Starkest possible difference.
I swallowed down a lump in my throat as yet another unfamiliar feeling bloomed in my chest. Not jealousy really, just… understanding. A painful, but necessary comprehension of the mistake I’d made. While I was all giddy about these new feelings, excited to learn and explore and figure it all out, thinking this was different… it was just another fling for him.
Now, I knew.
nine.
eddie.
Something was off.
I knew it from her blank expression when we locked eyes at Urban Grind, and from the fact that she didn’t seek me out before she left. She always did that – not even in a thirsty, attention seeking way at all. Just… a brush, a look, a question in her eyes, “Will I see you later?” and almost invariably that answer was yes.
So I didn’t know what was up tonight.
She was out with her sister, and with her friends, so I didn’t want to press the issue, but I did send a couple of texts. When those got no response – which was unusual – I called, and got no response there either. I had Saturday morning appointments, so I couldn’t just pop by the yoga studio, but as soon as I was done at the shop, I did the next best thing – I went to her house.
“Hi Eddie,” she chirped when she answered the door, in her usual pleasant tone. She leaned in her doorway and looked at me, waiting for me to respond. To somebody else, that might be a normal greeting, but when my last visit to the door had started with her arms around my neck while she practically scaled me like a tree… yeah.
Like I said… something was off.
“Uh… hey. What’s up with you? I texted a couple of times, called you… you never responded.”
“Oh I didn’t want to.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Okay… is there a reason why?”
“None that I care to expound on.”
What the fuck is happening right now?
“Are you mad at me about something?”
She shook her head. “Mad? No, not at all.”
“Aiight – Astrid, I’m not about to do this shit with you. Let me in. Let’s talk.”
“About what?”
“About whatever the fuck has you acting silly today. This is childish – just say what your problem is, damn. ”
Her arms came up, crossing over her chest as she tilted her head to the side. “Just say what my problem is, huh? Okay. Yeah. Come in.”
She stepped aside, and when I moved through the open door, I realized she had her lights low, music on, candles lit around the area where she had her mat set up. I’d probably interrupted her, which contributed to her attitude, but that wasn’t it. The root of it was something else, and I wanted to know what it was.
“So, what is up with you today?” I asked, trying to pull her into my arms, but she immediately ducked away from me, holding her hands up in a warning not to touch her.
“What’s up with me is that you and I are not on the same page.”
I frowned. “What page is that?”
“I don’t know yet. I was still figuring that out when I realized we weren’t in sync like I thought we were.”
“And… what makes you say that?” I asked, confused. “A few days ago you had me lifting your ass in the air with my feet, and that seemed pretty fucking in sync.”
She scoffed. “Yeah, I thought so too, until I saw you grinning in homeboy’s face last night while he groped your arm, not even twenty minutes after you hit me with the play-sister head nod while you had some bitch practically in your lap.”
“Wait a damn minute – this is about me talking to people, are you serious right now? You think I’m not going to fucking talk to people because of what we’re doing? We’re not even—”
“I know that!” she practically screamed, then cupped a hand over her mouth as she shook her head. She pushed out a deep breath, and then in a lower, calmer volume, repeated it. “I know that. But that doesn’t change how I feel about you. And please – don’t confuse that with me asking you to do, or feel, anything. I’m not asking you for shit. But because you obviously don’t share the feelings that I do, I am choosing to no longer engage in whatever the fuck this was.”
I heard what she was saying, I really did. But I was distracted by the glossiness in her eyes, the crack in her voice as she spoke that made my heart do backflips in my chest.
“Astrid… are you crying?” I asked, trying to approach her, but she immediately backed away again, shaking her head.
“See?” she said, scrubbing her face with her hands. “This is exactly why I never engage in this. I never wanted to feel like this, and you have me out here by myself looking foolish. You gotta go,” she said, trying to push me toward the door, but I didn’t move. “This isn’t good for my mental energy. You are not healthy for me.”
I frowned. “What the fuck? I’m not healthy for you? I haven’t done shit to you!”
“Not on purpose, no,” she agreed, swiping her eyes with her thumbs. “Which is why I said – I’m not mad, not at all. You were just being Eddie, and I don’t expect you to change anything about yourself for me, I’m not that girl. But I’m also not the girl to ignore something that bothers me and hope it goes away. You don’t just ignore poisoning, you take an antidote. The antidote here is that we don’t do this anymore.”
I let out a wry laugh as I wiped my hand over my face. “So… I’m poison to you now? That’s what you’re saying?”
She didn’t respond. Instead, she looked at her hands, which was… fuck. This woman was the epitome of that whole “don’t hang your head or your crown might fall” thing, and here she was… not even really wanting to look at me. That shit made my chest feel like it was about to cave in.
“So… this is it, huh? Just like that?”
When she lifted her head, the tears streaming down her face were so foreign to me it didn’t even feel like the same person. She was… heartbroken. Something I never, never expected to see from her. Truthfully, I didn’t know where I’d expected this to go, had just been seeing where things led.
I had never considered that it would be… here.
“I guess so,” she whispered, not even bothering to clean her face this time.
I nodded. I didn’t have words for the moment, so I didn’t even try.
I left.
&
“Ouch! Shit! What the – what the fuck – what is – Mama?!”
I grabbed her by the wrists, fending off the vicious blows from the Louis Vuitton bag I bought her ass a few Mother’s Days ago long enough to look my angry mother in the face, and ask her why in the world she was 1 – in my tattoo shop on a random Wednesday night, 2 – in my city, period, when she lived damn near across the country, and 3 – attacking me with a shop full of strangers watching, filming, and undoubtedly putting the shit on social media.
She snatched away from me with a huff, straightening her clothes before she pushed her bag back up on her shoulder. “Your sister gets an ass whooping. Her husband is getting an ass whooping. You are getting an ass whooping. Every-damn-body who knew she was moving to God-forsaken London with all that damn rain and funny accents and decided not tell me, is getting an ass whooping!”
“Okay Oprah, let’s take this in the office please,” I told her, steering her by the elbow toward the back of the shop. Luckily for me, I wasn’t with a customer, but Priya and William didn’t bother hiding their snickers as I led my mother to my office for privacy.
They’d worked with me long enough to have seen her in action before.
“So I’m guessing Erika told you, huh?”
“She didn’t have a choice!” was my mother’s indignant response. “I call that girl to discuss plans for the Essence festival this year, and this child talking about she couldn’t talk long because she was meeting with the realtor. And I said – well what realtor? What you need a damn realtor for?! And she starts stammering and stuttering, and finally comes out with it cause her little ass was caught. You know, I can’t belie
ve y’all. What have I done to my children for y’all to not want to be around me, hmm? You move clear across the country, this girl goes all the way across the ocean. Is wanting my children to be close to me too much to ask?”
I shook my head as I sat down at the edge of the desk. “Now mama, come on… you know that’s not about you. You know that. Phillip was pursuing a great opportunity to provide for his new family, and Erika went with him. I wanted to be somewhere that felt more like home to me. And that’s not to say your house isn’t still home, because it is. And not that there aren’t great opportunities in LA, because there are. But… we gotta do what’s right for us mama. Can’t get so busy living for other people that we forget to live for ourselves. Isn’t that what you’ve always taught us?”
“Yes, but you weren’t supposed to use it against me,” she grunted back, crossing her arms over her chest. “That was for these other people. I ain’t other people.”
I laughed, then stood up, circling my arms around her shoulders for a hug. “Ah, stop it. You know daggone well you’d be mad as hell if you found out we were limiting ourselves. For anything. That’s how I know even as much fuss as you kicked up about Erika going back to school after Nya, you were happy for her.”
“Of course I’m happy for my kids. That doesn’t mean I want you leaving me though.”
“She’s not leaving you,” I chuckled. “She’s just… spreading her wings. That girl loves the hell out of you Mama, couldn’t function without talking to you at least every other day. She just needs some breathing room, to start her family.”
My mother huffed, then sat down in one of the chairs across from my desk. “I’m not trying to hear that. I am angry.”
“Obviously. I mean, you got on a plane and walked in my shop swinging that Neverfull like a baseball bat.”
“Well, you shouldn’t be keeping secrets then! But anyway… speaking of keeping secrets, where is that beautiful girl you brought by the house? One of those licks was for not telling me about her sooner.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You said anyway like you were changing the subject, but then—”
“Just answer the question boy.”
I chuckled at her reaction, then scrubbed a hand over my face, trying to find the right words. “I, uh… she’s around.”
“Just… around, huh? So you’ve already dropped her and moved on? Is it because I liked her?”
“What?” I frowned. “No. It had nothing to do with that. Wasn’t even like that,” I said, pushing out a sigh. “I didn’t “drop” her. It was the other way around.”
“Well, what did you do?”
I sucked my teeth. “I didn’t do anything. If you ask me, she was looking for an excuse, so she found one.”
Across from me, my mother gave me a deadpan look. “I’m gonna ask that again… what did you do?”
“Nothing,” I insisted. “Seriously!”
But… that had been nagging me.
In the four or so days since we had that falling out, I’d been having a hard time figuring out exactly what the hell happened. I hadn’t done anything I hadn’t always done, hadn’t said anything out of the norm, as far as I could tell. I truly didn’t understand why me simply talking to somebody else had her upset enough to tell me I was “bad for her mental energy” and goddamn “poison”. And what pissed me off even further? The assumptions she ran with about her feelings not being reciprocated.
In any case, it wasn’t a conversation I was having with my mother, so I managed to redirect her attention, by taking her and my father out to dinner. Come to find out, they were simply on a layover as well, on the way to London like Erika had been. My father had been outside talking to the Uber driver while she was inside whooping ass.
The next day though, when I met up with Viv, I went back and forth on bringing up the subject. She knew I’d been seeing someone, was pissed I hadn’t told her who, and had easily noticed a shift in my mood since the “breakup” happened. I was allowing her room to be smug about it, but she’d actually taken very little, and hadn’t even pressed much about it. I think she could tell that this wasn’t my usual “man, I don’t even talk to ____ anymore.”
This was… different.
I was actually kinda messed up about it.
There was a distinct feeling of loss surrounding her sudden absence from my day-to-day, after I’d carved a place for her in it. I missed her, point blank. Her sunny energy, her peaceful aura, her pretty face… and we had too much sex for me to pretend I didn’t miss that too. It was all foreign to me – shit I hadn’t felt in a long ass time, for anybody. Usually, after I fought with somebody, it was all “fuck them” everything. Go out, drink, have a good time, take somebody home to cleanse my palate.
With this situation… the shit hadn’t even crossed my mind.
Astrid’s tears, on the other hand, had.
Several times.
“So how are you?” Viv asked once she was settled at the table, after rushing in late. She ordered a martini when the server approached her about what she wanted, but look at the messy state of her hair, the glow of her skin, and the smile she could barely keep off her face…. She’d already gotten what she needed to relax.
It was probably the reason she was late.
“I’m good,” I shrugged, then took a sip from my jack and coke.
Viv shook her head. “No. You certainly do not look like it. Your hairline is messy, your beard is not trimmed, there are bags under your eyes—”
“Damn, can you get off my neck?”
She giggled. “No, I absolutely cannot. The first thing you did to me after I broke up with Darren was critique my outfit, so I do not wish to hear your complaints me ami. Are you finally ready to tell me what is wrong with you?”
“I’ve already told you there isn’t shit wrong with me.”
“But there is, liar,” she accused, pointing a manicured finger at me from across the table. “It is written all over your skin. You have not had your morning smoothie in several days, have you? Why? Does running your fancy new Vitamix make you think of a certain earthbound goddess?” She delivered that question with a smirk that made my mouth drop open.
“I swear to God, niggas gossip just as much as women. Your husband ran his mouth, didn’t he?”
She laughed, but didn’t answer until the server had dropped off her drink and moved on. “He did not, actually. Only confirmed what I already suspected when you started doing yoga, and drinking smoothies, and insisting on organic margarita mix. You are not as hard to read as you think you are.”
I pushed out a sigh. “Have you told anyone else?”
“Of course not, what kind of friend do you think I am? You could have told me about her, by the way. I would not have judged you harshly.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t about that, you know that shit, come on. I wasn’t saying shit about it because I didn’t know what it was myself, and now… it’s nonexistent, so I guess it doesn’t matter anyway.”
“Why?” she asked, earnestly, then took a little sip from her martini.
“Why what?”
“Why is it nonexistent? I know who it is now, you may as well tell me what happened.”
I scoffed. “That’s more shit I barely know for myself. All I do know is that she saw me talking to a couple of people at UG the other night and then flipped out, talking about she didn’t want to be out here by herself, and I was bad for her mental health. Some bullshit.”
Viv’s face contorted into a frown. “If this was a reality show my martini would be in your face right now, have you lost your mind?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Eddie, we both know very well what “talking” can look like when you are involved. Lots of hands, sometimes tongues…”
I held up my hands. “There were definitely no tongues. But… yeah, I won’t lie, propositions were made. I didn’t accept any of them though, because that damn girl has my head all messed up. I’m not think
ing about anybody but her.”
“And she knows this?”
“She didn’t ask! She assumed that, because I was having – yes, intimate – conversations, I must not feel the same as her. Instead of talking to me, she got upset, acting like I’d completely played her or something. Talking about she can’t help the way she feels, as if I knew how she felt! I mean, yeah, I knew we were getting close, but how was I supposed to know it was serious for her like that?”
“Did you ask?”
My mouth snapped shut, and I sat back, nodding. “Touché. But I also wasn’t making any assumptions.”
“True. But it is not a far-fetched assumption. I have observed you “talking” to someone and presumed that they were your date, only for you to be disgusted by the suggestion. Not because of what you were doing, but because of the way they reacted to you. You are an incredibly attractive man, Eddie, and very charming. You invite conversation, and touch. I understand – now that I know you much better - that the touch is meaningless, just a part of socializing to you if you are not attracted to that person. But for the outside observer… especially someone who is enamored by you, and maybe new to those feelings… it can look like much more. Please do not pretend to not understand that.”
I pushed out a sigh. “Nah, I understand it. I just… hadn’t considered it. I mean… she’s a free spirit, right? The whole “attracted to a person’s vibe, not their gender” – that’s something she and I had in common. So why wouldn’t she look at it that way, instead of making an assumption?”
“Because she is not you Eddie. Just because she is confident, and self-assured, does not mean she wants to see someone else all over her man – and if “we were not official” comes out of your mouth, I swear I really will toss this drink in your face.”
Laughing, I raised my hands. “It wasn’t even on my mind, I swear. You’re the last person I would say something like that to.”
“Good,” she nodded. “You did not say it to her either, did you? Because it is not okay to cultivate a garden and then claim that fruit was not your intention.”
Something Like Love (Serendipitous Love Book 6) Page 16
