Miss Independent

by Kiki Leach

  “I don’t think I’ll need it,” he said, “but thanks anyway.”

  As he closed the door behind him, she ran up and kicked the base of her foot against the knob. She wasn’t sure if it was resentment, or downright rage at him being such an obvious prick.

  Part Thirteen

  Oscar stood behind the counter making coffee and watching Nikki as she wiped down tables and helped customers. He nearly spilled a few cups all over himself as he noticed her interacting a bit too much with the two male patrons in the corner who were sitting at the same table. He had no idea that one of them was from her acting class, while the other was someone she had known from high school who had just gotten a bit role on in a Broadway show. She laughed with them as if she hadn’t a care in the world, as if being at work today was just like any other day before, minus the sex that often took place in the back office. After Oscar handed a few cups of coffee to waiting customers, he casually went over to Nikki, or at least tried to appear casual, and placed a hand on her back, sliding it down to her waist. She looked up at him and he smiled sincerely.

  “Can I talk to you for a second in the back?”

  “Sure, let me just take care of them first,” she replied.

  “I think they’re fine. Right fellas? You’ve got your coffee and your bagels. You’re good, right?”

  The two men looked at one another and then smiled politely at Nikki, and nodded.

  “Great,” Oscar said. “Nikki?” He pointed toward the back and she excused herself, hurrying behind the counter.

  “That was rude,” she said under her breath.

  “They’ll be fine. We need to talk.” He pointed again to his office and she waited a few seconds before stepping inside.

  She had anxiety from remembering the last time they had been in there. It crept upon her like the shadow of a ghost. Oscar locked the door and immediately slid his hands around her waist and up to her breasts. She turned in a panic, and he kissed her, his tongue gliding over her lips and between them. She wanted to kiss him back but knew she couldn’t and pushed him away. She moved toward his desk and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She shut her eyes to keep a single tear from falling.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked him.

  “Because I care about you. And I miss you.”

  “Your wife is still in town. Vanessa told me about yesterday’s photo shoot that you had with Melanie and the kids. And then you bring me in here to kiss me like we can go back to everything as it was before all of this.”

  “Nothing’s changed. I’m still getting a divorce,” he reminded her.

  She spun around and opened her arms wide. “Then where are the papers? What do I have in writing that tells me that you’re actually leaving her and your family to be with me? Prueba. You keep telling me it takes time, but it’s been a year now and still, nothing. I’m still the whore on the side and she is still your wife.”

  “Don’t talk about yourself like that.”

  “Why not? It’s how everyone else will see it if she ever chooses to bring it out. Vanessa said she got the feeling your wife might know something about us. Has she said anything to you since that day I saw you two here?”

  He shrugged. “She hasn’t mentioned anything.”

  “She’s probably plotting something. I bet she knows and she’s just waiting to catch us in the act, and you keep giving her every opportunity to do it. I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “I can’t keep living my life in fear that your wife will expose me for being a whore. It worked for some people in Hollywood, but it won’t work for me. Your wife is the president of a major production company, and I am a nobody still busting my culo cleaning tables and serving coffee for a living to people who don’t even like it. She will squash me like a bug.”

  He moved closer and grabbed her face, massaging her cheeks with his thumbs. Instantly, she wanted to be closer to him. Everything always seemed to feel better when she was in his arms, when everything else in her life seemed to go so wrong. But this time, he was the cause of her problems.

  “What do you want?” he asked in a low voice. He slid is hands from her face down to her throat.

  “I want you… to stop treating me… like I’m stupid, and admit to me that you don’t plan on leaving your wife.” She opened her eyes and looked up at him. His face was bleak, his eyes were becoming red. What he didn’t say to her seemed to be everything she needed to hear. She removed his hands from her throat and stepped to the side. “I should probably be getting back to work since I’m the only one here.”

  She headed for the door and he spun around to face her.

  “Nik--”

  “Someone could be out there stealing doughnuts or a cup of coffee.”

  She immediately opened the door without looking back at him and gently closed it behind her. She breathed in deep, and then exhaled even deeper. Tears were forming, but she couldn’t show her pain at work. It was the first time in a long time when she felt like becoming an actress wasn’t the only thing she was so sure about anymore. She knew the man wasn’t leaving his wife, and she knew that one way or another she had to move on. But she didn’t know if she could truly do that. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to anymore.

  Instead of finishing up work like she had hoped, Vanessa was too busy staring at a blank computer screen, wondering what Maurice was doing on his date, and if he had really planned on bringing her back there that night to rub it in her face, or if he had enough decency to take it to her place for once. She didn’t want to care about any of this; she knew the last thing that he was doing in that moment was thinking about her and how she was feeling or what she was even doing and with who, but she couldn’t help herself. She didn’t want to believe after all these years of witnessing various women exiting his bedroom the next morning as she headed out for work that she was actually jealous of him going out with another one, even if he had chosen to take her to the same restaurant. But if he cared about her so much, why would he choose to treat her like this? They were supposed to be different, she was supposed to be first in his life. Maybe she had finally lost that privilege. Maybe he had come to the realization that if she wasn’t going to put him first in her life, then he had no reason to do the same anymore.

  She couldn’t bring herself to start another article and went to the kitchen for the rest of Nikki’s cake instead. She hopped on top of the counter, wondering what life would truly be like if she had in fact decided to give Maurice a chance. Would it really be worth it to risk a fifteen year friendship? The doorbell rang just then, which irritated her. She could no longer think to herself and wasn’t expecting anyone anyway. She waited a few minutes, hoping whoever was ringing her bell would eventually go away, but she wasn’t having much luck. She ate the remainder of the cake, tossing the plate in the trash and headed for the foyer. She dusted her hands of crumbs, and without asking who was on the other side, opened the door to see Sheila standing there wearing an orange Dior dress that she was sure she had worn just a few weeks ago herself.

  She rested her hand on the door and leaned aside. Her face fell and she glowered. “Oh I am really not in the mood for this shit,” said Vanessa. “What do you want?”

  “I came to talk to you.”

  “I can see that. Why?”

  “Because it’s been a long time and we never had the chance to speak at lunch. I think that we need to actually sit down and get some things straight between us, woman to woman.”

  How about woman to fist, she thought.

  “That crooked road we’re driving on is working just fine for me, thanks. Goodbye.”

  She tried shutting the door in Sheila’s face, but Sheila stopped it with the pointed edge of her black Manolo Blahnik.

  Vanessa yanked the door back and glared.

  “You know what, Vanessa? Truth be told, I almost thought I would never see you again after leaving New York.”

  “Oh? Because your cheap looking but so-called ‘expensive’ as hell we
dding invitation that was sent to me said otherwise. Oh wait, I’m sorry, the invitation sent from Nathan.”

  She nodded and slightly grinned. “I meant before that.”

  “Of course you did. Why the hell are you here? I’m working.”

  “It’s Saturday. Isn’t it your day off?”

  “I work from home sometimes and on the weekends. We have deadlines that need to be met no matter what. People with real jobs would know exactly what I’m talking about. See, a deadline is something that--”

  “I know what a deadline is. I set one for the RSVP to my wedding.”

  Vanessa grit her teeth. She had hit below the belt. “I don’t really have the time or the patience to deal with anymore your petty bullshit.”

  “Is that why you think I’m here?” asked Sheila.

  “Well with that kind of remark, you clearly haven’t changed, so why else would you be here? It’s not as if you’re going to apologize for screwing my boyfriend and thus screwing me over because that would actually be the polite thing to do.”

  She slid past Vanessa without a single regard to what she had said and made her way into the foyer, then welcomed herself to a plate full of cookies that was sitting on a table in the living room. Vanessa slammed the door and stormed into the room after her. She noticed Sheila visually admiring her paintings and furniture, as well as the fireplace in the corner. If she knew anything in that moment, she knew in the very least that her decorum was in fact more Nathan’s taste than Sheila’s ever was. It didn’t have to be said for her to grasp it. Just the grave look on Sheila’s face as if she was going to be ill from their commonalities was enough. She sat the cookie down and held her stomach.

  “It’s amazing that I didn’t seem to invite you into my home,” said Vanessa, “but you’ve managed to jump right on in anyway. Is that how you handled Nathan? I didn’t invite you to him either, and yet you still managed to jump right on top of him when I wasn’t looking and ride his dick off into your manmade sunset.”

  “I think that’s enough,” she shot back, flipping her hair behind her.

  “Is it? Because I feel like I’m just getting started.”

  “I didn’t come here to fight with you, Vanessa.”

  “Then what the hell did you come here for, Sheila? Because I don’t want to sit and talk about old times and past friendships. I didn’t want to do that when you finally decided to show up to the restaurant the other day, over an hour late. There’s CP time, and then there’s, ‘Bitch, you’re on MY time!’”

  “The other day, you mean when I caught you flirting with my fiancé?”

  Vanessa pulled her head back in shock and chortled. “Are you serious?!”

  “Completely,” she retorted. “It looks like you’ve forgiven him for what he did to you, which was worse if you think about it since he was the one you were having sex with, but I’m still the evil bitch that stole your man.”

  “I didn’t forgive him of anything, but even if I had, he wasn’t the best friend I treated like a sister. YOU WERE. But I guess that didn’t apply to me. You had been sniffing around his dick long before I even knew what the hell was going on. How did you finally manage to land him, anyway? I never learned that. Rub your titties up against him like you did with all the football players? Play ring around the dick like you did with all the basketball players?”

  “I never slept with all those people, and you know that better than anyone.”

  “No, I don’t. Because I don’t know YOU, at least not as well as I THOUGHT I did.”

  “I didn’t steal Nathan from you, V. He willingly came to me all on his own.”

  “Why? Because your legs were open wide enough like a 24-hour diner with a sign that read, COME INSIDE, ANYTIME hanging from your pubic hairs?”

  “That’s rich coming from you,” Sheila snapped.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean? I never slept with anybody but Nathan in high school.”

  “You were never Miss Goody Two Shoes either. How many times did I have to carry your ass home from a drunken party, huh? How many times did I have to lie to your parents AND mine when you decided to stay over, not because we were having a girls’ night, but because you were too damn drunk to drive home!”

  “I never proclaimed to be anything but what I was, Sheila. Every muthafuckin’ body now knows that. You on the other hand pretended to be my best friend for over nine years when you were anything but!”

  “I was your best friend! And I was a damn good one too!”

  “A damn good one?! Bitch, are you serious? You slept with Nathan behind my back for six months, and then continued to lie to my face about it for just as long! Anytime I asked about him, wondered about what he was doing and if he might have been screwing with somebody else because I wasn’t giving him enough of my time or myself, and you kept reassuring me every single time. You both were straight up and down trifling! Probably making fun of me the entire time as you fucked like rabbits on any flat surface you could find.”

  “It didn’t happen like that--”

  “Bull. Shit it didn’t. Did you think that you two could’ve just kept it up with me never finding out? How the hell was that supposed to work out? Was he just supposed to have me Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with you every other day following and then share us on the weekends, and me not question a damn thing about it?! You casually talk about this as if you didn’t consciously try to ruin my life.”

  “I didn’t ruin your life! By the looks of it, your life is working out just fine. And you were crazy as hell to think that you two were going to get married right after high school in the first place!”

  “I never said we’d get married right after high school, and even if I did, so what? It doesn’t matter anyway, because he’s marrying you, right? Not me. You are who chose to be with for the rest of his life, so what the hell are we arguing about any damn way?”

  Sheila took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She placed a hand on her stomach and waited a moment to calm herself before responding. “I didn’t come here for this, V. I really didn’t.”

  “Yeah.” She folded her arms and looked away.

  “I didn’t,” Sheila reiterated. “I came here because I wanted us to move past all of this.”

  “Move past this. Hear me, and hear me clearly. I’m not going to forgive you for what you did. You systematically went out of your way to screw me over and you have never stopped and won’t.”

  “Vanessa, I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re sorry you got caught in that shower and you’re sorry I’m still angry about it, but you’re not sorry for what you did. At the end of the day, you got who and what you wanted out of it and you’ll never be sorry for that. I can’t blame you for getting what you wanted, but you best believe I’ll blame you for how you got it. Now do me a favor and get the hell out of my house and don’t ever make the mistake of coming back again.”

  They stared at one another for a long time before Sheila grabbed her purse and finally left. Vanessa was so angry, she felt as if she could punch something, anything. She ripped off her glasses and ran upstairs to change into a fitted green tank, a pair of tennis shoes, leggings and one of Maurice’s old, baggy sweatshirts. If she was going to hit something, she was going to make damn sure it was anywhere but there so as not to get arrested for attacking Sheila unprovoked outside of her home.

  Part Fourteen

  Maurice waited for his date, Destiny, at promptly 8:30pm in front of the Thai restaurant. She was already fifteen minutes late, but he wasn’t worried. They had just met a few days ago and she was from out of town, visiting relatives or friends; he was hardly paying attention when she spoke. He did know, however, that she would risk getting lost before ever thinking of not showing up to meet him. He was almost too convinced he would score with her later that night in her hotel room.

  He wasn’t looking for love, just sex. A temporary fix at best to prove that he could move on from the one woman he was willing to
change it all for. The more he thought of it, the more he realized any woman except for Vanessa would just be a conquest. He couldn’t love them, he couldn’t treat them with more respect aside from being generally polite, because he never wanted anything more from them. He hoped this girl would realize this without him having to say it, but he wasn’t so sure.

  When she finally arrived around 9:15pm via cab, she pushed the door open and swung her pale long legs around the side. He got a closer look as she paid the cabbie and got out of the car, and noticed she was wearing a skirt so short, he could clearly see in the moonlight what her gynecologist had only seen on a table with a bended lamp. He wondered what the skirt would look like on Vanessa, and then wanted to punch himself in the face for even pondering it.

  “I’m sorry I’m so late!” she said, her strawberry blond hair blowing in the wind. “The driver got lost and then I couldn’t remember the exact name of the restaurant.” She pulled at her skirt as it blew up past her waist. “I hope I don’t hate this place, it looks kinda rank.” She laughed.

  The more she spoke and giggled, the more Maurice started to wonder what he was thinking even asking her out in the first place. Aside from a great body and a nice smile, with tiny freckles around her nose that he would normally adore, she wasn’t as put together as he would’ve liked. But it was a first date, leading only to sex with a possible goodbye note on the pillow she would find in the morning.

  “The food’s okay,” he told her. “I’ve been here before.”

  She nearly melted when he grinned. She moved up closer to him and kissed his cheek, a thank you for being so patient in waiting on her to arrive. Her eyelids fell shut the moment she got a whiff of his scented cologne.

  He pulled back slightly to look at her. She was practically drooling all over his jacket.

  “We better get inside before they give away our table,” he said.

  A few miles away, Vanessa had just finished her kickboxing lesson at the Equinox. She had spent the remainder of the day trying to sweat out her aggression. It didn’t work too well, she nearly broke a bag with the base of her foot and thought it was best to leave before she broke something else that she couldn’t afford to pay for within a week’s time. As she stepped out into the heat, a swift change from the last few weeks of oddly cool weather, she lifted her hair into a bun on top of her head and wiped the remaining strands from her face. She looked around, making sure no one was hanging outside the building, and saw Nathan standing across the street buying a cup of coffee and a magazine from a street vendor. When she caught him staring back at her, she refocused her eyes on the ground, tied her sweatshirt even tighter around her waist and started walking as fast as she could in the opposite direction.