“Yes, you have. You been sexing me and that dude?” He stretched his arm across the table and grabbed my arm tightly.
I froze for a second. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Then my mind came back to reality. “Let me go,” I shouted through clenched teeth. I snatched my arm away from his hold, and his glass of ice water crashed to the floor.
The waiter walked over to intervene. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you two to leave the premises immediately.” He tried to be professional, but I could see fear in his eyes.
He put his hands on me, and that was enough for me to get up and walk out. As I made it to my car, Lance followed me. “You are dirty. I trusted your conniving behind. I told you that I had just gotten over a bad relationship, and you gonna play me like they did. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted a whore like you. She was black, so I thought if I tried to be with someone out of my race, I would be better off. But ain’t none of y’all chicks loyal.” He spat at me. I could feel his breath and the saliva that sprayed in my face.
I begin to shake from fear as he threw daggers at me with his words. “I told you I was hurt before, and you came here to tell me you got someone else, and you wearing this diamond on your finger, in my face.” He grabbed my finger as if he wanted to break it off.
“I’m sorry, but I got to go. You need to calm down.” That was enough for me. I snatched my hand from him and hurried up, got in my car, closed the door, and locked it.
He tried to open the door. “You sorry! You sure are sorry, you little whore. You thought you was going to have a perfect little affair with me. This ain’t no perfect affair. This ain’t over. Trick, you hear me? You’re gonna pay,” he yelled as he kicked my truck and punched the window. I sped out to get away from his crazy behind.
It was getting dark outside as I drove home. I thought about how Lance had never acted like that in the past. I felt bad that I hurt him. Then I remembered that he did tell me that his last relationship ended on bad terms because the chick cheated on him and did him dirty. He told me that he was betrayed to the fullest and that he was really in love with her. He thought that he wouldn’t be able to trust any other woman ever again. But I didn’t plan to cheat on him, Steve just popped back into my life, and I was woman enough to break it off with Lance before it went too much further. Lance and I weren’t together that long. I didn’t think he was that attached to me. I didn’t think he would go off on me like he did. I cared for him, but it wasn’t that serious.
While I was deep in thought, I felt a hard thump at my bumper, like someone had rear-ended me. I slowed down my car and looked out the rearview mirror. I was in shock. It was Lance in his blue Dodge pickup truck. As my car came to a stop, he ran into the back of my SUV again!
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I shouted at the top of my lungs. I knew he couldn’t hear me because my windows were up. He slammed into my back end again. I looked around. No one was on the street. I had to get away from him because he wasn’t going to stop. So I put the pedal to the metal and drove. I was scared out of my mind. I griped the steering wheel tightly, and my palms sweat uncontrollably while my heart pumped spastically.
Then another crash to my backside. My head jerked forward, and I gasped for breath. I could hear the damage he was causing to my vehicle. The glass shattered in the back. I was going eighty miles per hour, and I almost lost control of my car. He was trying to kill me. My hands trembled as I tried to get my phone to call the police, to call someone to get this maniac off of my bumper. Tears filled my eyes. I was scared for my life. “Lord, please help me,” I cried out. I then tried turning right. As I turned the corner, he came out from the back and slammed his truck into my passenger’s door. I screamed out of fear and slammed on the brakes. My SUV flipped, I don’t know how many times. I lost count after the second flip. Suddenly, everything went black.
19
Melody
I sat on the couch and watched all the drama that was going down on Love & Hip Hop Atlanta, my favorite reality show. These chicks had me cracking up. MiMi finally told the truth about her sex tape. I wanted to get my hands on that tape just to be nosy. She should be ashamed of herself. I don’t care how much money I would get paid, I would never let no man videotape what goes down between us behind closed doors. MiMi had a daughter that one day will see that tape.
The doorbell snapped me from my thoughts. I flicked the TV off and got up, pulled the T-shirt that I was wearing down to cover my black lace boy shorts, and walked over to the door. I had butterflies in my stomach because I knew who was on the other side of the door.
“Hey, babe,” Rodney said after he saw my face. I had invited him over so I could get some things off my chest.
“Hey,” was all I could say as I looked into his dreamy eyes. He gave me that crooked smile that made me weak in the knees. But I had to remind myself what he was here for. We needed to talk. No, that’s not all we did was have sex. We talked about everything. We talked about our goals and our future. We barely argued about anything. The only thing I didn’t understand was why he was not ready to commit to our relationship.
He walked in and let the door slam behind him and planted a wet kiss on my cheek. “Umm, you smell good.” He then tried to see what was under the long T-shirt I was wearing. I smacked his hand and switched over to the couch and flopped down. “I missed you, babe. I haven’t seen you in weeks, and I have been so miserable without you. I’m sorry if I hurt you. Can we please just make up?” He walked over and sat next to me. At that very moment, he reminded me of Leon when he played Waiting to Exhale.
“What are you sorry for, Rodney?” I spat.
“Umm, I’m sorry that you think I’m trying to hurt you. I love you, and I need you in my life, and I would never intentionally hurt you. I don’t want to argue.” He gazed at me candidly.
“I don’t want to argue either. All I want is to be the only woman you need in your life.” I tried to be strong and swallow back the tears, but I couldn’t stop them. He was my heart, and I was so emotional when it came to him.
“Please don’t cry, baby.” He leaned in close to hug me.
“I don’t want your pity,” I said and pushed him back. “I want you to love me like I love you,” I said as I banged on his chest with both of my fists.
Rodney took his arms and wrapped them around my body, and my fists were still against his chest. “Melody, I love you, and only you. Let me make it up to you.” He whispered his words in my ear.
I wanted to fight him. I wanted to cuss him out. I wanted to ask him why he was over there playing house with that ghetto bimbo if he loved me. But those words he just told me comforted me, and I was locked in his love trance. He put his hand under my shirt and slipped his finger inside my panties. I moaned, and my body went numb. I couldn’t move a muscle. He handled me, and he handled me well.
As he tongued me down, between breaths, he said, “Babe, I swear, you are the only one I want.”
I moaned.
“Babe, you taste so good.”
My toes curled.
“Melody, I love you.”
I cried out his name. I released, and he took all my sweetness in.
He got up off of his knees and crawled on top of me and filled me with the best of him, and my womb clenched him snugly.
“Oh my Gawd,” I cried out.
“Damn, baby, you feel so good.” He moaned as he stroked me slowly and gently.
I closed my eyes as I reached my height of ecstasy. And then, I felt his liquid shoot deep inside of me. We were so hungry for each other that he didn’t put a condom on.
We lay in each other’s arms and enjoyed each other’s presence. Then I blurted out. “You know you came in me, right?” I had never slipped up like that before. I always used protection.
“Yeah, I’m sorry. You was feeling so good.” He kissed me on the forehead. “But don’t worry. I’ll give you the money for that morning-after pill.”
Then my phone rang, a
nd my heart pumped fast in my chest. Who was calling me in the middle of the night? Oh Gawd, I hope it wasn’t Dominic . . . Or Tayvon. I was going to act like I didn’t hear it, but then, “Ain’t you going to answer your phone? Who is it? Your boyfriend?” Rodney harshly said.
I smacked my lips. “No.” I slowly went for my phone, hoping the ringing would stop. I looked at the number. It was unfamiliar.
“Hello,” I said with an attitude.
“Hello, is this Melody Dickson?” a lady on the other end said.
I cleared my throat. “Yes, who is this?”
“My name is Linda, and I’m a nurse at Mercy Hospital. Your name was in Asia Underwood’s medical file as her emergency contact and—”
I cut her off. “Asia’s in the hospital? Is she okay?” I cried out in panic. My temple throbbed as I thought the worst.
“Yes, she is sedated right now. I cannot tell you—”
I cut her off again, “I’m on my way! Tell her I’m on my way.” I got out of bed and without saying anything to Rodney, said, “I’ll drive.” My chest was heavy. I hoped my cousin was going to be all right.
20
Sasha
I had to get a hold of my husband, because I wanted to know why in the world he was calling my mother, a person that I had no ties with in years, and telling her our business.
As I sat on my love set and sipped on a cup of hot green tea, I thought about how Asia looked as she lay in that hospital bed. Melody called me in the middle of the night and told me that she was in a bad car accident, so I went to the hospital to see how bad it was. I was still mad about how she played me by not telling me that she was with David first. But I had to go and check on her, and I would leave soon after. Asia had a collapsed lung, a broken ankle, and her face was banged up pretty badly. The doctor said when the rescue squad brought her in, the police report said that her vehicle had flipped over, and it was totaled. There were no witnesses, so they don’t know what caused the accident.
When we arrived, she was knocked out from the pain medication. Melody and I stayed there with her for a while, and then her fiancé told us that he would spend the night with her. Melody had informed him that we would stop by the next morning and check on her. She should let me out, because I had no plans on returning.
Jonathan told me he would be over an hour ago and still hadn’t made it. I was beginning to think that he stood me up. Then I heard my bell ring. I buzzed him in. When I opened the door, he gave me a look that said he really didn’t want to be bothered. “What did you call me over here for?”
“Hello, come in,” I said ignoring his attitude, as I looked him up and down. He looked nice, wearing a casual button-up shirt and some black jeans that didn’t sag but fit him just right. He walked in and looked around my apartment but didn’t say a word.
“Have a seat.” I extended my arm, pointing at the couch.
“What am I here for?” he asked nonchalantly. When I called him, all I said was that it was important that we talk.
“Asia is in the hospital.”
His eyes got wide. “Is she okay?” he said in a concerned voice.
“She was sedated when I saw her. She was in a car accident and broke a few bones, but she should make a full recovery,” I said not feeling like going into full details.
“Wow. Well, I hope she has a speedy recovery.” Jonathan knew how Asia felt about him. I had told him that she looked at him as her teenage crush. He laughed it off. He said the only reason he kissed her was because it was a dare his buddies made him do. He said that Asia was not his type because he didn’t date white girls. She was easy, and she was sloppy built. He made it clear that he wasn’t a racist. He just didn’t date outside his race.
“But that’s not what I asked you to come here for,” I said getting back to our conversation.
“What is it? I ain’t got all day.” He gave me a cold look.
“Why did you call my mother and tell her what was going on with us?”
“Oh, so, is this what you called me over here for? You could’ve asked me that over the phone.” He sat up straight as if he was ready to get up.
“Hold up. I just want to know why you called her. You know that her and I don’t talk and haven’t talked since I left home after high school,” I said, my voice a higher octave.
“You know what? I always said to myself how a woman could respect her husband when she don’t ever talk to her mother, and that’s disrespect to the fullest power.”
“Really!” I said at a loss for words.
“Yes, really. I always wanted to know why you and your mother never talked. Why your mother didn’t even come to our reception after we were married. Or why . . .” he paused, and then swallowed the lump in his throat, “she didn’t come around when we lost our firstborn.”
Was he really still feeling some type of way about the miscarriage? He needed to get over it. I then thought to myself, Maybe I needed to get over a few things in my past also.
“Tell me, Sasha, why aren’t you and your mother close? What has she done to you that makes you not want her to be a part of your life? When I talked to her, she seems like a nice lady,” he said, looking at me as if he was looking into my soul for an answer.
“She seems nice because she’s crazy. She can be nice one day and mean the next. She abused me, and she never wanted me from the beginning,” I shouted. All the pain from my childhood rushed me like a derailed train going at high speed.
“Tell me what happened,” my husband said in a concerned voice. He had asked me plenty of times in the past, but I didn’t feel it was important for him to know the pain that I had endured as a child. The events of my past flooded my memory as if it were just yesterday.
* * *
I had come in the house from school, and my mom was sitting on the couch watching TV. I never knew what day she was having until she would have a “fit,” that’s what I called them. Every time she would abuse me or go crazy for no reason, I would say she was having a fit.
“Hi, Mom,” I said as I passed her to go to the kitchen to get a snack.
“Where have you been?” she screeched.
I gave her a puzzled look. “I was at school, Mom.”
“I’ve been looking all over for you. I thought they took you.” She was pacing the floor in a cold sweat. I knew then that she was about to have a fit.
“Mom, please don’t work yourself up . . . I’m fine. I was at school. Now, I’m going upstairs to do my homework,” I said trying to calm her down.
“Don’t tell me not to work myself up.” She growled like a wild animal. Then she yanked my arm, and my school books fell from my hands. “Come on, you got to hide. I don’t want them to get you.”
She pulled me and guided me to the closet. I kicked and screamed. “Mom, please don’t do this.” I tried every time to break free because I knew what was about to happen.
She pushed me into the small coat closet that was right by the front door. And then she locked the door. “Be quiet. You’ll be safe from them here. Don’t be scared. I’ll protect you,” she would tell me in a calm voice.
I would bang on the door and cried for her to unlock the door. Most of the time after I became exhausted from screaming and banging on the door, I would hear her laughing and talking to the TV, which was near the closet that I was locked in. Sometimes she would lock me in her bedroom closet and leave the house and come back and tell me that she didn’t want me to go out in public with her because she was afraid that they would take me from her. I would ask her who “they” were. She would always say “the bad people” or “the devil.”
She would leave me locked up for hours. Sometimes she would lock me up with food, and sometimes she would lock me behind closed doors for the whole day. No one in my family knew what was going on because I was scared that I would be put in a foster home with strangers if I told them. So I just kept it a secret.
One night she was so angry because she thought that the bad people were in m
e, in my soul. She tried to shake them out of me. She shook. I screamed and cried. She shook me harder until we both heard a cracking sound. She had fractured my arm from pulling and yanking on it. But she didn’t take me to the hospital because she said that the bad people will take me from her. So she made me suffer and sleep with a fractured arm. The next morning she did take me to the doctor and told them I fell out of a bunk bed that we didn’t own.
* * *
“Wow, Sasha, that’s terrible. That’s why you be having all those terrible nightmares?”
I nodded my head. Tears trickled down my face. I didn’t realized how much hurt I still had inside from that. But after I released that to someone for the first time, it felt like a huge weight was lifted from me.
“You shouldn’t have been afraid to tell me that. That’s deep. Has she ever gotten any help to see why she did that to you?”
“She did it because she didn’t love me. She didn’t want a child; she didn’t want me. She was selfish, and she locked me up in those closets because she couldn’t stand to look at me, and she didn’t want to be bothered.” I was outraged. My blood boiled, and my head felt like I had been hit by a semitruck. I needed a drink. I walked over to my kitchen, poured a shot of Avion in a glass, and chugged it down.
“No, to me, it seemed to me like she was going through something. Or maybe she had a disorder. Maybe she’s bipolar or schizophrenic.”
“No, the broad just didn’t like me,” I said getting frustrated. He was acting like he was some type of doctor. “That woman put me through hell for almost my whole childhood. I would try to stay at Asia and Melody’s house as much as I could because I didn’t want to be home.” I swallowed hard, wiped the tears from my face, then continued. “Other times, my mother was a good person, and we shared some good memories in my early years of life. But it seemed like every year as I got older, she got worse. And now, she doesn’t bother to call me, and I don’t call her,” I confessed.
“I’m telling you, it seems like she has some type of disorder. You said she talked to herself, and she always thought someone was out to get you.” He folded his hands as if he was going to figure out a cure for why my mom did what she did. He was really irritating me. He annoyed me because he thought he knew everything. I just snapped.
No Perfect Affair Page 8
