“This is for you, birthday boy. You make sure that you call me.” With a wink, she turned and walked away.
“Hmph! Hmph! Hmph! I definitely think that her ass is asking a question,” Jacob said, referring to how her butt was shaped like an upside down question mark. “How about I play you for her number?”
Lyfe shook his head.
“Why? We all know that you’re not going to call her.”
“Give it a rest,” Lyfe warned. Being the youngest, he was used to being picked on and harassed; but tonight he really wasn’t in the mood. For two days, he’d been doing everything he could to get that damn interview out of his head. But nothing was working.
Corona Mae, or Chloe as she was calling herself nowadays, was getting married. No big deal. He was happy for her. He should be happy. He would be happy—eventually—as soon as Leanne brought him enough beers to get a good buzz going.
They claimed a nearby table and stool and ordered hot wings and fries. Royce announced that he and Lyfe would play the winner in the next game. For the next hour, Lyfe watched the game without seeing, listened to his brothers’ jokes without hearing, and drank his beer without tasting it. All that played in his head was the image of Corona Mae smiling at Hollywood’s most bankable star like she had finally found The One.
He tipped up his fourth drink, hoping that this bottle would be the one to dull the persistent and growing ache in the center of his chest. It didn’t.
Corona had definitely developed into quite a looker. She was no longer the seventeen-year-old teenager engrained in his memory. For years he wondered what he would say or do if their paths ever crossed again. Fourteen years later, he still didn’t have an answer. It looked like he really didn’t need one either. They lived in two different worlds.
“C’mon. You’re going to have to try to cheer up,” Jacob said, walking over to Lyfe. “This is supposed to be a birthday party, remember?”
“Oh, yeah? So where are my gifts?” Lyfe challenged.
The brother’s started whistling and looking all around like bees were buzzing about their heads.
“Cheap bastards,” Lyfe mumbled.
Suddenly they all broke out into smiles and guffaws. Dorian stepped forward and looped his arm around Lyfe’s neck. “I have a gift for you.”
The cocksure smile that covered his brother’s face made Lyfe curious and suspicious.
“Since you seem to have it for a Banks girl. Maybe all this time, you’ve just been looking at the wrong one?”
“What?”
Dorian grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around toward the front door as Tess Banks strolled into the place, looking like a million bucks and waaaay too much like her sister.
Chapter 6
November 30. Lyfe’s birthday.
After all these years, Corona had never forgotten the date. It had become a private tradition for her to stop and wonder what Lyfe was doing, who he was seeing and whether he was happy. And, more importantly, whether he had found it in his heart to forgive her. While riding in the back of a Maybach, Corona removed her reading glasses and stared out of the tinted windows. In the years since she had transplanted to New York, she had never really gotten used to the fast pace of the concrete jungle. She didn’t know how anyone really got used to it. People were always in a rush to get to God knows where, and there was rarely a smile to be seen anywhere. It was a far cry from Thomason, where everybody knew everyone else’s business. Smiles were given out like Halloween candy; and if you stood still, you’d swear you could hear the grass growing in everyone’s front yard.
Corona closed her eyes, and a memory of home materialized. She remembered how every Monday the scent of fresh baked bread would fill the entire house. Tuesday it would be the pie of the week that would get most of the family in trouble when they tried to sneak slices before dinner. Wednesday it would be some mouthwatering cake that would always be handed out after Bible study. Baking wasn’t her mother’s only talent. From pot roast to collard greens, her mother was a master in the kitchen.
Tugging in a deep breath, Corona was almost certain that she could smell her momma’s cooking right now. So much so, that she almost clicked her heels three times. How could a place so far away suddenly seemed so close?
An image of seventeen-year-old Lyfe tugging on his oversized tuxedo surfaced and guilt’s spidery fingers crept up her spine and then settled on her shoulders. She wasn’t supposed to see him before the wedding, but her nerves were so knotted together that she thought if she just snuck a peek, it would calm her down.
It hadn’t.
Corona slipped on her reading glasses and turned another page.
December 23, 1998
Dear Diary,
It’s been a week since my parents walked in on me and Lyfe. And so much is changing so fast. Just this morning, I was standing in the middle of my bedroom, staring at my reflection while Momma carefully looped what seemed like the millionth pearl button on the back of her old wedding gown.
“Oh, just look at you.” Momma sighed. “My dress fits you perfectly.”
Did it? I thought the virginal white gown was cutting off my air supply.
Not to mention, it felt like it weighed a ton.
“C’mon, sweetheart. There’s no reason to make such a long face. Everything is going to be fine. You’ll see.”
“Fine?” I twisted around to stare at her incredulously. “It’s a shotgun wedding. Daddy is forcing us to get married!”
“Lower your voice,” Momma commanded with a pinched face. “My goodness. I’m not deaf.”
“Well, we have to do something, Momma. This isn’t the seventeenth century. I don’t have to get married just because I’m not a virgin anymore.”
She flinched and, for a second, the same look of disappointment that had seized Daddy’s face these past six days flickered across her face.
I gasped and then twisted back around toward the mirror, this time with tears glossing my eyes.
“Now, sweetheart,” Momma tried again. “Your father is just doing what he thinks is right in this situation. He’s a preacher in this town and—”
“So I have to get married in order to save his reputation, is that it? I got to tell you, Mom. That’s pretty jacked up.”
“Stop it,” she snapped and then took a step back. “I won’t have you talk about your father in that tone of voice. You will show and give him the proper respect.” Momma took a couple of deep breaths before her face and voice softened. “Look, baby. You know that we love you and that we’re just doing what we feel is best for you.”
I pressed my lips together, but it didn’t stop them from trembling. In the mirror I saw that my response just added stress lines to Momma’s face.
“I don’t understand,” Momma said, shaking her head. “I thought that you loved Lyfe.”
“I do,” I answered instantly. “It’s just that … this is all happening so fast.”
“Sort of how things just happened last week?”
I didn’t like having my weak explanation of what happened between me and Lyfe being tossed back at me like that. I’d broken the golden rule about not having boys in the house when my parents weren’t home. In truth, we’d been breaking that rule a hell of a lot more since the beginning of our senior year. Suddenly we had new emotions and hormones that were just raging out of control.
My parents had to have sensed it. They were always trying to talk to me about the birds and the bees.
Daddy took to the task literally and got lost in breaking down the whole bee and flower pollination explanation. It ended up being the longest two hour talk of my entire life.
“Corona Mae,” Momma said, tilting up my chin. “Don’t you want to marry him?”
“I … do,” I answered softly.
Finally a smile exploded across Momma’s face. “You love him and you want to marry him—so what’s the problem?”
“I … I … “
“It’s just wedding jitters,” sh
e diagnosed proudly. “You’ll be fine once you become Mrs. Lyfe Alton.” Momma winked. “Now wait right here. I want to give you something.” With that, she turned and rushed out of the bedroom.
“Mrs. Lyfe Alton,” I repeated, staring at my reflection.
Tess spoke up, “You don’t look so good, Mrs. Alton.”
I cut a look across the room to where my ten-year-old sister sat, looking annoyed for having been forced into a dress when it wasn’t a Sunday. But then I realized that I needed an ally. “Tess, I need for you to do me a favor.”
“It’ll cost you five dollars,” Tess said, jutting out a hand.
“I haven’t even told you what it is yet,” I complained.
“Doesn’t matter. Five dollars.”
I stared her down.
“You want to make it ten?”
“Fine. Five dollars.” I yanked up my yards of fabric and stormed over to my top chest of drawers. “Turn around,” I commanded.
Tess huffed but quickly did as I told her.
Once I was sure that my sister wasn’t peeking, I kneeled and reached for the loose plank beside the drawers and withdrew my stash of saved allowance. I moved quickly and came up with the five dollars to bribe my sister.
“Here.”
Tess turned back around and greedily snatched the money from my hand. “All right. What can I do for you?”
“Go find Lyfe and tell him to come and meet me in the basement.”
“Corona Mae, it’s bad luck for you to see the groom before the wedding,” Tess warned as she tried to pull me back toward her bedroom.
“Please spare me all those foolish old wives’ tales,” I said, gathering up the yards of lace so that I could move faster. I had to hurry before Momma returned to fulfill her promise to give me something old, something new and something blue.
All I knew at that moment was that everything was just moving so fast. The beautiful moment that me and Lyfe had shared before my parents had busted in now had me barreling toward one of the fastest shotgun marriages in history. Seven days. I really hadn’t had much time to digest everything that was happening, so I could only imagine what Lyfe must be feeling.
There was a huge difference between wanting to sleep with your girlfriend and having to marry her. But by the time Daddy got through preaching fire and brimstones, I had an engagement ring and a wedding date.
I hadn’t even seen him, let alone talked to him, since he ran out my parents’ house naked. Of course I hadn’t been able to do much talking to my father either. There had been a lot of shouting and ordering me around, but no talking. Momma assured me that things would work themselves out after the wedding and that Daddy was just hurt and disappointed.
I never meant to hurt him—or anyone for that matter. There was a lot going on with me. My body. My emotions. It was all just so complicated.
“You’re making a mistake,” Tess continued, rushing behind me in her best Sunday dress.
“Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. Just do me this one favor,” I said, reaching the side door.
Tess rolled her eyes and settled her hands on her pencil-thin hips. “Sure, Batman. I’ll jump right on it.”
I placed my hands on my sister’s shoulders and looked her in the eye. “Tell him it’s important.”
“And how is he going to meet you there? Daddy is watching him like a hawk in case he’s thinking about bolting.”
“Please. Just do it,” I begged. “Lyfe will figure something out.” I turned my sister around by her shoulders and then scooted her out the back door with a reverent prayer.
Ten minutes later, I had damn near paced a hole into the basement’s concrete flooring. Did Tess deliver the message? Was he coming? Hell, I wasn’t even sure what I was going to say, let alone how I was going to say it. Maybe when I saw him, it would all come to me. I just knew it.
“Corona Mae?”
I jerked at the sound of Lyfe’s low whisper. Suddenly, my heart felt as if it was trying to escape through my throat.
“Corona, are you down here?”
“Over here,” I croaked.
Lyfe crept down the darkened staircase and looked around. The moment his eyes landed on me, he froze. “My God.” His gaze slowly caressed me from head to toe. “You look beautiful.”
I flushed. Until that moment, I had thought I was drowning in a sea of fabric. But now, seeing his reaction, I started to feel beautiful. “Thanks.” I whispered and then took a moment to assess him. His tall frame filled out his tuxedo rather nicely. With broad shoulders, a toned body, and still a bit of a baby face, I knew that Lyfe was on the cusp of being GQ fine, just like the other men in his family.
But if I was forced to pick my favorite feature, it would definitely be his eyes. His dark, soul-searing eyes were always filled with such love and honesty. There were times when he would just look at me and I would melt like a snowball being hurled toward the sun.
He walked down the rest of the staircase and made a beeline toward me. “Uhm. Should we be meeting like this before the wedding? I thought it was considered bad luck?”
For the second time, I waved off that foolishness. “I wanted … needed to talk to you.” I clasped my hands together and started wringing my fingers. “I wanted to see where your head was at with all of this.” I locked eyes with him. “You know, with my father forcing you to marry me.”
Lyfe opened his mouth, but then quickly closed it.
My brain seized on his hesitation as confirmation that he was also having second thoughts. “You don’t want to do this,” I concluded.
“No. No. I didn’t say that,” he said, quickly trying to cover his initial reaction. He even grabbed my tangled hands.
“We don’t have to go through with it,” I said. “I doubt that my father will really shoot you if we don’t get married.”
“Ha! You’re talking to a guy who had bullets whizzing by his ass just a few nights ago. He’ll shoot. Believe me … and the next time he won’t miss.” He laughed.
But did he want to get married? That was the question that I was having trouble getting past my lips. What if he didn’t, but said that he did—or worse, said that he did and meant it.
My mother’s dress was slowly suffocating me. I pulled my hands back and then pressed them against my nervous stomach. This was all my father’s doing. It had nothing to do with how we felt about each other or whether this was the right thing to do. It had everything to do with his “hurt and disappointment.” Hell, I didn’t even know what I wanted. What about school and college or getting a job and finding our own place? Seventeen was too young to get married, wasn’t it?
“Corona?” Lyfe took hold of my hands and then brought them up to his lips. “Are you all right? Is something troubling you?”
“Well … it’s … “ I looked back up into his inquiring eyes and my tongue began to swell up in my throat. If we went through with this, it could possibly ruin his life—ruin both our lives. “It’s just … you know … wedding jitters. You know?”
Lyfe nodded and then drew me into his arms. “It’s going to be alright. It’s not like getting married is the worst thing in the world. We’ve been together for a long time now, right?”
“Right.” That was hardly the most romantic thing a man could say on his wedding day. But what did I expect when he hadn’t technically proposed? My father produced a gun, Lyfe came up with a ring, and now here we were.
The basement door crept open and I nearly jumped out my skin. Had my father found us? Was he about to march us back upstairs with our hands up in the air?
Tess poked her head inside. “Y’all better come on. People are starting to look for you. Momma is trying to keep Daddy from his rifle cabinet.”
Lyfe’s eyes bulged. “We better go!”
“Oh … all right then,” I said, disappointed. My stomach looped into sailor’s knots. In a few minutes, we were going to be married.
Before racing to the door, Lyfe smiled and brushed a kiss against my upturned face. “
I’ll meet you at the altar,” he whispered.
I tried not to drown in his cognac gaze, but it was hard. I did love him—had loved him for as long as I could remember. Instinctively, I reached out and cupped the side of his face. “I love you.”
A smile exploded across Lyfe’s face. “I love you, too,” he said and stole another kiss. “Always have … always will.”
“Oh, brother. Get a room.” Tess rolled her eyes.
“There you two are.” Royce Alton poked his head in above Tess. “Do you know that the whole wedding party has been out here looking for you two?”
“Hey, what’s going on?” Hennessey’s head joined the stack of heads that were peering past the door. “What are y’all doing down here?”
Lyfe heaved out a long, frustrated breath. “Damn, y’all. We were just talking.”
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