Accidental Deception

by Tina Martin

  Not knowing where to go exactly, she kept on walking along Euclid Avenue, remembering there was a Shell gas station on the corner of East and South Boulevards. At least she could grab some snacks while she was airing out her frustrations, and making up her mind if she wanted to go back to his place. Maybe it was time for her life to go back to the way it was – living in homeless shelters and sleeping on sidewalks. At least she knew what she would be getting into with being homeless. It was better than being lied to by Charlotte’s most eligible bachelor.

  Chapter 24

  “Shay, I’m home baby,” Carter said after he stepped in the foyer, dropping his keys on the desk, not paying any attention to the file folder there. He took a few steps to the living room, looked across the way to the kitchen, then stepped in the family room. Shayla wasn’t there either, but he noticed his laptop was on the couch, still plugged into the charger. He folded it shut and set it on the table.

  “Shayla,” Carter called out again. It was quiet in the house. Too quiet. He’d usually hear the TV, radio or something. Maybe she’s already in bed, he thought.

  He jogged upstairs, tapped on her door, waited a moment then proceeded to go in. She wasn’t there.

  He walked down the hallway to the bathroom. No Shayla. He spent a few more minutes checking his room, the laundry room, the deck – she was nowhere to be found.

  Carter felt his dry throat tighten, his heart thumping. If her car was in the driveway and she wasn’t in the house, where was she? He paced back and forth in the living room, rubbing his head in angst trying to think of where she might be.

  Where are you, he thought, pacing the living room more. He couldn’t call her since he hadn’t got around to getting her a cell phone and he could slap himself for that now.

  “Where are you, Shayla?” he said out loud. He rushed out the front door, jumped in his truck and slowly drove around in his neighborhood looking for her. He circled the block – Lafayette Avenue to Berkley Avenue, then to Myrtle Avenue, Mount Vernon Avenue and back to Lafayette going in circles.

  No Shayla.

  He flipped on the high beam lights of his truck and circled the block again, driving a little slower the third time around, peering through the windows, hoping to see her walking.

  No Shayla.

  He rode slowly by Latta Park but there was no one there, which was usually the case this time of night.

  Carter drove back to his house now, parked out front trying to determine where she might be. What if she was in harm’s way? What if she was somewhere hurt and couldn’t reach him? He slapped the steering wheel hard, mistakenly hitting the horn, watching his next door neighbor peep through the blinds.

  He put the truck in drive again, and ventured out a little further on East Boulevard, heading for South Boulevard. At the intersection of both streets, he turned into the parking lot of the gas station there and parked next to a gas pump. He scanned the front of the store, even looked across the street into the parking lot of Fuel Pizza, but there was no sign of Shayla.

  Heart racing, he walked to the entrance of the store, pushed the door open and looked around briefly before noticing the gray-haired attendant behind the counter.

  “Excuse me, Sir,” Carter said, his face sweaty, eyes filled with worry. “Did you happen to see a woman in here in the last hour or two? Maybe three? She’s…ah…about the same complexion as me and—”

  “Sir, we get a lot of people in and out of here.”

  “I know but maybe you remember her. She’s a little lighter than me…ah…um…she has long, black, curly hair and marble black eyes,” Carter told him desperately.

  The clerk shook his head and began to ring up another customer.

  “Ah…she has a scar near her top lip…” Carter offered up.

  “Hmm…okay, yeah, I remember her,” the old man said. “She was here a little while ago.”

  Carter’s eyes brightened. A sign of hope. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I remember because she paid in change. And she was crying too. I asked her if she was okay, but she didn’t say anything…just walked away.”

  “Ah’ight. Thanks.” Carter headed to the door but stopped abruptly and asked the clerk, “How long ago?”

  “Twenty or thirty minutes, give or take.”

  “Okay. Thanks again.” Carter rushed to his truck, trying to calculate how far of a walk it was from the store to his house. The stretch was only about a mile so she should’ve been there by now.

  He drove straight home, exceeding the speed limit as he tried to track Shayla down. He couldn’t lose her now, not after they’d come this far. It would be like losing Jacob all over again.

  He ran in the house, yelled for her. “Shayla!” He continued upstairs and called her name again.

  No Shayla.

  Back outside, he jumped in the truck again. Heading he opposite direction this time, he frantically searched the streets, his eyes strained open, bright lights still on. As he cruised, the dark quiet streets in his upscale neighborhood, he thought about what the clerk said – that she’d been crying. But why? He hadn’t seen her emotional over Jacob in weeks. What brought it on this time? Was she sniffing Jacob’s favorite cologne again? And why would she pay for her purchase in all change when he’d given her a Visa check card and opened a bank account for her? Something wasn’t adding up. Maybe the clerk had Shayla mixed up with someone else.

  Carter drove down Euclid Avenue toward Templeton Avenue. A misting of rain blanketed his windshield. He turned on the wipers, saw someone walking on the left sidewalk with a white plastic bag in hand. As he got closer, he could see that it was Shayla. He pulled up next to her. “Shay, what are you doing?”

  Shayla kept walking like she didn’t hear him. She was in the zone, wanting to get as far away from him as she could. It was better to leave now than draw this out any longer than necessary.

  “Get in the truck, Shayla!”

  Still, she kept on walking, which only pissed him off even more.

  “Shayla!” Carter said, throwing the truck in park in the middle of the street, jumping out still wearing the crisp black suit he had on this morning. He caught up to her and grabbed her arm. “Shay, stop! What are you doing?”

  “I’m walking. What does it look like I’m doing?” Shayla said barely looking at him, small drops of rain pelting her face.

  “Why are you walking? You got the keys to the car. Why you out here walking in the rain eleven o’clock at night? Have you lost your freakin’ mind!”

  Shayla glared at him, “Let go of me.”

  “What?” Carter said dumbfounded. “Let you go? Let you go where?”

  “Just move out of my way, Carter!” She tried to push him away from her personal space.

  “Look at me, Shayla!”

  Shayla rolled her eyes, and looked in the opposite direction of him, fighting back tears.

  “Baby, why are—”

  “My name is Shayla. Don’t call me baby,” she said, sniffling.

  “Okay…Shayla…don’t know what your problem is, but we’re going home.”

  “I’m not going home with you,” Shayla said absolute.

  Carter frowned. He wanted to pick her up and force her in the truck but he took a moment to calm down. “Shayla, you need to talk to me. What is this? You’re regressing now? This is the type of thing I would’ve expected from you when you first moved in. What is this nonsense?”

  “Let go of me!”

  “I ain’t doing nothing until you talk to me!” he said, encircling his arms around her.

  “I have nothing to say to you now let…go…of…me,” Shayla said yanking hard to get away from him but was no match for his strength.

  “What did I do to you?” Carter let go of her arm and threw both of his arms around her instead. “You mad ‘cause I had to work late? Hunh?”

  A few cars squeezed around his truck that he’d left parked in the street with the driver door still open. The rain was coming down harder now, po
unding drops on their heads and wetting their clothes as they stood on the sidewalk. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled. The two should’ve been running for shelter, at home snuggled on the couch watching a movie. Instead, they were standing in the street in inclement weather, arguing for reasons unknown to Carter at the moment.

  “Look, I wanted to be home with you,” Carter said raising his voice an octave so she could hear him over the hissing sound of the downpour. “I would’ve rather stayed with you, but I had to work and…Shayla, sweetie, I don’t know what’s wrong with you but it’s raining, we’re both drenched and there’s no way I’m going to leave you out here. Okay? So whatever’s wrong, we can talk about it at home.”

  Shayla didn’t say a word. She just stood still, not even making eye contact with him.

  “Can we go now?” Carter asked pleadingly, his eyebrows raised, face wet with rain.

  “Yeah. Whatever,” Shayla whispered slightly, brushing tears and rain from her face. She walked toward the truck and Carter followed.

  Carter was dumbfounded, completely in the dark about what could set her off like this. Was she this upset because he had to work late? Or was this something that had to do with Jacob yet again? He got in the truck and drove, they both quiet, their clothes soaked with rain water.

  A few minutes later, he pulled up in the drive way. Shayla got out quickly and nearly sprinted towards the front door, unlocking it.

  Carter was hot on her trail, followed her to the kitchen, watching her wipe her face with a paper towel. “I hope you’re not gonna be sick because of this nonsense…walking in the rain…did you even take your medicine today?”

  “Let me worry about me. What do you care anyway?” she said flippantly.

  Carter glared at her, his aggravation reaching its peak. He walked up behind her. “You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care. I wouldn’t get off work this late, tired and exhausted, then come home and spend time looking for you…out in the rain arguing with you if I didn’t care!”

  “Well maybe you should’ve stayed at work, if you can even call it that.” Shayla smirked, walked by him and tossed damp papers towel in the trash.

  Perplexed, Carter rubbed his chin and sighed. “Shayla, I don’t know what your problem is—”

  “I’m not the one with the problem!” She left him standing in the kitchen and headed upstairs.

  Carter stood speechless, scratching his head trying to figure her out. Women, he thought, shaking his head. He took off his wet suit jacket and hung it on the back of one of the dinette chairs, then loosened his tie and undid two buttons at the top of his shirt. He strummed his hands across his wet hair, shook his head in agitation and just as he made up his mind to confront Shayla again about this, choosing not to let it wait until the morning, his cell phone rang.

  He took it from the breast pocket of his suit jacket. “Hello.”

  “Finally, he answers,” Genevieve said. “Pardon me for calling you so late.”

  Carter recognized Genevieve’s voice immediately. “That’s okay, Genevieve. I know we were supposed to meet today, but it’s been crazy at the office...you know how it is this time of the month. Anyway, I told Julie to have you come by the office in the morning.”

  “Oh, that’s no problem, Carter. Actually if you would prefer, we can go over the documents over the phone in the morning, especially since I’m heading back to Fort Mill tonight.”

  “So you left the paperwork with Julie?”

  “No. I gave it to Shayla, or Sheila…whatever her name is.”

  “You gave it to Shayla?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wait…you came by my house?” Carter asked, pacing the kitchen floor.

  “Yeah. When you didn’t show up for the meeting, I thought you forgot about me. I couldn’t get you on the phone, so I stopped by and left the folder with Shayla. I didn’t get Julie’s message until after I left your house. Shayla did give you the folder, didn’t she? I think she was a little pissed at me because I thought she was your housekeeper.”

  Crap, Carter thought. Shayla’s sudden change in mood was beginning to make sense.

  “Carter?”

  “Um, yeah,” Carter stammered. “I’m sure she left it around here somewhere. Why would you think she was my housekeeper?”

  “I don’t know. I saw a woman answer the door and I assumed she was your housekeeper.”

  Carter scratched his head. “What did you tell her, exactly?”

  “I told her that you and I were supposed to meet at The Blake, and since you didn’t show—”

  “Genevieve, I gotta call you back, okay?” he interrupted, ending the call before Genevieve had a chance to say bye. Now he knew why Shayla had been distant. Genevieve had unknowingly showed up and wrecked things – made Shayla believe that he was meeting her at a hotel for pleasure and not business when that’s all it was – business.

  Instead of clarifying the situation immediately, Carter went to his room, undressed, took a hot shower, thinking about this in more detail. What exactly did Shayla’s reaction to Genevieve mean? Was she falling in love with him? And if she was, did that mean she was finally over Jacob? Ready to move on? Could she actually see herself with a man like Carter?

  After his shower, he walked down the hall, tapped on her door while simultaneously saying her name. He waited a moment. Nothing.

  “Shayla, can I talk to you for a minute?” he asked, listening for noise, but didn’t hear a thing. So he turned the knob, pushed the door open and went in. She wasn’t there. He walked down the hall towards the bathroom and tapped on the door. “Shayla, you in there?”

  Shayla was sitting in a hot bubble bath, her body submerged in the water, emptying jealous thoughts from her heart. After all, Carter didn’t owe her anything. He wasn’t her man. She couldn’t claim him. No woman could claim a man as hers unless he had a ring on it (and even then sometimes it was questionable). So she dried her tears and told herself to be thankful that he cared enough about her to help her out. It didn’t matter what, or who, he did on personal time.

  “I’m taking a bath,” she said evenly, disguising the fact that she’d been crying.

  “Okay.” He walked away, feeling bad for what he assumed Shayla was feeling. Betrayed. Had she not been betrayed by his brother already? Now he was doing the exact same thing.

  Back in his room now, he took Jacob’s obituary from a black notebook in the top drawer of his nightstand. He stared at his brother’s picture on the front of it, wondering how Shayla hadn’t put the pieces together yet. He resembled his brother greatly, in his opinion, though they were the product of different fathers and had different eye colors and skin complexions.

  He opened the obituary to the inside page and began reading:

  Jacob Dempsey, 29, of Charlotte, North Carolina fell asleep in death June 11, 2009 at his home. Jacob was born November 3, 1979 to Nora and John Dempsey. He attended East Mecklenburg High School and continued his education at Piedmont Community College where he studied Accounting. He enjoyed watching football and playing basketball…

  Carter felt tension building up in his head, pressure from all the drama in his life. His reality was that his brother was dead. His mother died a few months later after Jacob. His father died years ago. And no matter how wrong it was to love his brother’s fiancée, he didn’t know how to make himself stop falling for her? The truth of the matter was, he needed Shayla at an even greater level of intensity than she ever needed him.

  After her bath, Shayla went back to her room and locked the door behind her. She sat on the bed and thought about where Carter might’ve been in the house. He was probably sitting in the den working, or lying in his bed reliving all the fun he had with Genevieve at The Blake Hotel. Who was she compared to Genevieve?

  The rain was pouring down harder now, its mesmerizing drops pounding heavy against the roof top. Thinking she was done with her bath, Carter walked back to Shayla’s room and tapped lightly on the door.

  No ans
wer.

  He turned the doorknob. It was locked. He wanted to knock louder, but instead, he walked back to his room, laid face up, listening to the rain pummel the roof. Usually, the sound of it was enough to put him to sleep, but tonight sleep didn’t come easy. He could only imagine what Shayla was feeling, how she assumed that he was seeing Genevieve at some hotel behind her back.

  Chapter 25

  Shayla rose early, the next morning, 7:00 a.m. or so, slid into her robe and walked downstairs in search of decaffeinated coffee. She was surprised to see Carter sitting at the table already, with his hands wrapped around a black Carolina Panthers coffee mug.

  “Good morning,” he said looking up at her, reading her.

  “Mornin’,” Shayla said thoughtlessly, taking a mug from the cupboard and walking near the coffee pot. “Is this decaf?”

  “Yeah. I always make decaf for you.”

  She poured herself a cup of coffee. Amazingly, she felt good this morning, having taken the time to decipher what she was feeling last night. She couldn’t fault Carter for going after a beautiful, successful woman like Genevieve. Did she have a right to be jealous? Money married money. Good-looking people dated good-looking people. Successful, gorgeous men didn’t date homeless women. That’s just the way it was.

  Carter’s eyes followed her every move until she finally took a seat opposite of him, picking up the classified section of The Charlotte Observer.

  “How’d you sleep last night?” he probed, sensing that she didn’t want to talk but he would make her anyway.

  Shayla shrugged, scanning various jobs with the newspaper held up in front of her face so she couldn’t see him.

  “Well, I didn’t sleep so good.” He took a sip of coffee and set the mug on the table. “And you would think with the rain and all, I would’ve slept like a baby, but nope, I couldn’t sleep. I just laid there in darkness, in the middle of the bed, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the rain.”