by Tracy Brown
“I’m not a battered woman,” Camille corrected, slightly offended. This nigga thought he had her all figured out.
“Not physically maybe. But emotionally, verbally probably, he batters you.”
Camille listened, hearing the truth in what Eli was saying to her.
“And he has you living lavishly and wearing big fur coats and bigger diamonds. So you deal with it.” He sipped his Fanta. “I think—and correct me if I’m wrong—that after a while, when you deal with shit like that for so long, it lowers your self-esteem. You start to forget that there’s more to you than a pretty face and pretty clothes.”
Camille thought maybe Eli was on to something after all.
“So, when I saw you that night standing there looking so beautiful and so upset at the same time, my heart went out to you, first of all.” He popped a French fry in his mouth. “You were mad! And even though you were pissed off, I thought you looked so much better than his side chick.”
Camille laughed, which made Eli smile. “Seriously,” he said. He opened up a packet of ketchup. “I couldn’t help noticing how pretty you were even though you were obviously hurt. Your husband seemed like an asshole for letting his side chick call the cops on you. So I’ll admit that I drove out here to ask you out, hoping that we would hit it off and I could make you forget that lame husband, maybe give you a shoulder to cry on.”
Camille didn’t respond.
“So now … I see that you got a situation.” He ate another fry and looked at her. “But I still think you’re beautiful. And I still think you need to forget about him. Just ’cuz you got a bun in the oven doesn’t mean we can’t hang out. It’s not like you got the cooties or something.” He grinned, revealing dimples.
Camille sipped her milkshake. “You really think I’m cuter than she is?”
He nodded. “Definitely.” He passed her an apple pie, which she readily accepted. “I’m a good guy. You should get to know me.”
Camille finished her lunch and did just that.
* * *
Mayra Nobles sat on the edge of her bed and lit a cigarette. Her lover ran his fingers through her long thick hair and she smiled. Guy was so affectionate with her, so attentive. She closed her eyes as he glided his fingertips down the small of her back, kissed the nape of her neck.
“Stay with me,” she purred. “Spend the night.”
Guy was tempted. He wanted her so badly that he would have gladly sacrificed everything in order to have Mayra all to himself. She was a lovely and voluptuous woman with sexiness dripping from her every crevice. But money was important to her, and until Doug Nobles’s will was executed, Mayra was playing the role of grieving widow to the hilt. If her affair with Guy was uncovered, she knew that Celia, Baron, or even Gillian might try to shut her out. As long as that was the case, Mayra would do anything she could to preserve that inheritance. Therefore, spending the night with her in the very bed she had shared with her dead husband was out of the question, no matter how much they both wanted it.
“Next time,” he lied. He got out of bed and began to get dressed as she watched him.
The infamous Guy London was one of the best entertainment lawyers in the game. Guy was one of her late husband’s closest friends, a friend who had steered him toward numerous ventures through which Doug Nobles had funneled tons of illegal money over the years. He was handsome and self-assured, and was married to a former supermodel who wasn’t ready to let go of the limelight just yet. His trysts with Mayra had started a year ago during a dinner party at which Doug Nobles had been present, parked in his wheelchair downstairs while Guy had his wife pinned to the wall in the master bathroom.
Mayra had been eager for her slice of the Nobles fortune, but hadn’t expected it to end so violently and tragically. Doug Nobles had been a sick man, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis after a twelve-year stint in prison. The disease had nearly crippled him, and Mayra had struggled to come to terms with the fact that her husband, who had once been fun and spontaneous, was now anything but. She had expected that MS would continue to debilitate him, but it had been a bloody shootout that brought his life to an end instead. As the date neared for the reading of her husband’s will, she pondered what she would do with the rest of her life as a wealthy widow. For now, she walked Guy to the door and kissed him good-bye. He winked at her and she giggled like a schoolgirl.
As Guy climbed into his car and blew Mayra a kiss, Gillian watched from her car cloaked in the midnight shadows across the street.
* * *
Toya lay back in her bathtub surrounded by bubbles and candles and stared at the ceiling. She couldn’t believe what was happening. Dominique had picked up Octavia and the two of them had gone home hours ago. Shortly afterward, Russell had stopped by unannounced. Usually, Toya would have told him off for coming by uninvited. But, this time Toya had yanked him into her home by his collar, kissed him passionately, and allowed him to ravage her. More than an hour of wild, kinky sex had followed, culminating in both of them falling asleep in her big bed. Toya had awakened, hoping it had all been a bad dream. But it wasn’t. She turned over in bed only to find Russell’s ugly face, mouth wide open as he snored.
Even then she hadn’t taken her usual next step. Ordinarily she would have awakened him and sent him home. After all, she almost never allowed a man to spend the night in her home, in her bed. It was a privilege that very few men had ever enjoyed. Still she found herself reluctant to awaken him considering the fact that he had rocked her to sleep so expertly. What he lacked in good looks, Russell more than made up for in sexual prowess. He was, hands down, the best fuck she’d had in a long, long time. In fact, she hoped that when he woke up he’d be ready to go for round two.
Toya had run herself a steaming hot bath and lit all the candles she had in order to clear her mind. As she lay now in the expansive Jacuzzi she closed her eyes and tried to tell herself that she didn’t like him that much. Sure, Russell was smart, a good conversationalist, charming, and single. He had no children, a great career, and made her shake like she was seizing. But that face!
Her doorbell rang and interrupted her thoughts. Toya lay there for a few moments, trying to figure out who might be at her door at this late hour. She sighed, wondering if one of her friends was in yet another crisis. As she prepared to climb out of the bathtub, she noticed Russell watching her from the doorway. Her body half in and half out of the steaming bath, he stared at her and smiled.
“You stay right there,” he said. “I’ll answer the door and then I’m coming back for you.”
Toya smiled and got excited at the thought of what awaited her when he returned. She heard him descend the stairs and unlock her front door. And the sound she heard next caused her hair to stand on end.
“Who are you?” boomed a raspy and demanding female voice.
Toya scrambled out of the bathtub and dried off as quickly as possible.
“My name is Russell. Russell Sharp.”
“Sharp?” the voice came again, then laughter.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Toya frantically reached for her bathrobe and put it on, tying it tightly around her waist.
“Where are your clothes?”
Russell cleared his throat. “Well, I just woke up and—”
“Just woke up? Where is my daughter? TOYA!”
Toya ran down the stairs with an award-worthy fake smile on her face.
“Sweets!” Toya greeted her mother using the nickname she and her brothers had called her by since they were kids. “What a surprise!” Despite her steely demeanor, Toya turned to mush whenever her mother came around. She was mortified that Sweets had arrived unannounced all the way from Atlanta to find ugly-ass Russell in her home, fresh out of her bed.
Jeanie “Sweets” Blake looked from Toya to Russell and back again. “I bet it is a surprise!”
Toya smiled at Russell. “This is my mother.”
Russell could see Toya’s discomfort even as she smiled. He looked at her
mother and apologized. “I shouldn’t have answered the door dressed this way.”
“Dressed?” Jeanie said sarcastically, looking at his long johns and T-shirt.
Russell could see where Toya got her straightforwardness from. “I’m just gonna go and get my stuff and head home.”
Toya nodded vigorously. She looked around and saw that her mother had brought enough luggage for weeks.
As Russell scampered up the stairs to retrieve his clothes, Jeanie watched him and shook her head.
“What the—”
“Sweets, at least wait until he’s gone!” Toya hissed. She stomped off toward her kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine. She could tell it was going to be a long night.
Toya watched from the kitchen as her mother strolled around her house and picked everything apart. “When’s the last time you took a sponge to these floors? All the dust gets trapped in the corners and you can’t get that with a broom. Sometimes you gotta get on your knees to get all that up.”
“I know. I’ll get to it eventually.”
“Eventually?” Toya came back into the living room and saw the look of disgust on her mother’s face.
Russell came back downstairs with all his clothes on and his leather jacket in hand. He wondered for a moment whether he should kiss Toya good-bye in front of her mother, but judging from the looks on both of their faces he figured it best to just leave.
“It was nice to meet you,” he said to Jeanie. She only waved dismissively in response. He looked at Toya and smiled. “Talk to you soon.”
Toya nodded and watched him go. The second the door shut behind him, Jeanie leered at her daughter. “You can’t be that desperate. That is the ugliest man I’ve ever seen. He looks deformed!”
Toya took a deep breath and blew it out. She sipped her wine and looked at her mother. “You could have called to tell me that you were coming to New York. I would have been ready for your visit.”
“I’m your mother. I shouldn’t have to call. Your door should always be open to me.” Jeanie set her purse down on the coffee table and sat on Toya’s sofa. “How long have you been letting that man in your house? You know once you let them in it’s hard to get rid of ’em. They see you got all this going on and they latch on like bloodsuckers.”
“This was his first time over here.”
“Don’t even think about having kids with him, either!”
Toya rolled her eyes. “What are you talking about kids for? I’m not having any kids! I don’t know how many times I can say it before you finally get it.” Toya sat across from her mother, careful to shield her nakedness beneath her bathrobe. “And he may not be cute, but he’s very nice. He’s a fireman.”
“All he has to do is look at the fire and—”
“Cut it out!” Toya was not in the mood to defend her love life to her mother, especially because she hadn’t made complete sense of it herself. She understood then how much her parents had affected her outlook on men and relationships. It seemed she had inherited her mother’s shallow and judgmental ways as well as her father’s biting and vicious verbal tenacity. The way she was being torn to shreds by her mother sounded eerily similar to her rants at her friends. “I don’t fly down to Atlanta unannounced and pick apart your sex life.”
“You’re not supposed to meddle in my business. I’m the mother.”
“Yes, you are. But I don’t want to talk about Russell anymore.” Toya sipped some more of her merlot and let the warm liquid coat her insides. She smiled at Jeanie. “How are you? What brings you to town?”
Jeanie scowled playfully at her daughter, still disapproving of her choice in bedfellow. “I spoke to Nate.”
Toya rolled her eyes again. She hadn’t heard from her father since their lunch date weeks ago, and she liked it that way.
“He told me that you had lunch with him, that you heard him out. He said that he promised to leave you alone after that, and he has kept his word. But he was hoping that you would call him and—”
“So you flew all the way up here to tell me that?” Toya was angry now. “You could have saved yourself the airfare.”
“He’s your father,” Jeanie said, leaning forward in her seat.
“You know what?” Toya sat forward as well. “You got a lot of nerve, Sweets. Coming to town with your criticism about who I spend my time with when all the while you spent your whole life with a loser like Nathaniel Blake.”
“All right, now,” Jeanie warned.
“Even after all these years, he’s still got you like a puppet on a string.”
Jeanie stood up. “Now, look here, Miss Thang,” she said, pointing at Toya. “I’m nobody’s goddamned puppet!”
Toya stopped talking, aware that she had touched a nerve.
“Nate didn’t do any more to me than I let him do. I was the one who stayed, and kept letting him back in.” Jeanie slowly sat back down under the gravity of that statement. “And it was a long time ago. It’s time to let go of old pain, that’s what I came here to tell you.”
“Well, I don’t have nothing else to say to him.” Toya set her glass on the table. There were things her mother just couldn’t understand. “He said his piece, I listened. He said he’d leave me alone, and that’s cool with me. I don’t see what else we need to talk about.”
Jeanie sat back down and looked at Toya coyly. “Forgiveness, Toya.”
Toya felt like a little kid again, scolded by her mother, a lesson forced on her when she wasn’t in the learning mood.
“Your brothers invited him over for dinner at Derrick’s house on Sunday night.”
Toya felt her temper flaring. Fucking traitors—especially Derrick!
“You should be there,” Jeanie said.
Toya sneered at her mother. “So is that why you flew into New York, to reunite with him after all these years? You can’t be that desperate.” Toya watched her mother react to her own words tossed back at her.
Jeanie didn’t respond.
“What is it?” Toya asked, really searching her mother’s face for an answer. “What’s so great about this guy all of a sudden that everybody can forget all the shit he used to do? He claims to be sick and gets some new clothes and a shower and just like that he’s a changed man! Gimme a break! We all know better than that.”
Jeanie felt her eyes well up with tears. She looked down as a couple fell into her lap and Toya felt bad. She hadn’t meant to make her mother cry.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You’re right. Nate was a horrible person when he was getting high.” She shook her head at the memory. “But before that, before all the drugs and the liquor, he was a good man. He was a good father and a good friend. He loved you so much. His only girl.” Jeanie’s face softened at the memory of Nate cradling Toya in his arms when she was a baby, comforting her whenever she cried. “Then he started drinking and that made him mean. Then the drugs got a hold of him and he was never the same. I didn’t know him anymore. For years I hung around hoping and praying that the man I married would walk back in that door one day or wake up from out of one of those twenty-four-hour naps he used to take when he was coming down from being high for days at a time.” She shook her head. “All that time I was waiting and hoping and praying, you and your brothers were watching and living with a whole lot of bullshit. And y’all didn’t deserve that. I should have left him a long, long time before I actually did.”
Toya felt better hearing her mother admit that. At least she wasn’t completely delusional.
“But rejecting him now ain’t the right kind of payback for what he did. He’s dying, Toya. It’s time to let it go.” Jeanie took a deep breath and looked at Toya with a serious expression on her face. “I don’t claim to be a saint. But I believe in God and I know that He wants us to let go and move on. You and I will go to dinner at Derrick’s house on Sunday and then I’ll see how long I need to stay in town before I head back.” She clapped her hands together as if the matter was settled and stoo
d up.
Toya watched her mother get up off the couch, retrieve her carry-on bag and purse and head upstairs to get settled in. She guzzled the rest of the wine in her glass and closed her eyes in exasperation.
Parental Discretion Advised
Gillian watched her mother flirting with the new Brazilian maître d’ and bit her lip angrily. She drummed her fingers on the table impatiently and rolled her eyes. Her cell phone rang and interrupted her silent temper tantrum.
“Yeah?” she answered after seeing Baron’s number flash across the screen.
“Hello to you, too,” he said sarcastically. “Sounds like I caught you at a bad time. Should I make an appointment with you and Frankie? Call your secretary or sum’n?”
Gillian took a deep breath and glanced at her watch. She had no time for her mother’s or Baron’s game-playing today. “Baron, what do you need? I’m in the middle of something right now so I need you to cut to the chase.”
He snickered, amused. Baby sis was sounding irritated. Sounded like she was playing the role of boss bitch to the hilt. “I owe you some money,” he said. “How’s that for cutting to the chase?”
Gillian recalled the fifty-five-thousand-dollar loan he’d begged her for in order to pay off a gambling debt. She’d taken the money out of her mother’s restaurant and had waited months for Baron to pay it back. Frankie had eventually put the money back before anyone noticed the deficit, saving Gillian from having to admit to her father that she had given Baron the loan in the first place. Since then, she had practically forgotten about that money, it being the least of her troubles after losing her father and watching Frankie battle his wife and her family.
“Yes, you do,” she said. “But consider it a gift. No need to repay it.” She watched her mother bend over to wipe up a spill off the restaurant floor, giving the new guy a bird’s-eye view of her plump assets.
Baron frowned. His sister was turning down a lot of money. “Why?” he asked.
She considered telling Baron that business was booming for them ever since Angelle had come through with an increase in prescription drugs, which was the new “crack epidemic” as far as Gillian could tell. OxyContin, Percocet, diazepam, and dozens of others—everybody from college kids to soccer moms, corporate workers, and hoodrats alike had an affinity for some prescription medication these days and it was a cash cow for them. That was one reason why she had managed to push her brother’s debt to the back of her mind. But it certainly wasn’t the main reason. Gillian was sick of beating around the bush—with everybody.
