was not at all what she expected. Instead of something ostentatious like Cameron Cole’s it was a very sensibly sized colonial at the end of a long pebble driveway and shielded from the road by tall ferns. The only hint about its occupant came from the three Bentleys and Mercedes parked out front.

  They called in from the gate and Chris was waiting for them at the door when they pulled up. He was wearing a dramatic all-white sweatsuit and a white baseball cap turned backward. He smiled when he spotted Riley and came toward her, arms outstretched.

  “How you doin’?” he asked hugging her.

  “Good,” she squeezed him back, and turned once again to Shawn who for the first time ever seemed surprisingly cool with her and Chris being so chummy.

  The décor was also a surprise; understated and elegant with warm tones throughout the foyer. Chris led them to a terrace where breakfast was already laid out; fruit and pastry with coffee, tea and juice.

  “If you want something else, eggs or something, let me know,” he said as they sat.

  “No, this is fine,” Shawn said.

  He seemed impatient to get down to business and all but ignored the food. Too hungry to do the same, Riley reached for a beignet and poured a cup of coffee.

  “Brendan’s on his way out,” Chris said. “And you called Doug as well, right?”

  “Yeah, he’s bringing someone else from his office. He thinks we need a female lawyer on this too,” Shawn said.

  Riley tried not to register her surprise. She had no idea that this was going to be a strategy meeting. Of course, there was no way it could have been purely a social visit given the circumstances, but she wished it were. Maybe her body language registered her tension, because Shawn’s hand fell to her leg and he gently squeezed it. She smiled at h
im, pretending to be more at ease than she was.

  “I got all the contact information he asked for,” Chris said. He reached beneath his chair and placed a manila folder on the table between him and Shawn. “Every dancer on the tour from the beginning. B has everything else. The bars you were at, all that.”

  “If somebody asked me where we were at that night, I don’t know . . .”

  “Well, you better resurrect that memory,” Chris warned. “Saying you don’t remember what happened ain’t gon’ fly.”

  “Doug said I won’t have to say anything.”

  “Maybe not in court. I’m thinking about after. No matter what happens in court, you have to be able to explain this to your public. Especially because . . .” Chris nodded in Riley’s direction. “. . . you just got married.”

  Shawn said nothing, his eyes meeting Riley’s for a pained moment. He looked down, his hand falling from her leg. Riley reached out and held it. Her need to have him feel shame for having cheated on her with Keisha seemed to have disappeared. Whatever he’d done to her—to them—he didn’t deserve this. To think that he might actually go to prison. Her vision abruptly blurred and she blinked rapidly, willing herself not to cry.

  Chris met her gaze and held a hand across the table.

  “Lemme show you the house,” he said.

  Shawn’s hand slid from hers as he let her go.

  “I’ll make some calls,” he said.

  Riley took her coffee with her, allowing Chris to lead her back into the house, to a sunroom that looked as though it had been transplanted from an English country cottage.

  “A woman decorated this,” she said smiling.

  “Yeah, of course,” Chris said. “I was in Germany when it happened. You think I would’ve gone for all these flowers and shit?”

  Riley laughed. “I know you wouldn’t. Since you’re all gangsta and what-not.”

  “You sure you’re up for this?” Chris asked in an abrupt change of subject.

  “I’ll leave the room when Doug gets here if the discussion gets to be too much,” she said.