Diamond Life

by Aliya S. King

  “Word.”

  “Why are we talking about Rendville?”

  “I lived in Jersey for a few years and then I moved to Atlanta when I was thirteen. Stayed with an aunt. Left there at eighteen and I’ve been on my own ever since.”

  Jake stood up.

  “So, are you a serial killer or something? Why do you have to be so extra? Just come out with whatever you have to tell me. I’m not gonna flip out.”

  Lily handed Jake the photo album. He sat back down on the edge of the bed and began to flip through it.

  “Who’s this?” he asked.

  “My mom. And that’s my dad standing next to her.”

  “And who’s that? Your brother?”

  “I’m an only child.”

  “Damn? That’s you?” Jake laughed. “You grew up into a beautiful woman. ’Cause you looked like a straight-up dude when you were a kid.”

  Lily raised one eyebrow.

  Jake stopped laughing abruptly and looked down at the photo album and then back up at Lily.

  “Wait.”

  Lily inched her body across the bed away from Jake. His nostrils flared. He swallowed hard and then looked back down at the photo album.

  “This is you.”

  Lily nodded. Jake pulled out another photo album from the box. He flipped the pages quickly, his eyes furiously moving back and forth across the pages.

  “These are all you.”

  “Yes.”

  Jake tossed the album on the bed and reached in the box. He pulled out a yearbook and started flipping the pages.

  “Where?” Jake asked.

  “Page 246. Bottom right.”

  Jake turned the pages quickly and then stopped. He saw a young version of Lily, a serious look on her—no, his—face. The kid had a buzz cut and was wearing a striped, button-up shirt and a clip-on tie. Under the photo was a name: Joseph Michael Callahan. Jake felt bile rising up in his throat and then choked it down.

  “You’re—”

  “I started hormones when I was sixteen. Had surgery a year ago.”

  Jake turned away. His head was spinning. He felt rage swelling up inside him and began walking toward the door of the apartment before it could escape. If he could just get out and get something to drink, he could deal.

  “Jake?”

  Jake stopped walking and turned around.

  “I wanted to tell you. But I didn’t know how. So I just avoided you as much as I could.”

  “This is a joke, right,” Jake chuckled. “You’re kidding. Right. I mean—I had—I had sex with you. You’re joking, right?”

  Lily shook her head and Jake tried to move but found that he suddenly could not.

  When Jake was very young, he’d walked in on his mother being attacked by a man she was dating. He wanted to rush in and pull the man off his mother and clock him in the jaw. But he couldn’t move. He was rooted to the spot. He finally yelled out for help, and their next-door neighbor came over and screamed until the man stop hitting his mother and ran out of the apartment. For weeks afterward, Jake felt flush with shame and embarrassment. He could run up on dudes twice his age and size on the courtyard and beat them bloody for no reason and with no help. But he couldn’t help his tiny mother? Jake stared at Lily. Once again, his feet felt like they were encased in cement boots. His brain wanted to attack. He wanted to break Lily’s other arm, punch her in the other eye. He started to hear a sharp ringing in his ears and when he put his hands up to his temples, he noticed that his skin was hot to the touch. Jake felt his fists curl up and he fought hard to keep his hands at his side.

  “Do you want to talk about this?” Lily asked.

  Jake took a step toward Lily, his balled-up fists still tight at his side. Lily didn’t move.

  “Is this what you usually do? Date guys and then wait to tell them the truth?”

  “I usually don’t do anything. I just stay away from dudes.”

  “So why didn’t you stay away from me?”

  “I asked you to just leave me alone,” said Lily. “But you wouldn’t.”

  Jake walked to the doorway. Then he stopped, turned back around, and rushed over to Lily’s bed. He looked at his hands, balled them into fists, and then punched the wall inches above Lily’s head. She ducked down and put her head in her lap.

  “You don’t do no shit like that!” he screamed.

  Jake pushed Lily onto the bed with his left hand and pulled his right fist back. He watched Lily curl up and prepare for his blow, covering her face with her hands. Jake noticed that she had a splint on her finger that he hadn’t seen before. And from this angle, he could see that she had deep bite marks on the side of her neck. Jake’s stomach turned. Something shifted, and he restrained himself from punching her in the face. He got up and quickly walked out of the apartment, slammed the door shut behind him, and ran down the stairs two at a time. At the bottom, he took several deep breaths while he sent a text message to the driver.

  “Where to, sir?” said the driver, as Jake climbed inside.

  “A liquor store,” said Jake. “And then home.”

  Just a few blocks away, the driver pulled over to a liquor store with a flashing OPEN sign on the front door.

  “What can I get for you, sir?”

  Jake threw his head back against the car seat and squeezed his eyes shut. He thought about what he’d gone through to get clean. The detox, the hallucinations, the tremors, and shakes . . .

  “Never mind. Just take me home.”

  Back at the penthouse, Jake squished himself into the corner of a living room sofa, brooding and mumbling to himself. More than anything else he was embarrassed. Humiliated. And what kept smacking him in the head was the fact that the main reason why he was pissed was because he actually liked Lily. If he’d found out that one of the nameless, faceless people he had sex with over the past year was a dude, he’d be grossed out. But he would be able to shrug it off. Shit happens when you’re drunk and screwing anything that moves.

  But Lily was different. He liked talking to her. She wasn’t afraid to challenge him or call him on his bullshit. She didn’t trip over his fame or his money. She had her own life and found her own joys in yoga and gardening and whatever else she was into.

  Lily reminded Jake of Kipenzi and the woman she would have been had she not become a celebrity. Someone who took pleasure in planting vegetables and painting. Someone who loved to spend time alone. Someone who liked the company of a man but didn’t need one.

  Despite himself, Jake’s mind kept going back to that night in her apartment. She was scared shitless. But nothing felt any different for Jake than the last time he had sex with a virgin—his wife Kipenzi. He had been careful not to hurt Lily and tried to take it slow. How could he not have known . . .

  Jake shuddered. He looked at the ceiling. It was beyond what he could comprehend, so he stopped trying.

  Corinne rubbed Lily’s back with a wet washcloth and then ran the cloth under the running water in the sink.

  “Are you sure he didn’t hit you?”

  “It’s not something I would forget.”

  “Might be something you’d lie about.”

  “He did not hit me. I swear.”

  Corinne grabbed a towel from the back of the bathroom door and wrapped it around Lily’s shoulders. She eased her up out of the tub and walked her back into the bedroom.

  “So what did he say?”

  “He yelled and screamed. And then he punched the wall and left.”

  “And that’s it?”

  Lily shrugged.

  “That’s it.”

  Corinne made up the bed while Lily tried to squirm into her clothes with the use of only one arm. The swelling on her eye had gone down, but she still couldn’t see out of it and every inch of her body was achy and sore.

  The nurse at the hospital had warned her that she would probably relive the attack over and over for a long time. She even told Lily to ask the doctor to give her a prescription for Ambien so that
she could sleep uninterrupted. But Lily’s thoughts never wandered to the attack. It was Jake’s eyes she saw when she tried to go to sleep at night. That look on his face when the truth finally dawned on him. It was just like when she sat in the break room at the Waffle House with Rick and told him the truth. She knew Jake would be angry. That was easy to predict. But the first emotion she saw was pure disappointment.

  “I wish he had hit me,” Lily said.

  “Why would you say that?”

  “It would just be easier. I’d have a reason to hate him, too.”

  “You’ve been through enough. Where’s your bag?”

  Lily pointed to her open suitcase in the hallway and Corinne placed some folded jeans and T-shirts inside.

  “I really think I should just stay here,” Lily said. “The cops caught the kids. I’ll be okay.”

  “And you think people are not talking about you? The jig is up, Lily. Everyone knows.”

  “So what am I supposed to do? Move, again? Am I going to be running for the rest of my life?”

  Corinne stopped folding Lily’s laundry and carried a pile of clothes to her closet.

  “So what do you want to do?”

  Lily’s head began to pound and she could feel her painkillers wearing off. She grabbed a bottle of pills with her good hand, shook a few into her mouth. She had no idea how to even begin answering that question. She knew she didn’t want to stay at Corinne’s house. Now that Jake knew the truth, she had nothing to run from. She would never see him again. And she was confident that he wouldn’t send anyone after her or try to hurt her in any way. He was just gone. And for Lily, that was enough punishment. She was ready to hunker down in her tiny apartment and ride out the rest of her life with Cat.

  “I want to call Jake.”

  Lily was just as surprised as Corinne to hear those words come out of her mouth.

  “Are you insane?” Corinne asked. “What makes you think he wants to talk to you?”

  “I want to hear him say he never wants to talk to me again. He never actually said that.”

  “Does he need to?”

  “Yeah. He does.”

  “Let me ask you this. Is he here right now?”

  Lily closed her eyes.

  “No. He’s not.”

  “Have you heard from him since you told him the truth?”

  “No. I have not.”

  “Do you honestly think a ridiculously rich and famous rapper would ever publicly admit to being in a relationship with a woman who was born a man?”

  Lily stared at Corinne, wanting to punch her in the eye.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Then that’s that. You don’t need to call him.”

  “I need closure,” Lily said.

  Corinne pointed to the hole in the wall where Jake’s fist had landed.

  “There’s your closure right there. You try to contact him and he’ll probably do that to your face.”

  Lily wandered into the kitchen and pulled down an ancient bottle of Hennessy from the cupboard, the same bottle she’d poured for Jake a million years ago. She twisted off the cap and lifted the bottle to her lips. The liquid burned her throat and chest, warming her from the inside out. She immediately felt better, lighter.

  “What are you doing?!” said Corinne, reaching out to grab the bottle from Lily’s hand. Lily pulled away sharply, almost dropping the bottle to the floor. She quickly recovered, caught the bottle in the crook of her good arm, and then used her shoulder to push Corinne away.

  “Leave me alone!” said Lily, limping to the living room sofa.

  “You’re on painkillers! You can’t mix those with alcohol!”

  Lily turned up the bottle once more and took two long gulps. She shivered as the alcohol hit her stomach and then replaced the top on the bottle and set it down on the floor. She curled up on the sofa as best as she could and turned her face toward the cushions. Corinne sat down on the edge of the couch and smoothed her hair back.

  “I can’t pretend like I know what you’re going through . . .”

  “You’d better believe it,” Lily mumbled. Her words were beginning to slur.

  “But you have a lot of decisions to make. You have a life to live. It’s not a perfect one and it comes with challenges. You have to find a way to make this work.”

  Lily pulled herself up and arranged her body against the cushions so that she could lean in close to Corinne’s face.

  “You know what really pisses me off? A woman could be a porn star and a prostitute and still nab a dude. She can say that’s who I used to be. That’s not me now. And they can live a perfectly respectable life. Criminals come out of jail and get a clean slate. You can be a recovering alcoholic. You can be an ex-anything. How come I can’t be . . .”

  “How come you can’t be what? An ex-man?”

  Lily and Corinne locked eyes and they both erupted into howls of laughter at the same time.

  “I should call Jake and say, hey, I’m not a man, I’m just an ex-man! Like the X-men! I’m a mutant!”

  They continued to laugh until Lily urged Corinne to stop because the sharp pains in her side were starting to come back.

  “I gotta laugh to keep from crying, I guess,” said Lily. She put the alcohol back up to her mouth, tilted the bottle back, and swallowed hard. Corinne shook her head and made disapproving noises.

  “I’m getting very very drunk tonight,” Lily said. “If you don’t like it, leave now.”

  Corinne stood up and looked around the apartment.

  “Try not to hurt yourself,” she said, walking to the apartment door.

  “Can’t promise that,” Lily yelled out, before turning the bottle up yet again. Corinne opened the door and stopped short. Lily heard her make a little sound like oh and Lily’s whole body tensed up. She immediately began breathing heavily and there were beads of sweat coming down her underarms. The boys were back. They were pissed off that they got arrested and now they were going to kill her. Why the hell didn’t she just pack a bag and go straight to Corinne’s house? What the hell was she trying to prove? Lily could not bring herself to turn around, so she just listened. She heard the rustling of what sounded like paper.

  “Who’s at the door?” Lily asked, her eyes on the wall.

  “Turn around,” Corinne said. Lily slowly turned just her head toward the door. A delivery man stood in the doorway, struggling to balance what looked like a thousand lilies.

  “What the—,” Lily whispered.

  Corinne led the man into the apartment and gestured for him to put the flowers on the kitchen counter. She signed a form and returned it to him. As soon as she closed the door, she rushed over to where Lily stood.

  “Is there a card?”

  Lily shook her head.

  “I don’t see one.”

  “What does this mean?”

  Lily looked up at Corinne.

  “It means he ordered these flowers a week ago and they’ve finally arrived.”

  Corinne ran to the front door and flung it open.

  “Hey!” she shouted down the hall.

  In the distance Lily could hear the delivery man answer Corinne. “What’s up?”

  “When’d you get this order?”

  “What’d you say?” came the voice, sounding very far away. Corinne cupped her hands around her mouth.

  “I said, when did you get this order?”

  “It’s on the receipt!” the man yelled out, just as the stairwell door slammed shut. Corinne smoothed out the receipt on the counter and ran her finger across the numbers. She held it up, peered at it closely, and then folded it carefully and pressed it in Lily’s hand.

  “Today,” Corinne said. “The lilies were ordered this morning.”

  Lily walked to the trash can, stepped on the lever and threw the receipt away.

  “It wasn’t him. It was someone else.”

  “Someone else who sends you lilies from Holland?

  “Maybe someone’s just messing with
me. Maybe—”

  Corinne turned her head to look at the back of the flowers.

  “There is a card!” she said, plucking it out of the vase. “It fell inside.”

  Lily moved away from the tiny envelope, as if it would burn her as soon as she touched it.

  “I don’t want it. Take it away.”

  Corinne moved closer to Lily, holding out the envelope.

  “You know you want to know if they’re from him. What could he possibly have to say to you?”

  “That it’s my last day on earth?”

  “He wouldn’t send you flowers and then kill you. Sounds like an episode of The Sopranos.”

  “I don’t care what’s in it. I don’t want to know.”

  “You just finished saying you want to stop running away from everything.” Corinne put the envelope down on the counter. “Put your big-girl panties on and open it.”

  Lily kept her eyes on Corinne as she slid the envelope off the counter. Still staring at her friend, she slipped her finger under the sealed flap and pulled it apart.

  Finally, Lily looked down and flipped the card open. She could hear Corinne’s breath as she read. She closed the card, inhaled, and closed her eyes.

  “Lily?”

  Lily didn’t move. She stood stock-still, the card still grasped in her hand.

  “What’d it say?”

  Corinne waited for Lily to speak. But she said nothing. She just stood there, her head tilted toward the floor. She looked like she’d just fallen asleep standing up. Corinne waited. And she saw tears slide out of Lily’s swollen eye. The drops came down faster and faster until they collected on her chin and began to drip onto her chest.

  Ras pulled up to the large brick office building and threw the car into park. He opened the glove compartment, slipped out his Ruger, and tucked the gun into his waistband. He left the car running and trotted up the steps, pushing the doors open with the palms of his hands and heading straight to a receptionist’s desk. He took out his cell phone and read the text message once more: “Meet me at Dr. Montague’s office. 3PM.”

  “Ras Bennett,” the woman said, her eyes wide. “So nice to meet you!”

  “Dr. Montague,” Ras said, ignoring her attention.

  The woman looked down, embarrassed, and wrote out a visitor’s badge. Ras snatched it and looked down at the suite number. He walked down the hall quickly, only glancing over to look at the suite number on each door. He came to suite 100 and read the sign on the door: Dr. Phillip H. Montague Metropolitan Fertility Center. Ras felt his stomach constrict, and he willed his knees not to completely buckle under him. A fertility clinic? What the hell?