by E. N. Joy
“You know, my youngest baby really is just a baby,” Deborah said. “Only a little over three months.”
Klarke looked Deborah up and down from head to toe. “Girl, you just dropped a load and already looking snatched? All right now!”
“Thank you,” Deborah said. She truly did appreciate the compliment but knew that if she didn’t have on those Spanx, there was no way Klarke would be saying something like that to her. She had to admit that tonight she was snatched in her size eight clothes. But since having Tatum, getting back into her size eights had been a struggle. She could zip up her size eight jeans only after ten minutes of tucking all her extra skin down into them. Deborah knew firsthand that a size eight in clothes and a size eight buck naked were two very different visuals.
In her clothing, Deborah could pull it off. She knew how to stand with her neck straight, her shoulders up, and how to suck her gut in. Then there were the Spanx and the waist trainers, which played a huge role in her appearance as well. But once she came out of all her clothes and let it all hang out . . . and she actually breathed . . . it was a sight to behold.
A size eight at age forty wasn’t the same as a size eight at thirty. And the extra skin, which wouldn’t go away no matter how many crunches she did, really messed with her self-esteem. If only she wasn’t afraid to go under the knife, she’d get a tummy tuck in a heartbeat. This extra skin wasn’t anything liposuction could fix. It needed to be cut off. She couldn’t wear Spanx twenty-four hours a day, and what woman didn’t want to feel good about herself twenty-four hours a day? Oh, well, at least at this party, among all these beautiful women, even the belle of the ball was giving Deborah her props. Apparently, not only was Deborah good at hiding how she really felt, but she was also good at hiding how her body really looked.
“You are welcome,” Klarke said. “But, anyway, my daughter has a partner who helps her out with babysitting, so your baby will be fine.” Klarke leaned in and whispered, “Shelia, our house manager, does a wonderful job with kids too.”
“House manager?” Deborah said to the woman making her daughter earn her own money to pay for driver’s education.
“That’s a fancy term for housekeeper.”
The women laughed.
Deborah shook her head. “Spoil the mother, not the child, huh?”
“Hey, I said our kids need to learn how to take care of themselves. But Mommy, on the other hand, has paid her dues.” Klarke held her hand up, and Deborah gave her a high five.
“I am not mad at you,” Deborah said. “Sometimes I feel like I need help.”
“Then get you some. Don’t be ashamed to get some help, girlfriend. It doesn’t make you any less of a wife or any less of a mother. We women are always trying to be superwoman and do it all. Take care of the house, take care of the kids, the man, and all while working jobs ourselves.”
“I promise you that you just stole the words that were in my head this morning,” Deborah said, loving the fact that this sista could relate. “God forbid you work from home, like I do,” Deborah continued. “Folks think you can stop whatever you are doing to take them to the store, to do this, or to do that.”
“Right. If you were clocking in at a nine-to-five, would folks really expect you to leave your desk and go ask your boss if you can take them to go drop their car off at the mechanic?”
“Say that again. I’ve been editing and agenting for years, and some folks still can’t grasp that what I do is my job and not a hobby.”
“Still doesn’t keep us from stopping in the middle of our work to look out for somebody else, though,” Klarke said. “We’re so worried about others’ expectations of us, on top of the ones we place on ourselves.”
Just thinking about those instances when she was trying to meet everyone else’s expectations on top of her own made Deborah begin to hyperventilate slightly. “It becomes so overwhelming sometimes.” She stared off into space, taking deep breaths and then letting them out.
“Calm down.” Klarke laughed, then rested her hand on Deborah’s shoulder. “You look like you are about to go crazy just thinking about it.” Klarke’s laughter faded as she raised an eyebrow, partly wondering if Deborah was okay or was pulling a Fred Sanford act.
Deborah noticed the expression on Klarke’s face and quickly regained her composure. She began to laugh it off. “I’m only playing. You know how it is.” Deborah was embarrassed that she’d allowed herself to get all riled up like that. If only she and Lynox had left when she’d wanted to, she wouldn’t be concerned about being exposed now. But no. Lynox had to go be Hollywood and smile for the camera.
Deborah anxiously began to look around for Lynox. She spotted him giving the photographer his business card. The photographer must have requested it so that he would get the spelling of Lynox’s name correct when he published the photo. “Well, it looks like they’re wrapping up.” She turned back to Klarke. “Again, thank you so much for having us.”
“You are welcome.” Deborah went to pull away, but Klarke still had a nice grip on her hand. “Next week. I mean it. I’m going to text you the day and time for us to get together.” She released Deborah’s hand. “And from the looks of things, you need some downtime, anyway, to relax.” She shot Deborah a knowing look. But what exactly did she know?
Deborah paused before speaking. “What do you mean?” Even though it wasn’t her intent to sound defensive, she did.
Klarke was slightly taken aback by Deborah’s sudden shift in demeanor. Just a second ago they were vibing and relating. Now Deborah was practically snapping her head off. “Well, nothing. I just—”
“Honey, you ready?” Lynox interrupted, putting his arm around Deborah’s shoulders.
She didn’t realize it when she wormed out of his embrace. “Yes, sure. I’ll go get our coats from the coat check.” Deborah stalked off.
Lynox glanced over at Klarke with a puzzled look on his face. “Everything okay?”
Klarke shrugged, her eyelids fluttering in confusion. “Yeah, as far as I know.”
Since Klarke was shrugging it off, so was Lynox. He complimented Klarke on such a lovely evening before he went after his wife. Hopefully, on the drive home she’d tell him what was going on. It didn’t matter what her mouth said. By the way she’d reacted, it was clear that something was wrong. And if he was being honest with himself, something had been wrong for the past month or so. The challenge would be figuring out how to make it right.
Chapter 4
“Did you enjoy yourself?” Lynox asked Deborah as they pulled away from the Laroque residence.
“Yeah, I did, actually,” Deborah said dryly, then proceeded to scroll down her Facebook News Feed on her cell phone.
There were a few more seconds of silence before Lynox spoke again. “Then what was that?”
Deborah looked up from her phone. “What was what?” Her head wobbled on her neck; then she turned her attention back to her phone.
“That, back there.” Lynox nodded in the direction of Reo and Klarke’s home.
Deborah was confused. “What do you mean? Didn’t I look like I was enjoying myself the entire time? The Laroques are amazing. Their home is amazing, the guest list, food, entertainment . . . What was there not to enjoy? Not to mention he invited you to collaborate with him on a project.” Deborah turned to face Lynox. “Honey, this was the evening of all evenings. How could you question whether I enjoyed myself or not?” She turned her attention back to her phone, this time exiting her social media account and checking for any missed texts. “Did I miss something? Did you not enjoy yourself? You seemed to be having a splendid time as well.”
“I very much enjoyed myself,” Lynox said, keeping his eyes on the road. “I posed the question only because of the way you snatched yourself out of my arms and stormed off to the coat check. I thought maybe you and Klarke might have had some sort of disagreement or something. But when I talked to her, she was as clueless as I was.”
Deborah’s head snapped up f
rom the cell phone as she stuffed it in her purse. Her eyes daggered into Lynox. “What do you mean, when you talked to Klarke? About what? About who? Me?” Deborah became very agitated. “You talking to another woman about me?” The mere thought of Lynox engaging in a conversation about her behind her back made her blood boil. If he wasn’t speaking about her to her mama, his mama, or a sister, she had a problem with that.
“No, nothing like that.” Lynox removed his right hand from the steering wheel and patted the air. “Calm down, honey. Calm down. It wasn’t anything like that.”
Watching Lynox’s hand fall, as if she was a child who needed hand signals to be instructed on how to behave, only teed Deborah off that much more. She felt as though he was also trying to silence her. That angered her as much as if he’d told her to shut up, like he was her superior, the boss of her, or something.
Deborah stared at his hand gesture, her anger rising more. Before she realized it, she’d slapped Lynox’s hand and shouted, “I don’t need you shushing me and telling me how to behave. And on top of that, I don’t need my husband talking about me to some other woman. That’s like relationship one-oh-one. Talking to a person of the opposite sex about issues with your spouse opens the door for the devil to go to work.” Deborah turned and looked out the passenger window, all the while mumbling under her breath. “How you gon’ talk about me with another female? You got me mixed up. You wanna know something about me? You come to me, not some other broad.” It didn’t help any that the woman he’d talked about her to was beautiful. In Deborah’s mind, that was all the more reason for Lynox to find an excuse to converse with Klarke. It only made it that much worse that he had used Deborah as an excuse.
While all those thoughts and fears were running through Deborah’s mind, Lynox’s mind was still back at Deborah slapping his hand. Now who was the one treating the other like a child?
“I’m not Tyson, Deborah,” Lynox said as calmly as he could.
This was the first time Deborah had ever done anything like that to him. He wasn’t sure if she was joking or trying to give an example of a “bossy act,” something akin to how he had patted the air with his hand. Perhaps that was her payback. Whatever it was, it didn’t sit well in his spirit, and because of that, he needed to express that to his wife so that it would never happen again.
Deborah snapped her head around. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” She rolled her eyes. “I’m not blind. I can see that you aren’t Tyson.”
“It means you have every right to smack your child’s hand, but I’m your husband. We don’t do that.”
Lynox was not about to try to check her when he was the one who had started it. Deborah had been scrolling down her News Feed, minding her own business, when he decided to start picking. “Negro, please.” Deborah shooed her hand and let out a harrumph. “You know darn well I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I don’t know what you meant,” Lynox said as he pulled onto the highway, heading to their house. “To be real one hundred with you, I haven’t been able to read you for the past few weeks.”
“Well, like that Facebook group you’re in says, ‘Don’t read me. Read a book.’” Deborah sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes.
Lynox squinted his eyes, in thought. He couldn’t recall ever mentioning to Deborah that he was in that group. “How did you know I was in that group? I don’t recall you being a member.” He looked over at his wife a couple of times in between keeping his eyes on the road.
Deborah kept silent, as if she hadn’t even heard a word he’d said. She felt so busted. She should have kept quiet while she was ahead.
“So what are you doing now? Trolling my Facebook information?” Lynox asked.
Again, Deborah remained silent. How could she tell her husband that right after having the baby, and not having lost all the baby fat, she’d started to feel a little insecure? She’d been the most confident and secure woman he’d known. But going from a tight size eight pre-pregnancy to not being able get a big toe in her eights at first had not been easy for Deborah. Whether she was biased or not, Lynox was one fine specimen of a gentleman. The entire atmosphere in a room shifted once he entered it. Women were drawn to him, even without knowing he was the man behind the pen that had created so many sensual novels. Learning that about him was only a plus to females. Women often wondered if Lynox was anything in bed like the wild, sexual characters he wrote about. After all, there was a saying that authors often wrote mostly about what they knew.
Women at book events had tried Deborah before. She had attended many, not only as the supporting wife, but as his editor and agent. Even with her sitting there right by his side, some tricks had had no problem leaving on the signing table a pair of lace red thongs, a fetish one of his main characters had. Deborah had always remained calm and professional, knowing that the women were mocking the book and that Lynox had to play along with it in order to please his fans. Besides that, Deborah had never felt intimidated. She herself was a beauty, and she had always made sure she was dressed her best whenever she was next to her man. That was when she’d been a for real size eight, one that Lynox was used to wrapping his arms around, and not the woman who was stuffing all her extra skin into a size eight. Nowadays, with all the excess meat and flab rolling out of the top of her jeans, she could hardly hide her envy of some of the pop bottle figures that approached Lynox’s table.
There was one little hot number in particular who had shown up at a book signing last month.
“Hi. I’m Montea. We’re Facebook friends,” she’d said, her hot tamale–red lipstick matching her formfitting red dress and her cleavage hanging out.
It was at that moment that something had been triggered in Deborah’s mind. If Lynox was “friends” with women like this on Facebook, and they were local, she couldn’t help but wonder if something more than innocent Facebook posts were being exchanged. That night, after Lynox was sound asleep in bed, calling hogs, Deborah had quietly got out the bed, undetected, and had gone to their home office, located in the basement. Instead of making her way over to her own desk, she’d gone to Lynox’s. She stood over his computer; its screen was black. She wiggled the mouse around, but nothing happened. Next, she hit a random button on the keyboard, which brought his computer to life.
With much anxiety, Deborah sat down and began checking out any open programs on Lynox’s screen. Just as she had suspected, he had at least three apps open. She’d been on top of him about making sure he completely signed off the Internet because it was causing them to go over their monthly data usage. Clearly, she had not gotten through to him. And it was a good thing too. With his apps already open and logged into, she didn’t have to spend numerous hours trying to figure out passwords.
“There is a God, indeed,” Deborah mumbled under her breath. That declaration alone had put a thought in Deborah’s mind . . . a scripture and a thought. The Word said that God would not allow her to be ignorant of Satan’s devices. That meant that if she believed God’s word, then she wouldn’t need to worry or go looking for any wrongdoing being done to her, that it would fall right into her lap . . . almost from heaven. Well, as far as she was concerned, she hadn’t really gone looking. She’d simply clicked a button or two, and—bam—there it was, right there in her lap. She’d take this as a sign from God that something was going on that she needed to know about.
It was midnight when Deborah first got on the computer. Her heart beat fast from the fear of her husband catching her on his computer. That didn’t stop her, though. Her adrenaline pumped as she invaded his virtual privacy. It was almost five o’clock in the morning the next time she looked at the time on the computer. Time had gotten away from her quick, fast, and in a hurry, and she still hadn’t really found anything concrete that would lead her to believe Lynox was up to no good. There were quite a few flirtatious in-box messages Lynox had received from several women. Lynox had replied to them, and Deborah felt, out of respect for his marriage, he should have simply deleted t
hem without acknowledging them. He’d received messages such as You are so freaking hot, or Your smile is so beautiful. I can only imagine what tricks you can do with those lips. Lynox had replied with a simple Thank you, but Deborah felt that was two words too many. To her, he was creating dialogue, because it took two to tango.
She searched for another hour before she heard Lynox above her, moving about. She didn’t want him to come down and see her on his computer. The early morning hours were when his creativity was at its peak, so she knew it would be only a matter of time before his feet came padding down the steps. Again, in the past hour she’d found nothing truly suspect, but she’d taken notes and created a file folder with things she had found, something she’d learned from a book she’d read titled A Woman’s Revenge, written by three Christian fiction authors.
But what she hadn’t learned from the book was how to react when cold busted for being a snooper. And as she rode in the passenger seat on the way home from the Laroques’, it was safe to say that she’d been cold busted.
“You’ve been following my footprints on Facebook,” Lynox told Deborah as they drove down the highway. “You know what groups I’m in and everything.”
Deborah didn’t say a word. She simply held her head up, as if she had every right to know his virtual whereabouts.
“Do you know the pages I like? My friends?”
And the profile pictures of other women you like, Deborah thought in her head and kept it there. Being insecure truly wasn’t a characteristic that she wanted to broadcast, as if she was proud of it.
“Have you trolled my Facebook friends’ pages as well?” Lynox didn’t sound any too pleased.
Again, Deborah remained silent. But for Lynox, that was all she wrote. Her silence was as good as a confession to him. He smelled something, and if it was roses, they were roses that had been left in stagnant water and now had a stench about them. He had to nip these flowers in the bud and throw them out.
