Strange Addiction

by Alexis Nicole

  “No, not a problem, per se. There are things I have to think about. What about Blair?”

  He shook his head. “Already taken care of. I bought her a town house, and it’s paid for, so she never has to worry about rent.”

  “Wow!” I said, thinking that was a bit overboard. “You bought my best friend a town house?”

  “Only because of you. I knew that you were going to be concerned about her, and I was right. She was the first one you asked about, so see?”

  Okay, that made sense, but there was still my other concern. “What about my work? I mean, I don’t have my job at BME, but Carmen told me to check back with her when I got back, and even if I don’t go back there, I’ll probably be someplace else up in the Valley.”

  “Baby . . . I don’t really want you to work.”

  Okay, put a halt on this dream. Because it was a dream up to this point. But if he was asking me to give up working, this dream had turned into a nightmare. After what I’d just been through in Connecticut, I needed to be doing something, serving a purpose. Plus, being a journalist had always been my dream, and I wanted to get back to pursuing my goals.

  “What would I do if I didn’t work?” I asked, trying to keep it light, not wanting this beautiful moment to turn into an argument.

  “What would you do? Take care of me,” he said, as if that answer was obvious.

  I looked at him with all my black woman attitude. I didn’t pull it out much, but if there was ever a time when he needed to “see” me say, “Negro, please,” this was the time.

  He chuckled, as if he read my expression perfectly. “Really, I want you to take care of me, and I want to take care of you.” He brought my hands back to his lips and kissed them softly. “I can give you whatever you want or need. I need for you to give me you, all of you.”

  This time he kissed me, my knees and my will weakened, as usual. That was what happened whenever this man touched me. And that was the way he got whatever he wanted out of me.

  Pulling away from King, I sighed for two reasons: from a little bit of frustration, and from a whole lot of love. I stood there for a moment, measuring everything, and then said, “Well, at least show me the rest of the house so I can see my trade up.”

  He grinned, he kissed me, and then he took me on our first walk-through of our new home.

  Chapter 9

  “Blair, this is Heiress, again.” I tried not to sigh into the phone, but I was sure that my friend heard my frustration. “Come on. It’s been almost a month since I’ve been back, and I haven’t seen or heard from you. You won’t return any of my calls. Are you okay?”

  I had left her the same message over the past few weeks, so I was sure that she’d not only heard my messages, but also probably knew this one by heart.

  “Well, anyway, King and I are having a dinner party tonight at the house, and I really would like for you to come. So please call me. Please.” I waited, trying to think of some other words to say. “Okay, then. Bye.”

  I felt nothing but sadness when I hung up the phone. This was the fourth time I’d left this message just today.

  After the first week when I couldn’t get Blair on the phone, I just thought that she was busy with her move. I never got to see her, since I didn’t even have to go back over to our apartment to pack up my stuff. King had that all taken care of since he wanted me to focus on our new home. I let a few days go by, but when she didn’t call me back the second week, I wondered why she was mad at me.

  Needing to see her, I asked King for the address of her new town house, but he kept forgetting to get it from his Realtor. So I went by the bar where she worked, but was told that she’d quit months ago. Now the only way I could reach her was on her cell.

  What was going on?

  I was just going to have to talk to King again. If he couldn’t remember to get her address, he needed to let me call the Realtor myself.

  There had never been a time when Blair and I had gone this long without talking. The longest stint of silence between us was a week during our junior year in college, when she lost my favorite sweater while trying to fool around with Craig Wyatt, the star point guard who now played for the New York Knicks. A tiny chuckle came through my lips when I thought back about how Blair and I had almost fought LaShawn Jenkins when we saw her wearing my sweater as she was strutting around campus. And when we found out that Craig had given it to her, we wanted to kill Craig too.

  Man, I really missed my best friend.

  The doorbell pulled me out of my thoughts and interrupted my walk down that memory lane. I scooted across the shiny foyer floor to let the caterers in.

  “Hello, Ms. Montgomery,” Sol, the owner of the catering company, greeted me. We’d done so many parties that I felt like Sol and I were friends.

  “Come on in,” I said to Sol and his team. “You know what to do.”

  I watched the people walk in behind Sol, about a dozen of them. I didn’t even have to lead them to the kitchen anymore. They catered for us so much, Sol and his people really needed to move in.

  I didn’t know what had gotten into King lately. It was like he was obsessed with entertaining. We’d been in this house for only a few weeks, and already we’d had four parties. Every week we had some kind of gathering. A card party with just a couple of friends turned into full-blown affairs. I had to admit that I utterly enjoyed the first few functions. After spending the first two weeks working with an interior designer and getting the ten rooms of our home exactly the way we wanted them, I was excited to show off what we’d done. For the first two parties, our home was filled with actors, producers, directors, athletes, and musicians of all types, who came to celebrate with us and partied to the wee hours of the morning. I felt like I was living a Cinderella life, being surrounded by all those rich and powerful people. But after the first few parties, entertaining went from exciting to mundane, and now it was just plain tiring. Who partied like this all the time? Certainly not the King I knew . . . at least not the King I thought I knew. Our entertaining had gotten out of hand.

  And when King told me on Monday that we were having another party this weekend, I thought I needed to calm him down a bit.

  “Baby, I really think we should slow down on the parties. We haven’t had one weekend to enjoy our home.”

  “What are you talking about?” he’d asked me. “We’ve been here every weekend.”

  “I’m talking about not being here alone.” I had said and had wrapped my arms around him. “Remember how we used to just stay in and hang out with each other? Let’s do that this weekend.”

  “You got a problem with parties?”

  “Not parties, just parties every weekend. And it is getting out of hand. Remember the guy who passed out in our den and the couple having sex in our pool? You didn’t even know them.”

  “So what?” he said, as if finding strangers all throughout your house wasn’t a big deal. “It was no big deal. I asked them to leave, and they did.”

  I sighed. “I just think the parties are becoming a bit much.”

  “Man, go somewhere with that stupid mess.”

  His words were shocking, and my eyes opened as wide as my mouth.

  He said, “I pay the bills around here, and if I want a party, we’re going to have a party.” He paused just long enough to glare at me. “All you have to do is make sure everything gets set up and looks pretty.” Shaking his head, he added, “Damn, how hard is that?” And then he stomped out of the house, leaving me standing in our living room, once again frozen with shock.

  His outbursts were few and far between, and even though this was only the second one, I was still hurt. It’s just the pressure of his job. That was what I told myself. Especially when he came back home hours later, so remorseful.

  “I love you, Heiress. You know that, right?” he’d said.

  I’d nodded, because I did know that he loved me. He showed me in every way. From the way he took care of me physically, financially, and—most of the ti
me—emotionally. Truly, I always felt loved. I just figured that King had to get settled in his fame. He was becoming a bigger and bigger star every day, and really, he was still young. He was just a year older than me. In a few years he’d be used to all of this and everything would be better.

  I was on my way to check on how Sol was coming along when my cell phone rang. A big smile spread across my face and I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the name flash across my screen.

  “Heifer, where have you been? I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for weeks,” I playfully scolded Blair upon answering the phone.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’ve just been extremely busy setting up house and taking care of some business,” she said with a slight sound of exhaustion in her voice. I was relieved that she hadn’t been just ignoring me, but I was curious as to what she had been up to.

  “I went by the bar to see if you were there, and they said you quit.” I knew Blair well enough to know that she wasn’t giving up the money she was making bartending unless she had someone else paying her bills.

  “Yeah, I outgrew that place. So how is life in Malibu?”

  It was kind of odd that Blair didn’t want to elaborate on why she quit. I thought she would have this big dramatic story about how she had escaped the grasp of her evil manager and had fallen into the arms of a knight in shining armor. I had been gone all this time, and she didn’t even give me details.

  “Malibu is nice. It’s so far from everything, though, but the house is beautiful.”

  “Well, I’m sure being with Mr. Perfect makes it all worth it.”

  “It kinda does.” I giggled. “Listen, we’re having a party tonight, and I would really love for you to come.”

  Blair was silent for a few minutes before she spoke. “Will fine, famous men be there?” There was the Blair I knew.

  “Of course.” I laughed.

  “Well, if you’re finally sharing the life of luxury you have been living, then I’ll make an appearance.” I began to fix my mouth to respond with excitement, but she quickly cut me off. “Just text me all the info. I gotta go, girl.”

  Just like that, the phone clicked off. I didn’t know what had Blair so preoccupied, but I was happy that she was coming to the party. I needed to see my best friend. I hoped we would get our connection back tonight and return to normal. I smiled with satisfaction and ran upstairs to get dressed.

  Hours later I was dressed in an Oni original, a mini sheath that the up-and-coming designer had fashioned just for me. After checking my makeup, I went down to the dining room to make sure that it had been decorated exactly the way King had planned.

  The huge space had been transformed into a lavish Mediterranean experience. Along the wall, Sol had prepared an amazing food spread that included a Mediterranean salad, Greek spaghetti, and falafel. Two of the waitstaff stood behind the bar, ready to serve the guests any kind of drink they wanted.

  Satisfied with the downstairs, I headed back upstairs to pull King’s suit from the closet. Since I wasn’t working, this was what I did every day, so King never had to worry. Once he came home, all he’d have to do would be to jump into the shower and then get dressed.

  I’d just laid his suit on the bed when King came stomping into the bedroom.

  I frowned. Ever since his tantrum on Monday, he’d been in a good mood. What could possibly be wrong now?

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him without even saying hello.

  “What is all that ridiculous food down there?”

  “What food?”

  “In the dining room. That stuff doesn’t even look good.”

  “That’s what you ordered, King. You’re the one who wanted Mediterranean cuisine.”

  “Well, I didn’t know it was going to look like that!”

  I wanted to tell him that it didn’t matter how it looked, that it was too late now, and that if he had listened to me, we wouldn’t even be having this stupid party. But I knew that would not be a good look. I just needed to calm him down.

  “Baby, the food is going to be fine. We had some of these dishes when we went to that event for the Lakers, remember?”

  He squinted like he was trying to remember. “Really?”

  “Yeah, that was where you got the idea.”

  He nodded, though I could tell that he was still unsure. But I knew what he was thinking. If it was good enough for the Busses, the owners of the Lakers, then it was good enough for King Stevens’s party.

  When King went into our master bath, I sighed, relieved. One situation avoided.

  King dressed just in time to greet our first guests. I stood at the door with him, but tonight I didn’t recognize too many of the faces. It was as if this was a whole new set of people that I’d never seen in the year that I’d known King.

  The more people came in, the more I was sure that I didn’t have any idea who any of them were. There were men in what I called Keith Sweat music video attire: their bare chests showing through shirts that were open all the way to their navels. They were arriving with two, three, four video vixens on their arms.

  There were dozens of people already in our home, eating our food, drinking our drinks, dancing to our music, when I pulled King aside.

  “Baby, who are all these people?” I whispered in King’s ear as I held on to his arm.

  He yanked his arm away from my grasp. “Friends,” was all he said, without even looking at me.

  But if he thought I was going to be deterred by that, he had another thing coming. “Whose friends? I’ve never seen these people before.”

  Finally, he turned to me. His irritation was etched all over his face. He leaned so close to me that his lips were on my ear. “Are we going to have a problem?”

  It was the look in his eyes, the tone in his voice that formed a knot in my stomach.

  I couldn’t even respond with words. I just shook my head no and hoped that would assure him.

  “Good,” he said, though he still didn’t sound happy. “Now, go be a good girl, and continue to be a good little hostess.”

  Now my eyes were the ones on fire, but I wasn’t going to start anything now. I spun around to walk away. That was all I wanted to do—to get away from him.

  But King grabbed my arm, stopping me. His grip was strong, but it wasn’t threatening. When he leaned toward me, I leaned back for a moment, not sure what he was going to do. But then he rubbed his lips across my cheek.

  “Thank you,” he said as he kissed me softly. Then, just as quickly as his words came, King disappeared back into the crowd.

  I had no idea what I was supposed to do other than smile. So I just wandered around my own house, making my way through the people who filled the rooms, drinking, eating, smoking, dancing. I walked up the spiral staircase and stood on the step that was exactly halfway up. From that vantage point, I could see most of the living room.

  And I could see King in the center of the room, the center of everyone’s attention. Women were all over him, hugging him, adoring him, and even from this far away, I could see that he was eating it all up.

  I folded my arms across my chest, trying to warm my bare arms. Even though it was burning up in this house, I felt cold. As I watched King, for the first time I could say that I truly felt uncomfortable. Not quite jealous. King had never given me any reason to be jealous at all. Whenever he was with me, he let everyone know that I was his lady, and if a woman ever came up to him in some kind of crazy way, he always let her know that he wasn’t interested. But tonight . . . I didn’t know. There was something about King. Almost like he’d forgotten that I was there.

  I began to think that maybe I needed to disappear. Maybe that was exactly what I needed to do. Why put myself through this? There was no one at this party for me, and I was totally convinced that King would not miss me.

  I had turned to continue up the stairs when I heard the front door open. Looking back down, I stood frozen for a moment. And then I screamed out, “Blair!” as I dashed down the step
s.

  “Oh my God,” I said to her as I hugged her. Then I stepped back and gave her the once-over. “Oh my God! You look fabulous. I love your haircut,” I said, wanting to run my hands through the waves that fell softly onto her shoulders. “And that dress!” I stepped back some more and took in the red knit that hugged what looked like all her new curves. “Have you lost weight?” I didn’t even give her a chance to answer before I asked, “Where have you been?” All the words rolled out of me. I was just so happy to see my friend. Not only because she was someone I knew, but also because I had missed her so much.

  Blair looked stunning . . . and different. Like she was the one leading a glamorous life.

  “How you doing, Heiress?”

  “I’m good. But where have you been? Did you have any trouble finding the house?”

  “No.”

  “That’s great,” I said as I hugged her again. “I’m so glad you came.”

  “Well, I wanted to see your new place, so here I am.”

  “I have so much to tell you,” I said, taking her hand after one of the staff took her coat. “So much is going on, and so much has changed.”

  We had eight months’ worth of gossip to catch up on, and though I didn’t think I could tell her everything tonight, I was going to try.

  Then, over my shoulder, I heard, “Blair, hey. Glad you made it.” King swooped in beside me. He stepped right in front of me, like I wasn’t even there, when he added, “Come with me. I have someone I know you want to meet.”

  And then they were both gone.

  It had happened so fast, I wasn’t even sure what had gone down. I watched King and Blair disappear into the living room crowd. I couldn’t see them through all the people, but rather than try to follow them, I returned to my perch on the steps.

  All kinds of thoughts were going through my mind as I searched the crowd for the twosome. Like how did King know that Blair was coming to the party? And when had they become so friendly? Plus, I wanted to know who King was introducing Blair to.

  It was all so confusing to me; I had no idea what was going on.