Can't Just Be His Friend

by Tina Martin

  I followed her while Derrick stayed outside with Mom.

  “You know this is gonna hurt my baby, don’t you?” Patricia asked me, searching the cabinets for something. Her voice was shaky and she looked like she was about to start crying any minute. “Reggie is gonna be heartbroken when he finds out about this.”

  “I love Derrick, Pat.”

  “And you don’t love Reggie?”

  “Yes, I love Reggie and I will always love him as my best friend.”

  “Reggie is in love with you!” Patricia said, yelling at me. “And you know that!”

  “Pat, Reggie will be fine without me. I love Derrick, and I’m going to marry him!” I shouted back at her. I’d never been in a shouting match with Patricia, the woman I considered to be a second Mother to me. Now, we were at odds, shouting at each other in my Mom’s kitchen.

  “You’re going to marry who?” Reggie said from behind me. He startled me and I felt my heart drop to the floor.

  “Derrick and I are engaged.”

  “You know, you’re taking this grudge thing way too far,” Reggie said with an uncomfortable chuckle. “You know I love you. I’ve always loved you and those things you said to me…about me not noticing you until you started dating Derrick is not true. I’ve always noticed you!”

  By that time, Mom and Derrick joined us in the kitchen. I watched the veins bulging out of Reggie’s neck as he yelled at me. He had water in his eyes, from his fear of losing me.

  “What’s going on, baby?” Derrick asked as he walked closer to put his arms around me. I didn’t answer him. I was too stunned at the way Reggie was approaching the situation.

  “How could you say those horrible things to me after everything we’ve been through! And then you have the nerve to tell me the only reason I showed any interest in you was because of this dude?” Reggie pointed at Derrick.

  “Ah’ight man, look, you may not respect me but you will respect my woman,” Derrick said as he stood in front of me, shielding me from Reggie’s wrath.

  “This is between me and Tiffany, Derrick,” Reggie said. “You need to fall back.”

  “No…you need to stop yelling and talk with some respect,” Derrick snapped back at him. “I’m not going to let you disrespect her, ah’ight? I don’t care how long you’ve known her.”

  “Derrick, its okay, honey. Just let him talk.” I grabbed Derrick’s hand to help him calm down.

  Reggie went on to say, “You know how I feel about you. I love you, Tiffany. I don’t even know how to love another woman. I love you and you never gave me any indication that you were interested in me when we were growing up. But I wanted you, and I wanted you to want me in the same way, but you never made a move. So I left it alone. It wasn’t until I read all those journals you wrote that I knew your true feelings for me.”

  “What journals?” Derrick asked me frowning fiercely. “Tiffany, what is he talking about?”

  Reggie walked outside. I thought he had left, until he came back with a cardboard box and said, “These journals,” and dropped the box on the floor. “Why didn’t you tell me how you felt about me, Tiffany?” Reggie said, standing in front of me. He didn’t even care that Derrick was there. As far as he was concerned, it was just us in my Mom’s kitchen. “As close as we were, why couldn’t you tell me you were in love with me?”

  “Would it have made a difference, Reggie? Had I told you how I felt, how would that have changed anything with us?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we would be together right now. We would be together like we should’ve been from the start! I loved you, Tiffany!” At that point in the conversation, Reggie’s eyes sprung tears that made me weak.

  “Reggie, that’s the past,” Derrick spoke up. “Tiffany is my fiancée. We’re in love and we’re getting married and nothing is going to change that now.”

  “Is that right, Tiffany? You love this man? You gon’ marry him?” Reggie asked me. He wanted me to say no. I could see it in his eyes. He wanted me to ditch Derrick and run into his arms to seal the deal. But I couldn’t. I loved Derrick. I couldn’t leave him. What Reggie and I could have had was irrelevant at this point in time. My heart belonged to another man now and I wasn’t about to break his heart to be with the man that broke mine.

  “Yes, I love him,” I said, bawling, “And I’m going to marry him.”

  “Then I hope you two have a good life together,” Reggie said, walking towards the living room door. “And just so you know, Tiffany,” he said, standing at the doorway, “There isn’t a man on this planet that will ever love you more than I do.”

  I wiped my eyes. I tried to fight back the tears, but a few were apparently stronger than me. I looked at my new fiancé and said, “Derrick, I need to talk to him for a minute alone, okay?”

  “Ah’ight,” Derrick said to me, but he must have been frustrated to see me crying over another man and then asking for permission to chase after him.

  I rushed to reach Reggie before he left. He had opened the door already, about to climb in the truck.

  “Reggie, this doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

  “Yeah…we’ll just be two people who love each other, but living a lie.”

  “No. We’ll be friends like we’ve always been.”

  Reggie shook his head and started his truck. Before he shut the door, he told me, “I will always love you, though, and I hope Derrick loves you too. I wish you nothing but happiness.”

  He shut the door and bounced. It felt like I went blank as I watched him drive off. He had driven right out of my life and this time, there was no coming back.

  I sucked it up and walked back up to the house when I saw Derrick walk out of the front door, browsing through one of the journals I wrote, reading personal things I wrote about Reggie.

  “So what does this mean, Tiffany?”

  I wiped my eyes. “What does what mean?”

  “This situation and our relationship. Look at you. You’re a mess over him.”

  “I’m a little upset, Derrick. I mean, my best friend just walked out of my life. I think I’m entitled to a little sorrow.”

  “And what about us? Are we still together, or have you not yet made up your mind who you want to be with?”

  “Yeah, we’re together.”

  “How is that possible? How can we be together when you love him like this?” Derrick flipped open the journal and started reading my words. “I love you. I will never love anyone like I love you. You are the man I want to be with. You wrote these things about him.”

  I cried harder and said, “I wrote that when I was in high school.”

  “How do you expect me to love you when you feel this way about another man? Look at you now. You’re heartbroken over him leaving.”

  “He’s my best friend...”

  Derrick turned his back to me to get his self together. Then he said, “I love you Tiffany, but I’m not going to do this to myself or to you. So I’m going to leave. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want nothing else to do with you until you make up your mind that I’m the man you want to be with.”

  “Derrick, I want to be with you.” I reached for his hands, but he snatched them away from me.

  “Obviously, you don’t know what you want.”

  After that, he was gone. He walked out, just like Reggie did. Now I was alone in my own misery thinking about the two men, both of whom I loved in different ways. Derrick was the man I wanted to be with but he needed the assurance of knowing I wanted to be with him. I couldn’t fault him for that. I probably would have demanded the same thing of him. So I gave him space. He needed time to think about me too. Was I really the woman he wanted?

  Chapter 26

  January 2009

  A MONTH WENT by fast, and during that time, Reggie and I managed to get back on track and on somewhat good terms again. There was no kissing, touching, or nothing like that. We barely even hugged each other. We were friends just like old times. We’d
go grab a bite every now and then, he would come by, chill at my crib, he’d stop by my job, take me to lunch as normal – we were friends again. That’s the way it was supposed to be.

  I wanted to be with Derrick but I didn’t call him. I should have, but I didn’t. I was just happy that Reggie and I were friends again. Don’t get me wrong – I missed Derrick a lot. There were plenty of times when I desired to go by his place to see him but I never did. I was waiting to see if he would miss me enough to come and see me, first.

  He never did.

  He was a man of his word. He didn’t call me or come by to see me. As for the engagement ring he gave me, I never took it off. That ring represented the love he had for me – the love we had for each other. If we were really meant to be together, if we were truly in love, then I knew Derrick and I would be together again. It was only a matter of time before one of us would make a move.

  I got up early that morning to go shopping with Mom. It was Saturday and though it was winter, today was a decent day as far as weather goes. It was sixty degrees and sunny. It was windy too, but not cold enough for a heavyweight jacket. I drove to her house to pick her up then we were off to Lynnhaven. I needed a new pair of jeans and Mom wanted some black boots.

  We were perusing the packed mall (it was usually always this busy on Saturdays) when Mom said, “Hey Tiffany, is that Derrick?”

  I looked up and sure enough, it was him. He had on some dark blue jeans with a navy blue sweater, holding a Footlocker bag in his right hand.

  “Yeah, that’s him.” I left it at that and quickly dipped into Bath & Body Works. I wasn’t running from him – okay, maybe I was – but it wasn’t like I didn’t want to see him. I just didn’t know what to say at the moment. After I paid the clerk for some body sprays and lotion I really didn’t need, we took the escalator to the food court. All that shopping made me hungry and neither of us had had breakfast.

  Sbarro was our choice for lunch. We both ordered one slice of pepperoni pizza with a tomato and cucumber salad. Finding a table during lunch time in the mall on a Saturday was like that one in a million shot of getting in and out of the DMV without a wait – it was nearly impossible, but Mom managed to snag us a couple of seats.

  As soon as I sat down and took a bite of the pizza that had my mouth watering, I glanced up and saw Derrick staring at me. Those were some unmistakable I-miss-you eagle eyes locked on me and I missed him just the same. So I caught his stares, looking at him with the same heat in my eyes.

  “Tiffany, there’s Derrick again,” Mom said, gesturing with a tomato slice.

  “Ma, don’t talk so loud. He can hear you, jeez,” I whispered back to her.

  “He can’t hear me over all these people in here, girl. Look at him. Look how pitiful he looks without you.”

  I looked at him again, sitting there alone. Some hoochies were walking by giving him looks, but Derrick didn’t take his eyes off of me. He looked lonely, expressionless – made me think of our weekend on his boat. The man put his heart on the line for me, and I told him I loved him, told him that I wanted to be with him and now we sat twenty feet apart exchanging heavy stares.

  “You should at least wave at him. You are still wearing the man’s ring.”

  I looked down at the ring for a moment, remembering how Derrick had proposed so romantically to me – the candles flickering, the waves crashing, the stars beaming down on us – that night on the beach was something I would never forget.

  “Ma, I am not going to wave at him.”

  “Look at him…he’s so handsome. Y’all will have some pretty, yellow babies.”

  “Ma, stop it.”

  “Tiffany, just look at how adorable he is.”

  Boy was she getting on my nerves. That’s what I get for asking my Mother to come to the mall with me. That’s my bad.

  “Ma, will you stop it?” I said, slapping the table, hoping my assault on the inanimate object reinforced the seriousness of my tone.

  “Will you go over there and speak? This is crazy. Y’all are engaged and you don’t even speak to the man. Why you wearing the ring then? Don’t make no sense…that twenty-thousand dollar ring, gone to waste.”

  “Ma…Derrick and I will deal with this when the time is right, okay? And how you know how much the ring cost?”

  “I looked it up online.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I ain’t never seen a design like that before, so I looked it up…found one similar to it for twenty grand.” I watched my Mother glance over at Derrick again. “This is crazy. I’m going to speak. You can sit here and ignore him but I’m gonna act like a normal human being and speak to people I know.”

  Mom got up from the table and pranced over to Derrick. I watched him smile as she approached, that perfect smile I missed so much, his most flattering quality. She said what she had to say to him, then headed back towards me.

  “See…how hard was that? And it took me all of three seconds…”

  “You want me to congratulate you now?”

  “No, I want you to speak like I did.”

  “Ma, it’s easy for you to go over there, but Derrick and I have issues to work out. I don’t even know if he still wants to be with me after what happened between me, him, and Reggie at your house.”

  “Well, you’ll never find out if you don’t open your mouth and say something to him.”

  “You’re right, okay. I’ll say something, but not today.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he just left.”

  I watched him walk away, my fiancé who suddenly became like a stranger to me. I didn’t like the predicament we found ourselves in, but that’s life and this was my reality.

  We left the mall right after we finished lunch. I dropped Mom by her house around three. Then I went home. I had planned on spending Saturday evening alone but after I’d made myself comfortable on the couch, my doorbell rang.

  “Who is it?” I yelled, too lazy to get up.

  “It’s me, Tiff.”

  I jumped up to open the door for Reggie.

  “Hey. What’s up? You want some company?”

  “No…I’m tired. I can barely keep my eyes open.”

  “So I gotta leave?”

  “Nah, you can come in, but I’m ‘bout to go to sleep.”

  I resumed my position on the couch and watched TV with Reggie – that is before I fell asleep.

  MY NAP WAS interrupted by the doorbell. It was close to nine o’clock when I faintly heard the chimes, alerting me that someone was at the door. I was so tired from kickin’ it with my Mom earlier in the day, I didn’t even want to get up. Lying on the couch was comfortable and if I didn’t have to get up to answer the door, I would probably sleep right there. Reggie was sitting at my feet eating Doritos, drinking Coke and watching wrestling.

  “Tiff, somebody’s at the door.”

  “Can you see who it is?” I asked densely. My nap had sucked the energy out of me.

  Reggie walked backwards to the door, not taking his eyes off of the TV for one second. The bell rang once more before he could answer.

  When Reggie opened the door, I heard the voice of my man. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb y’all,” he said.

  I sat up on the couch, heard Reggie respond saying, “There’s no disturbance. Hold on…” Reggie peeped back in the house. “Tiff, Derrick is here.”

  I rushed to get up, then stepped outside with him and shut the door behind me. Derrick was halfway to his car.

  “Derrick…wait.” I ran to catch up to him. “Derrick.”

  He ignored me and kept on walking.

  “Derrick, can you wait a minute?” I grabbed his arm and said, “Hey, why are you leaving?”

  He stopped there, didn’t say a word. If looks could kill, the expression on his face meant murder for me.

  “I’m here,” I said, staring in his eyes. “Why are you leaving so quickly?”

  “You have your man here, obviously. I guess I’m out of
order for coming over here to see you. I should’ve took a hint when you didn’t call me, when you sat in the mall and didn’t so much as wave at me. That’s my bad.”

  Derrick walked around me and proceeded to his car.

  “Derrick,” I called out to him but he wasn’t trying to hear me. Then I rushed to him and grabbed his arm again.

  “I told you I didn’t want to get hurt, Tiffany!” he yelled, yanking his arm away from my grasp. “But that’s what you did to me! I fell in love with you and look what you did to me!” he said, louder than before with a swell of tears in his eyes.

  “Derrick, I’m not in love with Reggie.”

  Derrick was panting and gasping for air like he was on the verge of a massive asthma attack. “Don’t lie to me! Stop lying to me!” He was angry and sad all at the same time.

  “I’m not lying to you, baby,” I said calmly, hoping my disposition rubbed off on him. I wiped the small stream of tears from his beautiful face.

  “I told you on the boat that day…if you didn’t want to be with me, just walk away.”

  “I can’t walk away from you, Derrick. I’m in love with you.”

  “Then what is he doing here?”

  “Reggie’s in there watching wrestling. There’s nothing going on between us. He knows how I feel about you. I love you, Derrick. You should know that by now and if you don’t, then maybe—” I caught myself before I said what I wanted to say. It hurt me to even think of speaking such foolishness, but we had to settle this once and for all. “Maybe we shouldn’t be together.” By then, he had me crying and upset.

  Derrick turned around and left me there crying like he didn’t care anymore. He just walked away like he’d given up on us, for good.

  My heart was thudding almost out of my chest. What was he doing? Was this it? Was his silent walk to his car the official end of our relationship? Our engagement?

  I watched him lean up against the passenger door. “C’mere,” he told me.

  I smiled with a face full of tears then ran to him and jumped up in his arms.