by Kiki Leach
Part Twelve
After a nice warm bath that seemed to relax both the muscles in her body as well as those that never stopped flexing inside her brain, Vanessa spent time in her room and began going through shades of her past that now only seemed to exist in giant boxes. It was the one sober thing she knew to do after, and with everyone out of the house, as well as no alcohol to drink – she assumed Maurice had gotten rid of the remaining bottles of vodka and tequila that morning, and she was never much of a beer drinker unless she was desperate, and she wasn’t there yet – and it was the perfect excuse to keep her from calling her mother, who managed to ring her cell phone six times and the house at least eight.
She left voicemail after voicemail, all but threatening her daughter with the possible loss of her job if she didn’t return at least one. But she refused to speak to her. She knew exactly what Alexis was going to say and she didn’t want to hear it then. She also knew that if she gave her mother a chance to speak, it would turn into nothing more than a screaming match that rivaled those they often had when she was in her teens, and it would most certainly seal her fate in never working for the magazine again, much more than any catfight that had been splashed all over the covers of Page Six and the Daily News ever could.
She sat in the middle of the floor in nothing but a tank and ‘boy shorts’, her hair up in a messy bun as she rummaged through the boxes, most of which hadn’t been opened since she moved in right after high school. There were pictures of her and Nathan, her and Sheila, one with all three of them together smiling. For a long time after Nathan and Vanessa became a couple, and to keep Sheila from feeling so left out of their relationship, they had referred to themselves as the Musketeers.
Vanessa held that picture of the three of them together in her hand, remembering back to that very day when it was taken, and shook her head. If she had known back then what she knew now, there was no way in hell she would’ve included Sheila in so much of her relationship. That’s where she always felt she had made her biggest mistake. An intimate relationship is supposed to be about two people coming together and who they are when it happens; there was never a plan to include someone else all too willing to make themselves part of the two.
The longer she stared at that picture, the more repulsed she became by it. She reached for a trashcan that sat in the corner and ripped the picture in half, tearing off the part of Nathan and staring at the part of her and Sheila. Truth be told, she missed their friendship a hell of a lot more than she was willing to admit. It was part of why she was still so angry with what her former best friend had done.
There were certainly times Sheila could be selfish and get on her nerves, times when whatever was happening in her life always seemed to be more important than what was happening in Vanessa’s. But she was so unaware of how vain she was that it was hard to not care about her. Sometimes, anyway. She tossed the picture of Nathan in the trash and ripped up the one of her and Sheila, tossing it in as well.
She grabbed another box that was filled with notes and long letters that had been sent between her, Sheila, and Maurice, and occasionally Nikki from time to time, most often discussing where they were going to hang out that Saturday night, who they were going to hang out with, and who they weren’t going to be seen with outside of the school hallways.
That was the perk of being popular and spoiled, all while having a lot of money to spend in your free time; you had first take in everything and could often dictate where you wanted to go without the hassle of dealing with those who would never be on the same level as you. She felt like she was so shallow back then, reading everything they said to each other and about who. But it was also such a highlight of her life, so much so that even little things like that, she wouldn’t have changed for the world.
When she came across another picture of her, Sheila and Nathan, with her off to the side while Nathan and Sheila were staring at each other so intensely in the background, completely unaware that they were being watched behind a camera lens, she froze. This was a picture she had forgotten about, one she wished she had never found, but at the same time, was glad that she did.
It was more proof she needed that those two were people she never needed to see in life again. But since that was now impossible, she knew for sure that no matter what happened between them she would never be there to pick up the pieces for Sheila again, nor would she ever lower herself to surrender to Nathan anytime they were in a room together, alone or with a crowd that filled the entire room and then some.
She grabbed a pair of scissors that were sitting on her dresser for an occasion just like this and cut the picture up into tiny pieces, so small they looked like tiny bits of chewed paper. She did the same with every other picture she found of them, only cutting herself out of ones in which she looked good in a certain outfit or she happened to like the way her hair looked that day.
She thought back to the picture on her desk at work, the one with her, Maurice and Nikki, where she had digitally removed Nathan and Sheila because the picture itself was too good to damage or get rid of. She didn’t find the same thing in the boxes when it pertained to the now ‘happy couple’, and thus, everything that she could manage to get her hands on was ultimately destroyed and tossed in the trash, or sat aside to later be burned.
Once she finished going through every box and trashing every picture she could find, she sat back against her bed and looked around her room. She looked at her drab walls which hadn’t been painted since the house was built. Maurice always encouraged her to do something about them because they were ‘light and boring’, never representing her true personality.
He always billed her as the dark and mysterious type, though even she often believed she was far from anything of the like, especially when it came to him because she had always been an open book. At least until recently when Nathan and Sheila returned to town.
She found herself hiding more and more things from him and Nikki and she didn’t like that feeling at all. Considering Nikki had been lying about Oscar for so long, she didn’t feel as bad in lying about Nathan last night or even her growing feelings for Maurice, but when it came to him, she felt like the entire world was crashing in on her. If she was Noah, he was the ark and she was often looking to be saved from herself. Or at least saved from her lifelong habit of terribly bad decisions.
He was the one who came to pick her up at night when she was lost and couldn’t find her way, whether it be to a party at a mutual friend’s house or back home because she had fled too far from the city. He was the one who often said she could do and be anything she chose to be as long as she was hell bent on putting her mind to making it happen and listening to no one who ever told her otherwise, for the sake of their own sanity, and security.
He was the one she knew she should’ve been with from the very beginning, but was so damn afraid of what it would turn into. Would he still be the same person who listened as she bitched and moaned? Would he still think it was cute to see her get so angry? Would he still be there to catch her if she fell, no matter how many stories high she had leaped from?
She couldn’t sit back and contemplate anymore. She knew that it was now or never, that this was a better time than any to explore something with him before someone with a better eye for quality snatched him from right underneath her perfectly shaped nose.
She got up from the floor determined more than ever to make things right. She felt good about herself, and the decisions she was making. For the first time, she didn’t have any regrets in what she had planned to do. And it didn’t hurt that Maurice made her feel appreciated, whereas Nathan, didn’t.
In an effort to relish in her good mood, she went over to the radio on her nightstand and turned up the volume as loud as it would go. Lenny Kravitz’s ‘Lady’ began blaring through the speakers, and Vanessa took pride in the song, dancing to every beat and tune and having memorized the lyrics as a girl, began singing along and playing air guitar as if she was part of his rock band.<
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When Maurice finally returned from his run, he went to the kitchen for a bottle of water – instead of the beer he thought of grabbing first – and tossed his keys on the table. He reached into the fridge, grabbing one from the side and twisting the cap, but stopped when he heard a loud noise booming throughout the house.
He sat the water on the counter and watched it bouncing until it reached the edge. He stopped and pushed it back, then placed the cap back on and set it back inside the fridge. He wiped every bit of sweat from his face and ran his hand down his chest and walked out of the kitchen, waiting in the foyer as he tried to figure out what the noise was, and where exactly it was coming from.
When he realized it was something from Vanessa’s room, and that whatever it was had exceeded the code on the amount of noise that was allowed for the area, he raced up the stairs, listening as the noise turned to music. He paused as Lenny blared down the hall, his favorite song playing no less, and walked up to Vanessa’s door.
He peeked in from the outside and saw her radio shaking on the nightstand from how loud the speakers were. He watched with a salacious grin forming on his lips as she shook her ample ass from one side to the other and carelessly waved her arms in the air as if she were next to dance down a modern day Soul Train line.
She watched reruns as a kid and that show was often her inspiration for various moves. It also helped to form her love of much older songs that even her friends would tease her about listening to when they were younger. It made him laugh to watch her move so wildly. She wasn’t the best dancer in the world, but she also wasn’t the absolute worst. He hadn’t noticed it before because he never paid much attention outside of her dancing with him.
When she spun around on her heels, still playing that air guitar, and saw him staring at her, she didn’t jump this time. She only smiled and held out her hands. “Come dance with me.”
He shook his head and mouthed, “No.”
“Come on, Mo.” She went over to him, still bobbing her head and shaking her body to the music, and pulled him inside her room. “Dance with me. Imagine it’s last night and nothing with Nathan or Sheila ever happened. Imagine it’s just us, like it’s always sort of been.”
She lifted his arm while still holding his hand and spun herself around beneath it. He chuckled and pulled her closer to him, dancing with her even as the music petered out. Their moves became slower and slower until it finally stopped, which happened to fit the next song firing up, though neither of them had ever heard of it before.
Vanessa gulped as she placed her other hand on his shoulder and looked up into his eyes. He represented something special to her, something incredible and magical and unique. He was almost like a radiating mythical creature, but he was real, he was her real. She stared with deep compassion as his eyes were filled with so much love and desire for her. She glanced down at the minimal space between them and he pulled her even closer to eradicate it.
“You’re sweating,” she said.
“That’s what happens when you go for a run in eighty degree weather.”
She looked back at her radio to avoid his piercing gaze. “The music stopped. I don’t know what this is playing now.”
“But we’re still dancing. So does it matter?” He removed her hand from his shoulder and slipped it inside of his. She closed her fingers around the back of it and moved against him the same as he had her. She felt his arousal developing as it pushed between her thighs; she had no urge to pull away, and in fact moved closer. But she knew before they could even think to go any further that she finally had to be completely honest. And not just with him, but with herself as well. “Your room’s a mess,” he said, looking around at the boxes and the stacked pile of trash in her can. “What did you do while I was gone?”
“I did a lot of thinking,” she told him. “And a lot of soul searching. I know that sounds like some kind of new age bullshit from one of Eliza’s bestsellers, but it’s true. I went through the boxes and I finally realized I don’t want to be angry anymore. I don’t want to keep living and dwelling in the past because the only person that past keeps hurting is me. The only reason I go back to it is because I’m familiar with it and it feels safe even if it’s bad for me. But I can’t live my life like that anymore. It’s time for me to move forward and I’d like to try doing that with you.” He nodded, unsure if she truly meant what she had said, or if she was just looking to go back on her word sometime later. She took a deep breath and exhaled between her lips. It cooled his skin, which he appreciated. “I didn’t want to tell you about Nathan, about me seeing him after leaving Sheila because I didn’t want you to be pissed. I feel like I can’t talk to you about things like this anymore because of what we have going. Or what we’re trying to have going, or whatever.”
“You can talk to me about anything, V. That’s what a partnership is all about, not just a friendship. I may not want to hear everything you have to say because I may not like it, especially when it comes to Nathan, but it doesn’t mean that I won’t.”
She swallowed hard, her mouth as dry as cotton, her nerves slightly teetering over the edge, and breathed out again. “Then I want to tell you that we did almost have sex when I went up to see him. It wasn’t a mistake in my mind before I went, but it was by the time I had left. I hadn’t planned on it, but I knew it was a possibility and I went up there anyway because I wanted to, or felt like I needed to or something. Part of me hoped it would happen just to get it over with because it had been building up since I first saw him again. And then another part of me hoped we would be interrupted again.”
He stopped dancing. “Again, which means you almost had sex with him last night when he came to see you in your office?”
She darted her eyes around the room in complete embarrassment. “Yeah.”
“So then, you lied about what happened last night. Something happened between you that didn’t happen today.”
“Only partially because we didn’t actually have sex either time.”
“Because Sheila called and stopped it from happening,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“So what you’re saying is that if she hadn’t have called, you would’ve gone through with it.”
“I don’t know.”
“Alright.” He clinched his teeth and tightened his jaw. “And what about today?”
“Housekeeping showed up.”
“Would you have gone through with it today?”
“No…” She stopped to think. “I don’t think so. But when I realized that he had already been with Sheila the night before and was willing to take me to bed so easily just a few hours later, it made me feel like complete trash.”
“You’re nothing like trash, V,” he said. “You don’t smell and no one wants to toss you out after ten days. You just keep making mistakes because of that stupid mother--” He bit his tongue and hid his anger behind a waning grin.
“You don’t have to do that, keep trying to make me feel better when I know I’ve done shitty things to people. I admire that about you, but I also can’t stand it because it makes you put me on some kind of pedestal that I don’t deserve.”
“You deserve it all the time, especially from me.”
She smiled as he held her tighter, dropping his hand to the center of her back. “I just don’t want to keep lying to you about this. I keep going back to him, even when I don’t want to. But I’m not going to do that anymore.”
“I’m glad to hear it. But we’ve got a legitimate problem if Sheila ever finds out about this.”
“He doesn’t have the balls to tell her. Not that she doesn’t deserve to know, but looking at the big picture, I’m not really even their problem. They’re two destructive people and frankly whatever comes their way is of their own doing. I was just a catalyst. Maybe that’s what Sheila’s always been for me, but I’m done with that now. I want to be with someone who appreciates me. Who loves every part of me through thick and thin, who looks at me like I’m the most bea
utiful person in the world even when I feel that I look like shit. I don’t know any other man on this planet willing to do that for me, except you. So, I’m willing to try, if you’re willing to let me.”
“I’ve always been willing, Vanessa. And I’ve always been waiting for you to say the same thing. No more running from you this time.”
“None, not ever,” she said. “I plan to stay put for however long this takes to get right.”
He took her face in his hands and she dipped her head back, preparing for a deep kiss like the one she had received last night, the one that made her lips ache and her toes curl. She was prepared not to become dizzy this time. He slipped his fingers into the back of her hair and hovered his mouth over hers. She closed her eyes and parted her lips, welcoming his tongue.
And then he smirked and pulled back. “Maybe we should wait on this,” he said. “Take things slower.”
She lifted her head and made a sour face. “How much slower could they possibly get? We’re already moving at a snails’ pace.”
“It took us fifteen years to get here, V. I’m willing to take another fifteen or twenty if it gets us to where we want to be for the rest of our lives.” He moved over to the door and looked back at her. “Are you hungry?”
“A little. I haven’t eaten since brunch.”
“Then I’ll make you some eggs, ceviche, maybe. That way we can sit down and talk about how fast, or slow this needs to go.” He held his hand out for her and she took it without hesitation, heading down to the kitchen as they enjoyed each other’s company for the first time as a potential couple.
Part Thirteen
Sheila was on the phone with a local Samaritan who was more than willing to give up all the goods on any and all information she had been looking for on Professor Adrian Samuels, for just the right price. Considering she was willing to pay anything to keep Vanessa out of her hair and Nathan’s pants for as long as she could, she was damn near desperate to bleed her trust fund dry if that’s what it came down to.
