“Is it bad?” I asked him. I was shaking, trembling. Adrenaline was racing through my veins like lava.
He shook his head. “Not as bad as I thought. No marks. And you’re dark, so it will take a minute for any bruises to show, if any show at all.”
I was grateful, as I just knew that being thrown into the wall had given me some kind of scratches to my face. But as I looked at my hands, I realized they had taken the beating from the wall. They were scraped up a bit, cut up, but not as bad as they could have been. I looked at Demitri. He had a sheen of sweat on his forehead, but otherwise, he was good. His opponent hadn’t been able to get a hit in edgewise. I looked to make sure the man’s blood hadn’t gotten on him anywhere. There wasn’t any, not where I could see.
I looked at all the traffic on Peachtree. The Fox Theatre was right down the street. Most of the traffic was probably coming from there and the surrounding restaurants. The city of Atlanta was lit up with the nightlife. Women in short skirts and even shorter shorts, with tall heels and plenty of breasts exposed, passed by us. Gay men who looked as if they’d appeared on RuPaul’s Drag Race passed us by. They stared Demitri down like he was their next meal.
“Sis, you’re wearing that fucking dress,” one of them said to me.
“She is,” another said.
“Slay, bitch,” said one who looked more like Beyoncé than Beyoncé herself, then winked.
I tried to smile. Said thank you. I swallowed. Glanced over my shoulder, same as Demitri did. We were trying to make sure dread head’s friends weren’t sneaking up on us. We saw Elliot’s truck just as we heard people coming down the alleyway from where we’d run. Elliot turned his blinkers on and pulled over. Demitri opened the back door to help me in. Then he hopped up front.
“Why didn’t you guys come back out through the front?” Elliot asked.
“Had the bouncers let us out through the back since we ran into the hecklers again,” Demitri lied.
I kept my eyes straight ahead. Caught Elliot’s eyes in the rearview mirror for only a couple of seconds. I cupped my hands in my lap so he couldn’t see them.
“You okay, Samona?” he asked.
“I got spit on,” was my answer.
I could tell Elliot was thinking that he had missed something or that there was something we weren’t telling him. He kept his eyes on me when we got to a red light.
“I’m all right, El,” I said, shakiness in my voice. “I got spit on. Couldn’t do shit about it. I’m worked up.”
He glanced at Demitri, who was leaning to the right, with his eyes straight ahead. He gave Demitri the once-over. A horn blew behind us, as the light had turned green. Elliot pulled out into traffic. My mind was on what had just happened. I’d just attacked someone, two people, in an alley behind a club. Who in the hell did I think I was?
I thought back to the night Amara had fought with Johnny. I remembered watching out the window as he rushed to his truck.
He was hurt, physically so. I knew Amara had done something to him. She was evil. If people crossed her just once, she’d make them regret it. Johnny got to his car, then bent over, like he was trying to catch his breath. My flat palms were against the window. I beat on the panes, hoping he would see me. He did. He looked up. Stood at his full height. Tried to smile and blew me a kiss. There was sadness in his eyes. He opened his car door, and only then did I see him holding his stomach. He was bleeding.
I banged on the window harder. I called his name over and over. Tried to open the window but couldn’t. I didn’t want him to leave. If he left, then there would be another man. And I knew in my heart, he wouldn’t be as kind to me as Johnny was. My eight-year-old heart just knew it.
Johnny got in his car. Laid his head back against his seat. He was breathing like every time he did, he was close to his last breath. With his bloody hands, he signed that he was sorry. He said he had to leave. Amara was making him leave. He told me that he loved me and that maybe one day, we’d see one another again. We never did. At least not until I was well into adulthood.
“Samona, get your ass out that fucking window,” Amara yelled down the hall.
I closed my curtains. Walked down the hall to see Amara sitting at the kitchen table. She was crying. Shaking. Blood-soaked cigarette to her lips. Blood inching its way from the corner of her mouth. There was a cut above her eye. Blood from it trickled down the side of her face. I knew Johnny had done that. Her cheeks were bruised. Lips swollen. While he’d never laid a bad hand on me, I’d seen him smack Mama more than once. So I knew he’d done that to her.
I grabbed a chair, pulled it up to the fridge. Took the ice tray down. I put ice in a towel and then handed it to Amara. Her bloody switchblade lay on the table. It scared me then. Thinking about it scared me now.
“Is he coming back?” I asked.
Amara turned to look at me. Eyes red, cold, and lifeless, she said, “If he does, he’ll leave in a body bag.”
The more I tried not to be Amara’s daughter, the more I proved I was. I should have walked away from that fight and left well enough alone. But she had spit on me. Becky had fixed her mouth and hawked a wad of her DNA in such a way that it had landed on my body. That angered me. Only one other person had spit on me, had spit in my face. I’d walked away from that woman, but only after I’d assaulted her. And I’d shared DNA with her.
We made it to my hotel with those thoughts swimming around in my mind. I hopped out of the truck after Elliot opened the door for me.
“We can come up—” he began, but I stopped him.
“No,” I said. “Need to be alone for a while,” I said.
I was halfway lying, halfway telling the truth. I did want to be alone, but I also didn’t want to tell Elliot what had transpired. For some reason, I felt he wouldn’t appreciate what I’d done. Demitri must have felt the same way, since he had chosen to lie by omission. Elliot gave me a hug. There were questions in his eyes. Ones I didn’t want to answer at the moment. So I walked away before he could ask them out loud.
I got to my room, disrobed, and then hopped in the shower. I washed all the hidden grit and dirt away that was under my dress. The cuts and scrapes on my hands burned as I scrubbed where that woman had violated me. Was surprised Elliot hadn’t noticed some of the dirt on the back of my dress. Maybe he’d been too worked up from the commotion earlier, or maybe he’d been too busy trying to figure out what Demitri and I weren’t telling him. Either way, I was happy he hadn’t asked me too many questions.
I’d left my phone in the hotel. My agent had called. Summer had called. I didn’t feel like responding to either of those calls at the moment. I cleaned my hands then wrapped bandages around them. I found two Tylenol in my carry-on, popped them with a glass of wine, then lay down. I woke up to it storming outside and someone ringing the doorbell to my hotel room.
I knew it was Demitri. Knew he would come back if he couldn’t figure out on his own the lies Elliot and I had told. That meant he’d come back to question me until I told him the truth. My head was pounding. The bandages on my hands annoyed me, so I snatched them off. Tossed them in the trash on my way to the door. The right side of my face felt heavy. Right eye throbbed hard. I’d looked at the clock when I crawled out of bed. It was three in the morning. Only an hour and a half later. I made it to the door, looked through the peephole, then paused.
I frowned. Licked my dry lips, then opened the door. His scent made its way into the room before he did.
“You okay?” he asked. “Came to check on you,” he said.
I looked up at him, wondering if he had lost his mind.
“He know you’re here?”
He shook his head. “No.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a prescription pill bottle. “Figured you’d need these.”
He’d changed clothes. Was dressed like he belonged to a bikers’ club. He had on a leather jacket and leather biker boots. A red helmet sat underneath his arm. The jeans he had on weren’t tight, but they weren’t lo
ose, either. I moved to the side to let Demitri in. I closed the door. Locked it and put the latch on.
“Let me see your face,” he said.
We were still standing by the door, underneath the dim light there.
He asked, “You put ice on it?”
I shook my head. “No. Head was hurting. Still is. But I took some pills and lay down.”
“What did you take?” he asked.
“Tylenol.”
He popped the top on the pill bottle. “Here. Motrin,” he said. “Eight hundred milligrams. It’s safe. Should help with the headache too.”
I took one pill, nodded, then asked him if he wanted to sit. He did. He took a seat in the same chair he had been sitting in earlier. I grabbed some water and popped the pill
“Thank you,” I said. “For the pills and for earlier. You pretty much saved me.”
“It’s good. No thanks needed. Didn’t look like you needed saving, anyway, though. You were doing damn good for yourself,” he said.
I averted my eyes from his. Didn’t want him to see the demons living there. Didn’t want him to see that I’d been transported back to the time when I was a little girl fighting for her life.
I changed the subject. “You tell Elliot about what happened?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“He ask?”
“Yeah.”
I looked out the window at the rain pummeling the city. “He’s probably not going to like that we didn’t tell him,” I said.
“It’s for the best. Don’t need him getting angry. His anger gets him in trouble,” he said.
He said that like a man who knew his man better than I did. Any other time that would have bothered me. Tonight it didn’t matter. I walked to the window. Pushed the shade aside to look at the rain. Atlanta’s nightlife was still alive. Traffic looked to be at a standstill from my vantage point. Clouds hid the top of the Atlanta skyline, giving it the proverbial “dark and stormy night” look.
Demitri was moving around behind me. I turned to look at him. His left hand was massaging his right one. Thought he might have hit the dread head too hard.
“Want me to get you some ice?” I asked him.
He looked up at me. “Would you?”
I nodded. Walked to the fridge, which had an ice maker. I put some ice in one of the bowls, walked into the bathroom to grab a hand towel, and then sat on the arm of the chair in the living area. I took his hand and eased it into the bowl. He winced a bit.
“You hit him too hard too many times,” I said, watching him as he watched me.
“He deserved it. Any man who hits a woman isn’t a man,” he said.
I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t stop looking at his lips, his eyes . . . those eyebrows. And his hair. Demitri’s hair was the kind that made women envious. If that made sense. I wanted to touch it. Run my fingers through it without messing up his neatly done finger coils. My eyes traveled back to his to find he was studying me, same as I was him.
I thought back to earlier, when he and I were in bed together. Thought back to my hand on his chest, then slipping into his pants. I’d been so relaxed. So at ease thinking it was Elliot beside me. Realizing it wasn’t Elliot had sent a shock wave through my body. Never mind the fact that there was something about Demitri’s eyes that rattled me.
I remembered the kiss we had shared earlier. Before all the madness. That man had laid a kiss on me that caught me by surprise. I’d kissed him only because Elliot had wanted me to. Demitri hadn’t wanted to kiss me. I could tell by the way he frowned down at me and moved his face when I tried to touch him. I’d told him that Elliot wanted us to kiss. Asked him if he was scared that he might actually enjoy it.
That had got to him. Curiosity always killed the cat. Satisfaction would always bring it back. Demitri’s tongue had found mine like he had been wanting and waiting to kiss me. His tongue had danced with mine, taking the lead in the kiss. He’d kissed me like he was hungry for it. Which had surprised me.
I swallowed. “You should take one of those pills you gave me,” I said, trying to break whatever it was that was happening between us.
“I did,” he said. “Shit still hurts when I flex too hard.”
“Think he’s going to call the cops on us?” I asked.
Demitri shook his head. “He’s going to be too embarrassed. His homies found him with his ass out. His manhood has already taken a hit. No way he’ll call the cops and admit to getting his ass handed to him by a man he doesn’t even consider a man.”
I nodded. “True,” I said.
“Did that girl see you hit her with the bottle?”
“The white girl did. Not sure if the black girl saw me before I hit her.”
“Might be a problem.”
I sighed. “I know.”
“Why’d you go after them again?”
“She spit on me.”
“We had your purse. We could have left.”
“If I spit on you right now, what would you do? I’ve walked away from slaps, kicks, and hits, but to spit on someone is the ultimate disrespect.”
“You were pretty pissed before then. Right around the time she called you a dyke. Before she spit on you.”
I didn’t respond. Gave him a slow blank gaze as my answer.
Demitri chuckled, then said, “I saw this dude spit on a woman before. Was in Publix over on Mount Zion. Dude, like, spit on her right in the corner of her fucking eye. I wanted to beat his ass for her, to be honest.”
“Oh, my God. That is fucking gross. I hope she tried to kill him.”
Demitri shook his head. “Nah. She started crying and ran from the store.”
“Oh, hell no. I’d have grabbed a wine bottle or two and gone to work.”
He looked at me and said, “Clearly, Laila Ali.”
“Didn’t mean to get you involved in my mess.”
“What did you think was going to happen when I realized you weren’t in the bathroom?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Didn’t really think you’d give a damn.”
He shook his head and sighed. “I know some dudes who work at the police department out here. I’ll put some feelers outs. Make sure no reports have come in.”
“Why?”
“Because you need to—”
“No. I mean, why would you do that for me? We’ve been fighting since we met.”
He shrugged. “They deserved that ass kicking, and Elliot cares about you. Anything happens to you, he won’t be well.”
That touched me. What he said, it touched me. Not because he was, in a sense, taking up for me. But because he loved Elliot, and because Elliot cared for me, Demitri wanted to protect me. I wondered if Elliot got just how much love Demitri had for him. In that moment, I started to see Demitri in a different light as a person.
“Thank you,” I finally said.
He gave me something of a smile, but it wasn’t a smile. I didn’t know what to call it. I licked my lips. Tried to figure out why Demitri was in my hotel room in the middle of the night, without Elliot.
Mona
“You’re prettier than your pictures online,” he said out of the blue.
I laughed. “Wow. Did you just give me a compliment?”
“You are. I wasn’t that impressed when I saw your pictures.”
I grunted. I’d never seen Demitri before the day I met him. There were no pictures of him on Elliot’s Facebook page. I’d looked. Searched high and low. I’d found it odd. Had even questioned it once, but all Elliot had said was that he liked to keep his personal life private.
“So you were looking for me online, then?” I asked.
He moved his hand around in the bowl. Made a face that said he wished he hadn’t done that.
“I have something I can wrap your wrist with,” I told him.
“Later,” he said. “And, no, I wasn’t looking for you online. You commented on one of Elliot’s posts. So I decided to look through your profile.”
“So, y
ou knew about me and Elliot, then?”
“Not at the time. I just kept seeing a woman on his Facebook page flirting with him and him flirting back with her. I knew there was something there. Could tell by the way he was speaking to you. This was before you two started fucking.”
I knew that feeling. Knew what it was to see the man you loved speak a certain way to someone who wasn’t you. You began to get curious. Started to search out the other person. My ex had taught me that lesson.
“How do you know?”
“Because before he started fucking you, he told me he wanted to. Rules of our engagement.”
“So you’ve known about me for a long time, then?” I asked.
“Long enough.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re going to get from me.”
I moved the bowl, forcing his hand to move. He grunted. I smiled.
“That was evil,” he said.
“How did he talk you into meeting me?” I asked.
“He’s Elliot. Whatever he wants, he gets.”
“Did he fuck you too? Have sex with you, then make love to you?” I asked.
I could tell my words took him aback. It lasted but a brief second, but I caught the flinch in his jaw before he caught himself and put his poker face back on. I had to watch Demitri closely, or I wouldn’t be able to catch the slight changes in his face and mood. I asked him that to be petty in a sense. I wanted him to know that Elliot had done to me what I was sure he had done to him. Used his sex, his dick, to get what he wanted from us.
Demitri moved his hand from the bowl. I gave him the towel. I took the bowl over to the dining table and set it down there. Walked into the bedroom to get the compression wraps I had. I had a bad ankle, so I kept them on standby. I returned to the living area and sat down on the arm of the chair and wrapped his wrist for him. He watched me the whole time.
I was well aware of that. Just as I was aware of the way he smelled . . .
“Is it too tight?” I asked him, trying to stave off the heat I felt in my gut.
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