“She may as well have cussed. I’m telling you, she snapped. I told her that I was sorry for what happened with Kita and how much I loved and missed her. That’s when she confessed to having somebody on the side. She told me some guy took her to a spa for her birthday and took her on a picnic, then on a dinner cruise.”
Adonis was stunned that Monique would volunteer this information. Boris walked to the mantel and looked at a photograph of him and Monique. “I did something stupid the day she was here.”
“Like what?”Adonis asked.
“When I saw the rims on her car and the bracelet she was wearing, I lost it. I was drunk and high, and I did something I shouldn’t have.”
Adonis felt his blood get warm. “What did you do?”
“Monique tried to leave, but I wouldn’t let her. I grabbed her arm and tried to kiss her, but she kneed me hard and got away from me. I wish I could relive that day and take it all back.”
Adonis was furious but he couldn’t let it show. How dare anyone touch the woman he loves? “Did you hurt her?”
“Nah, cuz.” Boris didn’t say a word for the longest moment. “I just wanted to make things the way they used to be before . . .”
“Before Kita?”
“Yeah, man, before that skeezah. It turns out the baby ain’t mine.”
“Whose is it?”
“Heck, I don’t even think she knows. I found out she’s been screwing Bubblegum.”
Adonis voice rose. “The dope dealer?”
“Yep, and it ain’t no telling who else she’s been dealing with.”
“How can you be sure the baby isn’t yours?”
“Because I started messing around with Kita about two months ago. She’s almost three months pregnant.”
Adonis studied the scratches on the left side of Boris’s face. “What happened to your jaw?”
“I went to Kita’s house to confront her about Bubblegum, and we got into a fight.”
Adonis shook his head from side to side. “I’m gone three days, and all heck breaks loose?”
Boris looked at the photograph again. “I gotta fix this, cuz. I gotta get my woman back, but she won’t give me the time of day.”
And she never will if I have anything to do with it, Adonis thought.
At precisely 7:30 p.m., Arykah arrived at 9130 Caridine Lane. Before she turned her engine off, Lance was at her driver’s door.
“How did you know I was here?”
Lance reached for Arykah’s hand to help her out of the car. “A queen is always looked out for. I’m glad you could make it.”
Arykah chuckled. “Are you kidding? You bought a house on first sight. Of course I would make it.” They walked hand in hand into the two-story foyer. Arykah looked all around the empty space. “I have to admit, Lance, this is a beautiful estate.”
“I’m pleased with it. I wanna thank you for loaning me the keys while the paperwork gets processed.”
“I gotta tell you that this is highly unusual for me. But your credit checked out as well as the check you gave me, so I didn’t see the harm. But this is only for one night. The good thing is that we can probably short close on this estate sometime next week.”
In the kitchen, Arykah saw a table and four chairs that weren’t there when she sold Lance the house earlier that day. Lance sat her at the table and draped a white linen napkin across her lap. “I hope you’re hungry.”
The aroma coming from the stove intoxicated Arykah. “Yes, I am. Whatever you’re cooking smells delicious.”
“It’s veggie lasagna salad; one of my many specialties.”
“Sounds intriguing,” Arykah smiled. “What’s in it?”
Lance took a pan covered with aluminum foil from the oven. “Well, let’s see. There are broccoli florets, a little bit of garlic, tomato paste, ricotta cheese, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, shredded carrots, zucchini, spinach, Asiago cheese, salt, and black pepper.”
As Lance went down the list of ingredients, Arykah prayed he couldn’t hear her empty stomach growling. “My God, that sounds good. Is it your personal creation?”
“Unfortunately, I can’t take the credit for this dish. I saw the recipe in the Chicago Sun-Times many years ago.”
Arykah watched Lance take two plates from a brand new box of dishes. He washed and dried them before setting them on the table. He had traded the tailor-made suit for a dark blue T-shirt and very fitting Levi jeans.
“What persuaded you to become a chef?” she asked.
He withdrew two glasses from a different box and placed them in the dishwater. “I’m the eldest of three kids. When I was eight years old, my father went to the grocery store for milk, but couldn’t find his way back home, so I was left to look after my six-year-old sister and five-year-old brother while my mother worked two jobs. I had to cook breakfast and dinner. So I guess it just grew on me.”
“Is your mother alive?”
“She’s alive and well. I would love for you to meet her.”
Myrtle once told Monique and Arykah that when a man is willing to introduce a woman to his mother, he was interested in a serious relationship. Although Arykah was smiling on the inside, she didn’t let it show. “What about your sister and brother? Are the three of you close?”
Lance filled their glasses with ice cubes and iced tea. “My sister, Adrienne, and I are like two peas in a pod. We do everything together. She leads the praise and worship team at church. She’s married with a three-year-old daughter, Bianca, who has her uncle Lance wrapped around her pinkie. My brother, Derek, well, what can I say? He has his own agenda on how to live his life. He’d rather sell drugs than work a nine to five to earn a living. I’ve stopped counting how many promises he’s broken about coming to church.”
Arykah could hear the disappointment and hurt in Lance’s voice as he talked about his brother. “Well, prayer changes things, but you know that already, right, Pastor?”
“You know what, Arykah. It’s my assignment to encourage people to pray without ceasing, but sometimes I have to wonder if God hears my own prayers.”
Arykah didn’t comment, but she could definitely relate to Lance. There had been many a day when she was forced to ask, “God, did you hear me?”
He brought the pan of lasagna to the table and sat opposite of Arykah. “Since you’re a guest in my soon to be home, why don’t you bless the food?”
“I’d love to,” Arykah happily responded. They bowed their heads, and she petitioned the throne of grace. “Father God, first and foremost we thank You for this day, a beautiful day we haven’t seen before. We honor You, Lord, as our Comforter and Keeper. We acknowledge that no one else can do for us what You can, and for this we’re grateful. I am especially thankful for my new friend, Lance Howell, and I thank You for this fellowship. We’re thankful for this meal, and please bless it along with the hands that prepared it. We pray, Lord, that thy will be done and that the mailbox outside would soon display the name ‘Howell.’ We exalt Your name, and we will be so ever careful to continue to glorify You in everything we do. In your darling Son, Jesus’ name, we thank You. Amen.”
Lance opened his eyes and looked across the table at Arykah. “Wow, that was excellent. Are you a prayer warrior or intercessor?”
“I don’t know about all of that, but believe me, I stay in God’s face.”
Arykah put a forkful of lasagna in her mouth, and one would’ve thought she’d taken a bite out of heaven. “This is so good.”
“Thank you. I put a lot of heart into it.”
Arykah paused for a minute. “Lance, there’s something you should know about me.”
“I’m listening,” he said.
“I’m ghetto,” Arykah confessed.
He chuckled. “Explain ghetto.”
“Ghetto means asking you to wrap me a plate of this lasagna to take home so I won’t have to buy lunch tomorrow.”
Lance laughed out loud. “I love your sense of humor, Arykah. Tell me about yourself.”
“Be careful what you ask for. I’ve got a lot of history. Pick a subject.”
“Your parents.”
“I don’t have any. From what I’ve been told, my mother hemorrhaged to death while giving birth to me. The doctors could only save one of us. On my birth certificate, the space designated for my father’s name is blank. I was bounced around from foster home to foster home until I was eighteen. I held jobs at every fast food restaurant in the city of Chicago while paying for my realty classes. Six years of hard work paid off. I’m the only African American female in my region that sells at least two estate homes a month.”
“That’s very impressive.”
“I love what I do,” Arykah said.
The more she talked, the more Lance wanted her to talk. “Can I get personal?”
“You can ask my age, but not my weight.”
He chuckled again. “I know better than to even go there, but now you’ve piqued my curiosity. How old are you, and how much do you weigh?”
Arykah drank iced tea before she answered. “I’m thirty, but only a husband is entitled to know a woman’s weight.”
“Thirty?” Lance shrieked. “I would have guessed you to be twenty-four.”
That comment brought a smile to Arykah’s face. “You better watch yourself. Flattery will get you everything.”
“Will it get me an answer to my next question?”
“Depends on the question.”
“Are you seeing anyone?” he asked.
“What do you mean by seeing?”
“Dating someone exclusively.”
“No.”
“Can I ask why?”
Arykah cocked her head to the side and looked at Lance. “I’m sorry, I was under the impression that you were a pastor of a church. Maybe I should change your occupation status to Private Investigator.”
“You intrigue me, Arykah.” The look on Lance’s face melted Arykah. His eyes pierced her soul. “I wanna know everything about you.”
Arykah laid her fork on her empty plate. “Okay, now you’re getting into my baggage. Are you sure you wanna do that?”
That statement made Lance even more interested. “I definitely wanna do that, but let’s take our dessert into the great room.”
“Dessert? Lance, I’m stuffed. Plus I’m trying to watch my weight.”
“Why don’t you let me do that for you. I’ve been watching it ever since you got here, and it looks great.”
Arykah knew she was cute that evening; thankful that Beyoncé made it easy for big girls to strut their stuff in House of Dereon jeans. Lance couldn’t take his eyes off of Arykah’s voluptuous backside. The way she strutted in the denim bottoms paired with four-inch gold stilettos and a navy wrap around blouse from Ashley Stewart, qualified Arykah to compete on America’s Next Top Model. She was big, she was black, she was beautiful, she was bold, and as Tyra Banks would say, she was fieerrce. “Remember what I said about flattery,” she smiled.
“I figured you to be a woman who loves strawberries.”
“Yes, I do. What did you make for dessert?”
“Strawberry pavlova. It’s sort of a baked strawberry soufflé.”
Arykah couldn’t resist. “I’ll have a very small slice, but I’m gonna visit the little girl’s room first.”
When Arykah joined Lance in the great room, she saw him sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. He held a saucer with a large slice of strawberry Pavlov on it. He patted the space on the floor next to him. “Come sit with me.”
She stepped out of her stilettos and walked across the huge, vacant room and sat next to him. When she became comfortable on the hardwood floor, Lance inserted a forkful of the dessert into her mouth. Arykah’s eyes rolled into the air. “Oh my God. Are you sure you’re a pastor? Because it’s probably a sin to make something this delicious. It can be addictive.”
“Before I was called into the ministry, I was a full-time chef at the Drake Hotel. Baking sweets was one of my favorite things to do. Why are you single, Arykah?” He wasn’t letting her off the hook.
“I was hoping you forgot you asked that.”
“If you don’t feel comfortable talking about it, that’s fine. But I really wanna know.”
“Let’s talk about you first. Why are you single?”
Lance fed her another bite. “How are you just gonna flip the script like that? We were talking about you.”
“But now we’re talking about you.”
Lance looked into her eyes and smiled. “You are slick, but okay, we’ll do this your way. Five years ago, I was engaged to Gwendolyn, the love of my life. She was beautiful and possessed everything I desired in a woman. If I started a sentence, she’d finish it. One Wednesday in January, I closed the deal on my construction company. I called Gwen with the good news, and we made plans to celebrate that evening.
“About three feet of snow had fallen that day. She loved cheesecake, so I decided to take her to the Cheesecake Factory in the Loop for dinner. My realtor’s office was Downtown, so Gwen was gonna meet me when she got off from work. She taught preschool on Fifty-Third Street. It was so much snow, it looked crazy outside, and I knew I should’ve told Gwen to just go home, but I got caught all up in the excitement of owning my business. I just prayed she would make it safely.
“We were supposed to meet at the restaurant at five o’clock. At five-thirty, I called her cell phone, but didn’t get an answer. I didn’t think too much of it because Gwen always blasted gospel music when she drove, and sometimes couldn’t hear her phone ringing.
“At six o’clock, she still hadn’t arrived at the restaurant, but I chalked it up to bad weather and traffic. I went and sat at the bar to wait for her. The bartender had the television on, and I remember looking at The Cosby Show when it was interrupted by breaking news. There was a fatal car accident on the Dan Ryan Expressway headed inbound to downtown.”
Lance paused, and Arykah grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “Lance, you don’t have to—”
He held up his hand to silence her. “No, it’s okay. I knew it was her. I could feel it. When Gwen’s car flashed across the screen, I fell off of the barstool. An eighteen-wheeler lost traction and slammed into her. The paramedics said she died instantly and didn’t suffer. I haven’t seen or met another Gwendolyn yet.”
Arykah ran the palm of her hand across Lance’s left cheek. “I am so sorry.”
“With nine months of therapy and trying to get over the guilt of not telling Gwen to just go home, I’m okay.”
“There’s no way you could’ve predicted what would have happened, Lance.”
“I was told that hundreds of times, but it still didn’t take away the pain.”
Arykah didn’t respond. She let her eyes fall to the floor.
“Your turn,” Lance said to her.
She sat with her back against the wall, took the saucer from Lance’s hand, and fed him dessert. “I was in love too. Madly in love with a guy who meant more to me than life itself. His name was Eric, and we lived together for two years. According to me, he could do no wrong.
His poop smelled like roses, and the sun rose and set at his command. Having spent my whole life moving from home to home, I yearned to hear the words ‘I love you,’ and when Eric said them to me, nothing or no one else in the entire world seemed to matter.”
She inserted another forkful of Pavlov into Lance’s mouth. “In the early part of our relationship, Eric and I got along perfectly. I loved him, and I really believed he loved me too until I started noticing changes in his behavior.”
“What kinds of changes?” Lance asked.
Arykah fed him again. “He started getting home later than usual from work and receiving phone calls on his cell phone in the middle of the night. And little petty stuff that normally wouldn’t faze him, started to tick him off. Things like strands of my hair in the bathroom sink, stuff like that. Eventually his complaints got personal. He told me the gap in my teeth was too wide, and my hair wasn’t
long enough.”
Lance was stunned. “Excuse me? I don’t mean to cut you off, but your gap is too wide?”
“That’s what Eric said.”
“Smile for me,” Lance requested.
“No.”
“Come on and smile with your fine self.”
Arykah displayed a wide grin. “Flattery, flattery.”
Lance focused on her teeth. “You have a lovely smile, and I don’t see a gap.”
Arykah brought his attention back to her story. “One day Eric got mad at me about something I did. I’ve forgotten what it was. I probably scrambled his eggs too hard or didn’t put enough fabric softener in his boxers. Anyway, he just came right out and admitted to sleeping with another woman, but he said he didn’t love her. He admitted to being attracted to how thin she was, and said if I lost weight, he’d leave her alone.”
Again, Lance was stunned. “He said what?”
“Yep, that’s what he said. So willingly giving up my self-respect and self-esteem, I tried my best to lose weight to hold on to Eric. No matter how hard I exercised or how little I ate, the weight would not come off. His complaints turned to insults, which tore my heart out. Suddenly, I was too fat to lie next to at night. Some nights Eric slept on the sofa to keep me from trying to seduce him. He said he wasn’t attracted to me anymore.”
Lance hadn’t met Eric, but he was angry with him. “Okay, can I say something here? I want you to know that it wasn’t your weight that put Eric on the sofa; it was the fact that he’d already been with the other woman not too long before bedtime. Men need time to recharge. I don’t care what size a woman is, if she’s lying naked next to a man, he’s gonna try and get her. The only reason a man won’t touch her is that he’s already satisfied.”
“You think so, Lance?”Arykah asked.
“I know so. Finish your story.”
“Well, Eric’s insults grew into verbal abuse. He told me over and over that I was too fat and unattractive to ever become anything in life, and no man would ever want me. One day he came home and asked why I was there. He made me feel like I was trespassing.”
Lance couldn’t help but interrupt Arykah again. ”He asked you what? Why did you stay there and take that crap from him?”
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