by Love Belvin
Once the door was shut, with adrenaline still running on high levels in my body, I looked to him for answers. He didn’t quickly offer them. He kept gazing at me as if I was the one in the wrong. We had a stare down for a while before I broke the ice with, “You can start with what the hell you are doing here.”
“I could ask you the same. I don’t hear from you in damn near three weeks. I call, text, e-mail, and show up to your office. What the hell is this all about? And what I really need to know is how the fuck did Michelle pass away and you not tell me?” Azmir was seething, he had never taken that tone with me before.
I shot him a look that could kill for that outburst. He didn’t react.
“What is wrong with you? Why do you keep running? At first that shit presented a romantic challenge but now it’s straight fucking neurotic!”
His beautiful nose had flared and I saw his brows knit with deep concern. In a nanosecond I appraised his handsome features, even when he was outraged. Feelings of familiarity started rushing in.
I didn’t have a response. There was so much going on in the moment. Just minutes ago I thought I was being violated and now Azmir is yelling angrily in my face. Did I mention I had no idea how he was able to get into my room? Speaking of which, “How the hell did you get in here?”
He scoffed, “After day nineteen of trying to contact you I got the memo that you were avoiding me. I eventually contacted your job. So, yeah, once Sharon told me where you were I decided that I would have to be forceful. And I used my fucking spare key!” He tossed his right arm toward the door, I’d supposed referring to the big brutes that just left. I was still speechless.
“Rayna, I don’t know what to do. You said you have a problem trusting people so I try and make myself more available to you emotionally. Before that bullshit with Tara, I thought we were finally in a good space. You have no damn idea what I’ve done in terms of extending myself to you. What more do you want from me?”
His baritone voice was calm and unnervingly even over controlled breaths as he stood feet away from me with his hands resting on his hips.
For the first time since my dear friend’s death I lost it, I exploded. “What more do I want from you?” I broke into a fit of giggles. They vanished almost as soon as they’d arrived. “I don’t need a goddamn thing! Not from you or anybody else! I’ve been at this thing by myself long enough! I’m not asking you for shit! The only person that ever gave a damn about me is gone! Could I at least get some room to grieve? I just need my space!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. The tears gushed after each word, I had lost all sense of control.
With that, Azmir grabbed his jacket and charged toward the door. He was leaving. I didn’t know how I expected him to respond to my meltdown or even if I wanted him to respond at all. But I didn’t expect him to turn his back and leave. His brisk actions snapped me back into reality. His pending departure represented loneliness to me. If Michelle was gone, who would I have to call on?
“You cannot go through life alone. If you’re planning to, you’re taking a detour to an early grave.” Michelle’s haunting words whispered into the deepest of my psyche.
“…you gone’ keep running like that daddy of yours. May even die a lonely death.” My grandfather’s wheezing laugh rang in my ear.
I have no fucking clue where the urge came from, all I felt was the need for him not to abandon me in my lowest state, in my darkest hour. I didn’t know how I would sift through this pain that I was feeling and needed help. I felt like I would somehow die if I didn’t sort through the barrage of emotions I was experiencing. In that very moment Azmir represented Michelle’s image for me. A light. I had to cling to what little I had of her left.
I shrieked in a desperate cry, “Azmir, please don’t leave me.” My world had collapsed. I swear, all of my hope and energy was depleted in that moment, vanished from my being. I had nothing left. Barely above a whimper I forced out, “I’m hurting so bad.” I choked out the words over my hard sobs. “I swear to fucking god, I’m gonna die in this shit, I swear!” I didn’t have enough oxygen to make all of my words audible.
But he heard my despairing appeal.
Azmir turned around and watched me buckle to the floor in the deepest sob. With eyes widened in regret, he grabbed me in a deep clinch and calmly whispered, “Let me take care of you. Hey…hey…hey! I’m not going anywhere.”
I bowed in his arms, paralyzed with pain, crushed in defeat. He held me for a while before carrying me over to the sofa. He allowed me a moment to let it all out. I’d wondered if he could sense that it had been pending for weeks. I cried until my body emptied of tears.
After a long space of silence he muttered, “What brought you here?”
I noticed him looking around the room. I had no guards up, I told him everything about my trip out there from my dad’s passing to my grandfather’s heeding and my mom’s condition. He sat and listened to it all in silence. In any other instance his silence would have bit at me but in this moment I was so low and in need to release it all, all those things that haunted me, had consumed me.
He remained quiet on me, his expression ran stoic. Insecurity finally peaked, I didn’t know what to make of it. He sat in the chair across from me with his elbows on each armrest and his fingers tented, fiddling with his beautiful and well-groomed mouth, his eyes faced the floor.
All of a sudden he rose from the chair and commanded, “Let’s go,” as he reached for my hand. Befuddled, I reached back.
As I stood bewildered I asked, “Where are we going?”
“I got us the presidential suite upstairs.”
“But wait. What about my room and my things? I’ve paid for this.” I was so confused at this point.
He ambled toward the door and without looking at me he replied, “I had your things taken up to the suite. I’ll reimburse you for the room.”
Up in the presidential suite Azmir ran me a bath. He was still disconcertingly quiet and I couldn’t get a take on why. I mean, I know I’d just unloaded on him but it felt like there was more going on. As I sat on the bed in the bedroom, he tossed the hotel’s menu on the bed.
“After your bath we can order you something to eat.”
After informing me of that he went back in the bathroom to check on the water.
Seconds later, he called out that the bath was ready. Right after, he came back out into the room and gave me a tentative glare.
“What?” I whispered. He’s too distant right now. What the hell is wrong with him?
He shook his head answering there was nothing wrong.
“Are you going to disrobe for your bath?” he asked too composed. Why is he rushing me to bathe?
“Is it just for me?” I was so thrown by his behavior. Where was he going with this?
“Do you want me to join you?” he asked with raised eyebrows, voice still calm.
Ummmmmm… “Sure,” I shrugged.
I rose from the bed and headed into the bathroom. He followed, on my heels. Once there, he watched me intently as I removed my blouse. He peeled off his shirt, leaving his chest bare, revealing his wiry upper torso, the one I could never tire from ogling. He stared at my upper body attentively, but his gaze never met my eyes; just kept fixated on my body. If his eyes read sensualism I’d understand at least what was going on in his head. But this—this—focus was something entirely different.
“Are you okay?” I softly asked before going any further.
I looked him square in his face. His eyes never met mine. He jerked his chin in the air telling me to continue. I didn’t know what else to do so I complied.
I unzipped my cropped jeans and pulled them down. I next unhooked my bra. Azmir maintained his fixated gape. I let the bra fall to the floor. Next, I went for my underwear. They weren’t my usual low cut cheekies, thongs or boy shorts. They were high briefs that I normally wouldn’t wear. As I rose up from pulling them down, Azmir turned at a 180-degree angle and let out the most frightening bellow th
at I’d ever heard from him.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!”
His hands squeezed into fists as he buckled into the vanity.
I jumped, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
I was met with silence for a few seconds.
“What happened to the baby?”
He was now turned facing the mirror as if it was painful to look at me. All the muscles in his back and arms flexed at a striking semblance of strain.
I was frozen.
“You couldn’t fucking tell me, Rayna? Goddamit!” Azmir spewed.
I took a deep swallow trying to maintain my placid expression. I didn’t know how long I’d be able to without breaking down.
“Azmir, what are you talking about?” My voice was barely audible, but my body began to tremble.
He remained with his back facing me. I grew uncomfortable standing in the middle of this bathroom ass naked.
He dropped his head between his shoulders and found the fortitude from deep within to continue, this time in a calm tone, “Your line…from your naval to your pubic hairs, Rayna…you were pregnant. What happened to the baby…” He paused before saying, “…our baby?” His words were labored through his distressed breathing.
My body tremors intensified.
Holy shit! How does he know?
The events of the past few weeks were too much of an emotional ride for me and the tears began to stream down my face as I asked, “H-how did you know about the pregnancy?” barely above a whisper.
With an exasperated pitch and absolute proclamation he informed, “Rayna, I am your lover. You think I don’t know your cycle? You don’t know that I am so in tune with your body that I know that you are easily aroused and in heat the two days before your period begins and that you have debilitating cramps the first day you start to bleed? That on the last two days, you have mild head and backaches? That you fuck like a champ the first five days after your last spotting? That the days following are your most pleasant in terms of your disposition?”
He finally turned to me in search of an answer. His scowl was new to me. Where was the loving, compassionate and placid Azmir?
How does this man know so much that I’ve never told him? I don’t think that I could quite articulate my cycle the way that he’d accurately expressed.
He must have read my mind because he answered, “I fucking depend on your body to tell me things that your mouth won’t.”
In that moment a blanket of guilt covered my body. I felt like my actions somehow robbed Azmir. Over the last few weeks I never thought much about Azmir and how my life was intertwined with his. How my misfortune was shared by him. I was so used to getting by alone. The tears wouldn’t stop. I wasn’t familiar with these feelings of guilt and regret for my actions that affected someone else. Suddenly I felt cold and heartless. I am a lot of things, but cold and heartless were not my ambition.
“I-I’m sorry, Azmir. I really am,” I attempted. “It’s just that so much was going on…with Michelle…you and Tara’s baby—”
He cut me off. “Oh, no! You will not use an accusation as an excuse to do this to me…to make long-term decisions concerning me without me. That is not acceptable, Rayna!” he scolded while looking me dead in the eyes and towering over me. He maintained a distance. Seconds later, he turned back toward the vanity.
Things got quiet, but I had to know. I had to ask because I was so confused.
“How could you be so certain that my child was yours and be so adamant that Tara’s isn’t?” I don’t know where the nerve came from but that I had to know.
He shot back a look that could kill. “What the hell are you implying?”
My eyes shot down to my toes. My thoughts were scattered, but I reached up and grabbed one.
“My fear was that I would further complicate you…us…if I brought this to you. I didn’t want to bother you with my issues,” I tried to explain.
“Honey…” he addressed me in a trenchant tone…derogate even. “…what you fail to assimilate in your pretty little incommunicado mind is that you being pregnant is not just your issue. It was of my doing. It’s my responsibility, even more so than yours. I am damn near ten years your senior, I should have been more responsible. I knew the ramifications of…of making love to you without protection,” he said with a swing of his hand, exhausted himself.
There was a brief pause. He needed to breathe.
“I had my suspicions that night behind the club,” he admitted all the while slouched over the sink. “When you came over that night and we had sex you felt different. I thought I’d give you time to tell me. But when you began to withdraw, I didn’t know what to do. Yesterday I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to see you…to see if I could convince you to not…do anything irrational.” Another painful pause. “Fuck! I see I’m too late.”
I understood from that statement that he was under the impression that I’d aborted the pregnancy. While it was in the deep recesses of my mind, I was so caught up in life that I hadn’t decided on anything. But I had to clear the air of this misconception.
“Azmir, I didn’t terminate the pregnancy,” I murmured with my eyes locked down on my mingling fingers.
He stilled and I could see him narrowing his eyebrows through the mirror. He was confused.
I continued, “I miscarried almost two weeks ago.”
His head shot up and he gave me a long faltering gaze through the mirror before turning to me to read my body language.
“Oh, shit. Rayna, I’m so sorry,” Azmir whispered softly and slowly, which was a far cry from his earlier outbursts. He engulfed me as his long arms folded around me. He kissed my head.
“Why didn’t you call me? I would’ve come.”
“I-I don’t know,” I answered at a loss for words.
“Who was there to comfort you?” he asked with pain in his words, still gripping me in his arms.
“No one.”
He withdrew his embrace, but kept his hands on my shoulders as he peered down into my weary eyes. “How did you get to the doctor…the hospital?” he interrogated.
“I drove myself,” I murmured suddenly feeling vulnerable as the images of my ride to the hospital flashed before my eyes. I hadn’t recalled that experience until this moment, causing all feelings of lowliness and incredulity to come crashing upon me.
He closed his eyes to find relief from the thoughts in his head and rested his forehead against mine. His arms around my naked body once again providing much needed warmth. We stood there for what seemed like an eternity.
“Rayna, I’m here. No more secrets. No more guards. All truths. Cards up. All trust…from here on out,” he proposed as he looked deep into my eyes. He was in search of my soul. His body was positioned so that his head was leveled down matching my height. His hands were gripped onto my shoulders.
My eyes were heavy, trying to make sense of what Azmir was asking of me. I don’t think I’m capable of being much to anyone. I’m not even sure that I want anyone to trust me completely. But once again, I didn’t want to disappoint the only person that was willing to take a chance on me. I’d lost my best friend…my sister.
“Deal?” Azmir implored again, only this time with more power behind his question. My throat constricted.
I nodded in agreement and succeeded in holding back the gallons of tears that were waiting to fall. I didn’t know what was being asked of me but for the first time in my life I was willing to do what I had to do to meet a man’s needs.
Could I be all he needed? Was I enough with all of my deficiencies?
~~~~~~~~~~
Azmir
I took in every word Rayna spoke to try to understand her. I figured she must be a sane case of bipolar because she definitely had her highs and lows. But once again, I saw the little insecure girl through her eyes. We spent the night there in the suite. The next morning I rose early to make arrangements for us to have a mini getaway in Atlantic City.
Rayna had a rental car that nee
ded to be returned near the airport. I had my people ride with me to turn it in while she stayed back at the hotel. When I returned, I encountered a frail woman in the lobby. I only took notice of her because of her constant twitching. I slowed down to get a better look at her. She looked lost there in the atrium of the hotel. She eventually turned toward my direction. She had a look of confusion in her eyes.
“Pardon me. Are you looking for someone?”
“Umm…Umm…my daughter here somewhere but I can’t find nobody that work here to help me get at her,” she protested as she kept trying to adjust her jacket.
“Is your daughter, Rayna?”
I knew this was her mother. I saw so many similarities in her features. She had Rayna’s beautiful chestnut eyes and full lips. You could tell that at some point she had the same caramel complexion before her dope habit. She gave me a look of distrust.
“Who you?”’ Samantha demanded with a bollixed expression.
I offered, “I’m a friend of hers.” But her facial muscles didn’t relax.
I reassured, “Rayna Brimm?”
After a long pause and deep gaze into my eyes she asked, “You her old man?”
I had to think about my answer. “I can take you to her so that you can talk to her,” I offered as a friendly gesture to gain her trust.
Her eyes widened. “Umm…umm…see, she said she gonna help me get this shit off my back. And I swear to god that I was gonna do it!” Samantha exclaimed, so embattled. “But I ain’t even gonna waste her time. I don’t want her to get mad at me. I ain’t seen her in so long. I ain’t wanna play her.” She was getting ready to tear up. I can tell she was earnest in not wanting to blow her opportunity.
“Just tell her I came through to say sorry and if she could come see me next time she come home. I’ll be ready then,” she continued with big and hopeful eyes.
