A beat of silence passed before he boomed, “What the fuck did you just say?”
“You heard me. Our son just informed me that he heard a conversation that was so damn loud, it sounded like both women were standing on the other side of his opened bedroom door. He was in his bedroom playing video games—and you know how loud them damn shooting games that you bought him be—yet, he very clearly heard those two trifling birds discussing my private information in front of our child. Now, I just pulled up to my parents’ house, but do I need to turn around and come up there and beat that bitch’s ass?”
“Hold up. Hold the fuck up, right the fuck now!” The sound of something shuffling or fabrics grazing the speaker of the phone filtered through to my line. “Ava!” His yell sounded like he had moved his face away from the phone. I imagined that that bird-brained heifer was hiding somewhere in their apartment. She had to know it was only a matter of time before her shenanigans came to light. “Ava! Come here!” He paused. “Did you tell Wisdom about Tonya's wedding in Vegas?”
“What? Ev, no. I wouldn't do that.” I could hear that lying-ass bitch with her fake ass innocent I-don’t-know-what-you-mean voice turned up to the max. I scoffed.
“Oh okay. Well, did you have a conversation with Cassie on speakerphone outside of his bedroom?”
“Uhhhh…”
“Uh?! What the fuck does ‘uh’ mean Ava? “
“Um…I'm trying to think.”
“What do you need to think about; just answer the question.
“She can't answer the question because she doesn't know how to tell the truth!” I screamed.
“Tonya?”
“Oh, you can hear her? Great; let me go ahead and put it on speakerphone since you prefer to do that cuz that's how you like to speak. Go ahead.”
“Yeah, it's me, you Mother Goose yellow-beak dog-faced-ass bitch! Let me tell you something; let this be the last time you fix your dumbass brain to make a decision concerning my son without first discussing it with me or his father! I let your ass slide when you told me to stay away from Evan but messing with my baby just opened you up for an ass-whooping. Lucky for you, I just checked my schedule, and it looks like I’m free all week!”
“Wait a minute? You told her to stay away from me?” Evan’s voice sounded like barely contained rage, and I wanted to cackle with glee.
I pressed a hand to my chest as I gasped in fake surprise. “Ava! You mean to tell me that Evan didn’t put you up to that?”
“I didn't even say I did anything.”
“You didn't have to say you did anything,” I snapped, over her trying to play me for a fool. “Wisdom already told me what happened, and he didn't even try to incriminate you. All he said was it sounded like you were right outside his bedroom, but he was in the middle of a game so he didn't get up to go check. To him, it sounded like his aunt was there, meaning you had her on speakerphone turned all the way up and you had to be standing not even a foot away from his open bedroom door. You did that shit on purpose, thinking you were being cute. But that’s okay because I got something cute for that ass.”
“Well, he needed to know anyway.”
My blood boiled but Evan beat me to the punch.
“That wasn't for you to decide, Ava. You didn't even give Tonya chance to tell him because she hadn't even gotten home yet.”
“How much information do you share with your children, Ava?”
She didn't say anything, so I followed up with another question.
“When it concerns details about your life, how much do you tell your children, Ava? Do your kids, the ones that you pushed out of your own pussy or were cut out of your stomach, know the information as soon as you get it, Ava?” She still hadn't answered me. “Is she still there, Evan?”
“She here. A cat must got her tongue now.”
“Shut up, Evan. You know I don't have no kids, Tonya.
“No, actually, I don't know because the way you're running your mouth to me about what my child needed to know sounded like you were trying to come at me on some mother-to-mother bullshit, but I know good and damn well you wouldn't do some shit like that when you don't even know what being a mother is about. Hell, you can't even halfway mother a child that's already been raised and is only sent to you essentially for babysitting. All you got to do is feed that nigga and make sure he got Wi-Fi to play his games, and you can't even do that shit right!”
There was a moment of silence before she muttered, “You gonna let her talk to me like this, Evan?” She had the nerve to sound choked up.
“Hell yeah. You stepped all the way out of line when you did that shit, and you deserve what you're getting right now. Wisdom is my son, too, and you knew I didn’t want him to know, but you did that sneaky shit anyway, and for what? What was the purpose? What did you hope to gain? I don’t even want to look at you right now.”
I could hear Ava sniffling, and it only made me angrier. How you fuck up but want to turn around cry?
“One last thing, Ava; the next time you feel in your non-motherly ass feelings that Wisdom should know something, bring that information to me or his father and we—his parents—will decide when and how the information should be delivered.”
With that, I hung up the phone. I sat in that car huffing and puffing, trying to get myself under control before I went into my parents’ house, but nothing was working. All I kept thinking about was Ava stepping outside her lane and doing something she had no business doing. I just kept imagining myself punching her in the mouth and how good it would feel. Not to my knuckles, of course, but just to know that I knocked that ass out and gave her what was long overdue.
Not even a minute passed when my door was wrenched open. I looked to my left, expecting to see my son impatiently tapping at his watch, telling me to get out of the car because he was hungry. Instead, I was shocked into silence to see Jereth standing there, looking down at me. He leaned against the car, resting an arm on the roof and ducking his head to see me, a sexy smirk on handsome his face.
Was I dreaming? Was he an apparition?
Had my rage caused me to imagine him standing in the driveway of my parents’ house, wearing a white v-neck t-shirt that clung to his flat stomach and displayed his slender but defined biceps and the ash-gray denim jeans that encased the thighs that had managed to bruise my ass from a round of powerful fucking the day before? A hand reached out to me, and I blinked at it before lifting my gaze to its owner.
“What's taking you so long to get out of the car, woman?”
Chapter Ten
When You Receive The Answers To The Test
The Blacks were a trip. Tonya's parents, Cyrus and Cynthia Black, reminded me so much of my mama and Pops in how loving they were to each other and their children, yet they had a lot of differences that I appreciated. From the moment I walked through the door of their home and Cyrus introduced me to Cynthia as their son-in-law, at no point did Cynthia descend on me with a million different questions about where I came from and where I was trying to go. That is the reaction I would have expected from my mother, and it was definitely the one I would eventually be getting from her the moment I informed her that I’d not only gotten married but to a woman she’s never met.
All Cynthia wanted to know was whether I intended to be the man her daughter deserved, and I have so much respect for that, for the two of them. Another difference between them and my own parents was that Cynthia didn't cook. She could but she told me that she didn't want to.
“I hate cooking,” she told me as she chopped vegetables for whatever Cyrus intended to prepare for dinner. “My mother died when I was nine-years-old, and my father made me cook the meals for our family every, single day until the day I left that house. When I moved out the day after my seventeenth birthday and married Cyrus, I said I would never cook again.”
She laughed, expertly deseeding jalapeño peppers and chopping onions without a hint of a tear falling from her eyes.
“Cyrus told me he'd cook
all of our meals as long as I washed the dishes, and that was when I knew that he was the one for me. That feeling was reinforced after he bought me a dishwasher when we’d been married for about six years. To this day, he's never asked me to do so much as heat him up a piece of toast, even after all this time.” Glancing over her shoulder, she caught my eye from where I stood next to the stove where Cyrus was stirring something in a pot while his wife spoke. She stared me right into my eyes, and I found myself frozen under her serious scrutiny. “It might seem simple to anybody else, but to me, it means the world that this man made a promise to me thirty-three years ago and has kept that promise to this day.”
Her words were important; I could feel that. Everything she was saying to me, there was meaning in it. She wasn't just sharing a funny anecdote about their life. She was imparting wisdom to me, and I would be remiss if I let it fall away. I held her eye without looking away.
“Be a man of your word, Jereth Hawkins. If you say that you're going to do something, do it. Stand firm in those vows that you made in front of God and those strangers in that chapel in Las Vegas. Do that and everything else will fall into place. Do the opposite, and everything will fall apart, and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”
While she returned to her task, I silently mulled over her directive. A man of my word. Was she speaking generally or did she mean a literal interpretation of our wedding vows? If she was being general then that would be easy. I tended not to say things I didn’t mean and made it a point to never make promises I wasn’t certain I could keep. If she meant the vows…well, while I wouldn’t say that would be hard, it would surely take hard work and effort. Much of honoring those recited oaths would depend on learning who Tonya was as a person so that I could care for her as her husband. I had no intention of backing down from the challenge. My impulses had led me here for a reason.
♥♥♥♥
When The Tribe Is The Prize
When dinner was nearly finished, Cyrus had excused himself to the bathroom when the front door opened and the slap, slap of tennis shoes hitting the hardwood flooring diverted everyone’s attention to the kitchen door where a young boy appeared with a wide grin on his face.
“Grandma, Grandpa, we're here!”
Gangly arms wrapped around Cynthia's torso from behind as she stood at the sink washing the cutting board and knife she been using for her sous chef duties as well as the mixing bowls that Cyrus had used for his cornbread batter. She placed the items in the dish rack next to the sink and dried her hands on a paper towel before turning around and hugging the boy just as tightly as he’d hugged her.
“Hey, baby! I feel like I haven't seen you in ages. Look how big you've gotten.”
“Wisdom was with his father this past week.”
I turned to see Cyrus leaning his hip on the counter on the counter next to where I stood, his eyes on the two people in front of both of us.
Oh, so this was Wisdom. Tonya’s son. I nodded.
“During the school year, he spends one week a month with his dad, and during the summer, he spends one week a month with Tonya. They call all that flip-flopping co-parenting.”
I snickered but didn't say anything. The emphasis that Cyrus had put on co-parenting was hilarious as if it was a foreign word he'd never heard of. We both watched as the boy looked around the room and saw his eyes land on Cyrus. He ran over and gave him the same treatment he just gave Cynthia, a tight hug and choruses of I missed you. It was touching to witness, and I found myself missing my own niece, who was about Wisdom's age. She had a cell phone now and texted me every now and then, but I hadn’t seen Ja’Mya in person in about three weeks.
Pulling out of his grandfather’s grasp, Wisdom stepped back and eyed me curiously.
“Hello.”
I nodded at him. “Hey.”
Neither Cyrus nor Cynthia opened their mouth to introduce me to him. From what I saw today, that seemed to be a running theme with this family.
“Who are you?” he asked.
I held out a hand. “I’m Jereth Hawkins. What's your name, lil dude?”
He shook my hand vigorously, grip pretty firm for a youngin’. “Wisdom Cyrus Black. I'm eleven.”
“Nice to meet you, Wisdom Cyrus Black. Can I just call you Wisdom?”
With a smug grin he said, “Well, it’s ‘May’ you call me Wisdom, but yeah, I guess that’s fine.” He cocked his head to the side. “Are you the man my mama married in Las Vegas?”
Cynthia gasped and my eyes widened with surprise. I looked over at Cyrus but he was no help, offering nothing but a shrug and raised eyebrows. Well, shit; with no suggestions, what else was I to do but tell the truth?
“Well,” I began, “if your mama is Latonya Black then yes, I am.”
Nodding slowly, he seemed to scrutinize me further. “Yeah, that’s my mama. You're very tall. What's your height?”
“I think I'm average height for a man. I'm only six feet and two inches.”
Wisdom’s brows furrowed, and he tapped a finger on his chin. “Well, the average height for a man is actually five feet ten inches, so that means you are pretty tall.”
“Word? I didn’t know that. How tall are you?” I inquired.
“I'm four feet seven inches. I'm actually kinda short compared to the other kids in my class. My dad is of average height and my mom is only five feet three inches, so I'm destined to be a short man when I get older.” He shrugged. “Luckily, I don't need height to be a genius.”
This kid was very articulate. “Are you a genius, Wisdom?
“No,” he said forlornly, dropping his shoulders. “But that is on my agenda of things to achieve before I die.”
I glanced at Cyrus who just shook his head with a smile on his face. “Uh, isn't it too early to be thinking about death and bucket lists? You have a long way to go before that. I mean, you just told me that you’re eleven.”
“My mama says the only guarantee in life is death, so that means it's never too early to think about it.”
“Speaking of your mama, where is she?” Cynthia voiced the question, interrupting what would have been me commenting on how morbid it was to discuss the inevitably of death with an eleven-year-old. Wisdom had obviously inherited his mama’s penchant for loquaciousness.
“Oh, she's outside, probably on the phone with my dad, fussing about Ava.”
Cynthia pursed her lips. “Well, you gon’ on to the bathroom and wash up for dinner. I'll handle your mama.”
Cyrus clapped a hand on my shoulder as Wisdom ran out of the room. “Wait a minute, Cyn. Why don't you let her husband handle her?”
Cynthia grinned. “You sho right. Gon’ on and see about your wife then, Jereth.”
Laughing, I made my way out the front door and down the driveway, where I could clearly see Tonya through her tinted windows having what looked like a heated discussion. I stood outside of her door, waiting for her to wrap it up, but once I saw her chest heaving, I knew I couldn’t wait any longer. Gripping the handle, I wrenched the door open and held out my hand.
“What's taking you so long to get out this car, woman?”
She stared at me, mouth agape, eyes disbelieving.
“Jereth?”
“The one and only.”
Her eyes widened further. “Wha—what are you doing here?”
“I came to see about my wife.”
“No,” she shook her head, “I mean, what are you doing here—at my parents’ house?”
“I got into town this morning and went by your family’s coffee shop. I met your father and uncles when I was there, and he invited me to dinner. He thought it'd be a great opportunity for me to meet the rest of the family.”
I wasn't sure what her reaction would be to hearing that father had invited me over. It could have gone several different ways, many of which ending in her being pissed that I even went behind her back and talked to her father. Though that wasn't how things played out, I wasn't naive enough to pretend that it coul
dn't be read that way. But when her face broke out into a huge grin, I knew that I was right where I was supposed to be. Leaning forward, I stretched out my hand and waited for her to grab it. Then I pulled her out of the car, closing the door behind her.
Man, I wrapped her up in my arms and squeezed her to my chest, burying my face into her neck.
“I know it's only been a few hours, but I missed you. I know it sounds crazy, but it is what it is.”
I felt her shake her head against my chest. “If it's crazy, have us both committed because I missed you too.”
Hearing her compassion brought a warmth to my chest. It felt so damn good to know that she felt just like I felt; that I wasn't in this by myself; that this spontaneous thing could take a hold of her just like it has taken a hold of me. I pressed my lips to hers, sipping from them and taking what I could as gently as possible, knowing that her parents and son occupied the house behind me and could easily look out at us through the window.
“Aww,” a bodiless coo came out of nowhere. “Look at the newlyweds.”
Breaking apart, we both turned to see her sisters walking up the driveway. Natasha wore a big grin, indicating that she was the one who’d spoken, and Latoya eyed me warily.
Tonya grinned at her sisters. “Hey, brats! Look who’s here.”
“We know,” Latoya stated flatly. “We saw him earlier.”
“Damn, Toy, can you sound any drier?”
Latoya shrugged. “Sorry that I’m not happy-go-lucky like Tasha.”
Tonya frowned and Natasha shook her head. I’d had enough of this shit. Facing Latoya, I folded my arms across my chest.
“Okay, man. How do we move past this churlish attitude you’re holding on to?”
She blinked at me. “You can go back to Las Vegas or wherever the hell you came from.”
Her sisters blew up.
“Wow, Toy! What the actual fuck?”
“That’s not cool at all, Toy.”
I shook my head. “Does Tonya’s desire for me to be here not matter? What about her happiness and what she wants?”
To Break a Vow Page 8
