“You don’t know jack shit about my body. And I’m not the one who’s married and hitting on another person. You are the one who built a façade.”
“Why are you talking like that? You never talked like this when we were together.”
“Ha! That’s it. I’m not the same naïve virgin you met back in seventy two. You think you know me when you don’t. If you knew me, you’d know I’m a half a second from throwing these hot grits on you,” I said as my hand eased to the bowl that held my grits.
Listening to John profess his love for me brought my anger to a boiling point. I had forty years’ worth of pent up frustration that was ready to be unleashed upon the object of my contempt. He was sitting at my kitchen table ruining the tiny bit of peace I’d managed to weave alone.
“Clara!”
“Clara my ass, John. It’s time for you to go!”
“Clara, don’t make me leave right now. I want you to know just how sorry I am.”
“I know you don’t think I’m going to sit in here and listen to you go on about how sorry you are. On that, we both agree. Next topic,” I said, easing my hand away from the bowl and picking up the spoon. I scooped some of the grits and ate them.
“I’m a good man with a good heart who made the wrong choice. When I got to the biggest crossroad in my life, I went down the wrong road.”
“Is that right?” I asked nonchalantly.
“It is, and I owe you an apology. That’s why I will give you as many apologies as you need, for as long as you need to hear them. But make no mistake about it, I am the furthest thing from a sorry man and you know that.”
“I will not pretend to know anything about you, John. You’re practically a stranger to me.”
“I’ll accept that, Clara,” John said as he took a sip from his coffee. His hand was shaking as he placed the mug back down on the table. We sat in silence for a while before he said, “I remember seeing you in the registration line at Wellmington. I knew you were the one for me right then and there. Remember, we were both with our parents?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“I didn’t have the nerve to say anything to you, until I left registration. I searched for you all over campus and then by the luck of the draw we ended up in the same English class. When we started studying together, I waited until you were ready to move me from the friend zone into the romantic zone. I waited for you then and it seems like I’ve waited a lifetime for this moment.”
John stood up and walked toward me. I got up from my chair and moved toward the sink. “That sounds all lovey dovey and cute, except you skipped a major part of our love story. The part where you left me and married another woman.”
John’s expression went from pleading to sorrow. He moved closer to me as if the close proximity would alleviate his sorrow. However, I had no intention of making him feel better. “I never meant to hurt you,” he said as he reached for my hand.
I glared at him in all seriousness. “If you touch me, you will walk away with one less limb than you came here with.”
“Damn it, Clara! What do you want me to do? Do you want me to just go back to Miami and act like magic didn’t flow between us last night? Like seeing you didn’t dig up feelings I’ve tried to bury for so long?”
“Throw some dirt on ‘em and keep ‘em buried, that’s what I want you to do. I want you to leave and not care, the same way you didn’t care when you left me with child.”
All expression left John’s face, which immediately turned pale. His breathing deepened as he clutched his chest as if to manually keep his heart beating. Finally, the moment had come for him to live through the agony that never let me go. I silently reveled in every minute of his suffering. “You were pregnant, Clara?” he asked once he gained a semblance of composure.
“I was going to tell you the day you came to my house and told me you were moving away. But after I saw how easy it was for you to walk out of my life – our lives – I didn’t have the nerve to tell you. There I was at that university on my parent’s last dime, money they worked their entire lives to save, pregnant with a bastard child. I had no choice but to scrape and scrub, so I could get an abortion.”
The agonizing thought of walking into that rusty abortion house rushed back to me and hugged me like a Grizzly. John wrapped an arm around me and touched my stomach, as if the simple act would channel him into the soul of our lost child. I was too pained to push him away. Memories of my first pregnancy always brought me to my knees.
“I should’ve never left you, Clara,” John said, as his eyes filled with tears that dared to fall.
I stared off into space as yesteryear’s feelings of abandonment crushed my heart, all over again. “Aborting our child was the hardest decision I ever made, but I was under so much pressure. When I walked into that makeshift clinic and asked for Ms. Maggie, I knew my life would forever be altered. It still haunts me today, when I wonder what our child would have looked like, what he or she would wear, or where they would work.”
While thinking about my first child, John continued to hold me and I didn’t resist. I accepted the temporary comfort in his arms. For once, I had someone to lean on as I shared the way I felt about my first child, whose bright smile never saw the light of day. The incomplete feeling I’d lived with since that day never stopped haunting me, and besides Ms. Maggie, I never told a soul.
Many nights I cried myself to sleep as I wondered if our precious baby would have been a boy or girl. My heart ached for the loss of my child. It also ached because the man who implanted his seed deep within me walked away as if I and his unborn child meant nothing.
I was determined to finish college, when I left that clinic devoid of the precious human life we’d conceived. I didn’t even think about dating after John. I just buried my head in the books and finished at the top of my class with a degree in communications.
The thought of all I endured alone made me retract from the hold John had on me. The pain had been my comforter. I vowed to never let another man hurt me like John did and until I met Destiny’s father, Weldyn, I’d never gotten close to the same hurt.
Weldyn tried his damndest to break me with his razor sharp tongue, his constant degrading words and cheating ways. He never raised his hands to hit me, but the way he looked at me and talked to me made me embrace being single. I had two strikes on love and I didn’t intend to give anyone a third chance not to love me.
However, as much as he tried, Weldyn never took me as low as I was the day I walked out of that abortion clinic without my child and without the love that created it.
“If only you knew what I went through, you wouldn’t have the nerve to stand here in my face asking for forgiveness,” I said to John.
“Clara, I didn’t know you were pregnant. If I had known my child was growing inside of you, there would’ve been nothing anyone would have been able to say me to keep me away, including you. I would have stayed with you and I would have raised our child as a Turner. There is no doubt in my mind about that. You should have trusted me enough to know that.”
“But yet, I wasn’t enough for you to stay?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yes you did. You said it with your actions when you left me.”
“I didn’t know you were with child.”
“John, that shouldn’t have mattered.”
“It matters. I never would’ve left you to make the decision about our child alone. I take care of my responsibilities. I always have. I don’t like knowing that you felt you had no one to turn to. In fact, I broke up with you because I wanted you to find someone who could be there for you while I was away.”
“It’s easy to say you wouldn’t have left me alone now that you’re not faced with the situation. What I know is your parents didn’t want you falling in love with a black girl, so they yanked you back to the front of the bus and into the land of the privileged.”
“My father thought sending me to Yale would put me in a better position
to run our business.”
“John, you are your father’s only son. You would’ve run your family business, even if you didn’t have a college education. He would’ve taught you the ropes. Your father sent you to Yale, so you wouldn’t be chasing behind me. Period.”
“Clara…” John slid an arm around my waist again and pulled me close. He buried his head in the groove of my neck, inhaling my essence as if it were his last chance. And if I had anything to do with it, it would be his last chance. “If you’re wanting me to explain away our past, I can’t. At the same time, I can’t put into words what you mean to me at this very moment. Give me the opportunity to show you,” he said as he hugged me closer to him.
I dared to move from the warmth of his embrace as I whispered, “Just go back to your life and let me be. I was fine before you got here.”
“Were you?” he asked as his lips grazed the skin of my neck with a tender kiss.
“I was… and you should leave now, John,” I said, struggling to get away from him.
He held me in place. “Going back to my life as it was is not an option. Now that I have seen you again, peered into your soul, felt your body next to mine, I’ll do whatever it takes to make things right.”
“You can’t just say things like that when there’s no way you mean it, John.” I pushed him away hard. “Your time is up!” I said walking to the front door.
“Will you at least sit down and let’s finish the breakfast you prepared?” he asked looking at the spread on the table. “After that, I promise I’ll leave.”
I knew he was just trying to buy more time, but I digressed.
“Since you’re suddenly hungry, hurry up and eat and then let yourself out,” I said as I walked out the kitchen and up the stairs to my bedroom. It wasn’t going to be easy getting rid of him, but come hell or high water the man had to go. He wasn’t about to ease back up into my life, as if the last four decades had not existed.
Chapter 7
Destiny
Navigating Different Terrain
I left Mama’s house headed to Montie’s to get my babies. I hadn’t seen them in a few days, so I was elated when I pulled up and saw Junior playing catch with his father. Montana was sitting on the porch playing with one of her American Girl dolls. It looked as if she was having one of the grandest tea parties ever as she placed a teacup in front of each doll.
“Mommy!” Junior and Montana said in unison as I walked around my parked car.
“Hey mommy’s babies. Did you miss me?”
“I miss you awot,” Montana said clinging onto her doll. “My frins miss you too,” she said pointing to her dolls.
“Aw, honey, I’m so ready to get home so we can play games and watch movies with your friends. You want to do that?” I asked Montana.
“Yay! I bout to go home, so I gotta get all my twoys up,” she said, smiling at Montie.
“Hey, Mom, you wanna see me throw the ball fifteen feet?” Junior said once he hugged me and ran back over to pick up the football.
“Sure, babe,” I told him. “Let’s see what you got.”
Junior picked up the ball and hurled it a nice distance. Montie stood off to the side watching him put his training to work.
“Hi, Montie,” I said before walking up to the porch to help Montana pick up her toys.
“I didn’t realize you were coming so early, or else I would’ve gotten them ready. I promised Junior I would work on his arm and we were just getting started,” he said sounding a little irritated.
“That’s fine, Montie, I’m not in a rush. You can go ahead and practice with him and I’ll sit here with Montana, if that’s okay with you,” I said as I sat down on the lounger and picked up one of the doll’s brushes.
“I guess that’s fine, as long as it won’t become a problem later with your husband,” he said with a smirk.
I wondered what was really going on with his attitude change. “It won’t be a problem,” I assured him.
Montie went back to tossing the ball with Junior and Montana caught me up on the details of her weekend. After about thirty minutes, he gave Junior his final throw and they huddled to discuss what would make him better. Junior listened closely to his father, shaking his head as he took every word in. It was a blessing that Montie was so active in our children’s lives; he really was a great father. I got a little sad as I thought about how rare these moments would be once the kids and I moved to Florida.
“I’ll go get their bags, Destiny,” Montie said as he and Junior jogged to the porch.
I stood up and said, “Actually I need to talk to you about something. Will it be okay if I come in to talk for a second?”
Montie shot me a suspicious look. “O-kay, that’ll give the kids time to finish putting their puzzle together. They were working on it earlier,” he said, walking into the house.
“Yes!” Junior said as he raced off to the half-done puzzle lying on the coffee table in the living room.
“I do the flower,” Montana said, her Pull-Up whooshing loudly as she followed behind Junior. I smiled as she waddled over and picked up a puzzle piece.
Once the kids were occupied, I settled in a chair in the kitchen. It was an open area, so we were able to keep an eye on the children as we talked. Montie poured himself a glass of water. “Would you like anything to drink?” he asked, tilting a glass in my direction.
“Nah, I’m good, Montie.”
“What’s on your mind, Destiny?”
“It’s about the kids.”
“What about the kids?”
“Montie, I’m moving to Miami. I mean, we are… me and the kids.”
He sat his cup down and leaned against the counter. His lips clamped shut as he studied me. I assumed he was assessing whether I was serious or not. He walked over and took the seat in front of me and said, “I guess what the kids have been saying is true.”
“The kids have been talking about moving?”
“Yeah, Montana talked about riding on a big plane and getting American Girl dolls. Junior was pumped about his game console. They told me Jacob took y’all to a big house down there and said you were moving into it. I thought they were just misinterpreting what they saw. Before now, I was one hundred percent sure you wouldn’t do anything to cut me out of their lives. Moving them eight hundred miles away will definitely do that.”
“It’s true that Jacob wants us to move to Miami. He has already picked out our house and everything. But you will still be in their lives.”
“Do you want to move to Miami?”
“To be with him, yes,” I admitted.
Montie’s tight expression fell. “So you’re going to up and move my children to a different state where it will be damn near impossible for me to have any kind of meaningful relationship with them?”
“You will still be able to see them on your weekends.”
“I never agreed to be a weekend father, Destiny. When we got divorced, I said from the jump I wanted to be active in my children’s life. I’m not babysitting every now and then, we are co-parenting.”
“I promise to fly them here every other weekend to see you, and the summers are still yours, Montie.”
“That would probably work if you were dealing with the old me. It’s not as simple as weekends and summers now. I go to Junior’s football games and to the school for Father’s Lunch Day. If Montana is sick, I’m on the list to pick her up from daycare. I’m an all-around dad. Ever since I realized what was most important in my life, I have been there for my kids and now you want to take that away.”
“That is the last thing I want to do. I will keep you updated on any sport Junior is playing and you are welcome to use Jacob’s private jet to travel back and forth between Atlanta and Miami so you can be present for games. And we can always use Skype.”
“I don’t want to talk to my kids over the damn phone, and I damn sho’ can’t eat lunch with them over Skype. As far as Jacob’s jet, I don’t need to use his shit. I need my kids to be in
the same city as I am. It seems like you’re trying to take them away and start over with a new father. They already have a father, Destiny.”
“I am fully aware of who their father is.”
“Are you?” Montie said with a raised brow.
“Of course, and I know this arrangement is not going to be perfect. But we can make this work, Montie.”
He stared at me for a long time without saying anything, until he shook his head in disbelief. “What did I do to deserve this? All I did was try to love you and my children. Am I that bad of a person that you have to move my kids so far away?” he asked.
“My decision to move to Miami has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with…” I paused before stating my reason. It was obvious my love for Jacob was strong enough to move to another continent, if that’s where he wanted to go, but for some reason I couldn’t say it to Montie.
“It has everything to do with being where Jacob will be. I get it. And if it were just you, I would have no problem with it. These are my children you’re talking about moving away with, Destiny.”
“And we are indeed moving. Of course, I want your blessing but I’m moving as soon as summer break starts. They will stay with you while I get settled, but once summer break is over I’ll be back for them.”
“What if I don’t agree with your terms?”
“If we need to go to court to get this settled, then so be it.”
Montie peered at me before he walked out of the room. “I’m going to get the kids’ bags.” When he brought the bags back, he handed them to me and then walked over and said goodbye to the kids. “I’ll see you guys next week,” he said hugging each of their necks.
Junior hugged him back and Montana placed a sloppy kiss on his cheek. “Lub you, daddy,” she said before picking up her dolls and walking to the door.
This conversation was yet another finality in my relationship with Montie. Moving to Miami would not only place physical distance between us, it would put me on Jacob’s terrain. Terrain I was ready to navigate with Montie’s support or not.
Breathless 3: In Love With An Alpha Billionaire Page 5
