The mood immediately changed when I said that.
“What do you mean?”
“We were involved, a long time ago.” I thought it was best to steer clear of saying that it wasn’t just a long time ago, but the awkwardness in my tone gave me away.
“Oh, you…were with him?” Now he sounded hurt.
“I grew up with him. He was my brother’s best friend, and…um…he left after he died. He was with him when he died, and he left because he couldn’t save him.” Marcus knew what had happened to Coop.
“Jesus, Olivia, why didn’t you tell me this before?”
At least now he was looking at me with a little more understanding.
“It was too painful to talk about.”
“Olivia, you should have said something. I get that it was difficult, but if the partners knew that you knew him and you were supposed to be negotiating such a big contract with him, it could have looked like you were favoring his terms.”
“I know and I’m sorry.” That was as much as I could say, because the situation was so much worse. Right now the news was still calling Sam a prime suspect but his name wasn’t mentioned. The minute it got to that stage… Well, I didn’t know what would happen.
“Are you still seeing him?” The strain returned to his voice.
“No.” I wished like hell that no didn’t sound so uncertain. Like I wasn’t sure. It was my heart again, betraying me.
“You want to be,” Marcus stated, to my surprise, and again looked hurt. It was in his eyes. “Is he why you didn’t want to see me anymore?”
What should I say? Saying no would be a blatant lie. I’d already slept with Sam before I told Marcus I didn’t think we were going to work out. Maybe I should have waited, but in my head we weren’t serious like that. Just dating, and not even the level of dating where I would consider myself exclusive to him.
Looking at him, though. Looking at him face to face and seeing the hurt in his eyes, I could see he thought otherwise.
Pulling in a deep breath, I decided to come clean. It was fair. It would be wrong to side step the question too.
“He’s part of the reason, but not the only reason.”
He looked away. “Okay, well, at least now I know.” He stood up and looked thrown. “I guess I’ll see you at work next week.”
“Marcus, please.” I stood too.
“Olivia, I just need to process… Process what you just told me. We seemed to have a good thing going until this guy turns up. Understand how I feel.”
“I do.” I understood, but I wouldn’t have said we had a good thing going at all. Up until the morning when Sam first came back, I was talking to Jada about my concerns in seeing Marcus. I was going to break it off, break off in my case, for lack of a better word. “Marcus, even if he didn’t come on the scene, I know we wouldn’t have continued to see each other.”
“Wow.” Now he looked annoyed.
It was better if I stopped talking and didn’t try to make this sound any other way than it was.
“I don’t mean to offend you in any way, and it’s just as I said. I think we’re better as friends.”
“If you thought that then why would you go out with me in the first place?”
“I was trying, I thought I’d try.”
“Try what, try to like me?”
Again my heart betrayed me. I was trying to be with someone who was a genuinely great guy. Someone who I thought could fill the hole Sam had left in my heart. In the process, I found Sam.
“Marcus, this conversation is going nowhere. I don’t know what you want me to say, and I’m not feeling so good, to be honest.” That migraine was threatening to come on back. I got rid of it the other day with sleep.
“Okay, I guess that’s it then. I’ll see you at work.” He didn’t allow me to answer. He walked out. Normally he’d say something along the lines of calling him if I needed him or that he was here for me.
He was angry, though. Very clearly angry.
When I heard the door close, I sat back down and gazed out the window. The trees swayed together in the light breeze in one massive cluster, mingling with the darkness of the night. It looked like how I felt. Like all the emotions had combined together to form a massive cluster of uncertainty.
Sam…
What was I really going to do about him?
I got up, headed to my room, and found myself reaching for my little silver chest on the shelf of my wardrobe. It was nestled to the very back of the shelf, behind all my hair and beauty products and gadgets.
It had been a very long time since I last looked inside it. Years ago.
Several.
It was the day I accepted that Sam wasn’t coming back. That he was lost to me. Lost and I had to move on. It was a hard day. Very hard, because it was like…
Well, that was the thing. I couldn’t really compare it to anything I’d ever experienced. Not even Coop’s death, or even Mama’s, which I was prepared for.
Losing Sam was different. So different I couldn’t explain it in words. It was something I felt and only someone who’d gone through serious heartache, and heart break could truly understand what I went through.
One day your with the person you love so much you can’t imagine how it was you went a minute in life without them. The next day, they’re gone. Just like that. Exactly like that in my case.
I moved to my bed, opened the box and just stared inside at the little engagement ring Sam gave me. It mingled with a select few of my other trinkets I’d collected and cherished over the years.
There was the little corsage dad gave for me for my high school graduation. I’d had the flowers dried and preserved to keep them intact. There was the bracelet Mama gave me when I was eight for finishing the school year top of my class, the earring Coop gave me for my sixteenth birthday, then my ring.
I picked up the ring and looked at it. It was just as beautiful as when I last looked at it and confined it to my trinket box. Truly, truly beautiful.
The marquise cut diamond in its prong setting held together by a delicate gold band sparkled so bright it glinted. It still did that. I remembered how taken aback I was when I first got it that it actually did that. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever owned and the fact that it still sparkled and glinted the way it was showed off its value.
I didn’t know how much Sam paid for it, but I knew he would have gotten me the very best he could get his hands on. This ring definitely looked it.
After he left, I wore it for all of four years before I took it off.
Four years.
Four long years of wishing and hoping he’d come back to me. In my head I was still his. We’d survived a five-year long, long distance relationship while he was serving in the Marines. I just felt, and chose to believe, that it couldn’t just end like that.
He’d given me the ring a few days after he came home from the Marines, Coop died, and I never Sam again until the other week where we’d ventured into this whirlwind romance. The day he proposed would always be engraved in my mind, but so was the day I took off this ring.
Now felt like then.
It had some similarities I didn’t like, and didn’t want to acknowledge.
It was the point where I needed to take a long hard look at what was going on and the facts. The facts and also what I felt. I needed to separate the fact and all the craziness that was going on around me, and think about how I felt.
Emotion was the difference in everything. You could flip a situation around with positivity, or make it worse with negativity.
The main thing that reminded me of the day I took of this ring, and now, was I had to make a choice.
Dad was right in his prep for the worst, but preparing for the worst didn’t change the way a person felt. It wouldn’t change the way I felt.
If Sam went to prison for something he didn’t do, would that make me feel any differently about him?
No…
And there, I thought it. Something he d
idn’t do.
He didn’t kill Bradley. Deep down I didn’t believe he would ever do something like that, even if I sounded like I might have when I spoke to Jada. That was me angry. That was me pissed at Sam for the lies and the bizarre situation.
It was me protecting my heart.
I continued to stare at the ring, and continued to think.
People said you never forgot your first love. I never forgot mine. He was always with me, and still was.
It was a nice thought, poetic even.
There was one thing that people forgot to mention in that saying. Heartache and heartbreak. What about those things? I’d had love and pain with Sam.
The light and the darkness.
I wasn’t sure how that could be a good thing.
But… I had to make a choice.
Chapter 7
Olivia
Jada laughed a long, off-key laugh, confirming how very drunk she was.
The bright club lights bounced off her, and again I saw the sexy bartender checking her out.
She noticed, too, and waved to him.
He waved back and winked, reminding me of an even hotter version of Eduardo Verástegui. A seriously hot Mexican actor who would make any woman within this solar system melt.
Jada was being Jada. I didn’t know how she did it, but she did, and in the mix she’d cheered me up.
It was Friday night and Dr. Love decided to come to my house and drag me out. She made me dress up in my finest with my hair down and curly. We ended up here at The Cat’s Tail, a trendy-looking club in East L.A.
I’d never been here before but I liked it. She’d been here loads of times, and by herself.
We started off with drinks. She had far too many and we’d only been here for an hour.
She leaned forward and pushed out her full red lips so Mr. Gorgeous could see. He was still staring at her.
“Jada, you’re like a bird,” I giggled.
“What the hell? Is that good or bad?”
“You know, like on the Discovery channel?”
“No I don’t know. Olivia, you’re such a nerd. God, look where we are and you’re talking about the Discovery channel.” She smirked.
I shook my head at her. “You know what, Miss Jada, you always tease me for being a nerd, but you have a PhD. Who’s the nerd?”
She templed her fingers and gave me a sharp glare. “Olivia, I have a PhD in love. Okaaay. It’s different.”
I laughed. “Jada, your PhD is in psychology and you majored in love and sexual relationships.”
She looked back over to Mr. Gorgeous and smiled. “I sure did, and that guy is going to see first-hand what the Love Doctor can do for him. I’m going home with him tonight.”
My jaw dropped and I looked over at the guy again, who was now literally just staring at her.
“Jada, you can’t just do that. You don’t know him.” I didn’t know why I bothered. As if that would stop her. At least he looked good.
I sighed and brought my hands together. Maybe I was stuck in the dark ages, although I’m pretty certain that if I lived in those times there’d be people somewhere being freaky with each other and getting it on, just not so much out in the open as now where you could literally walk up to a guy and hook up.
Whatever century and time, I’d be exactly like this and Jada would still be hyped up on sex. Dark ages or not.
“I’ll get to know him, don’t worry about that,” she cooed.
“Why is it you always attract all the good looking guys?”
“Girl, please, what are you asking me? You make it sound like Sam and Marcus are toads. Sam, the sexy, uber hot, bad boy ex-Marine you’ve been drooling over since the dawn of time. Jesus, the man looks like he just walked off the billboard for a Calvin Klein ad. And, Marcus L.A.’s hottest eligible bachelor. God even Ebony Magazine did an exclusive on him for being one of the most successful black men in the legal world. So I’m just going to say, whatever.” She giggled. “Both those guys have serious looks and brains Olivia.”
I had to laugh. She definitely had a way of pointing out the obvious. “I mean, most guys just look at you and that’s it. Bam, you’re hitched.” I adjusted the little straps on my top.
“Olivia, it’s all to do with the message you send. A guy looks at me and what he sees is this.” She motioned to all over her, head to toe, and slowly, from the glamorous way that her long hair had been styled to the sparkly silver body con that hugged her gym body. “My entire being screams available, single, wild, sexual fun, but…they know not to step to me unless I give the okay. One look and they know. That’s it.”
Jada was seriously of a different kind. We needed people like her in our lives, though, to keep the balance. It was a fact. An absolute fact that I couldn’t deny.
“Okay, Jada, I hear you,” I nodded.
“Anyway, no more drinks for me. I want to be sober. Let’s do our confessionals and call it a night. I don’t want you to get bags under your eyes.”
Confessionals. It was a game we played once a month. Tonight she decided it would be fun to do it here. Here at this club, with the music blasting. Where we were was the seating area reserved for guests who wanted to chill out and drink, so the music volume wasn’t too loud.
I guess since I hadn’t really spoken to her since the other day I had much to tell. Including last night with Marcus, which I still felt really bad about.
“Right, you first. What did you do this month that you’d like to tell me?” I began.
This was stuff that we didn’t talk about in the week. We started doing this crazy game when we were in college. It was the first time in our lives that we’d been away from each other, so every time we came home for the holidays or term break we’d catch up like this.
“Last week, I heard that lying bastard Taylor Matthews was trying to hook up with the governor’s daughter, so I sent an anonymous package to said governor.” Mischief flickered in her eyes.
I gasped. Taylor was one of her exes. He’d cheated on her with her secretary. Like the other guys she was with, he hadn’t lasted long, but he had potential. I saw it. She walked in on them at her house and threw them both outside butt naked. Of course, Jada being Jada, had to add in the drama, so she took to her advice column and named and shamed the hell out of them.
“What was in the package, Jada?”
“A sex tape my PI investigator found. Girl, he was stealing from me as well,” she grimaced.
“What? You never said.”
“I know. It wasn’t much, but it was theft in my book. So her father’s gonna get a rude surprise. Okay, your turn. No boring stuff, please.” She held up her hand as if to stop me in mid-track.
It was because last month I told her I accidentally used someone’s milk in the fridge at work for my coffee. That was my last confession.
“I didn’t do anything as farfetched as you.” To be honest, I was still in shock from the time she told me she had a threesome, and that was ten years ago.
“Fine, whatever. What do you have to confess?”
I thought for a moment. “Marcus came to my house last night.”
Her eyes widened and she straightened right up. “Olivia, please tell me that’s not going to end with you saying, ‘and I slept with him.’”
I laughed although it wasn’t actually funny. “No, it’s not.”
She looked dramatically relieved. “Thank God, woman you nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“I told him about Sam.”
“Really? How’d he take it?”
“Not good, he’s quite mad.”
“Ugh. Olivia, confessionals are supposed to be reserved for wild things we wouldn’t talk about normally. This is a normal Jake’s Spot conversation.”
“I’m boring, aren’t I?” I pouted, slumping.
“No, you aren’t. Maybe it’s me who’s just over eccentric. So you told him about Sam. What does that mean? Have you spoken to Sam much?” There was that mischief glimmering in her
eyes again.
“I haven’t.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Ughh. So you still don’t know the full story?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I want to. I think I should, and I know he’s not guilty. I always knew. Doesn’t help any, though.”
“Talk to him, it will be good for you. You don’t have to talk to him as a girlfriend, just a friend. Remember, you were that first.”
“Yeah I—” the words were lost on me as I shuffled and something across the room caught my attention.
Someone… a guy. I was certain I saw that guy who came into the restaurant on Sunday when I was having breakfast with Sam.
That guy. I continued looking and was sure now it was definitely him. Yes. It was. The hair and the goatee. I hadn’t seen many people with a full on Vincent Van Gough goatee, so I would remember that.
What was his name?
Peter?
No… it wasn’t that.
My poor brain.
Patrick?
Yes, that was it. He and another guy moved across the booth area and over to the stairs on the far left of the bar.
Patrick worked with Sam. I didn’t know if he was an actual worker at Stephens. Maybe that wasn’t true.
“Jada, I’ll be back.” I got up.
“Where are you going?” Jada asked.
“I have to check something out,” I replied, watching the two men descending down the stairs. The guy with Patrick looked mean and rough. Not the kind anyone wanted to mess with.
I moved to follow them and went down the stairs, too, but kept a good distance away from them. The last thing I wanted was to be seen and look so obvious in my pursuit of them, especially when Sam told me his team had framed him. I didn’t know if Patrick was part of that team, or if Sam just meant he’d worked with him at Stephens. Either way, it was best to be careful.
They went outside to the terrace. I followed and hid behind a pillar when they stopped at the bottom of the stairs to wait. Another man approached them. He just stepped out from the shadows and started talking to them.
I took note of the man. The light was just bright enough for me to see what he looked like. Tall and shifty, with a full beard. That was all I could make out. I wished I could get closer.
Yours Truly Page 5