Miss Independent, Volumes 1 - 4

by Kiki Leach

  “We were done. Once I officially got it out of my system for the second time, and realized that he had already been with you right after leaving me, there was no way in hell I could’ve gone through with much of anything else.”

  Sheila shut her eyes and scoffed, remembering back on the night before.

  No wonder Vanessa was so pissed with her at brunch after learning that she and Nathan had made love.

  Tears filled her eyes as she closed them, and rolled down her cheeks. She felt sick to her stomach, recalling the look on his face when he came back to their room after their big fight earlier in the night. She remembered how lust filled his hazel eyes became when he touched her, how deeply and possessively his tongue ruled her mouth as he kissed her, how aggressively his hips slid between her thighs as she unleashed her inhibitions and allowed him to ride against her. She remembered how his dick caressed both sides of her flesh as he entered her, soft and slow, then quick and steady; how she cried out his name while digging her nails into every part of his caramel skin that she could get to. And how instead of looking into her eyes as she repeatedly asked him to, he kept his eyes closed, so tight she could see the creases rising in the center of his forehead.

  It was about Vanessa, just like everything always seemed to be about her.

  She shook her head and poured herself more wine.

  “Adrian and I had sex,” she blurted out.

  Vanessa’s head snapped up so hard that she almost put a crick in her neck. She furrowed, then arched her brows and reached over to snatch the wine bottle, placing it at her side. “Say, what?!”

  After taking her last gulp, Sheila sat the glass down again and spun her fingers around the rim of it to keep her thoughts steady. “That’s what I came over here to tell you,” she said. “What I was so afraid to say because I wasn’t sure of your reaction. But now that you’ve told me that you almost had sex with Nathan and don’t seem to care just how much it might have actually made things worse between us, I’m almost glad to tell you that I had sex with Adrian.”

  Vanessa twisted in her chair like a pretzel and blinked so rapidly that it was starting to make Sheila nervous. “When the hell did this happen?”

  “Tonight.”

  She dropped back in her chair and wrapped her hand around her forehead. “You and Adrian had sex, tonight. Before you came here?”

  Sheila nodded.

  Vanessa rattled her head back and forth a few times in pure shock and then suddenly started laughing. After a few seconds of repeating the words inside her head and picturing them in bed, arms flapping, heads smacking, legs moving wildly against each other like two fish out of water, she was unable to control herself – laughing so hard and strong, she slapped one hand down on the table and the other on her leg. When she realized she couldn’t stop, she covered her face, then brought her hands down to her mouth to diffuse the sound.

  “Oh my God, I’m sorry,” she said between rampant giggles. She tossed her head back, unable to fully catch her breath. She brought it back down and rested a hand on her chest to feel the sudden incessant beating of her heart. “I’m so sorry, I don’t mean to laugh about it.”

  Sheila was taken aback by the reaction and didn’t know whether to join in on the laughter or be pissed that Vanessa didn’t seem remotely upset about it.

  “Maybe it is funny from the outside looking in, but for me, it’s not--”

  “You’re right, it’s not,” Vanessa said, wiping away the tears that fell in the wake of her laughter. “It’s not funny at all for anybody, but what you did with him tonight is just typical you. You don’t even need a reason for it and for that, I’m not shocked about it, nor do I really care.”

  Stunned, Sheila set back even further in her chair. “You don’t?”

  “No.” Vanessa took a sip of her wine. “I know that you’ve been obsessed with being at the top of everyone’s list since we were kids. But truth be told I’ve got more on my plate to worry about than you screwing yet another man I was involved with first.”

  “I wasn’t with him for that reason, you know.”

  “I gathered as much.” Vanessa watched Sheila as she lowered her eyes. “This started after you originally went to see him about me, didn’t it?”

  “Not then,” she said. “I didn’t even like him when I first met him and thought he was an asshole. Handsome in a nonconventional sort of way, but still an asshole.”

  “He’s never really been known to make the best first impression. That being said, if you two didn’t get along--”

  “I never said we didn’t get along, V, I just said that he came off like an asshole.”

  Vanessa rolled her eyes up. “Whatever. How did that meeting lead to what happened tonight?”

  “The night you came by my hotel room screaming at me about contacting him the first time, I had just come back from Bar Nineteen with Melanie. I checked my phone messages before going inside and like I told you that night, I had one from you, as well as him. After you left, I called him back and he came to the room while Nathan was out at some sports bar, and we talked.” She smiled thinking back on the second time they met. “Nothing happened that night, but I felt something with him that I never felt with Nathan before.”

  “What was it?”

  She looked Vanessa in the eyes and smiled even wider. “He made me feel like I mattered, V. He complimented me on things that Nathan never seemed to even notice or care about. And he was nice to me, genuinely nice. I barely even knew this man and I could still tell that he cared. I don’t know if I’m even explaining this very well, but there was a connection there that night. And then again when he found me on the beach after our big fight…”

  Vanessa could relate. It was the exact way she felt about Maurice.

  “So what’s been happening between you two over the last few weeks is what led to this.”

  “Yes and no,” Sheila told her. “I drove out to Queens tonight to talk to him about Nathan because he refused to come back here after what happened in the Hamptons, and we got into a fight. That’s what led to the actual sex.”

  “Oh, well, the best sex always comes from fighting,” she claimed. “At least if you’re with a man who knows what he’s doing. When he doesn’t, it’s not so much fun.” She sighed. “I’m hoping that if Maurice and I actually manage to work shit out between us that he’ll blow my back out. Unless he blows out Melanie’s first, and then we’ve got a problem.”

  “What?”

  Vanessa glanced at her, then shook her head. “Nothing. They’ve just been hanging out ever since we ended things and it just doesn’t sit right with me.”

  “So, you think they’re screwing?”

  “No. I said unless.”

  “How would you feel about it if they were?”

  “Sheila, just drop it, alright? Once again, I shouldn’t have said a damn thing about it. Especially since you seem to be friends with her ass all of a sudden.”

  She shrugged. “We’re this and that, I don’t know what we are. But if you don’t want to discuss it, fine. We can get back to the subject at hand.” She smirked and reached for the wine bottle. “To be honest I don’t even know if I should ask this after what you’ve told me, or what I’ve done, but now I feel like I have to.”

  “What is it?”

  “When you were together with Nathan back then, before things got so bad that he started--”

  She arched her brows and pinched her lips to the side. “Fuckin’ you?”

  Sheila cleared her throat and tried her best to ignore the question. “Did you ever have sex like that? Wild, crazy, angry? Dirty, sex?”

  Vanessa scrunched her face and readjusted herself in the chair. “Now you’re gettin’ just too damn comfortable over here after all of that wine, calm down.”

  “Sorry, I was just curious. He told me some things about you two being together, but--”

  “Yeah, I bet he did,” she said under her breath.

  Vanessa rested her elbow on the t
able and placed her head in her hand. She stared at Sheila, who looked off into the distance, and sighed. Neither of them seemed to love him in the same way anymore, which led her to believe that there may have not been too much harm in answering a simple question in that regard.

  “I’m not exactly sure what Nathan told you and believe me, I don’t ever want to hear what it was. But from my experience in us being together, we were never like that. We fought of course, everyone knows that, but it never led to sex after, good or bad. That’s what he had you for anyway, right?” She snatched the bottle again and poured the wine into her glass until there was none left.

  Sheila shrank down in her chair and winced. “Sorry. Again.”

  “It’s, whatever… Despite my constant picking at you, mostly because it just makes me feel better about everything, I don’t really care all that much anymore.”

  “Nathan still seems to. Which is why he came here first instead of coming to see me.”

  “Does it really matter though?” Vanessa lifted her glass and fell back in her chair. “You had sex with Adrian while you two are still engaged, which in my opinion says a hell of a lot more about your relationship than you might be willing to admit to yourself, and maybe even to him.” She drank back her wine, then pulled the glass away from her face and dipped her head back over the chair.

  “I want to admit it to him,” said Sheila. “Ever since I left Adrian’s, I’ve been wrestling with whether or not I should, just to put us both out of our misery. And I think I will, tonight. Just pull the trigger and end it once and for all when he finally decides to come back to the hotel.”

  Vanessa readjusted in her chair and stretched her neck. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “To tell him tonight?” she asked.

  “To tell him at all.” She set her glass back down on the table and rested her hands in her lap.

  Sheila sat back in shock. “After everything that just blew up in your face with Mo because of the secrets you kept from each other, I would’ve thought you’d be the first to agree with me.”

  “Under normal and very, very different circumstances, I would completely agree. Especially if I thought that telling Nathan anything would do any good. But after what happened here tonight, I’m positive that it’ll only make things worse for all of us. He won’t just laugh this off like I did – the man will go out of his way to destroy you both until there is absolutely nothing left to grind into the ground.”

  “Vanessa, I know that Nathan can be a hot head about a lot of things when it comes to you and other men. But I don’t think he’d actually go that far with something that had to do with me and another man.”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t?”

  “No. And after the way he’s been with me lately, I don’t think--”

  “Look,” she exclaimed. “Maybe before tonight, he wouldn’t give a damn because he’d find random pussy to give his dick a quick jerk in the meantime. But I don’t think that’ll be the case anymore.” She spun her legs around the side of the chair to face Sheila head on. “Did he ever tell you the exact reason he brought Adrian out to the Hamptons?”

  “I knew that it had to do with you and Maurice.”

  “Yeah, but did he give you a specific reason for it?”

  “No.”

  She tapped her fingers against her forehead and rocked back and forth in the chair a few times before sliding her fingers back into her hair and steadying herself again.

  “He caught us screwing in my bedroom upstairs.”

  Sheila guffawed. “What? When?”

  “I don’t want to go into specifics about it because they’re not important. But the bottom line is that seeing us ‘wrapped up in each other’ as he put it is what drove him to call Adrian and make sure he was out there in the Hamptons with us, along with my parent’s. It’s also what led to everything that happened here tonight. I didn’t want to go into this either because I thought it could all be avoided. But shit went down between him and Maurice, who dropped by without notice, and it got bad. Really bad as you could tell the minute you walked in my front door, to the point that I finally had to call the cops and have both of their asses arrested for disturbing the peace, and assault.”

  Her mouth dropped and she opened her eyes wide. “They’re in jail?!”

  “As we speak,” said Vanessa. “Fists went flying and things got bloody between them like I’d never seen before. So I asked to have them locked up for the night because even in handcuffs, they couldn’t stop going at each other like two idiots who needed a good smack upside the head with a leather belt.”

  Sheila brought her hand up to her mouth in shock and whispered, “Damn.”

  “Yeah. Now do you see why you can’t tell him the truth just yet? The way he looked at me tonight before they shoved him into the back of that police car told me that something was already coming. I don’t know what or when or how, but I’m convinced that it is. Now, if you tell him about Adrian on top of all that? It’ll further crush his puny little ego and we are all fucked up the ass with lead pipes and no lube.”

  She thought for a moment, knowing the amount of harm that could come from Nathan’s wrath if she added to his pain, and nodded. “Alright. I’ll keep it to myself for now.”

  “Good.”

  “But you tell me what I’m supposed to do in the meantime.”

  “For starters, you could try not sleeping with Adrian again. Or if you do, keep it under wraps so that no one else finds out about it – especially Harold, otherwise it’ll be blasted across every paper from here to Hong Kong.”

  “And what about Nathan?” asked Sheila. “How am I supposed to continue on keeping that up?”

  “I don’t know. When he gets out, he’ll go back to you first, more than likely expecting you to stroke his ego like always so just do that, I guess.”

  She scowled. “I don’t know if I can give into that like I used to, V. After being with Adrian tonight, there’s not much about Nathan that I look forward to stroking anymore.”

  “Yeah, well, join the club.”

  They looked at each other and laughed, genuinely. For the first time since returning to the city, Sheila felt that spark of friendship bubbling up between them that had been lost so long ago. She wasn’t sure if Vanessa felt it too, or if her feeling it was just the buzz from booze, but she didn’t care. If this was as close as she was ever going to get in having her best friend back in her life again, she was going to take it and treasure every second of it for all it was worth.

  Vanessa on the other hand wasn’t so sure. When she recognized the sincere moment happening between them, reminding her of times long before she felt the sting of Sheila’s betrayal, she suddenly felt uncomfortable and was eager for her to finally leave.

  “Um, I don’t know exactly what time it is, but I’ve got to find enough of it to sleep off this bottle, so…”

  Sheila nodded sheepishly. “Understood. I obviously kept you up long after you should’ve been in bed for work. Sorry.” She stood up quick, but felt slightly lightheaded and woozy. Grabbing onto her head with one hand and the edge of the table with the other, she stumbled over her feet and fell back into the chair.

  Startled, Vanessa sat up. “Are you going to be able to get back to the hotel in just a cab like that?”

  “I was worse than this after Bar Nineteen.”

  “Worse than nearly falling on your ass?”

  Taking a few deep breaths and trying not to think too hard about it, Sheila placed one hand on the table and the other on the head of the chair and slowly stood up again. Feeling more balanced this time, she took one step to the right and another to the left. But before even making it out of the kitchen, she found herself tumbling through the door and toppling to the floor like an old school Jenga set. Her purse went flying out of her hand, as did one shoe that nearly knocked Vanessa back in the face. After landing, the door to the kitchen swung back, smacking her in the side of her stomach. She groaned in pain an
d reached down to stroke her ribs.

  “Shit.” Vanessa got up from her chair and went over to her side. “Are you alright?” she asked, taking her by the arm and dragging her around to sit up.

  Sheila grabbed her head and side again, and nodded. “Cheap wine doesn’t normally hit me like this, but I haven’t eaten since this afternoon, so that may be a factor too.”

  Vanessa smacked Sheila’s hand against the floor and glowered. “After I saw you tumbling like a block of Legos, I thought for a split second about being generous enough to offer you space on the couch for the night. But even drunk, you still can’t stop yourself from being such a bitch.”

  “How does what I said about your wine being cheap make me a bitch, Vanessa? It IS cheap.”

  “It doesn’t matter if it was two dollars or two hundred and sixty. You don’t go around telling people that their shit is cheap and not worthy of you while simultaneously drinking every last drop of it! It’s rude as hell and makes you look like a hypocrite – a word I’m pretty sure you’ll need to look up in the dictionary once you’re sober.”

  Sheila whipped her head around and snarled. “Why don’t you scream all of that a little louder, V? I don’t think my eardrums heard you in Tokyo.”

  Vanessa shoved her aside and jumped to her feet. “This is exactly why we’ll never be friends again,” she told her, “and I’m completely good with that.”

  She stepped over Sheila, just missing her hand by a few inches, and headed into the foyer.

  Sheila twisted her body around and shouted, “Where are you going?”

  “Upstairs to bed,” Vanessa answered.

  “You’re just going to leave me here?”

  “Hell yeah! Because I don’t give a damn what you do or where you go from here. Crawl out the door for all I care. I’m tired as hell and I’m just about done with everything this evening, your ass included.”

  As she stomped off and headed upstairs, Sheila tried rolling over to her knees, but was still so dizzy, that she fell right back down on her ass. Dissatisfied, she straightened her legs and dropped her hands to her lap.