by Leach, Kiki
“I value his worth, alright? Sometimes I think I value it a hell of a lot more than my own.”
“Then you should prove it by telling him the truth!”
Maurice knocked on the frame, startling them. “We should eat before it gets too cold or dries out,” he said.
During dinner, nearly everything from politics to the weather had been discussed. Everything except for what each of them found the most important.
A few hours later, once the beers were downed and the plates washed, Vanessa encouraged her sister to finally head back to their mother’s house so that she could spend more alone time with Maurice before they were forced back to work the next day. She privately agreed on the condition that Vanessa tell him the truth.
As she grabbed her things and went to the door, unsure that it would come to pass, she stopped for a moment and turned around. She glanced at her sister before turning all attention to Maurice.
“I don’t know if Vanessa told you this, Mo, but Alexis informed me of everything that happened during your trip to the Hamptons. That’s why I’m really here--”
“Felicia!” she snapped.
“And I just want you to know that I’m rooting for you both and this relationship. You are too damn good to my sister even when she doesn’t deserve it. I don’t know many men with the capability to put up with her and her wild antics for as long as you have. Which means you’ll love her through thick and thin, no matter what. Right?”
Maurice slipped an arm around Vanessa’s waist. “No matter what.”
Felicia nodded. “And that right there is true love,” she said. “A man not only willing to cook for you, but loyal to a fault and willing to stand beside you no matter what. He deserves the best that you can give him, V. Don’t you think so?”
Vanessa zipped her tongue across her teeth as her eyes descended to the floor. “Yeah.” She gulped, finally confronting what she knew had to be done.
Felicia flashed her a genuine smile before assuring them that she would return soon enough and headed out the door. Maurice stepped forward to close and lock it, then whirled around to Vanessa, who suddenly appeared conflicted.
He took her in his arms but she hardly moved from place. “Hey,” he said. “Are you alright?”
“No.” She pulled out of his arms and traveled back into the living room.
A nervous Maurice slowly went after her. Standing against the frame, he watched as she placed one hand on the edge of the bookcase and pressed the other against her mouth. She started shaking but tried like hell to hold herself steady.
“Vanessa,” he called out.
She shut her eyes and turned her head to the side. “I slept with Adrian,” she exclaimed.
Taken aback and refusing to believe what he had heard from her, Maurice stepped into the living room and curled his fingers inside his palms. “What?”
“It wasn’t…” She dropped her hand from her mouth and turned to face him head on – her eyes pleading, begging for a forgiveness she wasn’t sure she would even receive, or even deserved if she had. “It wasn’t recently. But it happened.”
“Not recently,” he said.
“No. It was when I was in college, when he was my professor. It was um…” She cleared her throat and gulped again. “Not long after you and I did our dance, whatever it was.”
“Did Nathan know about this? Is that why he brought that son of a bitch out there this weekend, to rattle you?”
“We can only assume. He’s sort of disappeared from the city at the moment, so it’s not like we can actually ask him about it.”
“When the hell did he disappear?”
“This afternoon.” She sighed. “After Sheila told him that I was pregnant with Adrian’s child.”
Maurice lifted the edge of his palms up to his forehead and pressed them down hard against his eyebrows. He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take.
“How the fuck does Sheila know about any of this before I do, Vanessa?”
“Believe me, it’s not something that I wanted her to know at all, but when Adrian showed up, I thought that she might have been in on it since she was the reason he had come back to town in the first place.”
“And why is that?”
“It’s another story for another time. But the point is that she kept egging me and egging me and egging me on and the next thing I knew, I was telling her shit she shouldn’t know and never should’ve had access to. I haven’t told anyone else about the baby, not even Alexis – not even Nikki.” She walked over to the couch and fell down to the edge. “Felicia said that Rodney has some other family that she had no clue about. He had been stealing money left and right from their joint account to take it to some woman and her child in Studio City. She kept encouraging me to say something to you about this because she didn’t want my secret to screw up what we had. Or blow up for me like the Nathan shit.”
Maurice, struggling with his own pangs of guilt, walked over to the coffee table and sat down in front of her. Taking her hands in his and lifting them up to his face, he kissed each one. Her eyes fluttered as his smooth lips skimmed back and forth across her skin.
“I wish that you had told me about this when it happened,” he said. “I’d have been there for you, been your rock as I’ve always been. We could’ve raised the baby together if you wanted. Unless you -- ?”
“No,” she told him. “I lost the baby due to stress not long after Adrian skipped town and fled to the Congo.” She slid closer to him and pressed her knees together. “I know that I should’ve told you all of this so that we could avoid the conversation we’re having right now. But I had hoped that I would never have to see or hear from that man again.”
“Does he know?”
“No. And I don’t ever want him to because it’ll be a big mess and he may start some shit that we won’t be able to end. I just wanted to be able to move on with my life once he was gone. To forget those parts of it even existed for me, but I couldn’t. Every time I tried, more shit kept coming back to slap me directly in the face. I don’t want you to think that I kept this some big secret from you because I still had feelings for him, because I don’t. Initially I was only with him because I thought he could replace Nathan but--”
Maurice abruptly dropped her hands and sat back. “So after everything, it was about him?”
“Back then, yes, I thought it was which is probably why what we had was so fucked up to begin with. But I came to realize overtime, long after we were no longer together, that being with Adrian was never really about replacing Nathan or anyone else. I was using him to fill a void inside myself, one that you had so successfully filled for a while. I didn’t see it then, I couldn’t even feel it because I was still so caught up – so wrapped up in all of my anger that it’s what I believed at the time, that it was about him.” She released a breath and slightly lowered her head. “But the truth is that being with Adrian was in reaction to you, Mo. What I thought I wanted with him is everything that I want with you now. A life, a family, a baby, maybe two if my body can stand to handle it.” Her face immediately softened and she smiled. “Everything in my life always seems to lead me right back to you and I tried so hard to fight against that because I didn’t think you’d ever want to settle down and be faithful, even to me.”
His head snapped up.
“Are you kidding?” he asked, as a light chuckle escaped. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted to devote my entire life to, V. The only woman I’d ever give up everything for. There has never been any other woman to make me see that what I want from life is a family and kids and a house – a real house, out in Connecticut or someplace. You’ve always been the only woman to make me want that kind of life.”
He gradually dropped his eyes, and then his head. He furrowed his brows and scrunched his nose. Vanessa caressed the side of his face and he turned his cheek into her palm, embracing her touch.
“I never want to hurt you,” he said. “I never want to be the kind
of man that you can’t count on or trust or need when the time calls for it. I want to be everything to you and for you.”
“You already are.”
“But I’m not.” He leaned away from her hand and sat back. “I should be, but I’m not.”
Vanessa made a face and dropped her hand to his lap. “What are you talking about, Mo?” She let out a nervous giggle. “I’m starting to get confused by all of this and what you mean.”
“Do you remember when we were in your office, and Gina came to talk to you about that guy she was seeing?”
Vanessa thought for a moment and knit her brows. “The asshole who was trying to use her to get in the papers or something? Yeah, I remember. Why?”
“And you remember telling her about someone leaking Nathan and Sheila to Page Six?”
“I don’t remember saying exactly that, because I still don’t know how the information ever actually got out there.” She bent forward and dropped her shoulders. “Either way, I don’t understand what any of this has to do with what we’re talking about now--”
“How the information got out there,” he interjected. “Never mattered as much as it being out there in the first place, right?”
“I guess.” She shrugged. “But it’s not like it was some kind of picnic either way. You remember how crazy my life got after that information trickled between circles within the city. After Page Six posted the original story--”
“Your life went to hell not long after,” he mumbled.
“It did, but I had people like you and Nikki to help me get through all of that shit.”
He exhaled and momentarily closed his eyes. “But it brought back all those memories as soon as Sheila and Nathan came back.”
“You know it did, but we’ve been able to move past all of that. When Tweedle Dumb returns, he’ll be off planning his wedding with Tweedle Dee and we’ll continue to be happier than they could possibly ever be.” She shook her head and sat back. “I still don’t really understand what all of this has to do with anything now.”
“It has to do with a lot, V. More than I ever wanted you to know.”
“What does that mean?”
He and pressed his elbow into his knee while anxiously rubbing his hand back and forth across his mouth. Vanessa could see from the wild look in his eye that he was close to losing his shit.
She stared at him curiously. Her breathing increased, as did her heartrate. “You’re starting to scare me with all of this, Mo.”
“I don’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I don’t ever want to do that.”
“Then tell me what the hell is going on with you.”
He placed a hand on top of hers and pressed down hard, frowning. “You remember coming to me about Nathan and Sheila?”
She nodded. “You were the first person I told.”
His eyes traveled up to her face and as the guilt began to overwhelm him, the color drained from his skin. Vanessa noticed but was too fearful of what was happening to him to ask.
“I did something,” he told her. As his hand started shaking against her, he ripped it away. “I did something that I look back on now, that was stupid and reckless, but I did for what I thought were the right reasons at the time. I did it because I wanted to help you and protect you. I felt that you deserved better than what you were getting and I thought that they needed to pay for the hell that they put you through.”
She stiffened as she started to become aware of what he meant, but didn’t want to believe that what he was trying to tell her could possibly be true.
“What are you saying to me, Maurice?” she asked, her voice cracking as she spoke.
“I’m telling you…” He stopped and took in a breath. “I’m telling you that I’m the one who went to Page Six about Nathan and Sheila. The reason the story got out, the reason they even had the information in the first place was because of me.”
Shocked, but still refusing to believe that he could betray her in such a deep and conniving way, Vanessa shook her head and wouldn’t stop. She was starting to make herself dizzy, but if it helped to forget what she had just heard, she was willing to continue on with it.
“How is that even possible?” she asked. “How could you have--”
“I found one of their editors outside the building and told her--”
“Her.”
He gulped and looked straight into her eyes. He could feel the trust she had for him literally draining out of every part of her body by the second.
“Olivia Greenwald,” he said. “Which is who I was with earlier.”
“Her.”
“Yes. She was the one I spoke to at the time.”
Vanessa looked away from his face. “Fuck.” She slammed her feet to the floor and balled her fists, slamming them down against the couch. “FUCK!” She briefly dropped her head in her hands, then lifted her face and glared at him. “She immediately recognized you that day on the beach, didn’t she?”
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Shit. What the hell happened after that?”
“I told her that I could give her a solid story about the daughter of a former senator, and the boyfriend of the daughter of Alexis Brown. As soon as I said those words, she brought me up to her office and listened to whatever else it was that I had to say.”
She tried swallowing, but her mouth was so dry that she nearly choked. “You’re shitting me about this, right?”
He shook his head. “No, V. I’m not.” He took a moment to gage her expression. In all the years he had known her, never had she ever looked at him as if she hated him for just existing. He understood, he knew that she would be pissed and he expected it. But he didn’t expect for her reaction to hurt like hell. “I went there with every intention of screwing those two over for what they did to you. I went there armed with the information you told me about them for the sole purpose of humiliating them for the hell they put you through.”
“You didn’t just do it for that reason,” she said.
“I did, V--”
“LIAR!” she screamed, bending over in his face. “You are a damn LIAR!” She zipped away from him as fast as she could and stomped across the room. She crossed her arms over her chest tight to keep from slamming her hands into his chest or beating him until he could no longer breathe. “What did that bitch want from you today?”
“It doesn’t matter, Vanessa.”
“Oh, it fucking matters and the fact that you’re not telling me exactly what she asked you for is ALL I need to know. What did you do, promise her dick to keep her quiet?”
“She asked for it, V, but I would never do something like that to you,” he shouted, “ever!”
“But you could do THIS?!”
Maurice enfolded his hands. “What I did in telling her about Nathan and Sheila wasn’t meant to hurt you, V--”
“But it DID!” she hollered, spinning around to look at him. “You understand that, right? You understand that my life blew up into tiny little bits and has been put underneath a microscope ever since the very moment that information was leaked! Sheila was able to escape it – NATHAN was able to escape it and they’re the ones who fucked up by fucking each other in the first damn place. But the moment they skipped town, they were damn near off of EVERYONE’S radar. Meanwhile I was stuck here to continue living it out. Stuck here working for my mother and having to prove myself to every person who walked in and out of her building that I was worthy of running it even better than she did--”
“And you’ve proven that--”
“I shouldn’t have had to prove it as hard as I DID, all because they were more obsessed with my personal life and who I might’ve been sleeping with at the time than my work ethic. Let’s not mention my drinking, excessively, to the point where you had to carry me upstairs to my own bedroom time and again because I was too fucking drunk to walk. Or all the times I took whatever drug was available to me because I couldn’t bear to pass a newsstand anymore, only to see my face on the cover with pe
ople all around me stopping to wonder OUT LOUD if I was ever going to move past being part of a high school GOLDEN COUPLE because a new one had emerged in THOSE TWO.”
She furiously ran her hands through her hair and down the sides of her face.
“You know what, I want you to get the hell out. I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t even want to know you right now – GET OUT!”
He looked up at her with a dangerously fierce expression. She was pissed at him and had every right to be, but as far as he was concerned, she was still the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with and there was no way in hell she was just going to throw him away as if he meant nothing.
“No,” he told her. “Hell no.” He jumped up from the table and shuffled closer to her. She tried avoiding his eyes, but he forced his way into her space. “You’re not just going to get rid of me like that, V, not after all the shit we’ve been through and EVERYTHING we’ve done to get to a damn better place in our relationship. Now I fucked up, I get that and I’m sorry, but I’m telling you that I didn’t do it as a way to hurt you--”
“And I’m telling you that it DID!” She waved her arms in his face for emphasis and he stepped back. “Ever since that day, my life has never been the same, NONE of our lives have been the same. And shit has only gotten worse since then! We’re still on the covers of rags from here to Detroit with people I don’t know still coming up to me and asking about my current love life and how I feel about Nathan and Sheila getting married. I still can’t even walk down the street without feeling all eyes on me for one reason or another and that’s all thanks to YOU and your big fucking mouth, and why? Was it all because you were just so damn desperate to get inside my pants? Because honestly, if that was the case, I would’ve been willing to let you have a chance to see what’s inside them back then just to keep you quiet -- !”
“HEY!” he called out. His face was turning red, his eyes were bulged and his teeth were clinched. Every word she spat hit him like a brick in the chest, but he remained determined to come back stronger each time. “I’ve wanted a lot of things from you over the years, V, A LOT of things. Yeah, sex has been one of them, but it has never been the ONLY thing and it sure as hell has never been the thing to keep me around you for so long since I never thought I’d actually get any.”
