Tell Me No Lies

by Nikki- Michelle

  “Before you go back home to fuck the mother of my child,” I said casually, “I need to lay a few things on the table. From this point on, the only thing that we have to talk about now is business. For a long time all there ever will be between us is business. I don’t have a thing to discuss with you on a personal matter or friendship wise. The shit with Chyanne was foul as fuck, and on any given day I wouldn’t have done any shit like that to you.”

  Any other day, I’d have half a mind to believe that maybe . . . just maybe Gabe would respond differently to what I said. But not that day. He’d already taken an ass whupping physically, so mentally he wasn’t about to do the same.

  “So what do you want?” he asked nonchalantly. “An apology?”

  That wasn’t a real question. It was more like a “Fuck you.”

  “What’s done is done,” I answered him, opening the door of my truck to get in. “I just wanted you to know where we stand.”

  I pulled the door closed. I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. I wasn’t interested in what he had to say. I knew I just needed to get away before my determination faded. I was determined to carry out the rest of my plan, determined to let Chyanne know that to fuck me was to initiate your undoing. No, she wasn’t my woman anymore, but she couldn’t have possibly thought it was okay to fuck my best friend, not when I’d told her never to cross that line.

  Chyanne

  My whole life was coming apart at the seams.

  “What do you mean, Jamie did this to you?” I asked Gabe as I followed him up the stairs to his bedroom.

  He’d left me at his place. Although my first thought had been to go home, I’d stayed around, waiting for him to return, so I could give him a chance to say good-bye properly. Gabe slapped the light on, then kicked the black leather ottoman across his bedroom. It stopped shy of hitting the glass double doors of his balcony. His bedroom was clean, not even a stray hair on the polished hardwood floors. The California king–size bed was made up with a thick burgundy down comforter and black accessories. It was a substantial space, one where it seemed as if you had to walk a mile from the bed to the closet.

  I’d wanted to know what happened to his face. He’d walked in, slammed the door, jarring me from the blissful sleep he’d left me in. He was cursing, fighting mad about something. I had rushed from his front room and had been taken aback by the mess that had been made of his face. His baby blue dress shirt was adorned with blood.

  Now as I watched him, he yanked the necktie from around his neck, then punched his armoire so hard that its doors rattled and it threatened to fall to the floor.

  “He knows, Chyanne,” Gabe revealed, looking nothing like the calm-natured man who had left me earlier.

  He knows. As soon as those words left his mouth, I felt my world crashing down around me like broken glass. The only “he” he could be talking about was Jamie. If Jamie had done that to him, then that clearly meant that he’d found out about us. I tried to come up with ways he found out. I’d erased every text message, because I knew what would happen if he ever found any. But he’d found out, anyway. I started to look around for my keys, then remembered they were downstairs. I rushed from Gabe’s bedroom so fast, it was as if I had wings. I had to get home. Had to figure out if I still had a home. My mind went to AJ and my mother. How would I face Jamie when I got home? What would I say to him? How would I fix my mess? I went to the front room, snatched throw pillows off the oversize sofa, trying to find my keys and phone, but to no avail.

  Tears were already stinging my eyes. I couldn’t find my keys or my phone. I rushed back into the kitchen, grateful that my keys lay atop the island. I looked around on the floor frantically, wishing and praying desperately that my phone lay somewhere. I pushed my hair back from my face as I slid my feet into my shoes. I made a mad dash to the door, only to slip, slide, and hit the floor so hard that I swear, I almost knocked myself unconscious.

  “Chyanne, what the fuck!” Gabe exclaimed as he rushed down the stairs.

  The thud made by the back of my head was so loud that his neighbors could have heard it. He rushed to help me up from the floor. I was dizzy, but I was coherent enough to know I needed to get the hell out of his house.

  “I have to go.”

  He opened his front door for me. “Aric knows too. They both know,” he told me.

  My eyes widened. Trying to catch my breath nearly strangled me. However, I didn’t care that Aric knew. Jamie knew, and that terrified me more than death itself. I quickly moved down the five steps that led to his front door and ran full speed to my car. I backed up, turned my car around, and didn’t look back as I sped home. I looked at the clock on the dashboard and realized I’d been away from home for almost four hours.

  I shook my head, disgusted with myself. The quick sampling of sex that Gabe had given me before he left was enough to put me in an idyllic coma. I made it home quicker than I ever had. I didn’t see Jamie’s car. I was still scared, nervous about what was to become of my life, my home, my relationship. I rushed into the house to find my mother sitting in the front room, with AJ nestled safely in her arms. Aric must have brought him home while I was gone. She slowly looked up at me as I rounded the corner.

  “Jamie isn’t here,” she said calmly.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  It was a stupid question to ask her, but I was looking for any amount of help I could get.

  She shook her head, then moved to lay AJ on the couch. After she stood, she shook her head again. “No, I don’t.” There was a look on her face, a motherly one that said “I told you so.”

  I figured I’d left my phone at Gabe’s place somewhere, so I rushed to the house phone in the kitchen to call Jamie. I got no answer. I looked at my mom when she walked in.

  “When did he leave?”

  “Been gone for about two hours. An angry man left this house. There’s no telling what he left to do.”

  I thought back to the way Gabe’s face had been pummeled. I knew what Jamie had gone to do. Tears stung my eyes, then dripped over my eyelids.

  “I swear, I didn’t mean for this to happen,” I said to my mom, then hung my head. Shame had always been too big of a burden for me to carry.

  “Yes, you did. You knew what you were doing, and yet you kept doing it. You know right from wrong,” she scolded, causing me to lift my head. “I love you, but I love you enough to speak truthfully. This is your mess, and you’re going to have to fix it. You didn’t think about anyone but yourself. Instant gratification is what you wanted. And true enough, it may have been the fix you needed in the moment, but you should have thought about Jamie, and you most definitely should have thought about how this would affect AJ.”

  The harsh reality of my mother’s words was not what I wanted to hear. I didn’t need her to be in my face, beating me over the head with the mistake I’d made.

  “It was a mistake, Mom.”

  “Was no damn mistake. An affair isn’t a mistake. You left your home day in and day out to visit the bed of another man. That is no mistake. I realize that you had to grow up fast, but part of being an adult is taking responsibility for your actions. We had a talk before you left here, and you still didn’t listen to me.”

  “I did listen.”

  “No, you heard what I said, but you didn’t listen. If you had, you wouldn’t have rushed out of here to go see Gabriel.”

  Before I could respond, Jamie pushed the door open. For a minute all I had was the deer stuck in the headlights look. His eyes were fire red as he scowled at me. My mother didn’t say another word. She walked back to the front room, picked up AJ, and walked upstairs and toward the other side of the house. Jamie had always been bigger, taller than me, but for some reason the grand kitchen seemed to get smaller. His presence was a menacing one. A cut sat above his right eye. His right hand had been rebandaged. His sweater had been ripped in some places. He didn’t say anything to me for a while, just observed me from a distance. The sneer on his face w
as nasty, but more importantly, his silence scared me.

  I made the mistake of saying something first. “Jamie—”

  “Get the fuck out,” he said, cutting off any apology I might have wanted to give him.

  My heart fell out of my chest. I tried to walk closer to him. His fists balled up by his sides, and the frown on his face deepened. He reminded you of a wolf or a lion that was snarling, growling, ready to attack.

  “Don’t fucking touch me. Don’t come near me. Just get out.”

  “Jamie, I’m sorry. . . .”

  Yes, I used that age-old line, because that was all I had at the moment. All I had left was my own sword to fall on, so I did.

  “I know,” he said, then brushed past me.

  I tried to grab his arm to stop him, but he snatched his hand away, shoving me backward into the wall. I kept trying to talk and explain myself, anyway. He walked to the front room and started to snatch my pictures off the wall. All the things that I was attached to went flying. Pictures, my degrees, photos of him and me in happier times. He even snatched down the decorations I’d put up. The only things that he didn’t touch were photos that included me, him, and AJ.

  “Jamie, stop! Just listen to me,” I begged and pleaded. “It’s not what like you think!”

  My words fell on deaf ears, and when he picked up the sofa to flip it over, I knew he was serious about me getting away from him. My vision was blurry because of the tears clouding my eyes, but I followed him, anyway, as he moved up the stairs and into our bedroom. I would say anything, anything to get him to talk to me.

  “You played me,” he snapped, getting in my face. “You’re a fucking bitch, Chyanne. All I’ve ever done is treat you with respect. I loved you. I still fucking love you. I didn’t do you wrong at all.” He kept talking through clenched teeth, and then he turned and punched his arm through the wall. His voice escalated the more he talked. “All I asked in return was that you be faithful to me, love me like I loved you. You never had to worry about anything. Nothing. And you’re still no better than the motherfucker you have a child by. It’s funny how you could be faithful to an asshole like him, and you do me like this. This is what the fuck I get?”

  He was slapping his hand against his chest as he barked those things at me. Tears of another kind ran down his handsome face. Mine were of hurt and shame. His were of hurt, disgust, and betrayal.

  He went to the closet and started to throw my clothes from the shelves, hangers, and drawers that were built into the wall. As he cursed, yelled, and screamed at me, I jumped in front of him to try to get him to stop. I didn’t know what I would say if he did stop, but I just wanted him to. Then maybe he would see me like he used to. Maybe he would remember the way we used to be.

  “Jamie, please stop,” I cried, then grabbed ahold of both arms.

  “Chyanne, get away from me!” he screamed in my face. “Get away from me and get the fuck out of my house!”

  His voice was so cold that it chilled my skin. He wasn’t the Jamie that I’d met. He was a different man, that monster my mother had warned me about. His face was contorted from anger. I didn’t know what else to do, especially when he grabbed my wrists and slung me against the wall. One wrist was already injured from when he’d smacked the pill bottles out of my hand. He’d forgotten I was carrying his child, obviously. That angered me. It seemed as if both times I’d gotten pregnant, I had to deal with the child’s father putting his hands on me.

  “Jamie, I’m pregnant!” I screamed at him. “I can’t leave. AJ and I have no place to go.”

  That was not entirely true. I had enough money in my bank accounts to go and buy a place for myself and AJ, cash on the barrel, the next day, if I needed to. But I knew Jamie loved AJ, and I knew he wouldn’t want to put me out, knowing I was carrying his child. It was a low blow, but I didn’t have anything else left to hit with. I was guilty, had messed up a good thing. So I’d become one of those women, one who claimed there were no good men around, but when I had one, I didn’t know how to treat him. I’d become one of those stupid-ass women, and it was eating me alive. I’d made a mistake, whether my mother thought so or not. I’d done the unthinkable to a man who truly loved me.

  “Fuck it. Then I’ll leave!” he raged. “You can have this shit. Done with you. Fuck you. Don’t call me. Don’t text. Don’t say a motherfucking word to me if it doesn’t have shit to do with AJ or my child.”

  His face was close to mine. He spoke through gritted teeth, and he had gripped my throat. He was beyond the point of madness. I was afraid. Scared to death, because I’d never seen Jamie this way. There was nothing behind the glare in his eyes, just an emptiness. I knew in that moment that I no longer meant a damn thing to him. I was just an average whore on the street to him. I knew that because that was what he told me as his grip got tighter and tighter around my neck.

  “Jamie!”

  For a minute I didn’t know who had called him, because I was too focused on trying to breathe, but I was happy that they had. I looked to my right. toward the closet door. My mother stood there with a gun pointed at Jamie.

  “Jamie . . . I love you, son, and I know that what my daughter has done to you is wrong, but I can’t let you hurt my child. You have to let her go,” she said to him.

  Her voice was level, a slow monotone. While holding a gun would have terrified me, my mother’s aim was unwavering. Flashes of Stephanie pointing a gun at me added to my fear of Jamie’s big hand gripping my neck. When he didn’t make a move to let me go, I heard her cock the weapon.

  “Jamie . . . I sat in a prison cell for almost ten years. I assure you that going back doesn’t scare me at all. Now, please, son, let her go and we’ll leave. I’ll take her and AJ, and we’ll leave. Whatever you want. Just let her go. Nobody is worth your freedom or your sanity, Jamie. One day what she’s done will be a distant memory. Yeah, it may still hurt, but time heals all wounds. If she didn’t love you enough not to take you down this path, then don’t you love her enough to deny yourself the right to be a father, the right to live as a free man. There is no coming back from it. You’ll lose who you are trying to make her pay for something that she didn’t care enough not to do to you in the first place.”

  It took Jamie turning to look at my mother actually pointing a gun at him for him to let me go. He released me, and I dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes. I couldn’t believe my mother’s words to Jamie. Did she not love me? Did she not see that I loved Jamie? Could she not see that I was remorseful, drowning in regret? I sat on the floor and watched Jamie grab a leather overnight bag. I watched, consumed by dread, as he threw some of his clothes and other items into the bag. He was leaving me. He couldn’t leave me. I jumped from the floor and ran after him.

  “No, Jamie, wait. Please wait!” I cried out.

  I grabbed ahold of the sleeves of his jacket, and he just shook me off like a rag doll. He even came out of the jacket to make sure I was off him.

  He looked at my mother and, in a very cold manner, told her, “Keep her away from me. I’m leaving.”

  I tried to go after him again, but my mother stopped me. “Let him go, Chyanne,” she said, with the gun down by her side now. “Let him go.”

  I walked back into what used to be my and Jamie’s bedroom, plopped down on the bed, and cried my heart out. The sound of the front door slamming closed was like the pounding of nails in the coffin of our relationship. I sobbed loudly. It didn’t matter that my mother was there, watching me. It didn’t matter that I probably looked like a damn fool. I didn’t care. I held my head in my hands and drowned in my sorrows.

  There was silence in the house. He’d left. He was gone. We were done. We were finished. I didn’t want to accept that. We couldn’t be finished. It couldn’t be over. I got a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. I lay back, balled myself up into the fetal position. That was when my mother left me. She cut out all the lights, walked out, and closed the door behind her. Darkness enveloped me. Not even t
he glow of the moon could make me see the beauty in the world.

  A few hours later I was able to pull myself from the bed. I wanted to see AJ, needed to see my son. I was sick to my stomach, literally. My head was pounding; my eyes were swollen from all the tears of mourning. I stepped over the mess that had been made of the bedroom and walked out into the hall. I had seen my mother take AJ upstairs, probably to her bedroom, but I could hear her downstairs, cleaning up the mess. I slowly walked down the stairs to see her with a big garbage bag in hand.

  “Where’s AJ?” I asked her.

  She looked up. “With his father.”

  “When? How did he get there?”

  “Aric stopped by while you and Jamie were fighting. He asked if he could get his son. I didn’t stop him. AJ didn’t need to hear that.”

  I wanted to be upset, but I couldn’t. I was happy she’d let him go. The last thing I needed was for AJ to have the nightmares of childhood that I had.

  “I’ll be back,” I said to her.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “To get AJ.”

  “You don’t think you should let him stay with his father for the night?”

  I shook my head. “No. I just want him close to me.”

  Truth be told, I needed to get out of the house. The memories of Jamie and me in happier times spoke so loudly in the silence of our demise. She didn’t say anything else, just went back to cleaning. I walked into the kitchen to grab my keys. I still hadn’t found my phone. I picked up the phone to call Jamie. I was surprised when he answered, but as soon as he heard my voice, he hung up. I tried to call back several times and got no answer.

  The drive over to Aric’s place was solemn. It was cold out, but I let down all four windows and let the wind chill me. I couldn’t help but to think of Jamie. His face and voice clogged my mind. I would give just about anything to go back home and have him waiting there for me. I pulled up Aric’s long driveway, then sat in the car for a minute. I’d been so caught up with trying to keep Jamie that I’d completely forgotten that Gabe had told me Aric knew too. I sighed and dropped my head on the steering wheel. Lord, give me the strength to deal with this man, I prayed. I got out and made my way to his door. I rang the doorbell, then waited in silence.