Good Girls Ain't No Fun Boxed Set (The SIX romance and urban fiction volumes of the LOVE, SEX, LIES series)

by Jessica Watkins

  “Do you want me to come over?”

  “That’s okay. I’m okay.”

  I didn’t want him to ask to come over. I wanted him to take the initiative and just come.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I just told you that I wasn’t feeling well.”

  “Besides that. You sound dry. I haven’t talked to you in days…”

  “Amiel, if you don’t call me, I am not going to call you and chase you down. Besides, you were text messaging me, so it was obvious that you could text but couldn’t call, which means you were around Bridget.”

  “I was tired. I just needed a few days of rest.”

  “You do not have to give me an excuse as to why you were around your wife.”

  “She is not my wife. We are separated.”

  “She’s still your wife until you get those papers signed.”

  And then there was more silence.

  When usually we are so happy and content whenever we are in one another’s presence, now there was so much distance and tension between us. It was so sad to watch, what feels like, the end of our relationship. It was so sad because neither of us have done anything wrong. He has been honest with me and I chose to deal. I’ve done nothing but be committed to him and enjoyed his company.

  I simply want and need more, so much more than what he can give me right now. I continue to feel empty despite his efforts to do all that he is currently allowed to do.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  He quickly answered, “Sure.”

  “Did you mean what you said about wanting me to wait for you?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “But what will I be waiting for?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What am I waiting for? Once you’re divorced, what is going to happen?”

  He stuttered a little. I knew that he was a bit taken back because I’ve never outright asked him what our position was. I’ve always floated along and just let him lead.

  But now I feel as if he’s leading me to heartbreak. I be damned if I just ride with no control over where he is taking me.

  “I don’t know,” was what he finally said.

  I felt like I just got punched in the stomach. “You don’t know? Do you know where you want this relationship to go?”

  “It’s hard to answer that when I’m still dealing with…”

  “I’m not asking you about Bridget, your marriage, or your kids. I am asking you about this relationship; me and you.”

  “I want to be with you.”

  “As what?”

  He repeated what I said like he was confused. “As what?”

  “Yes, as what? Do you want me to be your hoe, your girlfriend, your significant other, or what?”

  “You’re not my hoe.”

  “In reality, I am.”

  “C’mon now,” he tsked.

  “The chick on the side,” I confirmed.

  “That’s not what you are either.”

  “Exactly. See, Amiel? This is the problem. I have no title. I don’t even know what the hell I am to you!”

  “Do you want a title, Tricey?”

  “Don’t patronize me, Amiel.”

  I sat in my bed looking at nothing but the darkness and wondering what in the hell I have found myself in the middle of. This relationship has transformed into agony, when just a few months ago I was on cloud nine and no one could tell me any different.

  That bitch named love can fuck up everything.

  “Tricey,” he said taking a deep breath, “I just want to get out of this marriage in the most rational way possible. That’s my focus.”

  “I’m asking you what you wantafter the marriage,” I explained. “Will we be in a committed relationship?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “So the only thing you can tell me is that you want to be with me, which means you want to still be fucking me, but you can’t make the decision to be committed to me.”

  “I don’t know how I will feel. I can’t answer that. I have been married for damn near eight years.”

  “That is the difference between me and you.”

  “What difference?”

  “You’re comfortable just fucking me however long I allow you to when I am dying not having some sort of title or obligation in your life.”

  “You are an obligation.”

  “Because you don’t want me to cut off the coochie supply.”

  “It’s so much more than that.”

  “If it was so much more than that, you would want to be with me.”

  “I love you.”

  “You love the pussy. You love the woman that I am. But you are not in love with me while I am definitely in love with you, and those worlds clash.”

  “I am in love with you. We have so much chemistry. There is history between us. We’ve shared more in one year than I ever have with my wife.”

  “And knowing all of that, you still haven’t made the decision to commit to me. You wave this chemistry flag like it’s suppose to show me what I mean to you. But if there was so much chemistry between us, it wouldn’t allow you to remain in the house with a woman that you don’t love.”

  “I can’t just walk away.”

  “If you were really in love with me, the walk would be so easy.”

  “It’s not about walking away. It’s about owning property with someone. It’s about alimony, child support, and splitting assets. Those things take time.”

  “So, when I’m being asked to wait, is it for a few months? Six months? A year? Two years?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I can’t go straight from a marriage into a relationship, Tricey. It don’t work like that.”

  “But you can buy me cars and fuck me?”

  “Stop making it sound so trivial!”

  Amiel raising his voice didn’t mean shit to me. I was sick of the excuses, the bullshit, and being lead around on this damn leash.

  “Amiel, I don’t blame you for my discomfort.”

  “Discomfort? You’re uncomfortable?”

  “I am very uncomfortable. You know the kind of woman that I am. You know that I prefer to be in a relationship, that I look forward to marriage, and that I want kids. You are asking a woman who adores commitment to sit by and wait, for God only knows how long, until your life allows you to be with me. That is so many uncertainties! What about my needs? What about the things that I want to own with my man? What about the children that I want? Is your family so much more important than me that what I deserve doesn’t matter?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  It hit me like a ton of bricks. That’s when I realized my position. Outside of the feelings that he claims to have for me and my feelings for him, it is what it is. And what this is is me being in love with a man who is content with being unavailable to me. He is happy because he is living life on his terms, and I am simply following along like a love sick puppy. There is no fight or drive in him to see me as content as he is.

  He is not in love when I am so in love that I’m sick just hearing him sound so nonchalant about my personal desires because they merely clash with his.

  “Tricey, I can’t tell you what’s going to happen,” Amiel said with a sigh. “I want to focus on you and give you what you need, but the obstacles that I am faced with regarding my family just don’t allow me to do that. I love you. I love you enough to want you to be happy, whether that’s with or without me.”

  FIFTEEN

  Sunday, December 7, 2008

  TRICEY

  I cried myself to sleep.

  Amiel made it so obvious that I need to come down off of this cloud that I’ve been on for the past year.

  I got off the phone with him with no argument. I didn’t yell, scream, or beg. Amiel has always been very honest with me, so I have always respected the fact that he keeps it real no matter how bad the truth may hurt me. Arguing with him wasn’t an opt
ion, because I be damned if I beg a motherfucker to choose me. However, it is time for me to beg myself to let him go.

  I’m ready. I’m ready to let him go. He can have the car back that he’s used as an umbilical cord to attach my pussy to him.

  Just then my cell rang as I lay thinking and staring at my ceiling fan. It was about one in the afternoon on a Sunday. I still felt sick, so if I didn’t have to get out of the bed, I didn’t want to.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, girl. It’s me,” Vic greeted. “Are you feeling any better?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you think you should go to the doctor?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s not that serious. I am just tired, and I can’t get rid of this cold.”

  “Are you pregnant?”

  I immediately answered with a laugh. “Hell no!”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know.”

  “When is your period due?”

  I tried to think back to the last time I had a menstrual cycle and couldn’t remember. Then I checked the calendar in my iPhone. I usually note the first and last day of my period on it for reference.

  “The first day of my last period was September 27th.”

  “So you’re late.”

  Then a dark cloud of hellish terror fell over me.

  “You need to take a test,” Vic told me.

  I did not want or need to have this conversation. Amiel had just basically told me that next to his family, I wasn’t shit. The thought of being pregnant by someone who doesn’t see you as an obligation is devastating, to say the least. I already felt like shit, so I didn’t need the pressure of being pregnant by a motherfucka who didn’t even want me on top of that.

  “Tricey?”

  “I’m here,” I told her.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Oh, I heard you.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. I’m not pregnant. My period is probably just late from stress.”

  Vic snapped. “Oh hell no! Heeeell no! You are not going to do this. You will not deny this shit like you’re fourteen all over again. I be damned if I let you talk me out of knowing what the hell I’m talking about again.”

  I had to laugh. When I was fourteen, Vic seemed to be the only person that knew and believed that I was pregnant. I think I knew but didn’t want to know that such a thing was happening to me.

  “I’m coming over there, and I am bringing some tests with me.”

  I didn’t argue with her.

  Vic and I stood in the bathroom eyeballing the four tests that I consecutively peed on; two of them were EPT, and the others were Clear Blue Easy. As they sat on the sink and the two minutes went slowly by, I eyeballed DeSire as she sat on the toilet devouring a sucker. As I looked at her, I wondered what the hell I would do as a single parent, if a parent was what I wound up being.

  I nearly fainted as the first digital screen of the Clear Blue Easy test read PREGNANT. Then the plus signs on the EPT tests appeared and sent frightening chills through me.

  I was on the floor holding my face in devastation by the time the last test read PREGNANT.

  “Triceeeeeeeeeey.” Vic whined sympathetically as she sat down on the floor in front of me. “Why are you crying? What’s wrong?”

  I didn’t even know that I was crying. The shock and awe of the results sent my mind out of my body. It actually felt like I was having an outer body experience. The only thing that I could see was that digital screen reading PREGNANT, and the only thing that I could hear was Amiel’s voice last night telling me that I wasn’t as important as his family.

  “Why am I crying?! Because I’m pregnant!”

  “Being pregnant is okay. We aren’t kids anymore. It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay when the father of your baby already has a pregnant wife!”

  Then Vic’s face reflected what I was feeling on the inside. It was as if, for a moment, she forgot who I was sleeping with.

  “Damn,” was all that she could finally say.

  I felt like I was suffocating. I wanted so badly to be dreaming and to wake up from this nightmare in a few minutes. But as DeSire made an attempt to say something only she and God understood while slobbing all over her Baby Phat sweater, I knew that this was very much real. All of a sudden, that cloud that I have been on evaporated into nothing and I began to fall face first into my reality.

  All of a sudden, I felt like I was fourteen again. I felt the same fear of revealing the fact that I was pregnant. The shame was there all over again. The embarrassment came right back. And just as I did when I was fourteen, I wanted to hide, tell no one, and just pray for “it” to disappear.

  “I don’t want to be pregnant,” I muttered.

  “I know, sweetie,” Vic said as she put her arm around me. “I know.”

  There was no need in throwing a “why me” or “this isn’t fair” fit. I was grown enough to know that careless actions resulted in situations such as this. I was more upset with myself that I was so open for him that I was this sloppy. Ever since my mother forced me into that abortion clinic damn near at gun point those many years ago, I swore that the next time I got pregnant no one would be able to force me into doing anything that I didn’t want to- including getting rid of it. And I know that getting rid of it would be Amiel’s first and only response since, not only does he already have one on the way, but also, a baby by me would bring him and Bridget so close to child support and alimony that he could taste and smell it. The thought of that sent a familiar feeling of terror and misery through me.

  LYRIC

  “’I know you’ve been ignoring my calls all day. You can ignore me all you want to. You can be mad at me if you want, but you and I both know who the bad guy is here. I don’t give a fuck if we were in a relationship, were just friends, or if we were dry humping each other once a month - You don’t do people like this! You don’t deceive people that love you, and you don’t hurt people without any remorse. You are such a selfish bitch! You are heartless, and you don’t deserve a husband. You definitely never deserved me!’...To delete this message press…”

  I simply ended the call.

  There has been no contact between Veronica and I since my attempt to reconcile gone terribly wrong last Monday. I prayed that her silence meant that she was dealing and getting over this phase of actually thinking that I was suppose to choose her over Bradley.

  Apparently that is not the case.

  I called Tricey to vent, but she didn’t answer, so I was forced to sit in my own annoyance. I wondered if I should return Veronica’s call or not, but I didn’t want to further stir that beast, so I put the cell phone down and stared into nothing in particular as I sat at the kitchen table.

  SIXTEEN

  Wednesday, December 10, 2008

  VICTORIA

  “Thomas Steel, a senior at Simpson Career Academy on Chicago’s southwest side, was gunned down Tuesday evening in the parking lot of the school in front of a group of classmates. Thomas was attending evening classes to make up for missing credits when a van pulled into the parking lot. A masked gunman shot into the crowd wounding two and killing Steel. This murder is amongst a slew of violence erupting in the Chicagoland area involving high school students, which began this past summer...”

  I cringed as the reporter on channel seven delivered the heartbreaking news. I was still trying to wake up. The alarm on my cell phone was going off simultaneously with the on-timer of the television that sat on the television stand across the room. Regrettably, it was time to pull myself out of bed.

  DeSire was asleep next to me. Though she has her own room, I hardly get the opportunity to enjoy my bed alone. I looked at her and smiled. Her black curly hair was dry and her pony tails were out of place from sleep, but she was still as cute as ever.

  As I crept about my room in the dark, I heard commotion across the hall and a deep masculine voice making a bad attempt to whisper.

  I have no pro
blem being nosy as hell, especially in my own house, so I went to my bedroom door and peeked through the cracks to see if I could get a good look at Crystal’s new beau.

  Yet, it wasn’t a new beau. It was Sean creeping out the bedroom behind Crystal as she led him to the front door and out of the house like a thief, more so pussy crook, in the night.

  No sooner than I heard her lock the door and creep back into this part of the house, I had to burst her bubble.

  I shouted into the hallway as I flipped on my bedroom light. “You aresooooooooo weak!”

  Crystal entered my bedroom laughing. Evidence of hot morning sex was all over her. Her scarf was cocked to side like a crackhead with no time to tie it right. Her gown was wrinkled. And if that was some sort of Sean juice dried up on her lip, I was going to gag.

  She asked with a guilty grin, “What?”

  “I heard you and Sean in there humping last night,” I lied.

  Her mouth fell to the floor in embarrassment as she squealed, “Did you?!”

  “No, I’m joking. But I was being nosy and saw him walking out of your room.”

  Pleasure then replaced her guilty expressions.

  I teased her. “Make up sex is the shit, ain’t it?”

  “It sure is,” she said with a satisfying sigh.

  “Where did the change of heart come from?”

  Crystal has been surprisingly firm since separating from Sean. Even after his emotional visit a few days ago, she has been strong in punishing him for his actions. When I would be a crying and babbling fool from the hurt of a cheating husband, her head has been high and her stride has been fierce. She has been making up for lost social time and making Sean eat every time he cheated and aimed a fist at her.

  “No change of heart. Just a lonely vagina. I still respect my marriage, so, though I have one or two new options, I let him come over and cure the kat.”

  “You are really sticking to your guns, girl. Are you planning on divorcing him?”

  Crystal leaned against the doorway with her arms folded as I got my toiletries together for my shower.

  “I’m still not sure,” she answered. “Now that I am outside of the situation looking in, I see so clearly how disrespectful and plain ‘ol mean Sean was to me. He kept me sheltered just so I wouldn’t be shown the error of his ways and to keep me from meeting someone that would show me how a woman is supposed to be treated.”