Your Ex My Man

by Sharissa Coles

  I listened as Antoine took a deep breath on the other end. I couldn’t tell if he was thinking about it or if he was appalled at the audacity of my offer.

  “Okay, well, I’ll let you go now,” I said, growing irrationally annoyed at his lack of words. I should’ve had more sympathy for him and what he’d just been through. “You know how to get a hold of me.”

  I waited for him to say something, anything, but he said nothing. I hung up.

  “That was weird,” I said to LaLa as I scrunched my face. “He doesn’t want to talk to me. It’s pretty obvious.”

  “He’ll come around,” she insisted. “And if not, well, you know now that you’re perfectly capable of moving on.”

  CHAPTER 26

  “Do you care if I go to Demarius’s?” LaLa asked me after I hung up with Antoine. “I can stay if you want me to.”

  The eagerness on her face told me that I couldn’t keep her to myself. I couldn’t keep her from spending all of her time with Demarius. He was a good guy.

  “You can go,” I said with a teasing lament.

  “You sure?” she asked as she winced. “I’m serious. I’ll stay if you need me to.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I assured her. “Honest.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  I glanced at the clock on my phone and threw it back down on the side table as I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Probably go to bed soon,” I said. “If you really want to know.”

  “Today was a shitty day,” LaLa said. She stood up and placed one hand gently on my shoulder as she walked by. “You did good though. I’m proud of you.”

  I laughed. “Proud of me for what?”

  “Standing up to Kevin. Calling Antoine. Not being a blubbering pile of melted goo all day long,” she said. “You had a double whammy today. You hung in there.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I placed my hand over hers.

  She slipped away and headed down the hall to her room to get ready. She and Demarius were pretty much inseparable, and as much as I missed her company, I was happy for her. She’d dated a lot of duds. She deserved to date a nice guy for a change.

  I took LaLa’s spot on the couch and covered my feet with a throw blanket.

  “Okay, I’m out of here,” LaLa said as she walked down the hall and past the living room where I was busy channel surfing. A cloud of hairspray and perfume filled the space around her, and I noticed her makeup had been touched up. She’d been wearing a lot more makeup lately since she’d been with Demarius. It was cute.

  “Have fun,” I called out.

  “Call me if you need me,” she replied as she rushed out the door.

  I was back to being alone. Just me, myself, and I. If things had gone the way they were supposed to go, I’d have been dancing my tired little feet off at Antoine and Ayla’s wedding in the arms of the gorgeous Kevin Harris. I’d be dreaming of my future with Kevin instead of obsessing over Antoine’s future with Ayla. I’d have gotten the closure I needed to fully move on from Antoine, and everything would’ve been peachy keen.

  My eyelids grew heavy as I sat in the darkness of my living room in front of the glow of the T.V. Some late night reality rerun flashed across the screen, but I really wasn’t paying much attention.

  As soon as my eyes had closed and I was mere seconds away from dreamland, I heard a knock at the door. I jumped up to my feet, startled, and tiptoed towards the peephole. It had to have been past ten, and part of me wondered if it was Kevin coming back to tell me he’d made a mistake and that Ayla really was a self-centered monster who only cared about herself.

  I vowed I wouldn’t fall for his antics again. If it was him on the other side of the door, I was going to tell him off like I’d never told anyone off before. He was going to hear it from me. I was going to give him a piece of my mind.

  I stood on my toes and peered through the tiny hole in the door. It was Antoine. I smoothed my hair back and re-did my ponytail, checked my breath, and opened the door.

  “Hi, Antoine,” I said with a coy smile. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  His eyes looked worn and tired and he was packing some major bags under them. He’d clearly been crying.

  “Come in, come in,” I said as I got out of the way. “Have a seat.”

  He took a seat in the arm chair closest to the door. His body was rigid and tense, and I could see him clenching his jaw.

  “You okay, Antoine?” I asked. “Want something to drink? Beer? Wine? Water?”

  He glanced up at me with the saddest eyes I’d ever seen and said nothing. It didn’t seem like he knew what to say or where to begin, or maybe he just didn’t have the energy to talk.

  “Beer it is,” I said as I scampered off to the kitchen to grab the last of the pale ale. “Here you go.”

  Antoine took the cold, uncapped bottle from my hand and chugged it all in one go.

  I took a seat across from him on the sofa, hands folded in my lap, and waited for him to speak. He looked so sweet sitting there like some brokenhearted little bird. I just wanted to hold him in my arms and tell him everything was going to be okay. I knew he deserved better than Ayla, but I had no idea how I could convince him of that.

  “God, what a royal fuck up today was,” he said as he finally broke the silence.

  “I know, right?” I replied.

  “What were you trying to tell me earlier today?” he asked. His eyes honed in on mine, and I couldn’t escape the intensity of his gaze even if I tried. “When you asked me something off the record?”

  “Um,” I stammered. “I was just asking if you thought you were making the right decision.”

  “Yeah, that,” he said. “Why’d you ask that?”

  I hesitated.

  “Did you know something I didn’t know?” he asked. “Did you know about Kevin and Ayla?”

  “Oh, God, no, Antoine,” I said as I placed my hand out. “I knew nothing. It was just as shocking for me as it was for you. I mean, I knew they had dated, but I didn’t know they still had feelings for each other. I didn’t know he was going to stand up and object to your marriage.”

  Antoine’s shoulders shrunk as he slumped down in the chair.

  “People like Kevin and Ayla,” I said. “They’re users. They used us, Antoine. We deserve better than that because we are not those kinds of people.”

  Antoine looked back up at me as he listened intently.

  “You especially. You are one of the most genuine people I’ve ever known,” I said.

  “What did Ayla say when you asked her those interview questions,” he asked. He was apparently still stuck on her.

  “Oh, um, well…” I hesitated. “Do you want the truth?”

  He nodded.

  “She had a hard time answering them, Antoine,” I said as I cringed. I waited for his tears to start falling, but they never came. “She actually kicked everyone out of the room and asked me if she was making a mistake. She said she could always divorce you if she was making the wrong decision.”

  His face twisted into an appalled, sickened reaction.

  “And what did you say?” he asked.

  “I didn’t really have a chance to respond. Her mom came busting through the door talking about how happy you were,” I said.

  “Huh,” Antoine said as he stared down at the carpet. “How about that for timing.”

  “So when you asked me off record if I thought I was making the right decision, you were really just referring to the fact that Ayla didn’t want to marry me,” he added.

  “I guess,” I replied.

  “It had nothing to do with you still having feelings for me or anything?” He glanced over at me with questioning eyes, and I saw a completely different side of him emerge. “I guess as much as you’ve been bumping into me the last few months, I didn’t know if you were trying to pull something.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I opened my mouth, but no response came out.

  “That’s what
I thought,” he said. He hardly gave me enough time to even think about my answer.

  “Can I be totally honest with you?” I said. “When I found out you were engaged to Ayla Giovanni and so soon after our relationship ended, something in me changed. Something in me woke up.”

  “Why?” he asked. “Because you always want what you don’t have?”

  “No,” I said. “Maybe. I don’t know. I guess it made me look at you in a different light. That and I always thought we’d end up together.”

  “Me too,” he said. His face was all sorts of pissed off, and I couldn’t tell what exactly he was upset about.

  When I looked over at Antoine, I no longer saw his sloped wrestler shoulders or his flaky scalp or his thinning, mousy brown hair. I no longer saw his imperfect smile or that his ears stuck out just a little too much.

  Maybe I had grown up in that past year. Maybe I’d finally started to realize that people’s insides and outsides don’t always tend to match.

  “It’s not too late,” I said to Antoine.

  “Not too late for what?” he huffed.

  “For us to see if we can make this work again,” I proposed. “You’re single. I’m single. We had something good once. We can get it again, right?”

  Antoine sat quietly in the chair, gripping the arms tight. He started rubbing his palms nervously against the sides before standing up. I was sure he was going to walk to the door and leave and I’d never see him again.

  To my surprise, he headed over towards the sofa and took a seat right next to me. He stared ahead as he scratched the side of his head and cleared his throat. It was almost like he had something important to tell me.

  “Rashida,” he began, though it didn’t sound good. “Look. You were my first real girlfriend. The first woman I ever loved.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said as I sunk back into the cushion. I was about to get some sort of rejection speech, I could feel it.

  “I have never stopped loving you,” he said.

  I sat back up, suddenly tuned back in, and turned to face him. His eyes shifted nervously at mine as he clutched his hands together.

  He took a deep breath, and I braced myself for what was to come next. It was either going to be really good or really bad.

  “I’m not ready to be in another relationship right now,” he said.

  My heart fell deep into my chest.

  “But,” he continued. “It doesn’t mean that I’m not open to the idea of maybe trying to figure out if there’s something we can salvage here.”

  My eyes lit up, and I couldn’t hide the smile that was spreading across my lips.

  “Is that something you’d be willing to work with?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

  I nodded vigorously and had to keep myself from throwing my arms happily around him.

  “I want to take things slow,” he said. “I rushed things with Ayla, and look how that turned out. You and I had our own issues. I want to start slow and fresh.”

  “I think that sounds perfect,” I said with a grin.

  He shifted closer towards me and reached out to take one of my hands in his.

  “Like I said, I never stopped loving you,” he admitted as he looked me deeply in the eyes. “Even when I proposed to Ayla, there was a part of me that wished it was you standing there.”

  “Really?!” I asked.

  “Ayla was a fantasy,” he said. “I didn’t have a future with her. I was just fooling myself to think that she and I had anything in common. Looking back, we probably looked so silly together.”

  “Don’t say that,” I said as I swatted his arm. “That’s not true.”

  “No,” he laughed, revealing his imperfect smile. “She was totally out of my league.”

  “Kevin was out of my league, too,” I lamented.

  “No,” Antoine insisted. “Rashida, you’re beautiful.”

  I blushed.

  “Do you know how much makeup Ayla has to wear just to get out of the house? Do you know how much time it takes for her to look that way?” He laughed. “Have you ever seen her without makeup?”

  “No,” I replied.

  “She’s just as ordinary as anyone else,” he said. “But you… You have an inner beauty that Ayla can’t even hold a flame to. And it shows on the outside.”

  “You’re being too kind,” I said to him. “I was not a nice person to you. I hurt you. I was selfish. I—”

  “Rashida,” he said as he squeezed my hand. “Nobody’s perfect. The fact that you didn’t want to see me get hurt today means the world to me. You tried to do the right thing. You tried to warn me not to marry her, and it wasn’t for your own self-serving purposes.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I said. I wanted to pat myself on the back. I really was growing up.

  “Not a lot of people would’ve done what you did,” he said. “And the fact that you reached out to me tonight, in spite of the way I’ve treated you every time I’ve seen you lately, showed me that you really do care.”

  “I know I didn’t always put you first in our relationship,” I said. “But that was the old me. I’ll never do that to you again, Antoine.”

  He flashed a quick smile and leaned in towards me. I could still smell his cologne from earlier that day as it wafted off of his warm skin. Some sort of magnetic pull was happening between us, and within seconds I found my lips on his. Thankfully, he kissed me back that time.

  His kiss was sweet, tender, and almost timid in nature. He meant what he said about not rushing things. He didn’t linger. He didn’t place his hands on me. But I could feel the love that still remained between us. It was a love that had never fully gone away.

  My future wasn’t with Kevin. It never was. And I wasn’t even sure about my future with Antoine. But in the same day that I thought I’d lost all hope, I gained it all back, and then some.

  CHAPTER 27: AYLA

  “You ready, kiddo?” my dad asked as he linked his arm out towards me.

  We stood in the back of the church, me in a gown so tight it almost sucked the life out of me and my father in a suit and tie that perfectly coordinated with my flowers.

  “You okay?” he asked. He must have noticed I wasn’t myself.

  The walk to the altar suddenly felt like a death sentence as I peer up through my veil towards a smiling Antoine. If he only knew the conversation I’d just had with Rashida moments before.

  As the Wedding March began to play and our guests stood up and turned, all eyes were on me. I plastered on the biggest T.V. news anchor smile I could muster and fought the hot tears forming in my eyes. I refused to let my guard down. I was going through with this. It was too late to back out now.

  As my father gave me away and placed my hands into Antoine’s, I couldn’t help but notice how happy he was. He and my mom had been this happy once, he had told me. My mom was the love of his life until she passed from cancer when I was eight.

  I wished more than anything in the world that she was there with me in person on my wedding day. I wondered what kind of advice she would’ve given me. She was so worldly and adventurous, or so I’d always been told. I didn’t remember her much. All I had were pictures of her and a closet full of her clothes. I knew she was pretty—no, not just pretty. She was drop dead gorgeous. I knew I had her eyes, her mouth, and her long legs.

  Julianne and I were close, but she always had such high expectations for me. Everything had to be perfect all the time and we never talked about feelings. She was an overachiever in the biggest way, and I suppose it trickled down to me as I grew up with her as my mother figure.

  I looked over at Antoine, and I could tell he could sense the anxiety pouring out of my every fiber. He mouthed the words “I love you”, but I couldn’t say them back without getting teary, so I said nothing at all. I lowered my eyes and stared down at the ground, at his shoes. I couldn’t even look at him.

  He squeezed my hand as if to tell me everything was going to be okay, but that only made things worse. I felt it in
the pit of my stomach. I knew I was making a mistake. We had rushed things. We should have waited another year. I shouldn’t have gotten so caught up in weddings and babies and diamond rings.

  I shouldn’t have ended things so soon with Kevin. I was wild about him. We had a fire and ice relationship. It only lasted a few short months, but it was magical. Every day was different and every date ended with fireworks. We could hardly keep our hands off each other, but for the life of us, we could never get on the same page.