by Leach, Kiki
“Yeah,” she replied in a soft voice. “Yeah, I did, I practically begged for it.”
“And he did. Which means that nothing happened.”
“No.”
She answered quickly to relieve herself of the pain she felt in lying to him for the first time ever. It was like ripping off a band aid before the wound was even healed, when the air hits it and it stings like someone has poured acid all over your skin. Her throat tightened and she felt like fainting if only to excuse herself from the entire conversation. She knew every word that had come out of her mouth was an even bigger atrocity than the last, but she couldn’t stop herself even if she wanted; she had to wonder if she truly did.
She was also aware that she was an even bigger fraud than either one of them would ever want to believe. But she was so desperate to hide that part of herself, so keen on keeping silent the derision that was sure to come if they had ever learned the truth of who she really was outside of their friendship.
“V,” Maurice started, attempting to bring her out of another presumed daze.
“Nothing happened,” she said again.
“But not because you weren’t expecting something to happen, right?” Nikki asked. Maurice glared in her direction. She ignored him and refocused her attention back to Vanessa. “Did you want something to happen? Be honest, we’re your best friends.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does, I think,” Maurice stated. “If you wanted something to happen, that changes some things.”
“Like what?”
He gradually lifted and lowered his shoulders. “It just changes things.”
“By how much? If I say I wanted something to happen…” She eyed them both. “What would change? Would that really be such a surprise after all this time?”
“Yeah. Especially after he tried to deck me for it.”
“You antagonized him, Maurice! How many times does it have to be said before you get that? I’m not even taking sides here, it’s just what happened. And listen, just because I might have wanted something with Nathan last night, doesn’t mean it did, or will.”
“So you wanted something?” he asked.
“I didn’t say that. I said IF.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Well, it’s what I meant.”
“It’s what you meant, but didn’t say. But what you DID say, was that he was never going away. And if you wanted it just like he did, how long do you think he’s going to wait until you finally give in to him again?”
“I don’t know, how long are you willing to wait?”
“I’m willing to wait for the rest of my life, which might be the biggest mistake of it all.”
Nikki glowered and then furrowed her brows, questioning. She had no idea what the hell was going on between them, but she got the same vibe in that moment that she had gotten last night as they rode together in the limo on the way to the reunion, and she didn’t like it.
She thought for a few seconds before a lightbulb finally went off above her head. “What if he left Sheila?” she asked.
Vanessa turned to her, confused. “What?”
“What if Nathan left Sheila? You said nothing happened, but if you wanted it as much as he did, what if he got desperate and went home to Sheila last night to break off the wedding?”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s too prideful. He wants to prove to himself and everyone around him that what they have is real, and that his sleeping with her behind my back wasn’t for naught. It would somehow make it all justifiable in his mind. If he comes back to me, it makes everything he did with her seem worthless. It was, but he can’t admit that because he would look worse than he already did, or does. His choosing to stay with her might not have started as meaningful, but he’s going to make sure that it ends that way. Besides, she’ll never leave him even if he grew enough balls and managed to toss in the towel. She’ll claw his back until it’s raw before she lets him get out of her cage.”
The house phone started ringing in the living room. Nikki offered to answer, leaving Vanessa and Maurice alone in the kitchen. They were silent for a moment before Maurice leaned in and brushed a piece of hair from her face. She stiffened.
“I’d wait a lifetime for you, Vanessa,” he told her. Her heart fluttered as she peeked up at him. “There’s no difference waiting now than when we were kids.”
“There’s a BIG difference now, Maurice. And you know what that difference is.”
“We’ve never even tried to be real, Vanessa. You say we have, but we never really did. That kiss last night… For the first time, I felt you, I felt all of you. You kissed me back and you kissed me hard and deep. You wanted more, I could taste it on your lips and the way you moved your tongue.”
She gulped. “Mo--”
“That look on your face this morning? Had I leaned in close enough, you would’ve taken it.”
“You can be so arrogant sometimes.”
“It’s not arrogance,” he said. “I’m not arrogant when it comes to you, V, I’m insecure as hell. I play games and say inappropriate things, but you’re the only woman who makes me feel something honest. You get me caught up in ways that I wish I wasn’t, but I stay there because it’s you. And I know that you want me. I can see it, I can taste it. I can feel it. Maybe you didn’t give into Nathan last night, I don’t know, and, I guess I don’t really care because you woke up to me this morning.” He stopped and grinned. “Sort of. But I don’t care about him, I care about you and what I plan to have…” He eyed her from head to toe and ran his tongue across his lips. “What I plan to have is you, for the rest of my life. And in more ways than one.”
“You sound like you’re proposing.”
“I’m not… not yet. You’ll know it when I do.”
She swallowed harder than before and ripped her eyes away as his gleamed with hope and longing. He had a plan, and she knew it was a damn good one; much more than just screwing her into submission or parading her on his arm around Manhattan like so many men before him, he wanted all of her, mind, body and soul until his last days, and he was damned to be stopped before having her.
Maurice made her tremble with a long dormant craving now brought back to life with his words, and weak with fear that she could love him in a way that would completely consume her entire being. He made her wish for eternal lovemaking on a remote island in Bora Bora. He made her believe that it was possible to accept and appreciate someone completely, flaws and all, and still treat them as if they were the most precious creature to ever walk the face of the earth.
But she was still terrified beneath her bones of letting go of what they had as friends and moving into a territory that required all of those things and more; territory that required her to finally give more than her body to a man who wasn’t Nathan.
Her emotions started boiling the longer he stared at her. She tried suppressing her thoughts, but it was becoming more and more difficult with him seeing right through her like glass.
Nikki bounced back into the kitchen then and pointed back toward the living room. “It’s Sheila on the phone,” she said.
Vanessa sneered. “What the hell does she want?”
“To take you to brunch. She sounded really happy, so I guess whatever happened with Nathan after he left you made up for the disaster at the reunion. Maybe he really did leave her.”
“If she sounded happy, unless you’re confusing that with her sounding completely manic, then I doubt Nathan left her high and dry so quickly.” She turned to Maurice and shyly tucked her hair behind her ear, barely looking at him as she spoke. “I better go and talk to her before she starts blowing up my cell phone.”
“Sure. We can talk about this some other time. Soon,” he said.
“Right, yeah.” She nodded and hurried from the room.
Nikki glanced back at her and then went over to Maurice, scowling. “What’s going on with you two?”
He looked over her head, staring back at the door. “Not as much as I would like.” He turned from her and headed back over toward the sink.
Once she reached the living room, Vanessa took a few deep breaths before finally picking up the receiver. She pulled back when she heard violent whistling sounds coming from the other side.
“What the hell is all of that?” she asked, holding the phone back from her ear. “Where are you?”
“Time’s Square!” Sheila hollered with a chuckle. “I forgot what a rush it is to walk downtown on a Sunday afternoon.”
“Right. What are you doing calling me, what do you want? If it’s an apology for last night, you can forget it.”
“I don’t want an apology, V, I want to invite you out to brunch so we can talk. You never called me back last night and I wasn’t sure if you had gotten my message.”
“I got it loud and clear before erasing it.” She wrapped the cord around her fingers and anxiously dug her toes into the hardwood floor. She didn’t mean to say that last part out loud. “I didn’t know what to say in response, so I hadn’t planned on saying anything at all unless we had to see each other again.”
“Are you willing to see me today? In about an hour so that we can talk?”
“Um…” Vanessa wavered. After last night, she never really wanted to see Sheila or acknowledge her existence again. But if she had planned to make any personal progress, she knew she had to start someplace, even if it was with her. “Where?”
“Isabella’s. I’ll pay so you don’t have to worry about that. Meet me there around 2:15?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll be there with bells on.”
“Good.”
“Great. Ok then, bye.”
She dropped the receiver back onto the hook and stepped back to look at it. It seemed like some kind of large foreign object that had forced her into doing something she found objectionable: spending more time than had been desired with the woman who had in part, virtually helped to change the course of her life for better and most certainly for worse. This wasn’t going to end well, she thought. It was only a disaster just waiting to happen.
Part Three
Nathan stood in front of the mirror in his bathroom staring back at his reflection as if he had expected it to do something different from himself. Maybe smack him around a little for the things he did last night or tell him what a terrible person he was for doing them. He had been staring at himself for only a few minutes after getting out of the shower – drips of water still glistening all over his caramel skin – though to him it felt like hours, maybe even a few days or weeks.
He curled his fingers around the edge of the counter and leaned over the sink as if he expected to heave. The towel wrapped around his waist loosened, barely covering him, but he didn’t seem to notice much. When he caught a glimpse of his bed in the mirror, he ripped his eyes away from his reflection and turned his head, frowning. He saw it clear as day on the other side of the doorframe, and took note of the messy sheets and come stained pillows that spread from one corner of the mattress to the other.
He remembered returning to the hotel room, and back to Sheila after nearly having sex with Vanessa just a few hours before. It was never his intention in arriving to her office, he only wanted to know if she had missed him as much as he missed her. But as always with them, what began as a few exchanged words turned into something lurid, something raw and unexpected, something painful yet desirable; something that was no longer accepted. But the worst of for him was that he didn’t feel bad in nearly having sex with her on her desk, in fact he welcomed it.
Had Sheila never called to interrupt them, he would’ve woken up next to Vanessa that morning on the couch that sat in the corner of her office, instead of back in his room alone, surrounded only by the sweet scent of perfume that his soon to be wife left behind before escaping those sweat soaked sheets. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t stepped out before, but when he was actually with Vanessa as her boyfriend, as the presumed love of her life, he felt that guilt; he never wanted to turn what he had with Sheila in high school into a full blown affair behind her back, but he couldn’t stop the way his dick reacted to her body whenever she walked into a room, especially after the first time they were together.
Things were different now, but still somewhat the same. He was no longer with Sheila as the mistress, Sheila as Vanessa’s one time best friend and confidant. He was now with Sheila, the soon to be Mrs. Nathaniel Taylor. And last night, he did what any man would do with his fiancée – he made love to her until her toes curled and her hair sweat, until her back went limp and her legs went numb beneath him. But he would hope to God that she would never find out that he only made love to her because he was prevented from making love to Vanessa as he wanted.
Sheila was just a body to him, one that was eager and capable of providing him with the physical love he was so certain he didn’t need, but craved. He dreamed of Vanessa after, and woke up to thoughts of her in the morning. He washed himself clean of his fiancée in the shower, all while wondering what would come of either one of them if Vanessa were to find out the truth. It was normal for engaged people to have sex as often as they liked before marriage; it wasn’t normal for one party of the engaged couple to wonder what their ex thought of them having done so.
When he heard Sheila returning to the room and calling out for him, he listened to the swishing of shopping bags in her hands as they shuffled against one another. He eased toward the door and closed it lightly, hoping she wouldn’t notice that it had been open the entire time.
She tossed all six bags on a chair near the television set across the room and ran her hand down the front of her white Chanel skirt, smoothing it down until it stopped at the head of her knees. She removed her matching jacket and folded it over her arm as she glanced at the mess around the room. She smirked, recalling how the mess was made and then beamed, shaking her head.
After having called Vanessa to apologize for her actions at the reunion, she drank a few glasses of warm milk to calm herself. She couldn’t call Nathan to see where he was, seeing as she had kept his phone behind, but hoped and prayed to everything she believed in that they weren’t together.
When he finally returned, he tapped her on the shoulder, waking her from a barely deep slumber. She opened her eyes to him standing above her, sweaty and still somewhat angry from the night’s events. He never spoke a single word to her, only watching with a close eye as her legs moved back and forth beneath their silk sheets. She was slightly afraid of what he was going to say to her. Was he going to leave her? Had he finally taken the last straw when it came to their relationship? She gradually rose to her knees and looked directly into his hazel eyes with trepidation. He tried avoiding hers, which in that moment beneath the moonlight engulfing the room, almost appeared to be the hazy color of smoke from a fresh lit cigar. He looked down at her breasts instead, savoring the memory of having seen Vanessa’s just moments before.
Sheila’s breasts were hidden behind a white lace top, one she had bought for herself three years prior, hoping to entice him for his birthday. He didn’t want gifts or a party, so she thought the next best thing was herself. It didn’t work out as well as she had hoped it would, as he claimed to be too tired to do anything but sleep, but it certainly worked when he saw her wearing it last night.
Without thinking, she placed her hands on his shoulders and moved closer to his body, feeling the heat as it arose from his skin. She moved one hand up to the side of his face and he embraced her, clasping his fingers around her small wrist as he turned his face inward, mentally releasing himself of the powerful ache he felt in leaving behind the one woman he had loved most of all.
Sheila felt that ache and wanted to heal it for him, though she didn’t know that it wasn’t because of her or their fight. Part of her had a feeling it wasn’t, like most women did who knew their men intimately, but she tried disregarding that feeling, grateful that he came back to her at all, never questioning why
he did or where he had gone.
All that mattered was that he was there now and with her; that he was touching her, and that he was kissing her like he hadn’t since the first time they were together – softly, slowly, with just enough pressure against her tongue to make her feel the love for him deep inside her belly and other places. She was hesitant in removing his clothes, wondering if he was really willing to go as far as she wanted. It had been months since they were intimate and she wasn’t sure if he was going to turn her down after getting hot and bothered like he had so many times before.
But this time was different, this time he was finally willing to go all the way. As she dropped back to the bed and he climbed on top of her, he shut his eyes and pictured Vanessa’s face. All Sheila could think of as he maneuvered between her legs was how this is the way it should always be, never knowing that he could never feel the same.
The sound of a siren blaring down the Manhattan streets just outside of their window brought her to attention. She looked down at her pink tank and white platform shoes and smiled at herself as she went over to the bathroom door, knocking twice. Nathan had returned to glaring at himself in the mirror, convinced that what stared back at him was a much better man than he would ever be. Sheila knocked again when he didn’t answer. He tried ignoring her, hoping that she would go away, but he knew better than to believe that she would. He took a deep breath and ripped himself away from the counter. He looked to the floor and pulled back on the door handle, and saw her smiling.
She felt good about herself today, sexy and confident. She fiddled with a tiny gold chain around her neck, one he had gotten her right after graduation when they decided to pick up and leave for California. She hadn’t worn it in a few years, only finding it in her makeup bag that morning. She felt it was a sign of good things to come and convinced herself that today was a better day than any to pull it out and showcase it again, just like her engagement ring.
She tilted her head and tossed her jacket on a table next to the bookcase.
