by Tiana Laveen
“True. I still prefer pools. And you?”
“Beach. Your turn.”
“What’s your favorite song?”
“I have more than one. I really love music by Jill Scott and Mary J. Blige, though.”
“Nice choices.”
“And you, Vangelis?”
“Robohands.”
“Never heard of them.”
“I’ll change that before the end of the night. Next.”
“Ever had your heart broken?”
He looked at her for a spell and shifted about in his seat.
“Yes. And you?”
She swallowed. Her shoulders slumped and she averted her gaze.
“Your answer?” he asked again, wanting to hear what she had to say.
“Yeah, of course… haven’t we all?” A tilted smile creased her face, married to sorrow in her dark, almond shaped eyes.
“I, uh…” He shrugged, speaking softly. “I honestly don’t know if everyone has experienced heartbreak. You have to open yourself up to experience that, right? In order to be disappointed, you’d have had expectations, I imagine.” He looked down at his shoes… what nice shoes they were. Black and shiny, fit for a wedding, a fundraiser gala, and a funeral, too…
“I think someone could have their heart broken and not even know it.” She stated.
“I don’t understand that. What do you mean?”
“Like, maybe they think the person was just a jerk, but don’t delve deeper and look harder into the matter. Like, maybe they are incapable of really going that far with themselves, admitting that they’d been duped, while the rest of us feel it in every way possible. Not because we want to, but because we have no choice.”
He stared at her for a moment, and another moment after that. What curious things occasionally came out of Sahara’s mouth…
Is she talking about me? Is she talking about herself? Maybe she’s talking about both of us?
Paranoia raced through his veins, poisoning him with delusions and realities. Kernels of truth with sharp edges came wrapped in the stinking sewage of a past he was just scratching the surface of.
This woman made a bed of secrets. He knew about that all too well.
He ran his hand against his tie. The fabric felt nice and slick against the pads of his fingers. He slowly slid it from around his neck and laid it down on the island between them.
“Whose turn is it?”
“Mine.”
Neither of them was smiling; in fact, he’d put money down on a bet that neither of them were in the mood to continue the game at all. But they did anyway. He’d poured them more wine, they laughed after each sip… Loose tongues found each other, their eyes gazing at one another while his loins heated with desire. He reached over the island and kissed her, wishing and hoping this would soon end so he could have her all to himself… to dive deep inside her, fucking away the bad shit she’d dredged up like forensic evidence from a crime committed in the sea. Question after question came and went. Some were simple inquiries, such as a favorite color or vacation spot, while others were hard hitting, uncovering childhood traumas that they laughed off, claimed were water under their bridges…
Lying wasn’t his strong suit. He imagined it wasn’t hers, either.
“You and Leonard are very close, just like me and my brothers. Your brother is a good man and I enjoy it when he visits.” She nodded, though the smile on her face was somber. “Tell me one word to perfectly describe him.” He tapped his fingers on the table as he waited.
“Protective…”
He mulled over the word. Leonard definitely seemed like the type to be protective and he was so very proud of his sister, always having kind things to say about her. Occasionally, he’d share a funny story or two about her—but Vangelis blamed Leonard in part for the state he was currently in…
Leonard had told the tale of a wonderful woman, made him like her before they’d even laid eyes on one another. He’d begged him to contact the woman because her leg had been giving her the blues, and now, here they were…
Yes, it was all that man’s fault.
He reached across the table and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. It was then that he noticed her lower lip trembling ever so slightly.
“Yes, protective is the right word…” she stated after a moment of silence. “I don’t really know why, maybe it’s the alcohol, but I want to tell you about something that happened to me.”
“Okay. Go right ahead.” He stroked her hand now, worried about how she sat there trying to keep it all together, fighting tears that were hellbent on being born.
“I want… I want to tell you why I was in the car accident… the reason that led us to meeting in the first place.” He thought he knew the backstory behind that… there was more? “What I am about to tell you, nobody knows, not even my brother. After I tell you this, Vangelis, I don’t want it ever brought up again. Do you understand me?” Her voice shook as her eyes sheened over. When she blinked, one tear rolled down her cheek. She patted it dry with the palm of her hand as quickly as it had fallen.
“I won’t bring it up. I promise,” he assured her.
“A while ago we were discussing broken hearts. I have been in quite a few relationships, and some of them even led to discussions of marriage.” She hung her head for a spell. “For a myriad reasons, they just weren’t meant to be. Some of my ex-boyfriends were very good men, so it had nothing to do with me or them as to why things just didn’t work out. As you get to know people, sometimes you discover you have less in common than you thought, or maybe as you said earlier, expectations aren’t being met. Some of the men I’d dated had problems telling the truth. Some were cheaters. Others were too controlling. Yet others didn’t seem to care at all.
“I’ve always been open minded about who I was open to date. Though I’ve dated mostly Black men, I’ve been in relationships with a few White and Hispanic men, too. A few worked blue collar jobs, others were CEOs, attorneys, or like you, a doctor.” She sniffed and picked with her cuticles as her chest rose and fell slowly. “I dated a professional ball player. His name doesn’t matter… but he was in the public eye.
“He was one of San Diego’s golden boys.” She smiled sadly. “And we were good together, at least for the first year. He told me we were going to get married. He’d become friends with my friends, and I with his. I supported his dreams, never pressured him for more time—I knew he was on the road. I thought we were going to be together forever… but then, a woman called…”
He slowly got up from the island and brought over a new bottle of wine. Popping the cork, he poured her a fresh glass, then sat back in his seat, doing what he did best: listen.
“She was his ex-wife. They had a four-year-old daughter together. I’d met his daughter… beautiful little girl, and of course I knew of his ex-wife. Well, it seems that, uh, my knight in shining armor wasn’t quite over the past. He and the ex-wife had been sleeping together the entire damn time we were together!”
She hit the table with a hard fist, causing the wine in her glass to slosh.
He leaned closer, unnerved by her confession, but he maintained his composure, determined not to show it. He’d had his fill of tales of affairs that day, people fucking one another with no concern whatsoever. One account was now sullied with fear, and this one stunk of the ultimate betrayal.
“She told me she’d just found out about me the day before, and you know what was crazy? You know what was a trip? She was nice, Vangelis… so damn nice.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “She said that they’d been trying to reconcile on and off. They’d been on vacations together. She sent me photos of them in the Caribbean just the week before. He was wearing a pair of swimming trunks that I had bought him!” She pointed to her chest, her eyes filled with rage and sorrow. “He lied to me and told me he had some business out of town. He had some business all right.”
“He had his own money, naturally, but I had bought him things… nice things. She knew about some of them becaus
e he turned around and gave them to her. She and I spoke for over an hour that night. Once she was done with me, I knew, at the very least, half of what she’d said was true. She told me that she was calling me not to be vicious or spiteful, but because he’d been playing both of us, and she’d found out about me by mistake. He’d made the error of leaving his cellphone out before it locked, and when he walked away, she scrolled through his text messages. There were my text messages to him… personal ones, ones that were no one’s business but our own. So she memorized my number, put the phone down, and went on about her day. I could barely keep it together when we got off that phone… I finally managed to calm down enough to call him, confront him.
“Do you know what he said to me?” She swiped at another tear.
“What?”
“He laughed.” She grinned, a haunting smile that he was certain he’d never forget. “He laughed and told me it was no big deal… that it was his ex-wife, the mother of his child, and I should understand! He asked me, ‘What did you expect?’ He laughed at my pain… my shock… my hurt. He told me I was bougie, that I believed my education meant I was better than everyone else. He told me I was pretty, but he’d had better. He told me that I ruined his life because now she knew, and she was done with him. He blamed me for all that was wrong in his life!”
He handed her a napkin from a holder nearby and she dabbed her eyes and nose with it.
“He and I argued and I ended the call. I told him to never contact me again. I was so upset, Vangelis, I could barely see straight. I wanted to get away, to run. I got in my car, and my mind was racing. I initially was going to drive to a friend’s house, but then my mission changed… I wasn’t paying attention to anything, nothing at all. I just didn’t care anymore. I crossed over the line on the highway and that… that’s when it happened.”
By the time Sahara slumped down in her chair, he had her up in his arms, holding her tight against him. Running his hand along her back, he carried her away, far, far away into his bedroom, kissing her tears with each step he took.
She’d stopped crying, but the look in her eyes let him know it still hurt… not her leg, not the breakup, but the realization that she’d been played for a fool and had given her heart to someone who’d treated it so carelessly. It wasn’t the loss of a man that drove her over the edge; it was losing her ability to trust her own judgment, to question what she saw in front of her own eyes. There was nothing like that sort of pain for if you can’t trust yourself, then who can you trust?
In a matter of minutes, he had her undressed and clothed in one of his favorite old college jerseys. It was faded and stretched out, comfortable like a grandmother’s lap. She lay there in the center of his bed, curled up, her thick, brown curls sprawled about like grapevines. He stood there for the longest by the side of the bed, watching her as her eyelids fluttered and she gave way to sleep—in that moment, she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. She’d turned to crystal, like the red globe coveted by an ornery twelve year old Chinese boy who was emotionally neglected and physically abandoned, long forgotten about by over-achieving parents.
She was transparent like Chi’s honesty. She was forgiving like Amara. She was caring, like Leonard. This woman now sleeping before him with nothing but a beating heart and what some would presume was an attempted suicide due to being a fool in love, was the sort of vulnerability in the flesh that he’d feared…
How could she do it so easily? Become a looking glass? How could she open up like a flower before him, and give him this glass gift without thinking twice? Complete translucence… Her vulnerability made him crave her, and be afraid of her, too. With only a misguided whisper she proved she could shatter but she was strong enough to pull her jagged, broken pieces back together again, anyhow…with no one’s help but her own. Her openness and resilience made him question her, unnerved him, but also drove him closer to the source of his new obsession—Sahara.
How could she be so strong and so pitiful all at once? She, too, wished to guard such secrets; so much so, she never quite said the words, but trusted him to figure them out.
Moments later, he found himself naked beside her, coiled up, facing her, their foreheads resting against each other like lovers sharing their last breath. He held her, and she held him, neither willing to let go.
Her pain was his… she mirrored trauma within him, a pain he refused to discuss with another living soul. He was a healer after all, there was no honor in such confessions. Or was there?
All of those questions, all of those shades of green, and all of those glittery diamonds and delicious drops of wine couldn’t make the pain go away. He wasn’t treating a slow healing leg; he was treating a slow healing heart…
She showed him how it was done, how to be open and free… but even with her careful instructions, could he follow her lead?
His tiny red globe, a beautiful handcrafted rarity, an exceptional jewel amongst many, had nothing on her… for that night, his life changed forever. She became his new coveted globe.
Sahara was now his entire world—pulled weeds, shattered glass and all…
CHAPTER TEN
The Three B’s
Blame, Brothers, and Betrayal
Chi went on and on about a popular youngster at his school that pulled some nice looking girls but smelled like burnt onions and day old sauerkraut. It was the damnedest thing to the kid—how could someone remain in ‘cool’ standing while letting off the distinct aroma of authentic German cuisine? Vangelis stood inside his garage, placing the last nut and bolt in the storage rack while the kid helped here and there, jabbering off at the mouth more than anything, getting in the way and making his annoying presence known. With a shuffle of his feet clad in black and white sneakers, the kid kicked at something metal, forcing it to skid across the concrete ground.
“I probably needed that.” Vangelis huffed, but kept his eye steady on his work.
“You have like ten of ’em… So uh, Mr. Vangelis, do all Greek women have fat asses?”
“Chi… don’t start up.” He shook his head and grimaced as he picked up a large bin full of old hammers. He wasn’t certain why he kept them. Dad had stated nobody made hammers like that anymore, and they’d been passed down from generation to generation. Dad was a some-timey pack rat and tried to spread his affliction around.
Vangelis, being the eldest, had received the coveted prize… or so it was proclaimed to be. He’d be just as content if they made their way to the dumpster, but knowing his luck, Dad would ask to borrow one out of the blue one fine day and then a shitstorm of accusations and drama would ensue should he not be able to supply them on demand. So, they remained in his garage, guarded from the city scrapyard. The man had a reputation for trying to dump his old wares over at his children’s homes. That way, his house stayed a bit less cluttered while he defiled his children’s residences with bequeathed hand me downs.
Vangelis would refuse these items more times than not, but the hammers did have a bit of an appeal—something about knowing they’d been in the hands of his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather before him gave him comfort in a strange sort of way. Chi slid his phone out of his pocket and started to play on it. The sounds of dings and chimes ensued, as if he were in the trenches of a game.
“Hey, Mr. Vangelis?”
“Mmmm hmmm?” He looked over the rack and began to pull and push, ensuring everything was locked into place.
“Can I spend tha night?”
Vangelis paused, perplexed at such a question. “I don’t think you’d enjoy that.”
“Hell yeah, I would! Come on, man!” Chi’s expression was now a mixture of sadness and ‘don’t be a party-pooper’. “My grandfather is booooring. I got nothin’ to do. Besides, you’ve got good food and HBO… and I like talkin’ to you. You’re smart without being a show off.”
Vangelis smirked.
“I’m not your peer though, Chi. Besides, I’d be no fun. Don’t you want to hang with
kids your own age for sleepovers?”
The boy shrugged his shoulders and drew quiet.
“I have to leave in a little bit, Chi.” He got to his feet, happy with the job he’d done on the garage rack. Dusting off his knees, he peered at the boy whose jet black hair was covering half his face in its customary way. Donning a dark red hoodie and slouchy black jeans, the kid seemed filled with thoughts, things yet unsaid. This had been going on for quite some time—weeks in fact.
Vangelis had known Chi since the kid was a toddler. Funny how fast he was growing up. Alarming, actually. He also found it rather surprising that his drop in-drop out parents seemed to almost expect him to help watch over their son and the grandfather who, as far as he was concerned, was suffering from early on-set dementia. Nevertheless, he did so as a courtesy, but resented the fact that they lived their lives as if they had no responsibilities, happily care-free while saddling him with a kid who was soon to enter his teenage years and was more than apparently struggling with his identity and place in the world.
“Chi, I need to go get ready to leave.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, then placed a twenty dollar bill in the boy’s hand.
“What’s this for?”
“Invite a friend or two over to your own house. Order a pizza and play some video games or watch a movie… one that is PG-13.”
The boy rolled his eyes and hissed as he shoved the cash into his pocket, crumbling it up.
That was a perfectly crisp bill!
Vangelis tried to ignore what just transpired—one of his biggest pet peeves. Wrinkled money… ick!
“Mr. Vangelis, you have a lot to learn.” At this, he couldn’t help but chuckle. “All movies worth watching have the three B’s!”
“I don’t even want to know what the three B’s are… I change my mind. Humor me.”
“Boobs, blood, and bullets. Some say blades, babes, and bombs… just depends on the movie and what floats your boat, I guess. Hey, since you’re a doctor, can you tell me where a girl’s clit is? I read that it’s like the magic button on ’er, and if I can make it feel good, then I can get to third base. You can do it over their pants. Only leggings though. Jeans are too thick.”
