Once I got AJ in the car, I decided to go check on my mother. She and I had been talking on and off since she’d first shown up. Each time I tried to convince her to come home with me. I was hoping that if I showed up with AJ, he could help me convince her to come home with us. It didn’t take me long to get down Tara Boulevard. I turned into the Scottish Inns, parked, and grabbed a sleeping AJ from the backseat. My mother was standing outside, smoking, as we pulled up. She quickly rushed inside, leaving the door cracked for me to walk in. I rushed up the stairs, closing the door behind me once I got in the room. The hotel room was drab at best. Pasty yellow walls with cheap floral wallpaper lining it. The burgundy carpet looked worn. A rickety old round wooden table sat in the corner by the window with two feeble brown chairs. I could hear water running in the bathroom as I laid AJ on the floral comforter.
“Be out in a sec,” my mom yelled from the bathroom. “I wanted to wash the smoke off me best I could so I can hold my grandbaby,” she called.
“Okay, no problem,” I said in return.
I took off my coat, being that the room was toasty, then checked my vibrating cell. It was Jamie.
“Where are you?” he asked before I could say hello.
“I’m at my mom’s hotel with AJ. We’ll be home soon.”
He was quiet a moment, like he was trying to determine whether to believe me or not. I looked up when my mom walked out of the bathroom. She had changed from her red T-shirt into a black one. There was a big smile on her face as she looked at AJ.
“Can I wake him?” she asked.
I nodded. Her hair was pulled back into a French braid. The style showed all her facial features, highlighting the high cheekbones.
“What time will you be home?” Jamie finally asked me. Light jazz was playing in the background.
“As soon as I leave here.”
“Okay. I know things have been crazy between us as of late, but I miss who we used to be, Chyanne. I want us back.”
I couldn’t agree with him more. I’d missed the old us too. The “us” before that phone call had changed everything. The “us” before I’d cheated on him with Gabe.
“I know. I do too.”
“I don’t like where we are right now, and I know I placed a lot on your plate at once, but if we could just sit and talk . . . try to come up with a resolution, then maybe we can get back to happy.”
I moved to the bathroom while my mom tried unsuccessfully to wake AJ. I closed the door, then sat on the closed toilet lid.
“Jamie, this has been hard on both of us. Hearing what happened to you, learning about the PTSD and bipolar disorder . . .” I shook my head and sighed. “It all just came at me at once. I don’t want to sound insensitive, but I don’t know how to be there for you on that. You have to tell me . . . show me how.”
He groaned like what I’d said had hurt him. His voice was gruff and deep. “Can we talk about this face-to-face when you get home, please?”
I wanted to keep talking at that very moment, but he was right. It was a conversation we should have face-to-face. So I agreed.
“Thank you,” he said. “I love you, Chyanne. Nothing will change that.”
I wondered if that last part would hold true if he ever found out I was cheating.
“I love you too, Jamie. Nothing will change that.”
I hung up with him, then paid my water bill to the toilet bowl man. I washed my hands and dried them before walking back into my mom’s room. It smelled like stale chicken. I looked over and frowned at the Church’s Chicken box on the small counter, next to a small white microwave. She hadn’t gotten AJ to wake up, so she was rocking him from side to side in her arms as she hummed a lullaby to him.
“He must have worn himself out at the museum,” I told her as I sat down next to them.
My mom looked over at me. “You wore that to a museum?” she asked.
“No. I went to a funeral, and a friend of mine took AJ to the children’s museum.”
“Oh. So how’ve you been?”
“I’ve been okay. Worried about you being in this place.”
She stopped rocking AJ, then laid him back on her bed. She stood and adjusted her worn jeans.
“I’m fine for now. Thank you for paying for the room. I’ve been looking for work. Kind of hard when you don’t have much skill and you have a felony on your record. Not to mention the fact that no one wants to hire an old woman,” she said as she walked over to start cleaning off the small dining area.
“Mom, you can come home with me. I own my own business. I could hire you, train you for work, or at least get someone else to hire you.”
She cut her light brown eyes at me. “I don’t need handouts. I ain’t ever been one for handouts.”
“It’s not a handout.”
“To me it is,” she said as she dumped the empty Church’s container in the small trash can beside her bed.
“Wouldn’t you like to be closer to AJ?” I asked her, trying a different approach.
She smiled as she glanced at him sleeping peacefully.
“Don’t use my grandchild against me, Chyanne.”
“I’m not. I’m just asking, is all.”
“I would, but I don’t want to get in the way of your and Jamie’s affairs.”
The only person who was having an affair was me, I thought, but I didn’t say anything out loud. My guilt had me moving aimlessly around
“You won’t be in the way. Just come to live with us for a while. This place can’t be all that safe, and I don’t really want to keep bringing AJ over here,” I pleaded.
“I don’t know, baby. I kind of like my privacy and space.”
“Did you see how big the house I live in is? You could have one side of the house all to yourself if you wanted to.”
It took me a few more tries, but she finally gave in. I was more than happy to help her pack what little she had. During one of our phone conversations previously, I’d told her about the new baby. She had been excited, had said she would finally get to be a part of my pregnancy. As we packed, she asked me about all she’d missed with AJ. She also wanted to know more about the business I was in. She was very impressed and proud of me. She couldn’t stop smiling when I told her that I had my own office and that our last name was half of my company’s moniker. Before we left, she made sure the hotel manager transferred the month’s credit she had left on her room to the single mother of four who was living a few doors down from her.
By the time we were ready to leave, AJ was wide awake and was asking for his father, until he saw my mother in the front seat. Before I could pull out of the hotel, my mom jumped in the backseat with AJ. They laughed and talked the whole way home. I couldn’t lie. I was happy to have my mother come home with me. I was also happy that our relationship wasn’t as strained as it could have been. I hadn’t told Jamie about my mother coming to live with us, and I hoped he would be okay with it.
Gabe
“I don’t know why I expected more from the son of a whore. I knew you were fucking the little slut too. I knew it. What’s in this bitch’s pussy? Gold?”
A few weeks had passed since my father’s funeral. Stephanie was standing at my door. I hadn’t been expecting her, hadn’t seen her since we laid my father to rest a few weeks before. But there she stood. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail that swung like a pendulum anytime she moved her head. The judge, a friend of my father’s, hadn’t ordered that the ankle monitor be placed back on her yet. She clutched her purse underneath her right arm. The silk cream blouse and the cream pleated dress pants made her look as if she should have been a part of the business meeting I’d just left.
“What in hell are you talking about, Stephanie?” I asked.
“That little whore Chyanne was at our father’s funeral. I saw the bitch. She was looking right at me, mean mugging me at my father’s funeral. At first it confused me, but then I slowly started putting two and two together. The answer came to six, and that just did
n’t add up. She couldn’t have been there for Aric, and she wouldn’t have been stupid enough to show up there with him.”
The sun had finally come out that day. I swear, it felt as if Atlanta hadn’t seen the sun since my father was killed. It was bright and sunny that day, but the sun didn’t do anything to help the cold temperature, though.
I shrugged. “So she showed up at Pop’s funeral. Big deal.”
“You’re fucking her, and I know you are. I would have stopped by last night, but her car was here. I saw it,” she said, then smirked.
“That could have been anyone’s car.”
“No. It was hers. Trust me on that. Does Aric know you’re fucking his tramp?”
I didn’t say anything as I folded my arms across my chest. “What do you want, Stephanie?”
She chuckled wickedly. “To see if you are really your mother’s son. Doesn’t she have a man, Gabriel? Isn’t she your best friend’s son’s mother? How low of you.”
She was talking, but my mind was on the night before. Chyanne had come to tell me that she couldn’t see me anymore, that we had to stop. Like hell we had to. I didn’t want to stop. I was too far gone to stop. So we’d fought about it. I’d asked her, “Why stop now when the damage was already done?” She was worried about Aric and what he would do if he found out. I wasn’t. She didn’t want to hurt Jamie, because she loved him. I called that bullshit, told her she obviously didn’t love him enough not to let me fuck her. She didn’t like my semi-drunken response. So she slapped me for the affront. I grabbed both her wrists, then slammed her back against the wall. She screamed at me that she was pregnant and asked me if I’d lost my damned mind. I had heard her curse only once before, and like then, it turned me on.
She had told me she wanted it to end, but when I kissed her, her resolve faltered. When my hand found its way inside her yoga pants, then inside her underwear, she was just as wet as my dick was hard. I snatched her pants down, ripped her underwear from her body, then sat her on my shoulders. Ate her pussy as I walked to my front room. Then I placed her on my couch, threw her legs over my shoulders, and asked her if she was sure it was the last time. Every time she moaned, I went harder, stroked deeper. I needed to be sure that she was sure it was the last time.
“I got shit to do, Stephanie. I don’t have time for your games.”
I was about to shut the door in her face when she shoved it.
“Aren’t you a little worried that I’m going to leave here and tell Aric?” she asked, that same wicked smile on her face.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Ha! And you have the same haughty spirit as your mother; like you don’t care that what you’re doing is wrong. But don’t worry. I’m not going to tell Aric anything. I hope that when he finds out, it cracks his fucking face just as it did mine when he played me to the left for her.”
I didn’t respond to that. I only slammed the door in her face. I went back to my home office to look over the contracts I’d taken away from my meeting. I’d turned down the job offer at B&G and decided to seek to buy them out instead. Aric had been gone for a little over a month, and the company was already failing again. I’d taken a leave of absence. The company couldn’t survive without us running it. So I’d waited until the stock numbers dropped and made an offer to the board. Seven of the twelve members were ready to sell out. I needed only three more in order for them to override the remaining members.
I thumbed my nose as I sat at my desk and got back to work. In order to get my mind off my father, I had thrown myself into my work. I had too. Nights of drinking and shedding tears had started to throw me off mentally. Chyanne was a good vice too, but in the end she was only a temporary fix. She had a family that she had to try to keep intact. I wouldn’t even fool myself into thinking that we could ever have any more than what was.
I’d even met her mother when she came to pick up AJ from Aric’s crib a few days ago. I’d been discussing the business deal with Aric. If he and I could take over B&G, we could save our jobs and buy an already established company for way less than it was worth. When Chyanne walked in with her mother, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her. I’d missed her, just as I always did when she didn’t come around for a few days. The text messages and phone calls were never enough.
The daughter was every bit as beautiful as the woman who had birthed her. She and Chy looked identical. The only difference was that Chy’s mother’s waist was smaller, and her hair and skin were a different color. While her mother talked to Aric, I talked to Chy, without saying a word. Our eyes did the talking. I knew I had to leave her alone, just as she had suggested, but the pull was too strong. So much so that I was already prepared to lose a friendship over it.
Aric and I had years of friendship under our belts, but at the same time I already knew he wouldn’t be happy with the idea of me and Chy sexing. Did I feel bad about it? Depends on the mood I was in. Most times I didn’t. If they had still been together, I wouldn’t have taken it this far. I had tried to take my mind off of her, had tried to keep my head in the game by focusing on the buyout and work. Strange thing about it was, I hadn’t even thought about what a confrontation with Jamie would be like if he ever found out.
So work it was for now. If I wasn’t working, I was making sure my mom kept her sanity about her. My father’s death had been hard on both of us, but especially her. It was officially just me and her now. We had nobody else. We hadn’t had any more problems out of Cecilia, either. All had been quiet on that front. The judge that was to sentence Stephanie had called and told me what he and my father had discussed as far as Stephanie’s sentencing was concerned. He wanted to know, out of respect, if I wanted him to go ahead and pursue the course of action that had been decided upon. I trusted my father’s judgment, so I told him to proceed with the original plans. My Pops had a lot of pull, and if he had to use it to protect his children, he would. I no longer held that against him.
Later on that day I went to check on my mother. It had become a daily routine of mine. I had to make sure she was doing okay. Part of me just wanted to be sure I spent every moment with her as if it was my last. Losing my father had scared me. I wasn’t prepared for what had happened to him. What I also wasn’t prepared for was seeing Cecilia’s car in my mother’s driveway. I didn’t know what to expect or what to make of the sight. I parked my car and exited quickly. I used my key to let myself in the house.
“No matter what Xavier said, I knew he loved you, De-De,” I overheard Cecilia tell my mom. “We’ve fought for years over one man, like there was never another one.”
“No, you fought over him,” my mother replied, correcting her. “I played my position well. I know you may not want to hear it, but I did.”
I walked softly down the hall, then peeked around the corner. My mom and Cecilia sat face-to-face on the settee. Cecilia’s back was turned to me, and my mother was facing the entryway.
Cecilia wiped her tears, then looked up at my mother. “Yes, you did. When he wouldn’t answer my calls, I knew where he was and who he was with. I was so happy when we moved away to Nassau. I just knew that was the end of you and him, but no.” She shook her head. “It was just his way of moving me away from you this time. He would still leave for days, to come right back to you. I guess he just didn’t love me enough to leave you alone.”
I couldn’t see her face, but I could tell she was crying by the way her voice shook.
“Think about this,” my mother said, then handed Cecilia another Kleenex. “He didn’t love me enough to leave you, either.”
Cecilia looked up at my mother, and they both gave a little laugh. My mom finally gazed up at me. She smiled a soothing smile. Cecilia looked over her shoulder and saw me standing there. She quickly stood, then tucked her purse underneath her arm. Her white-gloved hand brushed the wrinkles from the front of her dress slacks as she tried to compose herself.
“I guess I should be going,” she said.
When she turned to look at m
e, she stared for a long time. I was the spitting image of my father. She stared at me like she was wishing I was him, but I wasn’t. I was his son, and it was in that moment, I think, that she finally accepted that.
Chyanne
How did you know when something just wasn’t right? What was that feeling you got when you knew you were doing something that you shouldn’t be doing? Was it intuition? Was it instinct? What kept men and women from cheating on their significant others, wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends . . . fiancés, fiancées? Whatever it was, I needed it to kick in and kick in soon. I was about to cheat on the man I loved with a man who had always caused me more pain than pleasure . . . depending on how you looked at it. He was the reason that I’d had to sit in a courtroom and be belittled by his ex-wife’s defense attorney, the reason I had to be labeled a home-wrecking whore. He was the reason that same ex-wife had tried to kill me. Yet I was about to let him ruin all that I’d worked for. Why? Why was I about to do this? Why couldn’t I just leave this man alone?
“Oh my God . . . Aric . . . please . . . ,” I begged.
I was begging, yes. As soon as he eased and inched his way deep inside of me, I had to start begging. No, I wasn’t begging him to stop. I was begging him not to stop. I was begging him to stay in that one spot that he was hitting. That one spot that was causing me blinding pleasure. That one spot that he’d made his a long time ago. That one spot that had me biting down on my bottom lip, gripping the top of my dryer as he sexed me from behind. The loud laughter of children could be heard just outside. Music played as adults laughed and yelled for their children not to do this and not to do that. Our son’s party was going on outside, but there we were in my house, the house I shared with Jamie. I was allowing Aric to violate Jamie’s space, helping him to disrespect a man that loved me more than he loved himself at times.
Tell Me No Lies Page 25
