by C. L. Donley
They refueled in France. He slept little. And each time he started to get a little rest, the effort it took to stay asleep inevitably woke him up. He was divided, the oil of worrying about his son, the water of laying eyes on the woman of his waking nightmare. No more running, he thought. For better or worse they would be a part of each other’s lives. Would his son be safer in the States? Absolutely not. Would he even survive? Would Bel survive, seeing him lying there? What was his name?
Hani. That had been the name of his son with Leilani, Asha if it had been a girl. He had only one image in his mind of his stillborn son, one with forceps unforgivably around his head. His wife later succumbed to hemorrhaging, and it seemed like he would never outrun that moment. And now he could barely remember what day it’d been. He’d build a shrine to his grief, but the damn thing kept moving. The world had kept turning, and despite his efforts, he’d remained alive and changing.
When he landed in Nashville over a half day later, it was as though he’d been chasing the city itself and had finally caught it. He forced himself to freshen up and went out into the balmy summer night. He was breathing her air, he thought. He turned on his phone and called Dale.
“Where’s everyone?”
“Out. Amara convinced Kim to leave the hospital for a few hours and have a bit of a girl’s night.”
“What??”
“We all thought it would be better for you not to have to run into her just yet. Besides, Kim’s been at the hospital for 84 hours straight, bro. There’s nothing she can do.”
“Why not, what’s happened??”
“Well, it’s good news, actually. They’re going to give him a live transplant so that he won’t have to wait. Mya’s gonna give him a piece of her liver.”
“Why Mya?”
“Because Mya’s the same blood type as Jabari.”
Jabari. His name was Jabari.
Arabic. It meant “courageous.” In an instant, love was already flooding his veins. No more running, he thought. But he couldn’t if he tried. The impulse had all but vanished.
“You there?”
“You said his name is Jabari,” Bel said.
“Yeah,” Dale laughed a bit. He’d seen the boy.
“How does he look?” Bel’s voice quivered.
“Exactly like you,” Dale laughed.
“I meant… does he look like he’s gonna make it.”
“Well yeah, I mean…he’s jaundiced because his liver’s failing, but other than that he’s normal. Really chill. And happy.”
Bel was weeping at Dale’s description.
Dale was at a bit of a loss at what to do, and he felt a bit guilty.
He’d been in la la land with Mya for nearly a year and had hardly thought about Bel, which was out of character for him since up to that point he was always checking up on one or the other of them.
Dale had to guess a lot of things about Bel, but one thing he failed to question was the apparently wrong impression that Bel lacked the emotional maturity to be a father. He’d known his friend had been an iceberg, but what could he do? While the man was on some level predictable, he was notoriously unknowable, never talked about himself. Dale could’ve tried harder, but he got the distinct feeling that they were friends because he didn’t try. After a long moment, Bel still hadn’t recovered. Dale spoke.
“Full disclosure bro, you’re freakin’ me out a little bit.”
Bel continued to weep, trying in vain to pull it together enough to talk.
“I gotta go,” Bel eeked out, and then hastily hung up the phone.
Twenty minutes later they’d arrived at the hospital. He ran into real trouble at the airport with his brother in tow. Two morose looking Arabs were a bit much for the Nashville International Airport, but thankfully they were both handsome and rich. Bel didn’t have as public a profile as Grayson and Dale, so he didn’t often get recognized unless he was with them. Plus, he didn’t seem to give off an air of approachableness. Most people assumed he was a sheik or some prominent middle eastern figure, which was true, so he couldn’t cry stereotyping technically. Depending on where he went, he got a lot of stares and camera phone pictures like he was in a zoo, particularly from women. He was just thankful that he never had to hire a security detail, though that would likely be a permanent fixture once his father passed.
Kim had thoughtfully told the hospital to anticipate his arrival.
“Right this way, Mr. Hafiz,” a nurse named Mindy discreetly directed him. Her warmth instantly created a feeling of excitement and woe, because he was actually about to lay eyes on him. He felt that this strange woman was excited for him, but if she’d known him at all she would’ve known better. And when he finally laid eyes on his sleeping son, the emotional dam was irreparably broken.
Prince Jabari al Malwali of Ghassan was sleeping comfortably, but to his father, it looked as though the machines were some alien arsenal slowly sucking the life from him, and that’s about how it felt. The king fell to his knees in helpless grief, his brother Fahid faithfully at his side doing what he could to comfort him.
Bel was on his knees from the force that assaulted him, the force with which he knew with all certainty that this was his son.
He knew because he had passed many helpless looking babies on the way to Jabari, some of them pitiful in crying agony. Yet this one was the only one he felt the overwhelming urge to switch places with, immediately on sight.
He also instantly understood why a father would want to do such a thing, and it was not sacrificial but in fact purely selfish. He would’ve easily preferred being hooked up to a machine and with a failing liver than to see his flesh and blood, no bigger than the size of a half gallon of milk, suffer so soon under the yoke of human existence.
His little distended belly inflated and deflated rapidly as he slept. The hyperawareness of all his tiny body parts and organs endeared Bel fiercely to the boy, and he indeed thought him worthy of his name. He would have to complement Kim on her thoughtful choice. But first things first, she had some explaining to do, and hopefully, he would be able to keep himself from throttling her.
* * *
It took a few hours, but eventually, Kim was able to relax mentally.
She did not doubt that Jabari was in good hands at the hospital, she just worried that if and when he needed her, she wouldn’t be there. It was the one area her parents had dismally failed, and she couldn’t bear to fail in the same way.
Little by little, her girls had coaxed her out of her brain. Amara had been right. She wouldn’t be any good to her baby hovering over his bed, not sleeping, not eating, and being otherwise depleted. She needed to vent, to laugh, to recharge. With Mya and Amara here, it was inevitable.
The guys went to the hotel while Kim gave the ladies a tour of her lavish high rise apartment in the city. It was a mix of industrial loft style with impossibly high, exposed ceilings, and farmhouse elements with hand scraped wood on the floors and trim. One wall was a massive panel of windows and a door that went out to the terrace that it overlooked. The downtown skyline looked close enough to touch. Kim rolled her eyes as they ooh’ed and aah’ed.
“I know it’s not eleven figures or anything, so you can stop with all that.”
“No Kim, for real. This is really nice,” Mya assured her.
“Girl, I’ve been to so many butt ugly places,” Amara insisted. “But this is like…nice. Nashville is trying to come up for real.”
Mya flopped down on the cream split sectional, the centerpiece of the living room.
“This is so… you. You fuckin’ did it, girl.”
“All by yourself.”
“All by my fuckin’ self.”
Kim had earned her Juris doctor while working for Mead, Sanderson & Young, and now she was the youngest corporate lawyer to be already making a six-figure salary. Not bad for the daughter of two junkies. Most importantly, now she was a mom. And thanks to her best friend, her baby was going to live.
The girls treate
d Kim to her favorite pastime, which was getting ready.
They put on music; they primped, they curled, they tried on myriad dresses. Mya could, of course, be counted upon not to have packed anything girly enough to go out in. Kim was quite a bit taller than Mya, so they had to use Kim’s closet to improvise.
“Jamaal is meeting us up there,” Kim said, after sending him a text.
“I still can’t believe he’s old enough to drive and also not a child anymore,” Amara said.
“Yeah, he’s been ‘not a child’ for a couple of years now.”
“Is he still kickboxing?”
“Girl, he’s been off that, he’s a damn bodyguard.”
“Whaaat?”
“Then shouldn’t he be working right now?”
“He’s not working for the friggin’ Kardashians; it’s just a 40 hour a week thing.”
“Making good money?”
“Better than he should be with no damn degree.”
“You and your damn college,” Amara scoffed, somewhat hypocritically.
Kim’s younger brother Jamaal was 23, an overachiever like his sister. Her youngest brother had joined the military at the encouragement of Mya’s father, who’d been more of a father to him than his own.
After the ice was sufficiently broken, Amara began.
“So… what the hell happened?”
“What? Between Bel and me?”
“You and Bel, the miscarriage, the baby…”
“They told me I miscarried!” Kim nodded with a swivel in her neck, her head full of massive barrel rollers.
“Waitamint…you mean to tell me you didn’t know you were pregnant?” Mya raised an eyebrow.
“I…didn’t…know…I…was…pregnant!” she repeated emphatically, wide-eyed. The girls were doubled over in laughter.
It wasn’t some diabolical plot to erase Bel from her life; the bitch was just a walking TLC documentary. Of course, something like that would happen to Kim.
“But I don’t understand. If you were cramping and bleeding and the whole thing, and you went to the doctor…”
“What the ER doctor said was that I probably lost Jabari’s brother or sister, and Jabari was still in there.”
Amara nodded with illumination.
“Wooow…” was all Mya could say.
“So when you were still having symptoms…”
“I just thought it was because of the miscarriage.”
“Literally, every fuckin’ thing could be blamed on a miscarriage,” Mya volunteered out of the blue.
“Right? Cramping, miscarriage. Bleeding, miscarriage. Period, no period, miscarriage. Pain, miscarriage.”
“But didn’t you get big?”
“Not really. Not that much bigger than I’d already been, because I was about…four months at the time, with twins apparently. If I’da got an ultrasound right away they probably woulda caught that.”
“Why didn’t you get the ultrasound?”
“Busy. I kept rescheduling it.”
“So what happened when you finally went to the ER?”
“I just told them that I was in serious pain. Like it would come and go but it was getting worse and worse, and they were like, ‘are you having a baby?’ And I was like ‘no.’”
Amara laughed did a facepalm.
“I just explained over and over to everybody that I’d had a miscarriage a few months ago. So finally they gave me an ultrasound and were like, ‘okay well, you’re in labor soo….’”
“Shit like this only happens to you, Kim,” Mya giggled.
“I know,” she shook her head, as if exasperated.
“So were you ever gonna tell Bel?”
She rolled her eyes and shrugged.
“I guess, I mean… after all that…shit, I just wanted to enjoy my baby for a little while.”
“What ‘shit?’”
“I don’t know, I mean. It is what it is,” Kim answered cryptically. “I’m just petty, you know me. I wanted a baby, he gave me one, so I can’t complain. I guess I was just expecting…more,” she downplayed.
Amara felt another pang of guilt. More. She was sure they each had just the right amount of testosterone to be right for each other, and sure enough, she’d never seen Bel behave like he’d done with Kim. But it turned out Kim was really just batshit crazy. Amara had subjected her unsuspecting boss to a fickle, flippant woman and she’d broken his heart. “More”??? Just what was going to be good enough for Kim?
“Bel was moping around hardcore after I got back to work,” Amara tried to appeal to Kim’s sympathies.
“You don’t say,” Kim deadpanned.
“When he found out you miscarried, he fuckin’… I don’t know. Like, he changed. He usually spends Thanksgiving with us, and New Year’s and… he just vanished until like, February.”
Kim shrugged. “First I’m hearing about it. You sure that’s not some other chick’s doing?”
“Bel don’t get that way about women,” Amara lowered her head as she maintained eye contact.
“I don’t know what you want me to say about it, Amara. I mean, that nig—” Kim pressed her lips together and shook her head.
Mya snickered. Kim was about to use a word that she never thought she would have to at her current level.
Ah, Amara thought. Apparently, there was more to the story than what Kim wanted to admit.
“He could’ve called me anytime,” Kim calmly revised.
“Well learn from me, Kim,” Mya warned, “Amara’s around Bel all time, and if she’s saying that it’s more than you think, then it probably is.”
Amara. Fuck Amara, Kim thought.
The simple fact was, no one in their right mind would walk away from a weekend like that unless they were a grade A sociopath with no feelings.
She spent hours in his bed while he pleasured her over and over to the brink, trying to drive her out of her mind, her mind being the source of the problem. He bathed her and caressed her and spoke to her in other languages. She laughed, cried, moaned, screamed, cursed, and he’d done the same. And then he simply walked away.
Amara had no idea the true nature of her boss, and Kim at least found comfort in that fact. She really hadn’t known any better. The simple truth was, Bel was a monster. And he had them all fooled.
* * *
After hours of getting ready, they finally made it out at about 9 pm.
They went to the Indigo, a two-story upscale club downtown with an outdoor terrace that overlooked the towering skyline. When they showed up, Kim’s brother was already there, looking like his father except a great deal more dangerous. Jamaal had always had a thing for Kim’s friends who never ceased to see him as a child, even now. He practically lived with them at Mya’s parents’ house, where he and his brother lived until they came of age. Once Kim and Mya went off to college, they each had their own room, and he was finally able to jack off to fantasies of Mya and Amara in peace.
They ordered drinks and Amara bought out the balcony’s plush VIP section, an all-white area with minimalist white couches, oval tables and white silk on the walls, emanating pinkish orange neon lighting. It was a Tuesday night, but the place was still pleasantly packed. There seemed to be a lot of college students out tonight, and they looked to the girls like children. Any other time in their lives before the last three years, they would’ve died to find themselves in VIP. But that was three years ago. Now a private jet was their primary form of transportation. The most well-dressed men at the club looked positively mediocre. VIP may as well have stood for Very Inhospitable Pussy because they were all three of them ruined.
“Kim I’mma be honest. I really thought you were making shit up about Bel Hafiz being your baby daddy,” Jamaal said.
“It’s pretty unbelievable,” Kim admitted before she took a sip of her Pink Cadillac. The girls giggled.
“No, what’s really unbelievable is Amara landing Grayson Davis.”
“Thanks, Jamaal,” Amara smiled.
�
�Like…what did you say to him?”
Kim snapped her head back with a furrowed brow. Amara didn’t bat an eye.
“Boy, watch the interview.”
“I did, and I still don’t fuckin’ get it.”
“Wow,” Mya deadpanned.
“Um, the part where I fall for him, or he falls for me?”
“I mean Amara, you’re beautiful and all but—”
“Am I gonna get mad at whatever you’re about to say?”
“I’m just sayin’… a man goes from blondes to sistas like…”
“Is that what you think about me and Dale?” Mya said.
“No, that I get,” Jamaal said but didn’t clarify. Kim bunched up her face as she rolled her eyes.
“Just think of it like the NBA but in reverse,” Amara said.
“Jamaal, we all support you in your pilgrimage to the Mecca that is blonde pussy, alright?” Kim dismissed, “now go away until I call you.”
“Am I beating this guy up or what?”
“You tryin’ to die in a foreign prison or what?”
“So why am I here, Kim?”
“Nigga, for moral support!!” Kim shouted, stank-faced. Mya and Amara chuckled as Jamal left in a huff, the way he used to when he was eleven.
“Good to see you Jamaal!” Mya sent at his back.
“Let’s call the guys,” Amara suggested.
“No guys,” Mya dismissed.
Amara pouted.
“Maybe we all need this,” Mya spoke up.
“Need what? I look hot, and Grayson’s not even here to see it.”
“Umm…yeah so, what the hell was all that at the hospital??” inquired Kim.
“Oh, you mean that time when you told a married man you wanna climb him like a tree right in front of his wife?”
