Back to Life Series Box Set

by Danielle Allen

  Seeming to recognize my voice, Talia Michelle Mills lit up as soon as she turned her little face in my direction. Even though she was in her dad’s arms, she reached for me and whined until I scooped her up. She smelled like baby powder and sweetness.

  “I’ve missed you, Talia.” I smothered her chubby cheeks with kisses as she giggled.

  Our parents went to the kitchen to get some snacks and as soon as they turned the corner, I felt Emanuel’s eyes boring into the side of my face. My eyes flicked to his as he continued to study me. “How’s it going?” I asked casually.

  He looked at me incredulously. “Uh, you first.”

  I shook my head and looked back at my niece. “I’m too busy spending time with Talia, aren’t I baby? Aren’t we having Auntie and niece time? Yes we are… Yes we are… Yes we are…”

  She giggled every time I said ‘yes we are.’

  I looked at Manny again and the look he gave me let me know he was not playing around. I sighed. “I’ll tell you in a minute. You just got here. Get comfortable.”

  “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t go to the house and fuck him up.” He kissed the back of Talia’s head. “Sorry baby… don’t learn that word or your mommy will kill me.”

  Lifting Talia in the air as she kicked her little feet out and grinned at me, I gave my brother a firm look. “Here’s one reason.” I brought her back down into my arms and kissed her cheek. “If you need me to rattle off a few more, I can.”

  “I never liked that guy,” he grunted like the protective big brother that he was.

  I let out a little laugh. “Yes, you did.”

  He curled his lip in disgust. “And that makes it worse. Because I did like that guy, I gave him the stamp of approval and he thinks he’s going to fuck over my little sister. I will beat his ass. I’m telling you Em, you just give me the word and I’ll beat his ass.”

  Kissing the dark, curly tufts of hair, I replied, “Do you remember when I wanted to kick Ashlyn’s ass? Do you remember what you said?”

  “That was different!” He argued.

  I pursed my lips and when I cracked them open to prove him wrong, I was interrupted.

  “Assssssssss,” Talia wailed with a big smile on her face.

  Wide eyed, my brother and I stared at each other.

  “This is your fault,” we said simultaneously as our parents returned with hot cocoa for us all.

  Chapter 10

  Monday, March 13h – 5:27pm

  “Hello?” I answered in a singsong tone of voice.

  “Well don’t you sound chipper,” Addison giggled.

  “I am chipper. My beginners and my intermediate contemporary and my intermediate ballet classes are picking up the moves for the showcase in May so fast. As of right now, they are ahead of schedule.” I grinned as I walked into my office. “These are my pre-teen and teen groups. It makes me so proud how far they’ve come. How are you?”

  It was at that moment that I realized that in two months of knowing each other, I honestly didn’t know her fiancé’s name.

  But in my defense, she never calls him anything but fiancé!

  Addison made a little squealing noise. “I’m well—very well, actually.”

  “Ooooh… do tell?” I sat behind my desk and typed in my password on my computer.

  “I found the dress!”

  My mouth dropped. “You found your wedding dress?”

  “Yes! Ahhh!”

  I pulled the phone away from my ear at the piercing sound of her shrieking. When it sounded like she’d stopped, I put the phone back to my ear. “Addy, that’s amazing! Can you send me a picture? I want to see it!”

  “You’ll be seeing it sooner rather than later.”

  I leaned back in my chair, intrigued. “Is my favorite club owner coming to visit me?”

  “We both know I’m your second favorite club owner.” She giggled. “But soon, I promise! Between your schedule and mine, we wouldn’t have any real time together right now. We have to strategically plan this out!”

  She was right. We were always working and we worked opposite hours. I typically worked from late morning until around nine o’clock at night and she worked from about six o’clock in the evening until anytime between two or three o’clock in the morning.

  “You’re right. We need to plan something. And you just promised me sooner rather than later so let’s hear what you have planned.”

  “So I found my dress and everything started falling into place. We set a date! December second is our day!”

  “Wait, when did you find your dress?”

  “Yesterday!”

  I gasped and sat up straight in my chair. “You found your dress yesterday and you picked a date? You’ve had quite the productive weekend.”

  “Yes!” She let out a scream. “So we are having an engagement party in June. We didn’t want to have one until we had a date set so now that we have a date set—”

  “Everything is coming together,” I finished for her, genuine happiness warming my cheeks.

  “Yes! So before I set anything in stone, I wanted to let you and Natasha know the dates to see which one worked for you two. You two are my busiest friends.”

  After reading me the two dates that worked for them, I was able to make one of them work.

  “June twenty-fourth it is!” Addison called out as I marked my calendar.

  “Where is it going to be? December?” I ignored the little flutter that tickled my belly.

  “It all depends. Because if we do it there, we’ll have to make it a private event and we’ll end up either losing money or inviting people outside of just friends and family. But if we don’t do it there, we’ll have to let someone else be in charge for the whole night and you know Addo is not going to let that happen.”

  Just the mention of his name threw me off my game. I stared at my calendar in front of me. My hand paused and I swallowed hard. The warm and fuzzy feeling I got when I thought of him had died down some. I hadn’t seen him since that night in Atlanta and I hadn’t talked to him since that Valentine’s Day text exchange. But I thought of him daily.

  “How is CJ?” I asked quietly, pulling at a lock of my hair and looking at the ends.

  “He’s eh... He’s good. I’m sure he could be better.” She paused and I heard her door shut. “I’ve been very good about giving the two of you space. But I’m so confused. Anytime you come up, he always asks how you’re doing. He won’t come out and ask about the divorce, but he’ll hint at it. Every time I bring him up to you, you get shy and your voice is all teenage-girl-at-a-slumber-party-ish. You’re probably twirling your damn hair around your finger right now.”

  I stopped manipulating my hair and tucked the strands behind my ear. “Like I told you, I don’t want things to be weird. But I do care about how he’s doing and what he’s up to. That’s why I ask.”

  “But if you two are friends, why is it weird for you to call him and ask him? And why don’t you update him on your divorce?”

  Because we’re not friends, I thought, wanting to respond but not daring to open my mouth and state those words.

  The truth was simple and complicated at the same time. It wasn’t that we weren’t friends, but on my end, we weren’t just friends. I didn’t trust myself around him. I didn’t trust what I was feeling. I didn’t trust how fast and how intense I felt it. And because of that, I didn’t trust myself to make good choices. Either I was going to fall in love with him and he was going to break my heart or I was going to treat him like a rebound and I was going to break his.

  “I just…” I let my sentence trail off as I dropped my chin to my chest.

  I don’t trust myself with him.

  I knew it was unfair of me to unload my emotional baggage onto Addison because of CJ being like a brother to her. But I didn’t know what else to do.

  “Hold on, please,” Addison said as I heard the background noise change from outdoors to indoors.

  “Hello?” CJ’s deep voi
ce reverberated through the phone and my body and I was rendered momentarily speechless. The butterflies that I thought had retreated since we hadn’t been in contact were back with a vengeance.

  “Hello.” There was a breathlessness in my greeting that made it painfully obvious that I was both caught off guard and smitten.

  I hated it.

  “How are you, Emily?” The smooth way his tone dripped over my name was sexy, but it didn’t feel like it did during our weekend together. He sounded like he did when he first introduced himself—guarded, professional, impersonal, but sexy.

  So sexy.

  “I’m well. How are you?”

  “I can’t complain.”

  “That’s good to hear.” I didn’t know what to say after being radio silent for so long and words tumbled out of my mouth. “I knew you were doing well because I ask Addy about you.”

  I didn’t know why I said it, but I did. I felt ridiculous afterward.

  I never returned his calls. I never reached out to him. But I just decided to admit to asking his best friend about him instead of just calling him myself. I groaned internally. What is the matter with me?

  I cleared my throat gently. “I’m presuming from your silence that Addy just handed you the phone and walked off.”

  “Yeah, pretty much. She ran in the direction of the bathroom.”

  “Probably because she knew you wouldn’t follow her in there. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she just said ‘fuck the phone’ and snuck out the window to her car so we were forced to talk to one another.”

  The booming sound of his laugh sent butterflies scrambling to wake up my entire body. I felt my skin warm as the smile spread across my face. I closed my eyes and let the sound infiltrate me as I pictured his face, his smile, his eyes, his body. His laugh vividly reminded me of how much I enjoyed him and how fleeting that time was.

  I missed his laugh and I had no right to.

  CJ scoffed in apparent amusement, “Forced, huh?”

  I smiled against the phone and reveled in how warm I felt. “Well, you sound like you were forced to talk to me. Me, on the other hand, I was blindsided. I had no idea!”

  “I didn’t either,” he argued, laughing when I laughed.

  I sat up, twisting my pursed lips to the side of my mouth. “So you’re telling me that she handed you the phone and you didn’t look on the screen to see who it was.”

  He chuckled harder. “I forgot how funny you are,” he mentioned as his amusement died down. “I saw it maybe two seconds before I said hello.”

  I giggled. “See! And I’m sure you used those extra seconds you had to practice sounding like that.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, don’t do that.” I let my head drop against the chair and rolled my eyes. “Don’t pretend like that. It’s beneath you.”

  “Em, just because the sound of my voice does something to you doesn’t mean I practice it. It just happens.”

  We both cracked up until it faded into comfortable silence. I inhaled and exhaled imagining what it would be like to be with him, around him. I wondered if it would always be so intoxicating or if I was caught up in my rebound mode.

  I needed to change the subject. “Addy’s been really worked up about us speaking recently.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he sighed with a little of what sounded like unease.

  Dread filled me. What did she want us to discuss specifically? And why does it now sound like bad news?

  I cleared my throat. “Did she tell you what she wanted us to talk about?”

  “Well, I know she wanted me to tell you about Ghana.”

  “What about Ghana?” I responded quickly.

  “I’m going to visit family for a little while.”

  Thank God!

  “Oh! Okay, good!” My heartrate slowed, my body relaxed slightly and I let out a silent sigh of relief. “I thought you were going to say you were moving there or something.” I forced a giggle to cover how worried I was. “I mean, who would keep Addison Fry in line if you weren’t around?”

  “No, I’ll just be gone for a couple months.”

  “A couple of months?!” I exclaimed, unable to hide my surprise.

  “Yeah, I’m helping with a project out there and seeing family at the same time. Addy’s fiancé is going be helping her out at December so this is really the only time I have that won’t leave Addy in a bind.”

  A million questions ran through my head, but I asked the most pertinent. “When are you going and when do you get back?”

  “I leave tomorrow night. I get back May 25th.”

  We were both quiet for a minute.

  I was inexplicably saddened by the fact that he’d be gone for the next couple of months even though I spent the last two months avoiding communication with him. I stared at the computer screen, not really seeing anything. CJ had a way of stirring up emotions in me unnecessarily and I had to get something off my chest.

  Opening my mouth to say what I should’ve said any time over the last couple of months, I hesitated. Taking a deep breath, I tried again. “I’m sorry.” My voice was so light and breathy that I was unsure if he heard me.

  He said nothing, but I heard him breathing, listening, taking in my words. Somehow, I knew he heard me, but still felt the need to say it again.

  I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry I never called you back,” I apologized quietly. “I just…” I took a breath. “Will you please accept my apology?”

  He was quiet for a while and I heard his background noise change to quieter surroundings. “I will if you tell me why,” he finally answered. “The truth.”

  My heart beat loudly. Nerves caused my free hand to shake slightly as I tapped it against my desk. I inhaled shakily as I tried to think of the best way to answer.

  “Talk to me,” he uttered in a way that instantly affected me.

  I felt my guard crumbling down as my throat burned with unshed tears. I blinked rapidly and sucked in a gasping breath.

  I must’ve sounded like I was upset because CJ tried once more. “Emily, I’m here. Talk to me.”

  Without thinking it through, I admitted things to him that I’d never said out loud. “Because my life is a mess right now.”

  I kept myself from sounding as if I was crying, even though the tears fell down my cheeks. My voice did not indicate it, but having CJ listen to me and tell me he was there for me, the floodgates opened. I felt safe enough to tell CJ what was going on in my head and I didn’t know how to stop the waterworks or my motor mouth.

  “Everything is just all over the place. I’m still married and I’m trying to detangle myself from that. Divorce is hard and stressful and nothing like they say it’s going to be. It’s just a lot of him stalling and dragging this out. I have stuff that I can’t even get out of the house because he’s being so petty. We don’t go to court until this summer and it feels like he’s doing everything that he can to make me miserable. To make matters worse, I’m living with my parents. I love my parents. They are the best parents in the world and I feel so guilty for saying this, but I can’t do it anymore. I haven’t lived with them since I was eighteen. They do everything they can to make me comfortable, which just makes me feel worse, because nothing is going to change the fact that I’m not in my own space. In addition, in order to stop thinking about everything, I’ve thrown myself into work. That’s all I do, all the time. I just work, because it’s easier to focus on dance than it is to try to control things I can’t control. The stress has triggered more pain flare-ups in my legs. My personal life is a mess right now and I just need to focus on getting that resolved and working on me…and I can’t do that with you in my life.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The tone of my voice reflected how I felt when I shyly answered, “You’re not good for me.”

  I couldn’t get the words to come out right. What I said didn’t come out the way I meant it. My stomach fluttered with unspoken emotions and I was dizzy a
s I tried to think of a way to backpedal. I didn’t even know where to begin. It wasn’t necessarily that he wasn’t good for me, but a relationship wasn’t good for me.

  CJ sounded bewildered. “I thought we agreed to be friends?”

  “We aren’t friends,” I scoffed. “I mean…” I covered my eyes and leaned back in my chair.

  I know he feels what happens when we’re together. But then again, that was two months ago. Maybe he’s over it. Maybe when he stopped trying to contact me, he stopped getting butterflies when he heard my name. Or maybe this whole thing was one sided. Maybe I read too much into it and it really wasn’t that big of a deal. How can I put this without sounding like I’m declaring that I’m in love with him? I don’t want him to think that I’m—

  “Addo, we’ve been looking for you!” A man’s voice bellowed, interrupting my thoughts and our conversation.

  CJ seemed startled by the intruder. “Oh! Yeah, I’ll be out in a minute.”

  The man in the background laughed. “I’ve been fighting for you out there. They want the man of the hour. You’re going to have to call whoever you’re talking to back. I’m not supposed to tell you that you have two surprise guests, Vanessa had something for you, and Addison said she needs her phone back.”

  “Ok, I’m right behind you,” CJ replied to the intruder.

  I heard chuckling and then muffled phone sounds.

  He cleared his throat. “Hello?”

  “Hi,” I said, feeling foolishly emotional and I started second guessing everything that I’d said.

  He paused for a beat. “You said something about us not being friends and me not being good for you.”

  My heart rattled in my chest as I listened to the sound of his voice as he repeated what I had said. The words were the same, but the meaning he seemed to take from it was not at all what I meant. I tried to clarify. “It’s not—”

  “Addo!” The woman’s high pitched squeal rubbed me the wrong way instantly.

  “Vanessa, I’m on the phone,” he replied sharply against the changing of background noise. The murmur of a crowd was distinct. “I’ll be right with you.”