Oh, and poor Jackson was so angry to hear about Renee’s little tryst. Who cares if I left out that Darren was gay? I shrugged. Not my problem and neither was the little bastard Jackson had on the way. Wasn’t even looking to run into that in formation.
And Eric. He was the most shocked of them all. Jaime stealing his money? A secret account? He didn’t believe me, but I bet he swallowed up the truth from that detective he hired. I still cannot believe he had her car repossessed. Oooh, to be a bird on the limb of the tree over that scene.
Not that I didn’t have problems of my own.
In the morning, the delivery truck would arrive to pack me up and move my things back to Richmond Hills. I couldn’t wait. Enough pretending. The life I thought I was going to have with Eric was over and this house was a part of that dream.
Taking another sip of wine, I walked across the hardwood floors to pull back the silk curtains. I gasped and dropped the wineglass. It shattered to the floor as I looked at Eric through the glass. He was standing there, cloaked by the bushes and shadows of night, watching me. My heart pounded. Even though the glass separated us, I stepped back from him in my Louboutins.
“You changed the locks,” he said loudly through the glass, his voice accusing, his eyes blazing.
I eyed him as I pulled my BlackBerry phone from the snug back pocket of my skinny jeans. His anger was palpable. I dialed his cell number and he answered, his eyes still locked on me.
“Eric, listen, what do you want from me? I gave up a lot to have you and you didn’t even though you said you would and so I’m tired of the lies. Tired of being alone. Tired of the bullshit. But you want me to open my mouth wide and let you keep shoveling it in?”
Eric shoved his hands into the pocket of his slacks. “You’re not leaving me,” he said.
My heart dipped in my chest.
“You can’t have it all. I gave you the choice. Me or Jaime. Right?” I pointed to the house. “Do you live here? Did you move in? Huh? Do you have divorce papers for me to see? No. Where’s my engagement ring? When’s our wedding date? Huh?”
Eric dipped his head down and looked at me hard. “So you fuck up my marriage and now you just want to move on?”
That hurt. I fucked up his marriage? “Look, leave me the fuck alone, Eric. I don’t know what kind of games you playing or what kicks you get out of fucking two women, but you need to find some other fool for your fake-ass ménage. Okay?”
I dropped the curtain and flipped my phone closed.
Seconds later, he began banging on the door.
I tried to ignore him. I tried. But the knocking continued.
It was all so damn juvenile.
Flipping the phone back open, I dialed his cell number again. The knocking stopped.
“Listen, Eric, stop acting so damn crazy,” I snapped. “It’s over. You’re freaking me out. And if you do not get the hell away from my door I will call the police.”
“I love you, Jessa. Don’t leave me. Please. Don’t leave me.”
This man that I loved was now a stranger to me. This erratic, angry, and emotional being was nothing like the cool, calm, and collected man who was first my friend and then my lover. His behavior confused me.
My heart ached to hear him sounding so pitiful, but I couldn’t cave. I couldn’t bend. It was over and he had to understand that. I’d played the role of mistress for too long. I’ve never been happy with second place. Never.
“Jessa,” he moaned.
I moved back to the window to pull back the curtain. Eric stood there, his head bent back with his eyes closed, his phone pressed to his ear and his free hand massaging the length of his dick with a fast and furious pace.
“Eric,” I snapped into the phone, knocking on the window.
He shifted his head to look directly at me, a weird smile spreading across his handsome face as he continued to jack off with a moan deep in the back of his throat. “I miss your pussy, Jessa,” he said, flicking his tongue at me like a snake.
My eyes dropped down to his dick.
“That’s right. Watch me,” he said, his voice raspy.
“Stop it, Eric,” I said, looking up and down the street to see if anyone saw him. My eyes widened at car lights moving up the street. “A car is coming.”
“No one can see me but you, ” he said, before biting his bottom lip and pulling on his dick harder.
Had he done this perverted shit before? Standing outside my home, watching me . . . and masturbating? Eric Livewell? An intelligent man who owned his own architectural firm, attended church regularly, and was a respected philanthropist, was getting off in my front yard?
Thoroughly disgusted, I dropped the sheer curtain and reached up to pull the silk curtains closed. “You’re sick,” I said into the phone.
“I’m coming,” he moaned. “Uhhhmmmmm.”
What in the hell?
I ended the call and flung my BlackBerry across the floor. I couldn’t wait to move back to Richmond Hills. Eric was all about his image and he would never pull these kind of antics in their gated community. Never. I knew that for sure.
I paced the room, my heels echoing throughout the house. The minutes ticked by. No knocking. My cell phone didn’t ring.
Shaking my head, I moved back to the window and pulled back the curtains. Relief and disgust filled me. Eric was gone, but his cum was splattered against my windows.
Chapter 11
Aria sat up straight in bed, gasping for air as she escaped from the nightmare. She pulled her knees up and hugged them to her chest as she forced herself to settle down. The sight and sound of Renee’s car crashing into that fence had scared the shit out of her that day and still shook her up in her dreams.
She had been driving up to the gate to leave the subdivision when she’d spotted Renee’s car barreling at another car and then turning off suddenly and slamming into the towering stone walls flanking the entrance. Aria had slammed on her brakes and barely put her Range Rover into park, to rush over and pull Renee from the car. Everything after that was a blur of ambulances, tow trucks, spectators, and being questioned by the police.
Renee was arrested for a DUI and Jackson had rushed his future baby’s mama to the hospital to be examined.
Aria wiped her face with her hands before she climbed out of the pulled-out sofa bed in her office. Sleeping in their bed without Kingston didn’t feel right. Living here without him wasn’t right.
She glanced at the clock. It was just after midnight and the entire house was quiet. She climbed out of the bed and walked to her desk, easing down into the chair and turning on her computer.
Her muse was gone.
For the past week the words wouldn’t come. Her creative energy was shot. Too much going the fuck on.
The return of Jessa. Renee’s arrest. Her separation from Kingston.
“Humph, I’m lucky I’m not hitting the bottle,” she muttered and then regretted it.
Renee’s drinking wasn’t shit to joke about. At all.
She shook her head to free it of the image of Renee’s forehead cut and bleeding from going headfirst into the windshield during the collision. Thankfully she was fine physically, but the thought of Renee in jail? She wouldn’t even have a bail hearing until Monday.
It completely weakened Aria.
Aria smoothed her hands over her scarf-covered head as she looked out the office door to her empty house. In the past Kingston would miss her warmth and search for her in the house, usually finding her in her office.
She reached for her cordless phone, holding it for endless minutes before she finally turned it over and dialed Kingston’s cell number.
For every ring her heart beat a thousand times more.
When it eventually sent her to his voice mail, Aria felt bitter disappointment. She closed her eyes. “Kingston, I . . . I have so much I want to say to you. So much. But you won’t answer my calls. You won’t reach out to me.”
Aria leaned back in her chair, pressing a han
d to her stomach to settle the butterflies. “I miss you so much. I love you so much. I’m sorry, baby. If I could let you feel what I’m feeling you would know how sorry I am. Please don’t hate me.”
She wiped away a tear. “I just wanted to be good enough for you,” she admitted truthfully, hanging her head down.
Aria ended the call, sitting the phone back on its base. What more could she say? How much more could she beg?
She reached out and touched the picture album holding their wedding pictures. She smiled thinking of their first dance at their reception to Donny Hathaway’s “A Song for You.”
A memory she couldn’t forget . . .
“Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Kingston Livewell. ”
The double doors leading into the ballroom opened. Aria and Kingston walked in holding hands to the thunderous applause of the family and friends among the elegant and romantic decor. Towering floral centerpieces, silk tablecloths, crystals hanging from the ceiling, and a soft lavender lighting with their names rotating around the dimly lit room. Everything was just as they’d planned. A perfect accoutrement to his hand-tailored tuxedo and her strapless trumpet dress with touches of Swarovski crystal at the waist and hem.
“Ready, Mrs. Livewell?” Kingston asked, looking down at her as he pulled her body close to his in the center of the dance floor.
Aria leaned back in his embrace and lightly stroked his cheek, her eyes filled with joy and love. “I’ve been ready for this since the first day I met you,” she whispered up to him.
The smile that spread across his handsome face made her melt as she snuggled her face close to his. The opening moments of “A Song for You” began with the piano solo and Kingston lead their bodies in a back and forth sway. The sounds of the keys was haunting and touching all at once.
“I’ve been so many places in my life and time, ” he sang softly into her ear.
Aria nearly swooned as chills covered her body.
“Kingston,” she sighed in surprise and pleasure before she pressed a kiss to his cheek.
“But we’re alone now and I’m singing this song for you,” he sang softly.
And that’s how it felt. Like the room of two hundred guests and staff faded and it was just them. A man and his wife, completely lost in each other and the moment.
They held each other tighter as they slowly twirled around the floor together. Everything was there in that moment. Their love. Their passion. Their commitment.
Aria had never loved him more. Never.
It was the best two minutes of her life.
As the song came to an end, Aria held him close, pressing her hands to his lower back. Kingston pressed a row of intimate kisses from just behind her ear and down her neck and back again. “Thank you for being my wife. I will spend every day of our lives together loving you, taking care of you, and being there for you. I swear.”
Aria leaned back in his strong embrace without a fear that she wasn’t safe. “And I promise you the same, Kingston. I swear.”
Brrrnnnggg.
The sound of the phone ringing pulled Aria from her memory. She snatched up the cordless and felt weak at the sight of Kingston’s cell number on the phone.
“Hello.”
“I don’t hate you, Aria.”
She pressed the phone closer to her ear.
“But I don’t know if I can forgive you.”
She shifted troubled eyes to their wedding photo.
“You hurt me. You really fucked me up, Aria. Because there is nothing in this world I wouldn’t do for you.”
“Even if you knew everything, I mean everything about me?” she asked.
“Yes, because your past has nothing to do with the woman I thought I married, Aria.”
“I miss you, Kingston.”
“I miss you, too, but right now I can’t even look at you, Aria. This shit hurts. What else are you keeping from me? You don’t think that shit runs through my mind?”
“I wanted so badly to be able to give you a baby. I guess I was hoping God would give us an immaculate conception,” she admitted softly, shifting her hands over to the other half of the bifold frame to touch the photo of the teddy bear. The photo of their baby was supposed to replace it one day.
“Come on, Columbia University, you’re smarter than this shit. We could have gone through fertility treatments or just adopted, Aria. But when you’re so busy sneaking and lying and fighting this truth alone like I’m less of a man and can’t help you through this? Damn.”
Aria wiped her face with her hand.
“I need time, Aria. I need to work this shit through in my head and in my heart.”
Aria said nothing. Neither did he.
“And I’m singing this song for you. . . .”
Aria’s eyes widened and she pressed the phone closer to her ear.
“I’ll call you soon, okay. Bye, Aria.”
Click.
Long after the call ended, Aria held on to the fact that Kingston had been listening to their wedding song. Maybe the memories of all the good they’d shared would outweigh the bad and bring him home to her.
Maybe.
The hope she felt made it possible for Aria to climb back into bed, clutching one of Kingston’s shirts to her body, and sleep. This time her dreams were filled with visions of her and Kingston and their daughter with his eyes and her face. The dream was so damn good that she was angry when the ringing phone awakened her.
Crawling from the sofa she blindly reached for the cordless phone from the edge of her desk. “Kingston,” she said, her voice still thick and heavy with sleep.
“No, this your mama. Call down to the raggedy gate and tell this white boy to let your mama in before he catch one across the cheek.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Click.
Aria smiled as she called and gave Lucky the okay. No matter how many times her mother visited she was not feeling the whole gate thing. She called it a reverse prison.
Stretching her tall curvaceous frame quickly, Aria rushed out of the room and down the stairs to yank the door open. Love filled her as her mother bustled past her, playfully swatting her buttocks as she did. Uncle One-Eye followed close behind. Aria knew his rusty dilapidated hooptie was proudly parked in her drive, but she didn’t care. Her family was here. She needed them. They knew it. Simple.
“Gal, go put some clothes on,” Uncle One-Eye said, his one good eye purposefully diverted from her long legs in the shorts and tank top she’d worn to bed.
By the time she’d showered and come back downstairs dressed in a comfortable print maxi dress, the scent of food was thick in the air. Aria’s stomach grumbled. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten something.
Aria paused at the foot of the stairs thinking that with all its size and decor, her house was not a home. Not without Kingston.
She made her way into the kitchen and her mother turned from the stove with a plate piled high with grits, crispy fried slab bacon, corned beef hash, and scrambled eggs. Her favorites. “Sit. Eat.”
Uncle One-Eye was already stirring his over easy eggs into his grits. Her people lived in Newark but they brought the country of Hawkinsville, Georgia with them.
“I’m not hungry, Ma,” she said, her appetite lost as she looked out the window at Renee’s empty home. “I’m worried about my friend.”
Heather wiped her hands with a dish towel. “I bet. But she’ll be okay.”
As soon as Aria had gotten back from the police station checking on Renee she had called her mother and Jaime, trying to find solace after the collapse of Renee’s world. And trying not to feel guilty because her friend had turned to alcohol to deal. “I pulled away from our friendship and I didn’t have a clue she was drinking like that.”
“Yes, but this isn’t about you, Aria,” Heather said simply.
“Huh?” Aria picked up her fork and stirred the square of margarine into her grits. She side-eyed Uncle One-Eye with his face buried in the plate, but he raised
his head to lock his one good eye with her mama’s.
Aria frowned.
“Well, baby girl, you can be a little critical of folks, you know,” Heather said gently.
What the hell?
“And . . . you tend to relate everything back to you. Sometimes it’s good, most times it’s not.”
“I thought you came to comfort me through all this ish I’m going through,” Aria grumbled. “I’m already in therapy. I don’t need the ghetto Oprah analyzing me.”
“What’s that saying Mama used to tell us about truth?” Heather asked One-Eye as he chewed away on the hard rind of a slice of bacon.
“ ‘Truth is the light, don’t live in darkness,’ ” he said, smacking between each word.
Oh, shut up, Uncle One-Eye, Aria thought—thinking it but not daring to say it out loud.
“Amen,” Heather said, before scooping a spoonful of grits and egg into her mouth.
“Oh, Lord, so now we in church?” Aria snapped sarcastically.
Her mother and uncle laughed.
“Steppin’ on dem toes, Heather. You steppin’ on dem toes,” Uncle One-Eye warned.
“Time for some mommy-daughter time. Take your plate in the den and watch TV,” Heather said.
“Re-up my plate first.” He handed the plate to his sister.
Heather quickly gave him a second helping and then guided him by the elbow off his stool and out of the kitchen.
Aria just shook her head at them.
“Now let’s get to the really real, baby,” Heather said, sliding onto the stool she’d just helped her brother out of.
Aria turned on her own stool to face her mother and the truth.
“You got angry with Renee for her affair. What that had to do with you? You’re not Jackson? It wasn’t your pussy or your business. Right? Right.”
Aria drummed her fingertips against the marble top of the island.
Her mother shifted her eyes to Aria’s hand. Hard. Aria flattened her hand against the marble.
“You’ve always ridden Kingston so hard when you knew you had secrets of your own.”
Mistress No More Page 18
