“Yes, AJ.”
He didn’t say another word, just anxiously stood by the front door, waiting for me to join him so we could leave.
The drive over wasn’t a bad one. While my mind wandered all over the place, AJ’s ABC’s CD kept him occupied. My mind wandered back to what my father had said about me going to see Stephanie. I still had to question why. What in hell would she have to say to me? Because I sure as hell had nothing good to say to her. Normally, when my father suggested something, I followed up on it, because he was a wise man in some areas. However, suggesting that I go see the woman who had tried to murder me and my son had me calling his judgment into question. I had to do a lot of thinking, but I decided to take his advice. What would it hurt to give her closure? All I had to do was see her, say a few words, and that would be it. Closure was what I needed to move past the whole incident myself. That was where my divorce had come in. That was my cessation.
After I dropped AJ off, I picked up the phone and dialed Gabe.
“What’s up?” he answered.
“I need Stephanie’s address.”
I heard him whisper for someone to hold on in the background before he asked, “Say what now?”
“I need her address.”
“Why?”
“The fuck you need to know all that for? Just give me the address.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone before he spoke up again. He was somewhere where there was a crowd. It sounded like a bar, which was kind of unusual for him. Gabe wasn’t one of those guys who spent his time in bars.
“Look, Aric, I know what Stephanie has done, but do you really think it’s a good idea to try to confront her right now? She has been found guilty and is likely to be locked away for a while. You got what you wanted.”
“No, I didn’t get what I wanted.”
If I’d gotten what I wanted, she wouldn’t still be walking around, but she got what she deserved.
“So, why do you want her address?”
He sounded annoyed, which was another strange thing. Normally, he didn’t show that he cared that much about Stephanie. Even though I knew he cared about her, no matter what he said, it was the first time he was showing it on this scale.
“For closure,” I answered, repeating my father’s words. “Now, just give me the damn address.”
Once he gave me the information I wanted, I hung up and made my way toward my destination. It didn’t take me long to find Stephanie’s home with my GPS on. It was a nice neighborhood, but not one I would normally see Stephanie being a part of. I guess circumstances had a way of changing people. Was I one of those people? That depended on how you looked at my situation. Stephanie had been calling me, and I’d been ignoring her. Her restraining said that she was to make no contact of any kind with me, but that had never stopped Stephanie. She’d left messages, sent e-mails, and I was really halfway expecting her to find out where I lived. I could have turned her in, but I didn’t. That was the one thing I hadn’t told my father. He would have wanted me to call the police, but I figured me ignoring her would hurt her way more than her being arrested. I walked up to her door, prepared to ring the doorbell, but before I could, she pulled the door open in usual Stephanie fashion.
“You came?” she asked, as if she couldn’t believe it.
I looked at her. I mean I just gazed at her for a long time. Everything I’d found beautiful and sexy about her before disgusted me now. The motherfucker had tried to kill me. She was still very beautiful, but her heart was as black as the coldest winter night, and that made her look like shit to me. Her hazel eyes drank me in as she stood there, dressed like she’d just stepped off a runway in Paris. Her white silk designer dress slacks, expensive kitten heels, and matching blouse made her look like an everyday Stepford housewife. She had her hair pulled back into a tight bun. She didn’t look like a woman who’d been found guilty of attempted murder.
“What do you want?”
“I just wanted to see you, Aric. Do you really have to treat me like we had nothing at all? If there was a time when you ever loved me, then at least treat me civilly.”
She actually looked as if she was serious; she spoke the words with conviction, like she had a leg to stand on. Why had I come here? I asked myself.
“Treat you civilly? Are you serious?”
“Yes. Is that too much to ask?”
“Stephanie, what do you want?”
“You don’t want to come in?” she asked in earnest.
“No.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. You wouldn’t have been able to tell that we had been a couple in a relationship and a marriage for almost twenty years with the way we were acting. She regarded me closely when she saw that I was serious about not entering her home.
“You’re not even with her anymore, Aric. So, tell me, was it all worth it? All the drama, hurt, and pain?” she asked.
The old Stephanie I’d come to know was back.
“You need to ask yourself that. I’m a free man. You’re about to go to prison,” I taunted.
She smiled. “Or so you think. Don’t forget who my father is.”
Her father did have power and influence, but that didn’t mean a damn thing to me.
“I don’t give a damn about any of that, you understand? Now, I’m going to say this once. Stop calling me, stop e-mailing me, and stay the fuck away from me. We ain’t got shit to talk about. Nothing. And we never will again. You get that?” I asked her, intentionally being insulting by talking to her as if she was hard of understanding.
Her cold gaze grew darker as I turned to walk away. Fuck her.
“Your son looks just like you,” she said, and it stopped me in my tracks.
I turned back around, and my eyes narrowed at her. “What did you say?”
She gave a cold, callous smirk. “Your son, he looks just like you. He has your eyes, your nose.” She laughed. “He even walks like you. Well, he walks like your father.”
I pointed at her and said sternly, “Don’t play with your life like that, Stephanie. If you go anywhere near my son—”
“Again? If I go near him again,” she taunted, then smirked.
Thinking back about how AJ almost didn’t survive, about his small, frail body being in that incubator, about the nights Chyanne cried and I almost broke down when he would stop breathing, about the trips to the ER when he needed breathing treatments, my resolve faded. I was still close enough to reach out and touch her, so I did. I punched her and knocked her ass back into the door of her home. I didn’t hit her as hard as I would have hit a man, but I did it with enough force to let her know I meant business. Her arms went flailing over her head as she hit the back of the door and fell to the floor. Half of her body was lying in the house, and the other half outside. She slowly pulled herself up and cut her eyes at me as blood profusely spilled from her nose.
“Try that shit one more time. Go near him again,” I threatened her.
The warning laced in my words was obvious. I buttoned my double-breasted trench coat up, then turned to walk back to my car. I ignored her screams and her threats that I would pay for what I’d just done. I wouldn’t let it be known that her words had rattled me. I’d taken every precaution to ensure that she would never know where my son was or what he looked like. So it pissed me off to no end to hear her say that she’d seen him. Stephanie thought I was playing, but I really would do something that would cost me my freedom if she set foot near AJ again.
Chyanne
Things hadn’t really gotten any better between Jamie and me. I couldn’t explain why he had become so sullen after he got that phone call from his grandmother. It was a first for us. Never in our relationship had things been strained. I felt as if there was something that he wasn’t telling me, or was there something I’d missed? Why had my mentioning his family made him flip on me as he had? Why, even after I apologized, had he still felt the need to be cold toward me? Something wasn’t right. The question th
en became, what exactly was it? I didn’t want to push and pry. Hell, if he didn’t want to talk about his family, then so be it. Like he’d said, I never mentioned my mother and father, either. As far as the rest of my family? My mom’s family became so ashamed of what she’d done that they wanted very little to do with me, and my father’s family never really gave a damn about me to begin with. They wanted nothing to do with me.
I’d called Kay and asked her to meet me out somewhere. Jamie and I had been a bit off, and I just needed someone to talk to. Kay had been AJ’s Babies Can’t Wait liaison and teacher, and we’d become good friends. Babies Can’t Wait was a program for babies who were born prematurely, a phenomenon that could cause developmental delays or disabilities. She’d been around since his birth, and during that time we’d learned a lot about one another as we became friends. She’d also been a practicing therapist, but she’d closed her practice down a while back because of issues she wouldn’t discuss. I just assumed it was because of the lax economy.
Kay and I were sitting outside and having lunch at the California Pizza Kitchen. The sun was shining, and it was warm out, almost springlike. It was the first warm weather we’d had in several weeks, and I was grateful for it. My sundress blew in the wind as I stood to reach over and grab napkins from the table next to us. It was empty, and we’d been waiting on fresh napkins for a while. While people strolled about, enjoying the different shops at Atlantic Station, Kay and I were enjoying lunch on the patio of the restaurant, along with a few other patrons. Atlantic Station was in the heart of Midtown and featured a wide assortment of shops, movie theaters, and world-class restaurants. It was a great way to distract myself from what was going on at home.
“How was work?” she asked once we finished ordering food.
We’d both ordered a Hawaiian barbecue pizza with extra pineapples and barbecue sauce. For drinks we’d ordered frozen lemonade.
“It was long. We’ve been busy since landing that big contract,” I told her, sipping my water, which had already been brought out.
“Wow, so you guys are really getting into the thick of things?” Kay’s hair blew around in the wind. I’d pulled mine back into a ponytail.
“Yes, and we’re happy about it. People know our name. We’re running with the big dogs, so we’re hoping the boys around town will start to respect us more. You know how it goes when they feel women are getting out of place.”
She laughed with me. “Tell me about it. So talk to me about what’s been going on with you,” she said, crossing her long toffee-colored legs. “I see the stress on your face.”
I shook my head and smiled, trying not to stress myself over what had been going on in my relationship. “Relationship issues,” I answered.
“You and Jamie are having problems?”
I waited until the waiter had set our beverages down before answering. “You can say that. To be honest, I don’t know what’s going on. It’s like Jamie is two different people now.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, leaning forward, clasping her hands together.
“I mean . . . it’s like one minute he’s my man and the next minute he’s this silent, brooding person who snaps at the drop of a dime.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Okay, so we’re supposed to be going to visit his family next weekend. Well, a couple of weeks ago we were home, lounging around the house, and we were about to eat a late lunch when I asked him about his family, specifically his parents. He got pissed. He yelled at me that they were dead, and then he stormed out. For the rest of that day he barely said two words to me,” I explained to her, keeping my voice low so the other patrons couldn’t hear me. “It was like . . . I’d never seen Jamie that way. He didn’t even sleep in bed with me that night. That’s a first, and we’ve been dating since AJ was about four months old.”
I watched her face as she listened intently. Her light eyes were shining behind the black-framed glasses she wore. “Have you talked to him?”
“I’ve been trying, Kay. I swear it’s like sometimes I don’t know this man. One minute he’s my Jamie and the next minute he’s not.” I covered my eyes and quickly uncovered them with a sigh. “He’s this depressed individual who doesn’t want the TV too loud, or he just doesn’t want to be bothered at all. He doesn’t want the lights on. I found him sitting in the front room in the dark, with tears running down his face. I tried, you know, being there for him, asking him what was wrong, and he totally brushed me off. He yelled at me to leave him alone and everything.”
“That doesn’t sound like Jamie at all, Chy. What’s really going on?”
“I have no idea, Kay. I really don’t.”
“Well,” she began as she leaned forward, “and I hate to go all psychotherapist on you, but it sounds like Jamie is dealing with something else.”
“Something else like what?”
“I’m not sure. I want to say he sounds depressed. Sitting in the dark, crying? Definitely sounds like something a little deeper than him just being stressed.”
I frowned and leaned back in my seat. “He’s never, ever been this way before.”
She nodded and sipped some of her frozen lemonade before responding. “That doesn’t mean that he isn’t depressed. Most times when these episodes happen, something triggers them, and you said it wasn’t until you started talking about his family that he got like this.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’m not saying this is a definite, but if my guess is correct, then I would say depression. Try to talk to him and see what’s going on.”
We stopped talking long enough to thank the waiter for finally bringing the pizza out. Once he was gone, we continued talking. Although what she said made me nervous, I got some sense of relief from knowing that it wasn’t me making him that way. It still worried me, though. Jamie had never been the type to just be moody. He’d always been straightforward with his emotions, so this new thing was foreign to me. We enjoyed the rest of our time at lunch, and afterward we did a little shopping. Since there was a Publix grocery store nearby, we even picked up a few groceries before going our separate ways.
I found myself calling Jamie but got no answer. I really hoped the day had been going well for him. He had a book-signing event at his bookstore in Lenox Square. I sent him a text just to let him know I was thinking about him and that I loved him.
By the time I made it to Aric’s to pick up AJ, I was a little sleepy. What Kay and I had talked about was still on my mind. I loved Jamie, and I wanted what we had built together back. Our relationship had been damn near perfect. I pulled into Aric’s driveway and got out of my car. I saw Gabe’s truck and smiled. I hadn’t seen him in a while. I walked up the cobblestone drive and rang the doorbell. I looked around at the flowers that adorned either side of the steps, and I knew that a woman had put her touches on the home. I gave a light chuckle and shook my head. Aric had said he didn’t wanted to be with me, but he’d been with plenty of women after me. I had a mind to curse, but I didn’t.
I was expecting Aric to snatch the door open, and I was pleasantly surprised to see Gabriel’s handsome face smiling down at me. “What’s up, Chyanne? Nice to see you again. It’s been a while,” he said, then licked his lips.
I smiled as his deep voice washed over me. Gabriel’s voice was ridiculously sexy. I mean, it made no sense for any man’s voice to flow over your skin like silk and leave goose bumps as well as tingles. My goodness.
“Yes, it has. Nice to see you too.”
Before, the way Gabe would look at me would make me blush like never before, but the more I got to know him, the more I’d come to know that he cast that same look at most women he found attractive. He was an all-around flirt, a good guy, but a flirt.
He pulled the door open wider and let me in. “Aric is upstairs with AJ. Just as you pulled up, AJ spilled juice on him.”
The foyer was big, and I’d always been fascinated by it. The gold and black decor gave it a bachelor pad feel. The b
rand-new hardwood floor shone underneath our shoes. A coatrack stood to the left of us, along with a small table with a bowl for keys. Gabe was standing tall and sexy as ever, with his locks pulled back, showing his handsome features. His neatly trimmed goatee made him even more appealing. It went well with the perfect smile that he owned, and as always, his starch-white teeth added to the sexual appeal.
The chocolate-brown dress shirt he had on hugged the muscles in his chest and arms. The way his black slacks hung grown-man low made his posture even more masculine. There was a time when I thought I would always be curious about Gabriel, but I was glad I didn’t have that curiosity anymore. I’d come to learn very well that curiosity killed the cat. He stood there with his hands in his pockets, watching me, giving me the same look he always had. It made my smile a mile wide. He was about to ask me something when I heard AJ yelling for me as he tried to run down the stairs.
“Don’t run down the stairs, AJ. How many times do we have to have this conversation?”
I heard Aric before I could see him. After all this time, his voice still chilled me whenever I was in his presence.
“Mommy, Daddy,” AJ’s said in a soft voice as he stopped and looked around the corner behind him.
“Yeah, but running down the stairs could hurt you. Walk,” Aric said.
I moved past Gabe and walked to the foot of the stairs to meet AJ. He was dressed in dark denim jeans and a short-sleeved white T-shirt, and fresh Nike shoes were on his feet. He held on to the right side of the railing as he quickly descended the stairs to get to me. I held my arms open when he was all the way down, and he jumped into my arms. People were always surprised when we told them AJ’s age, because he could speak like he was a two-year-old at only eighteen months.
I looked at the top of the stairs and saw Aric standing there with his shirt off. He had a white shirt in his hand, which he hadn’t put on yet. His eyes locked with mine. The way he looked at me made me glance away, because that look was familiar to me. It had been ages since I’d last seen him naked, but his body was still as cut and ripped as it had been before. His chest made me remember the way I used to lie on him after we made love. His abs were still just as defined, and his arms were still thick and sinewy with muscles too. He had on gym shorts that showed off his toned calf muscles. The same thick eyebrows and long curly lashes gave his hazel eyes that mysterious Egyptian appeal. His bald head and thick lips made old memories surface of the time when there was an us. But when I looked at his massive hands, I remembered them connecting with my face, and I quickly came back to reality.
Tell Me No Lies Page 7
