Armstrong felt Meena’s body stiffen.
“A father doesn’t need thanks for showing up for his child, Zaria,” Ned said, his voice tight.
She arched a brow and stiffened her neck as she eyed her ex with attitude.
“Zaria,” Kaleb said his voice chiding.
She looked up at her husband and forced a stiff smile before looking back to her ex-husband. “Listen, this a wonderful day in our daughter’s life and I’m just happy that we are both here to see it. I know it will make her happy,” she said, keeping her tone soft.
Ned looked surprised.
Kaleb rubbed her back and pressed a kiss to her temple.
Zaria released a heavy breath.
Armstrong's eyes were on Meena as her eyes flittered back and forth between her parents. He fought the urge to shake his head in dismay. It was the broken romance of her parents that led to Meena’s feelings about marriage and he knew at that moment where he felt hope that the cold war between her parents had just begun to thaw, that she was thinking their love never should’ve exploded into war in the first place.
“Oh no,” someone in the crowd wailed.
They focused their eyes inside Uplift just as Dane pulled Neema up from her kneeling pose. There were no hugs or kisses or signs of an acceptance of her proposal. Neema stood there in her white maxi dress and floral headpiece looking beautiful but confused and hurt.
Everyone—the Strongs, the Jacksons, the twins’ father, and Armstrong all entered the bookstore/coffeehouse. Their questions and concerns escalated in volume as Dane walked away from Neema and crossed the divide to his office.
Her eyes were filled with hurt as she stood there with the ring she had for the man she loved still pressed between her index finger and thumb.
“This the bullshit I’m talking about,” Meena said, shifting her shoulders to free herself of Armstrong’s arm around her shoulders to move through the crowd towards her twin.
He frowned as his heart hammered, feeling more than the physical distance between them.
Before she could reach her sister, Dane came out of his office and crossed the floor again to reach Neema. Meena came to a full stop as he lowered himself to his knee before her twin.
And as Dane took the lead and proposed to Neema instead, Meena turned to him and released a breath through pursed lips that was a clear sign of her relief. She made her way back to him and quickly hugged him close before looking back over her shoulder at her sister become engaged to Dane.
This the bullshit I’m talking about...
Even as they moved forward with the crowd to offer their congratulations, Armstrong truly wondered if Meena Ali would ever want to be his wife.
∞
May 2016
Armstrong slid his hand from Meena’s shoulders down her back to tightly grasp her buttocks. She gasped in pleasure, her hand on his hard stomach and her knees tightly gripping the sides of his buttocks as she rode him with a slowness that pushed him to the edge. His eyes devoured her. The look of rapture on her face. The slow run of a bead of sweat between the valley of her breasts. The tautness of her brown nipples. The way she bit her bottom lips as she leaned forward just enough to bring her hips up and slide her core to the smooth tip of his hardness.
He felt overwhelmed by her. His body tingled from his toes upward as he was pleasured by her. His heart nearly bursting in his chest with love for her.
“Marry me,” he whispered into the heat between them, his eyes searching hers, caring nothing about the big proposal in the yellow house but going with the moment.
Meena froze. Her panted breaths harshly filled the air as she looked down at him with eyes wide with surprise. “Huh? What?” she asked, before taking a large swallow.
When a myriad of emotions filled across her face—everything except joy, wonder, and love—he regretted his impulsiveness. At first.
They were three years in and he was ready for more. Ready for his happily ever after.
“Marry me,” Armstrong repeated, raising his hand to stroke the side of her face.
Meena closed her eyes as she leaned her face into his touch and released a heavy breath before rising from the bed to break their physical connection. “Mann-Mann,” she began, pacing alongside his bed as she ran her fingers through her hair before clenching the strands into her fist. “I thought I made my feelings about marriage clear.”
He sat up in the middle of the bed and pulled the sheet over his now flaccid dick as he eyed her. “And so did I,” he replied.
She stopped near the foot of the bed, her hands on her hips as her face became incredulous.
“I love you,” Armstrong said.
“And I love you,” she stressed with emotion.
“But,” he led her.
“But I don’t want to be married. I don’t want to ruin what we have. I don’t need a license to love you,” she said, her eyes brimming with her feelings.
“What happened to your parents won’t happen to us and it's unfair to tie me up because you’re so afraid of repeating their damn mistakes,” he said, flinging away the sheet and rising from the bed.
“Tie you up?” Meena asked, turning her lips downward as she jerked her head to the side. “That’s what I’m doing, Mann-Mann? Huh? I’m tying you up?”
Armstrong nodded as he rubbed his hand over his mouth and beard. “You damn right you are because if this doesn’t lead to marriage and a life in the yellow house with babies, then what the hell are we doing, Meena?” he asked, his voice loud and brimming with his anger and his hurt.
She nodded and laughed bitterly. “Humph. The last thing I want to do is tie you up,” she said, her voice low but cold.
Armstrong released a breath as he felt his feelings tighten his throat. His fight was gone. His will was weakened. He didn’t want to lose or to step back or to give up what he wanted. He matched her look with his own, fighting so very hard for the tears he felt rising not to fall. “Will you marry me?” he asked, his voice soft and feelings raw.
One tear raced down Meena’s cheek as she shook her head denying his request.
A pain coursed over his chest and gripped his heart as it was figuratively broken. He took a breath to strengthen himself to say the words he felt needed to be said. “Then we might as well end it sooner than later.”
“So it's all or nothing?” she asked. “Where is the love in that?”
“If the love was there marriage wouldn’t be such a huge issue,” he countered, hating that he spoke the truth of his feelings.
And that hurt him. Deeply.
Meena began gathering up her clothes and getting dressed.
Armstrong reached into his dresser drawer for pajama bottoms and pulled them on before leaving the bedroom to stand at one of the windows in the living room.
The floor creaked as Meena came into the room with him. Everything—absolutely everything—in him wanted to take back every word and pull her into his arms.
But he didn’t.
He focused his eyes on the round light of the yard pole as the whine of Meena opening the thin metal front door echoed. He closed his eyes as the air conditioner in the windows let out a knock as it came on to fight off the summer heat.
“You call me when you realize that you are throwing away something really good for something you think is really right,” she said.
Moments later the door closed behind her.
Armstrong kept his eyes locked on the light, refusing to watch her climb in her car to drive away and leave him.
CHAPTER THREE
June 2016
Meena awakened with a start, sitting up in the middle of her bed as if she had forgotten some important appointment or such. It was summer. The school year was over and there were no students to teach or lesson plans to complete. She had a summer position as a tutor but that didn’t start for another two weeks.
She flopped back on the bed and kicked her legs free of the cotton sheet and lightweight covers. “Just me, myself and
I,” she said, with a sad lift of her mouth that could barely be called a smile.
She thought of Armstrong and felt dismayed.
It’s really over.
The first week when she didn’t hear from Armstrong she was so sure he would change his mind once things cooled off. The second week she thought a little break was what they needed because she refused to be pressured into marriage. The third week she felt their three-year relationship did not end on the right note and at the very least they should have that final goodbye—or at least that’s why she convinced herself to call him. His phone went straight to voicemail and there were no posts on his social media accounts. Her anger was stoked over the next week and served as the impetus for her finally going to his home several nights ago.
All or nothing was exactly what he meant.
Armstrong—her Mann-Mann—was gone.
She pressed her eyes shut and bit her bottom lip. She had become the whiny woman bemoaning the loss of a man. She hated that, but she loved Armstrong more and simply missed him. His smile. His chuckle. His touch. His smell. Everything.
“Falling in love will soften you, Twin.”
“Weakened is more like it,” she mumbled, remembering her sister’s words.
Meena wondered if she would ever recover.
Thirty-two days and counting.
She wondered just what morning she would rise and not care or count the days since Armstrong ended their relationship. And moved. And got a new phone. And left social media.
Left me.
“But he said he loved me,” she scoffed, her eyes watching the turning motion of the ceiling fan.
“If this doesn’t lead to marriage and a life in the yellow house with babies, then what the hell are we doing, Meena?”
She called his bluff and lost.
“Damn,” she whispered, closing her eyes again and releasing a long steady breath through pursed lips.
Ding-dong-ding.
She rolled off the bed and pulled her mint green lightweight robe over her sleep shirt before leaving the room at the sound of the doorbell, glad for the diversion from her thoughts. She paused midway down the stairs as she considered it might be Neema and Dane at her front door. She had officially become their third wheel over the last couple of days and if she had to sit around their constant lovefest one more millisecond she would scream.
Meena frowned and paused again when she remembered her twin’s own annoyance at her and Armstrong’s cuteness when she was going through the end of her engagement to her college sweetheart Adam Crave. “Oh, Karma, you are a bitch,” she said, finally reaching the front door and opening it.
She took in her father and the IHOP takeout bag he carried. “Morning, pancakes,” she said, stepping back to let him in.
“Pancakes?” he asked, turning in the living room to eye her.
“And you too, Daddy,” she added with a smile.
He moved around the sofa to set the bag on the coffee table as he looked around the house. It was different from when he once shared it with her mother. Warm and beautifully stylish with lots of light. Neema had designed it to perfection.
Meena now resided in it alone.
“Is this your first time being back in here since...” she said, letting the rest of the words fade away.
Ned nodded as he began unpacking white Styrofoam containers and plastic utensils from the bag. “When you girls were little pancakes would make everything better,” he said, effortlessly changing the subject.
Meena allowed the diversion. “Strawberry syrup?” she asked, testing his memory.
Ned smiled as he set a large Styrofoam cup on the table. “Of course,” he said.
She dropped down onto the couch and covered her face with her hands, touched by the gesture. Her emotions were all over the place since the break-up. One minute it was tears and pity and the next second it was anger and indignation. “Shit,” she swore.
“Meena,” her father said, his tone stern at her profanity.
She dropped her hands and looked at him. “My bad, Daddy, but why couldn’t you be as dope a husband as you are a father?” she asked.
Ned looked away from her. “Meena, your mother and I married young and unfortunately neither of us knew what we wanted. We grew up in our marriage and suddenly things began to look and feel different,” he explained. “I do wish I handled things differently, but I don’t regret marrying your mother or being the father of the most beautiful twins I’ve ever laid eyes on.”
She eyed him and bit her bottom lip, tears filling her eyes. “I just don’t understand how someone can go from wanting to be married and then wanting to be gone. Like, where they do that at?” she asked, with a laugh that was sad.
“So, Armstrong proposed?” Ned asked, his surprise clear.
She nodded. “And I turned him down.”
“Your sister told me you two broke up but she didn’t go into it,” he said.
“And you brought me pancakes,” Meena said, reaching for her container.
“With strawberry syrup,” he added.
“Absolutely,” she agreed.
They shared a soft smile.
“Maybe if I wasn’t so jacked up over you and Momma’s mess of a marriage I would have said yes to Armstrong’s proposal and he would still be here,” she said, picking at her pancakes with her fork.
Like Armstrong, her appetite had disappeared.
Where is he?
“Meena.”
Did I miss the signs of another woman in Mann-Mann’s life and that’s where he fled to in a quickness?
“Meena.”
She looked over at her father. “Do you think he cheated and that’s why it was so easy to leave?” she asked, locking her eyes with his.
“It’s never easy to leave, Meena, please believe that.”
“Then why do men cheat?” she asked.
“You mean why did I cheat,” Ned said, wiping his mouth with his napkin before balling it up to toss onto his unfinished food.
“Yes,” she affirmed.
He fell quiet.
“Do you think its none of my business?” she asked, moving her plate from her lap to the table and giving up any pretense of hunger. “Because I disagree.”
“Are you alluding to having daddy issues?” he asked, his tone slightly offended.
“Absolutely,” she said.
Ned settled back on the sofa and eyed his daughter. “I was young, immature, and looking for an escape from an unhappy situation...things I don’t see in Armstrong,” he said.
And for the first time Meena saw his regret for his actions in his eyes—or maybe it was the first she bothered to even look. She reached over and grasped his hand with her own. “Being in a relationship gives you a new perspective. It makes you understand that there are two sides to every relationship,” she said.
He smiled in gratitude for her concession.
“I knew I loved him, but I didn’t know I loved him this much,” she admitted, releasing her father’s hand to stroke her brows.
“If you and Armstrong don’t want the same end result for your relationship then maybe it's for the best that you both go your separate ways, Twin,” Ned said, his eyes soft and compassionate.
“If this doesn’t lead to marriage and a life in the yellow house with babies, then what the hell are we doing, Meena?”
She nodded. “I’ve had thirty-two days to agree with that,” she said.
Ned rose to his feet and spread his arms wide. “I have to get back to the shop,” he said.
Meena rose and wrapped her arms tightly around her father’s waist, burying her face against his chest. “Thanks for coming to check on me,” she said.
He hugged her close in return, pressing a kiss to the top of her hair. “What doesn’t break you makes you stronger,” he said, releasing her and heading over to the front door.
She nodded and waved goodbye as he left the house, wondering just when she would feel less like breaking.
T
hirty-two days and counting.
Meena quickly cleaned up their mess, saving her pancakes in the fridge, before jogging back up the stairs to her bedroom.
She picked up her iPhone as she dropped down onto the bed. She scrolled through her contacts, pausing at the listing for Montgomery “Monty” Edison. Fellow teacher. Level seven cutie. Interested admirer.
Her thumb hovered above the phone. Maybe a date with a smart cutie is what I need.
Right?
Armstrong has moved on. Why shouldn’t I?
Right?
It’s just a date. A night out. Dinner and drinks.
Right?
The news was out and everyone in her life knew her relationship with Armstrong was over. Her mother was too consoling. Her stepfather and uncles too angry. Her aunties too riled up. Her grandparents too preachy. And Neema and Dane were too clinging.
It would be nice to just be in the company of someone who wasn’t just as deep in their emotions about the breakup as she.
Right?
“Right,” she said, dialing his number.
“Hello.”
“Monty? Hi, it's Meena. You busy?” she asked, crossing her legs on the bed Indian style as she dragged her free hand through her mussed hair.
The line was noticeably silent for a few seconds before he finally answered. “For you? Definitely not. What’s up?”
“I thought I should take you up on that offer for dinner,” she said, looking up at the ceiling and then back down at her manicured nails.
Why does it feel like I’m doing something wrong?
“I thought you had a boyfriend,” Monty reminded her.
She thought of Armstrong and her heart ached. “Not anymore,” she admitted, forcing strength into her tone. “Not for over a month.”
Thirty-two days.
“His loss,” Monty said.
Meena arched a brow and nodded in agreement. “You know what? You are damn right. It is his loss. So, where we going?” she asked, determined to move onward and upward from Armstrong Mann.
∞
The stars and the moonlight were crisp and bright against the inky night sky. The weather ideal. A perfect night. Not even the hard ridges of the bed of the rusted red truck against his back and buttocks could ruin it. He arched his back and clenched his buttocks as he looked up at the soft and beautiful body of the woman sitting astride him. Her skin was smooth to his touch. Her breath sweet as she released a soft gasp of pleasure at the feel of him inside her. The feel of her hands against his chest gave him shivers and the kisses she bent down low to press to his mouth gave him renewed energy.
Welcome Back, My Love Page 5
