Truth & Consequences: A Miss Independent Novel

by Leach, Kiki

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll go out of my way to avoid being a complete bitch, alright? Now can you please just tell me what you’re doing in here? As you can see, I haven’t gotten a lot done so far and I’m already behind on my deadlines to the point that I’m damn near certain our Mother is gonna beat the piss out of me if she doesn’t have something written in my name on her desk before the day is over. It’s bad enough that I barely had enough time this morning to create quick notes for that photo shoot, which she probably ripped up before even reading the first one.”

  Felicia shifted back and forth in the chair. “Speaking of our mother, she’s the reason I’m in here.”

  “Great.” Vanessa dropped her hands on top of her desk. “She’s the reason you’re in here and the reason you came back to the city, what next? Is she going to be the reason for you sitting in this chair too?”

  “I’m not here to take your job from you, Vanessa. I’m only in here because Alexis asked me to come down here and retrieve the sketches you were supposed to create last night. She’s still held up at that photoshoot but said she wants them on her desk by the time she gets back so she can look over them in peace and pick out the one she wants before the magazine goes to official press for the next issue.”

  “Why the hell would she send you down here to retrieve anything when I have an assistant out there who can just as easily take those sketches and place them on Alexis’ desk herself?”

  Felicia looked behind her and stared at Samantha who purposely kept her eyes focused down on her desk, despite knowing that she was currently being watched and discussed.

  She turned back to her sister and grinned. “I guess it’s only a matter of time before everyone else finds out, so I’ll save you the trouble of learning it around the same time as them.”

  Vanessa raised her brows and braced herself for the blow. “Learn, what?”

  “That Alexis offered me a position within the company.”

  Vanessa smacked her palm against the edge of her desk, then leaned her head back and pointed. “I knew it.”

  “She didn’t offer me your position, V.”

  “She didn’t offer you my position, yet.”

  “She’s not offering it at all. She wants me in a position with her personally, as her assistant. That’s why she sent me down here, to ‘assist’ her.”

  “Whatever. Assistant today, tomorrow, the entire company. It’s only a matter of time before she tries to force you into this seat and we both know it. Forget all the shit I’ve done since college in making this magazine what it’s become. She’s going to ignore all of that just as long as she can get you where she’s always been convinced that you belong.” She pointed to her chair. “Right here.”

  “I don’t want your job, Vanessa. I don’t know many people who do unless all they’re looking for is to gain a name for themselves in the public eye. Even if it had been offered to me again, I would’ve turned it down flat just like I did the first time. Being in your position is hard as hell and I’ve seen from afar all that you’ve had to go through in keeping this place afloat, even with Mother being the one behind the steering wheel.”

  Vanessa folded her arms and visually inspected her sister. Though doubtful it was heartfelt, she was still more than willing to accept the praise bestowed upon her.

  “I’ve only done what I can in the hopes that it keeps her from tossing me out on my ass like I know she’s wanted to do for years now. Especially since I can’t seem to keep my name, or that same ass, out of the papers.”

  Felicia chuckled.

  “I wasn’t exactly trying to make you laugh,” Vanessa continued. “But I do have a question about something.”

  “What is it?”

  “Why in the hell would you want to work directly beneath her? The two of you are so much alike, which is why you’ve always been her favorite, but at some point, working so closely together will lead to nothing but an epic clash of the titans. Not that I’d be all too sorry to see that happen because we have been clashing since the doctor removed me from her womb and will more than likely continue, even as she lay gasping for air on her death bed.”

  Felicia rested her elbow on the arm of the chair and swung her leg back and forth. “I don’t necessarily want to work directly beneath her, V, but I also can’t deny how much I need the money right now. And with what she’s willing to offer me here, I’d be a fool to take any other position someplace else.”

  “When and how the hell did all of this even come together?”

  “Yesterday, after you left.”

  “Of course it did--”

  “After learning about the depth of Rodney’s actions, she asked me to come back home for good with the kids. A day has barely passed since that conversation, so I have yet to officially decide or give her a real answer about it either way. But I need you to know that I’m tempted. I’m really tempted to take her up on this offer. The kids miss her like crazy and Alexander is the only granddaddy they’ve ever known thanks to Terrence skipping out on us, and Rodney’s parents dying before the girls were even born. They need to be surrounded by love and spoiled like we were at that age.”

  “What the fresh hell are you talking about?” spat Vanessa. “Grandmother didn’t spoil us, Felicia. She spoiled the hell outta you, but she sure as shit didn’t spoil me.”

  “You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead--”

  “How is telling the truth and thus ‘shaming the devil’ speaking ill of the dead? To this day I’m still not sure if she even liked me when we were little and especially once I got old enough to see right through her ‘sweet old lady’ persona. She didn't think I'd catch onto her little snide remarks after she'd berate me about Nathan as if I was stupidly having sex with him out in the open like all of her little church going, tabloid reading, gossip mongering friends seemed to be convinced of.”

  “That’s not true, V.”

  “Oh yes it is. Why is it that she never seemed to call me on my birthday or give me money like grandparents are supposed to do for their grandkids? I know that you don’t want to believe this, but the only time she ever called was to scold me for ‘showin’ my behind to the free world’ after the Sheila and Nathan incident went public, which was almost word for word what Alexis said when she saw me on the cover of every paper in New York City following that wretched reunion – which once again included appearances by none other than those two clowns.”

  Felicia twisted in the chair and draped one leg over the other. “She took pictures of those covers and sent copies to my phone --”

  “Of course she did.”

  Silence filled the room as they looked away from each other. And it remained that way for at least the next fifteen or so minutes until Vanessa decided to ask her sister a question that if she didn’t get off her chest before the morning was over, was going to virtually combust inside of her.

  “Do you think Daddy leaving is part of the reason I’ve become what I am?”

  She knit her brows, confused. “Huh?”

  “You mentioning him is leaving me to wonder about a few things that I virtually pushed out of my head years ago. And when I ask you if his leaving is part of the reason I’ve turned into this, I don’t mean when it comes to the stupid shit that I’ve done like drag Sheila across a ballroom floor. I mean when it comes to the men in my life. You know that I love Alexander and that if it weren’t for him, I’d be a hell of a lot more screwed up in the head than what I already am. But do you think it’s possible that this sense of loss and abandonment because of Terrence is where most of my problems might stem from?”

  “What does your therapist say about it?”

  “You’re trying to be cute with that, but I haven’t seen her in weeks. I can’t bear to keep paying somebody to tell me the same shit that I can self-diagnose with the help of Bing or a friend for free. Or you.”

  “Where is all of this coming from, Vanessa?”

  “I’ve been thinking more and more about it since Maurice
and I split up. I guess I’m just starting to wonder if my issues with men might have something to do with what he did in leaving and never bothering to say goodbye or contact us once he was gone. I feel like I was so afraid of being alone because of it. To the point that even after all of the shit Nathan did, I would have been more than willing to take him back had none of it gone public thanks to Mo.”

  “Are you pissed at Mo for leaking it because you’d still be with Nathan if he hadn’t?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m getting at. It’s probably for the best that it came out because it helped to end the toxicity that Nathan and I had become. I can’t be pissed at Mo for helping to end something that was already dying a slow death and just waiting for one of us to pull the plug. I’m am pissed that he fucked around with my trust, just like I told you the first damn time. What I’m saying now is that if it hadn’t, there’s a real possibility that things would’ve been much more different, which probably wouldn’t have been good for any of us. I’m just curious if my feelings on that, along with my being so afraid to step back into the ring with Maurice again, might go back to my abandonment and trust issues with Daddy?”

  “So on the one hand, you can’t trust Maurice for helping to end a toxic relationship that should’ve been killed the moment it started. And yet on the other, you’re certain you would’ve stayed in that same toxic relationship had the truth not gone public, all thanks to the man that you should be with, right now, as we speak?”

  “YES!”

  She abruptly shut her eyes and shook her head as a wave of confusion washed over her. “Maybe you should go back into therapy, Vanessa.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “And I am aware of that,” she replied. “But everything you’re telling me sounds too screwed up to fix.”

  “I’m not asking you to fix me, I’m asking for your opinion on it, there’s a difference.”

  “I gave you my opinion on it, V.”

  “Telling me to go back into therapy isn’t the kind of opinion I was looking for. Considering what you’re going through with Rodney, I was hoping that you could give me some kind of insight--”

  “Well I can’t,” she snapped. “Maybe if Terrence ever decides to come around again, he can give you the insight you’ve been looking for.” Felicia stood up from the chair and dropped her hands in front of her. “All I really need now are the sketches so that I can place them on Alexis’ desk before she comes back into the office and has a fit.”

  Taken aback by Felicia’s swift change in attitude, which left her virtually shaking in her heels, Vanessa kept her eyes on her sister as she pointed across the room. Felicia followed the direction of her hand to the pile of sketches sitting on top of the bookcase.

  She flipped through each one in silence before glancing back at her sister. “Is this all of them?” she asked.

  “That’s as many as I was able to come up with on such short notice, yeah,” Vanessa told her. “If she doesn’t like any of them, I can’t do much about that but maybe with enough money or desperation to put up with her perfectionism, she’ll find someone else who can.”

  Felicia snatched the sketches and tucked them beneath her arm. “Considering the deadline is tonight, she’s not likely to go with anything else outside of this pile.”

  “I don’t know with her anymore, but it doesn’t really matter anyway because they’re out of my hands now and into yours.”

  The girls stared at each other for a few minutes before Felicia finally left the office in a huff. Vanessa couldn’t exactly piece together why her sister reacted in the manner that she had, but didn’t have much time to process any of it as Samantha entered her office shortly after with a reminder of the meeting she had planned for her staff later in the afternoon.

  “Shit,” she mumbled. She dropped her elbows on her desk and slapped her hands around her face. “I completely forgot about that. Did I happen to tell you what I had planned to talk to them about?”

  “The finances of modern women and how to incorporate a budget for the ‘girl on the go’ into more of their articles,” she said, glancing up from her electronic notebook. “As well as what you hope the new layout will look like.”

  “I don’t even remember which sketch I liked the most, but I can almost guarantee that whichever one I chose, Alexis will choose the exact opposite – if she chooses any at all. Either way, she’ll want something tweaked enough to make it look as if someone else had done it entirely, therefore leaving me no credit whatsoever in regard to the original copy.” She threw herself back in the chair and bounced her head against the headrest. “I’m starting to wonder how much of this job is worth the pieces of any stability I might have left. I feel as if it’s being stripped away bit by bit and the shit with Maurice has only made things worse. Everywhere I go, I’m reminded of him and us and what we’ve done or what I’ve always wanted to do with him. Things we once shared.” She glanced across the room. “Like this stupid couch.” She got up from her chair and moved over toward Samantha. “We’ve almost had sex on that couch,” she said. “More than once.”

  Samantha gradually placed a hand over her stomach and gulped. “I’ve sat on that couch numerous times within the last few months, V.”

  She cut her eyes at Samantha. “I said ‘almost’, I never said that we actually went through with it.”

  “But you went far enough, right?”

  “We always went far enough. But we’ve never had sex outside of my bedroom. Well, that’s not exactly true, we’ve never had sex outside of my house… Maybe that’s not exactly true either.” Vanessa drew in a short breath and Samantha scrunched her face in disgust. “I’m only telling you this because I think that it’s time I finally get rid of this thing and purchased another. Maybe something white. Hell, purple even. A purple leather couch that matches absolutely nothing inside this office. That way, it’ll not only piss off my mother but it will keep me from being distracted by thinking of Maurice. Two birds, one stone.”

  Vanessa returned to her desk.

  Samantha strolled over and looked into Vanessa’s eyes; despite trying to hide it as best as she could, Samantha couldn’t help in noticing the waves of sadness crashing through her like a burst pipe.

  “Are you absolutely sure that you want to get rid of this couch?” she asked. “It might be better to change up the colors of your office by bringing in a new one, but memories are sacred. Especially those that you carry of someone you love. They’re one of the few things in life that I have never really taken for granted.”

  “I don’t take my memories of Mo for granted,” she said. “But what good does any memory of this couch do me when there’s a high chance that I’ll never have moments like that with him again?”

  “It gives you the hope of the possibility that it might.”

  “That’s a lot of words.” Vanessa eyed her with curiosity and quietly laughed. “I’ve never taken you for one as being such a hopeless romantic.”

  Samantha grinned. “It’s not so much me being a hopeless romantic as it is me believing that what you have with Maurice is far from over. And I can say that as someone who’s only seen you with him in work related group settings.”

  “And because of that, you think that I should keep the couch?”

  “Maybe inside a storage unit if it keeps you too distracted up here. If you throw away everything that reminded you of what was good with him--”

  Vanessa showed Samantha her hand. “I get it, Mahatma Gandhi, you don’t have to go any further than that. I think my mother still has a giant storage unit just a few miles outside the city. She doesn’t have much shit in there anymore, so maybe the couch can fit inside of there. Get the number to the place from my sister and then get the number for a moving company to see if they can get this thing out of here in a timely fashion, and with as little fanfare as possible.”

  Samantha feverishly marked notes on her pad.

  “Speaking of the press, I need you to do me a favor an
d check around to see if anyone has pictures of Mo or Nathan from last night. As well as any pictures of me and Mo that were taken this morning outside of that damn pop-up market just a few steps from the building. If anyone has something, get me their names and I’ll take it from there.”

  “Sure thing,” she said, making her last note. “Anything else.”

  Vanessa rubbed her hands down the front of her face and complained. “I don’t necessarily want you to do this because I don’t want to do it myself. But whenever you get time in between all of that, make a quick phone call down to the Fifteenth District Police station. Discreetly ask about Nathan and make sure he hasn’t done anything stupid that he can’t take back. I’ve debated on whether or not I even want to go down there to bail him out. As much as I don’t think he deserves it, I can’t actually just leave him in there like that, can I?” She glanced up at Samantha and lifted her brow. “Can I?”

  “I’m not really the one who should be giving you any advice,” she said.

  “But I’m asking for it.”

  Samantha took a few seconds to think. “When you told me this morning what happened, I was appalled. But I still don’t think Nathan is all that bad of a person, maybe a little bit messed up. And leaving him in there for too long might cause more problems for the both of you than solutions.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.” She rested her hands on top of her head and grumbled. “Shit. Alright, then call down there and make sure he’s still… you know, first. And then take care of everything else.”

  “Sure thing.”

  As Samantha backed out of her office and closed the door, Vanessa looked over at that couch again. Within seconds her mind flooded with memories of every single moment she had spent there with Maurice, whether he was placing her on her back and sliding between her legs, or just sitting with her and eating Chinese food out of boxes as she mulled over articles and last minute photographs that he offered to help with.

  It was all starting to become too much for her to handle, which convinced her brain that finally getting rid of that couch was for the best.