“I would like that very much,” David responded happily.
“Will the two of you be having dessert tonight?” the waiter asked as he reappeared.
“Yes,” David replied quickly to the waiter. To Katrina he said, “This just gives me an excuse to keep you out with me longer.”
Chapter Twelve
After being dropped off at her car, Aujanae went straight to her mother’s house to pick up her son. When she got there, however, she realized she was too emotionally drained to handle Billy Jr. She decided it would be best if she left him there. She cleared it with her mother, who was all too thrilled to have her grandson spend the entire night with her. Aujanae praised God for the blessing of her mother and headed home.
On the drive to her house she decided to call William at work. She wanted to know what it would now feel like to hear his voice—the voice of the man who had been lying to her and more than likely cheating on her. She attempted his cell phone first, but when it went straight to voice mail, she assumed he had turned it off because he was in a meeting of some sort. So instead of leaving a message on his voice mail, she decided to call his assistant and see if she could pull him out of whatever he was doing for just a moment. She was sure this move would totally catch William by surprise. The only time she ever did this before was when she went into labor with Billy Jr.
“USA Bank. This is Analeisa. How can I help you?”
“Hi Analeisa. This is Aujanae Rucker.”
“Hello, Ms. Rucker. It’s been a little while since I have heard your voice. William must be pretty sick if he has to have you call to check in for him. When he called off work this morning, I was kind of surprised that he would actually take the day off, even though he is sick. Tell your husband not to worry about what’s going on here at the office. We can manage one day without him. He just needs to concentrate on resting and getting better.”
Aujanae was initially confused by Analeisa’s statement, but it quickly hit her like a ton of bricks. William had taken the day off by telling them at the office that he was sick. It did not take her as long to figure out where he went when he left the house this morning, however.
“Uh . . . you know what, Analeisa? You’re right. I am going to hang up this phone and tell Billy he can just wait until he returns tomorrow to discuss the dealings of the office. I will take good care of my husband, and I promise to send him back to you all in the morning.” Aujanae quickly disconnected the call.
“Wow! This day just keeps getting better and better,” Aujanae said out loud sarcastically.
To her surprise, when she arrived home, William’s car was in the driveway. Aujanae was stunned. Could it possibly be true? Maybe, just maybe, William was home from work sick and had not been with his little hoochie mama.
No. No. She was not going to do this to herself this time. She was not going to allow her heart to keep her naïve and in the dark. She was going in this house, knowing that her husband was involved with another woman, refusing to be lied to anymore.
Aujanae entered the house and found William sitting in the family room on the sofa, flipping through channels on the television. He turned when he heard her enter.
“Hey, baby. Where have you been? You didn’t mention you were going out today.”
“I could ask you the same thing. You said you would be home from work early, but I wasn’t expecting you this early.”
William got up from the couch and stood in front of Aujanae as she stood in front of the kitchen island.
“I missed you. Since we didn’t get to spend yesterday together like we usually do, I found myself longing for your company, so I left the job early.”
Wow! Aujanae thought. Her husband stood right in front of her, lying through his teeth, while she could smell the other’s woman fragrance all over him. When he reached for her, she recoiled.
William lifted an eyebrow, wondering what could possibly be bothering Aujanae. He knew the possibilities, but could not fathom how she could really know anything. He began to play things cautiously.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart? Have you had a rough day?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Aujanae answered cryptically. “You smell . . . nice. Is that a new brand of cologne you’re wearing?”
William’s heart skipped a beat and his breath caught in his throat. Aujanae knew something. He could hear it in the foreign tone she was using. The woman standing before him did not sound like his wife. He was totally caught off guard by Aujanae’s question and her demeanor. Since he was not sure how to handle her stance just yet, he decided to defer.
“Where’s B.J., baby?”
Aujanae stared directly into William’s eyes. There she saw confusion and fear. These were not emotions she was accustomed to seeing in her husband, but she recognized them still the same. She decided to play along with his little game of diversion for just a few moments to see how much more he would lie to her.
“He’s at my mother’s house. I took him over there while I went to have lunch with Maleeka and Katrina, my friends from church. After lunch I decided I needed a little time to myself so instead of picking him up, I asked Mom if she minded keeping him overnight.” Aujanae kept her voice as even as she could, considering how angry she was becoming as she continued to breathe the other woman’s fragrance.
“Oh. Sounds cool. Did you have a good time with the ladies?” William asked, still a little nervous about Aujanae’s whole aura.
Aujanae had had enough. It was time for him to answer some questions. She walked into the family room, trying to put some distance between herself and the sickening scent on her husband. He followed closely on her heals, though. She was granted a little reprieve when she went to sit on the sofa and he chose the loveseat instead.
Aujanae crossed her legs and began bouncing her left calf up and down as she stretched her arms across the back of the sofa.
“It’s interesting you should ask that question, honey. My time with the ladies was . . . fascinating, for lack of a better term. I’ll tell you all about it in a minute. But first, tell me, how long have you been home?”
William was finding out that guilt was a horrible emotion. It made the senses overly inflamed when they did not necessarily have to be. William, knowing what he had been up to for over a year, sat with the sick feeling that his wife knew something simply because there was something to know. But how could she have found out the truth? He had been very careful to keep his tracks covered. He told absolutely no one about him and April’s affair, so no one could have told her other than April, and he was fairly certain she had not said a word. The most lax he had been had been in the past two days by going to see April on a Sunday, the day he was supposed to be off limits to her, and today when he called in sick to work.
William knew he needed to say something to Aujanae. His hesitation was surely making an already uncomfortable situation even more awkward.
“I . . . uh . . . came home about an hour or two ago. Like I said, I missed you. I told them at work that I was going to take a half personal day so I could come home to you.”
William’s lie sounded sick even to himself. He hoped it was only because he knew the truth, not because he was being a terrible liar right now.
“So you went to work for half a day, and then came straight home? Is that what you’re saying, Billy?” Aujanae sounded like a district attorney on cross examination.
“What is with this third degree, Aujanae? Why are you speaking to me like I’m a child who missed curfew?” William’s guilt and nervousness was now turning to frustration because he felt himself losing total control of this situation that was obviously brewing with his wife.
Aujanae sat quietly for a few moments, just staring at William through eyes that had been reduced to mere slits. She had never before been a violent woman, but something inside of her made her want to pick up the lamp from the end table and hurl it at his head, hoping to hit him in his lying mouth.
“How, Billy? How can you
sit there and just keep stringing those lies together?” Aujanae’s voice sounded foreign even to herself. Anger had taken up residence in her bones and it propelled her to want to hurt and humiliate William as she had been hurt and humiliated. She, however, would do it with her words instead of her body.
“What are you talking abou—” William again tried to deflect Aujanae’s dead-on-point observation.
“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare trying to make me think I’m crazy. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Now, I want you to tell me exactly where you were today, where you were yesterday, and who you were with during those times.” She did not yell, but there was viciousness in her voice that left no uncertainty about how she felt at that moment.
It was now time for William to stare at Aujanae. His stomach knotted and flipped. He began to perspire from his armpits and upper lip. His distress was visible and palpable. He was lost as to what to do or what to say right then. It was apparent that Aujanae knew he had lied, but was he really ready to concede, to admit that he had been cheating on her for fourteen months? Was he ready to openly destroy her with what he had been doing secretly for more than a year?
William got up from his spot on the loveseat and attempted to move next to Aujanae on the sofa, but she moved when he sat down. She then stood hovering over him, glowering at him with spirited contempt.
“Answer my questions, Billy.” Her voice was filled with all the malice she felt inside.
“Aujanae, I don’t know what you are talking about, I told you I was with David yesterday, and you saw me this morning leave here going to work,” William responded weakly.
“Well, tell me this then: Do you have more than one cousin named David Mathis that lives here in Phoenix? Because the one I thought you were talking about took Katrina Hartsfield to a movie and to dinner right after church yesterday.”
William literally doubled over from the blow his wife had just delivered. He clutched his stomach as he hunched forward on the sofa. Before he could right himself from the first shot, she distributed another.
“Oh, and the job you say I saw you leave for this morning, told me just a few moments ago that you called in sick today. By the way, Analeisa says she’s proud of you for taking the day off to take care of yourself, you lying skunk!”Aujanae yelled.
William knew the jig was up for sure now. Aujanae had hard evidence against him. There was not a thing he could say to refute what she used to counter his deceit, so he sat quiet, embarrassed, and afraid.
Aujanae had actually exhausted herself from her mini tirade. She dropped onto the loveseat and placed her face in her hands. She needed a place to rest her heavy head, which carried the weight of her heart. She sat like that for three or four minutes, neither she nor William speaking a syllable to each other. She was the first to end the hush.
“I want you to tell me who she is, and I want you to tell me every gritty and grimy detail of your affair.” Aujanae’s voice was calm, but not the least bit peaceful. She oozed such seriousness that William began explaining immediately.
“Her name is April Colston, and we have been seeing each other for fourteen months,” he said softly and contritely.
It was now Aujanae’s turn to feel the gut shot. She had suspected it for weeks now, had known it for sure after spending the afternoon with her friends, and had it signed and sealed when she called his job. Somehow, though, hearing it from his lips made it rawer than she realized she was prepared for. She jumped from her seat and ran to the half bath to vomit her misery.
William sat glued to his seat, tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. The guilt in his chest was threatening to pound itself into a heart attack. The pain between his eyes made him dizzy enough to believe he was about to have a stroke. The hammering in his ears had to surely be a symptom of a seizure or brain aneurism. And if any one or all of those medical malfunctions had occurred, they could not have made him feel any worse than he did at that moment. In fact, William believed they may be a relief compared to the agony he was going through.
The tears now fell from his eyes, landing on the caramel-colored carpet and forming a wet spot. How ironic that on the very day he ended his affair, his wife would find out about it. Under normal circumstances, William would pray when he was in this kind of misery. If there was ever such a time before, he could not remember it, but misery in general usually led him into prayer. Somehow, though, he felt that talking to God about this mess he had created would be blasphemous. He assumed Jesus was shaking His head at His child in censure.
Aujanae sat in the bathroom on the toilet with the top down after her dry heaving session was over. She wet several paper towels, one after the other, to cool her face, but they kept falling apart from the extra moisture her unyielding tears created.
She could still hear William’s voice ringing in her ears, telling her he had been cheating on her for as long as their son had been alive. She told him she wanted to hear all the gory details, but she fled the room the moment he uttered the small amount of information he had shared.
April Colston, Aujanae recalled. That sounds like a name that could belong to the pretty woman at church. Aujanae conjured up an image of the beautiful woman, and her heart sank further into her shoes.
How could I ever compete with a woman so stunning? she thought.
Just as quickly, she told herself out loud, “Why should I have to compete with her or any other woman? If William was not satisfied with me, then he should have never married me.”
Hearing her own declaration gave her a little strength, at least enough to want to go out there and ask William if April Colston was indeed the pretty woman at church.
Aujanae was a bit taken aback by the scene she found in the family room when she returned. William was kneeling in front of the sofa looking like he was praying. In her anger, she said a silent prayer as well. She prayed that God was not listening to a word her raggedy husband had to say. Aujanae began speaking before he had concluded his conversation with God.
“Is April Colston the woman who has been sitting near us at church for the past few weeks? Is she the one who had the confrontation with the usher last week? Is she the woman you were staring at yesterday in church?”
William remained on the floor for another twenty seconds, as if finishing his prayer. He then rose slowly and sat on the sofa. Aujanae approached him and stood directly in front of him, awaiting an answer.
William continued to hesitate, unsure of just how much he should tell his wife about April and their affair. He looked up with bloodshot eyes into a pair of eyes that mirrored his own. It was the hurt, misery, and anger in those eyes that told him what he should do.
“Aujanae, sit down, please.”
Aujanae continue to stand, glaring at her husband. Her emotional state really did have her exhausted, but she wanted to continue to stand simply because he had asked her to sit. Fatigue won out, however, and she sat.
William took a deep breath. “Yes. April is the woman at church. She joined the church in order to see you, the woman she deemed as her competition.”
Aujanae shook her head as the sick feeling in her stomach returned. This time she stayed put, however. She willed herself to hear the rest of this horrible tale that had now become a part of her life.
“Competition! Funny you should use that word. While I was in the bathroom, I wondered about her being my competition. Then I wised up and realized I am your wife, not some snotty little chick you are just killing time with. Therein lies the difference between me being just your girlfriend and me being your wife. When you decided that you wanted to marry me, you made a legal and supposedly spiritual declaration that there was no one who could compete with me. Your decision should have eliminated all competition, as I was supposed to be your one and only. That’s what marriage is, William.”
William visibly flinched at Aujanae’s very appropriate reprimand. Though his actions may not have shown it in recent months, William was a saved man, a man who believ
ed in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. At that very moment, he felt as if he had received a tongue-lashing from the Trinity themselves.
“Aujanae, ‘I’m sorry’ seems so inappropriate right now, but that is all that comes to mind. I don’t know what else to say—other than it just so happens that I ended things with April this very afternoon.”
Was that supposed to make me feel better? Aujanae wondered silently. Though she may not have said it aloud, the look on her face spoke volumes.
“I know that doesn’t change what has already happened. I just wanted you to know it’s over now,” William said meekly.
“So that is where you spent your morning, with your little whore?”
“Yes,” he replied in a raspy voice.
“Did you have sex with her this morning? Is that her scent that you brought home with you?”
“Yes,” he answered again, contritely.
Aujanae really wanted to run screaming from the room, from the house even, but she forced herself to sit and find out the grimy details, as she had asked for them previously. She continued to question William as the sound of her shattering heart roared loudly in her ears.
“Why did you end it with her, if that is even the truth, and still have sex with her?”
William was more uncomfortable than he could ever recall being before in his life. He imagined that sitting in front of a firing squad would be less excruciating than sitting before his wife, telling her all about how he betrayed her, her trust, and their marriage vows.
“Honestly, it was not my intention for it to end today. April gave me an ultimatum, her or you, and I chose you.”
William was not trying to win points with Aujanae; he was just giving her the facts. He felt so bad about the situation that he would not blame her if she never spoke to him again. In fact, in light of the pain this conversation was obviously causing her and the humiliation and guilt it was causing him, he almost wished she would stop talking to him forever.
Several more seconds of silence stretched between the couple. Tears began to silently fall onto Aujanae’s cheeks. William saw them, and his waterfall started again as well.
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