by Bianca
Once I was in my car, I pulled my phone out of my blazer pocket and saw that Russ had called me several times as well as Alton and Kriss. I couldn’t believe that my phone was on silent. I thought I put it on vibrate. I opened up Russ’s message and clicked on the location that he sent me, and the GPS said that it was forty-five minutes away. I sighed in frustration because I hoped that Russ or whoever would still be alive by the time I made it.
The minute I hit the expressway, my phone rang and it was Alton. An immediate smile came on my face.
“Hello,” I answered the phone, and I could hear all the machines going on in the background.
“Hey, beautiful girl. I was wondering what you were doing. I miss you,” he said into the phone.
“Alton, you just left my bed this morning. How are you missing me already?” I asked.
“I just love sleeping and cuddling up next to you. I want to take you to dinner tonight because I want to talk to you about something important. Are you free?” he said into the phone.
“I can be free,” I told him.
“Okay, I’m going to send you the reservation, and you can meet me there. Have a wonderful day, my lady,” he said and hung up the phone.
Another reason why Alton was my type of guy was that he made plans for us. Most dudes these days would “what you doing” or “what you want to do” you to death. He was such a gentleman. While I was on the way, I called Kriss back to see what she wanted. We still talked every day, just not as much, if that made sense. We used to text each other all day unless we were extremely busy, but now, it’s like a good morning or good night text, or a picture of Quad’s chubby self smiling or something like that. She picked up on the first ring, and I heard Quad whining in the background.
“Hey, girl! I called you because Russ called me to come pick him up from some chicken head house. Apparently, she slashed his tires or something. I would go, but Spence would kill me if I took Quad around something that could be dangerous. You know how he is. Y’all come over here after you pick him up. Thanks. Let me get Quad down for his nap, and hopefully, he’ll be good and sleep when y’all get here. Love you, bye!” Kriss said and hung up the phone.
I laughed while shaking my head. Kriss didn’t know anything about being a parent at all. She’s still learning, and I could tell that she be getting overwhelmed sometimes. I turned the music up until the GPS told me that I was rounding the corner to the house where he was at. My eyes bucked when I saw his Tahoe with spray painted words all over it. ‘Hoe,’ ‘Bitch,’ ‘Community Penis’ were just some of the words that were on there. All of the tires were slashed, and all of the windows were busted. She messed his truck up so bad. I grabbed my mace out of my armrest and got out the car. I walked slowly up the driveway when his Tahoe door opened, making me jump back. Russ stepped out of the truck, butt-naked, with his junk being covered by a towel. I fell into a fit of laughter.
“Not now, Lawrynn. Not now!” he hissed.
The door to the house opened up, and the girl, who I had never seen before, stepped outside.
“I know you didn’t call one of your—”
“Choose your next words wisely,” I warned her.
“Get your piece of shit ass man. Take him away from here!” the girl shouted.
“I ain’t going nowhere until you give me my clothes and the tow truck come and get my car. You straight bugging Michelle,” Russ hollered at her.
“I’m bugging. How I’m the one bugging when you called ME asking to come over here and then you straight up disrespect me by having other girls calling you, while you here with ME! You ain’t getting no clothes up out of my house. Take your girl and leave.”
“You not even my girl Michelle! Just let me get my clothes, and I’ll never call you again. Damn!”
“Nope,” she said and walked back in the house.
I fell into a fit of laughter again, and I continued to laugh until the tow truck pulled up and hooked up the truck. The tow truck pulled away, leaving Russ and me standing there looking at each other.
“You not sitting your bare ass on my leather seats, negro. I have some basketball shorts in the trunk. You know I wear them big, so you should be able to wear them. They will be a lil’ tight on you, but we can make-do. Kriss wants us to come over to her house.”
“Uuughhh,” Russ groaned. “So you can fill her in and y’all both be laughing at me? I don’t think so. Take me home, mane.”
“Nah.”
I opened my trunk and gave Russ the shorts and walked away from the back to give him what little privacy that he had. Once I was in the car, I put Kriss’s address into the GPS. Moments later, Russ slammed my trunk, getting my attention, and then got in the car. I looked at him in the pink Nike shorts and laughed again.
“Lawrynn, just drive man,” Russ sighed.
“Nah, you called me away from work, you gon’ tell me what happened.”
“Mane… I came over here last night because I didn’t have to go to work today. Me and her chilled all last night with no problems. After I put her to sleep, I went to sleep right next to her. I woke up to her throwing ice-cold water on me. I was stunned for like a minute honestly. She was screaming at me, telling me to get out and some more shit. I look for my clothes, and they are nowhere to be found. We argued about my clothes for about fifteen minutes before she said that she was getting ready to call the police. So, I’m like, forget it, let me just make a run for my truck. Mane, I got outside to my truck, and it was looking just like that. I couldn’t even go back into the house because she had locked me out. So, yeah, that’s pretty much that. My only guess is that she went through my phone while I was sleep. You know I don’t keep a lock on my phone.”
“Dammmmnnn, she got you good, fam. I bet you put a lock on your phone now,” I joked with him.
He waved me off and laid back until we pulled through the gates of Kriss’s place. We got out the car and walked in the house. I loved this house. Kriss called us into the kitchen, and she already had three wine glasses out for us, probably filled with Sangria. She loved that weak shit.
“Russ, why are you half-naked?” Kriss asked him.
“Mane…”
“Nah, he got caught up and put out the house… butt-naked. The only thing he had was a little washcloth covering up his delicate parts,” I told her.
Kriss looked at him and started laughing so hard and so loud. She was doubling over with laughter, and Russ was looking hurt in the face.
“Oh, I’m so mad I didn’t take a picture of his truck, but all the windows were gone, tires flat, and his pretty pearl truck was spray painted with everything but being a child of God.”
“Dang, Russ! You need this glass more than me,” Kriss laughed.
“Mane, enough about me. What’s going on with you? Newlywed. New mother. New riches,” Russ said to Kriss.
“Oh my God! I honestly thought that you would never ask. Listen, Quad is teething, and when I tell you he is taking me down through there, he is. Nothing is making him happy right now. I will be so glad when I finally get him to go to sleep. You know Spence don’t want me to go back to work until he turns two. So, I’m here all day, every day, while you two are at work living it up. I need a day off from being a mother. Is that bad that I want a day off from being a mom? I love my son to death… but…”
“No! Don’t beat yourself up, Kriss. You have been doing a good job at this. You were kind of jumped into this life and didn’t really have time to enjoy your life with Spence without being a mother or his wife. Maybe you and Spence should drop Quad off at your dad’s or his parents, so you two can have a weekend alone or something.
“Girl! I tried. Spence doesn’t want his son out of his sight unless he’s at work.”
“Put your foot down or something. Girl, you know Spence hates when you’re mad at him. When your nose starts flaring, Spence bows down,” Russ said laughing.
Before Kriss could start speaking again, Spence walked into the kitchen. His eyebrow went
up when he saw Russ sitting there with pink shorts on with no shirt.
“Hey, everybody! What’s going on?” Spence spoke to everyone. “Mr. Lawrence, the only man I like half-naked in my house is me. Find some clothes, please,” Spence said to him, making me and Kriss burst into laughter.
“Also, honey, do you mind if Trevor brings his girlfriend over for dinner tonight? He’s dying for you to meet her,” Spence said to her, and her eyes immediately fell on me.
Trevor… girlfriend, I thought to myself. He definitely didn’t have a girlfriend last month.
“Ms. Barksdale, you can bring Al if you want. Make this one big, interesting dinner,” Spence said and winked at me.
“Luckily for me, Alton has made reservations for us tonight somewhere,” I replied.
“Maybe another time then.” He smiled and walked away.
I low-key wanted to see who she was. I wasn’t jealous or anything, I just wanted to see what his type of woman was. I bet she probably didn’t do anything. Probably paid for breasts, hips, and ass. Probably light skin with green eyes and long, blonde hair. That seemed like the type that Trevor liked.
“Lawrynn, are you okay? We’ve been talking for a minute, and it looks like you blanked out or something,” Kriss said.
“Yeah, I’m good. I just realized that I have to go and get ready for dinner,” I said climbing off the stool.
After hugging Kriss, both me and Russell headed for the door. We told each other that we would talk later. In the car, Russell kept looking at me upside my head, probably expecting me to say something. He knew how I felt about Trevor because I ended up telling him what happened between him and me after Kriss’s wedding.
“Your mood just shifted. You feel something about Trevor having a girlfriend, don’t you? You can keep it real with me, sis,” Russ said.
“Why would I care about who or what Trevor dates?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“I don’t give a damn about who Trevor dates,” I said with much force.
Holding his hands up in surrender, he said, “Aight, I’m just saying, man. Just know that I know you better than you know yourself, Lawrynn.”
I didn’t reply to his comment, and we rode the rest of the way in silence. After I dropped him off, I promised that I would call him later. The drive home to my place, I smiled at the thought of the date that I was having with Alton tonight.
Today had been so long, and I was dreading this last meeting. I wasn’t dreading it because the person was a bad person, it’s just that I had a case of the Mondays. You know how some Mondays can go; everything that can go wrong goes wrong. My morning started at three-thirty when I woke up drenched in sweat. I go to the thermostat and come to find out, my air had gone out. The repair place didn’t open until eight, but I wasn’t about to stay here until eight in this heat. My ceiling fans wouldn’t generate the type of air I needed to be able to go back to sleep. I called my girlfriend, Jasmine, to see if I could spend the rest of the morning with her, but I forgot that she was at her parents’ house all the way in Savannah. I wanted to call Spence, but I knew his phone was on loud, and my phone call would have wakened Quad, and I wouldn’t have heard the end of it. I could have gone to my parents’ house, but they stayed an hour away, and I was so tired that I wasn’t sure I could have made it. I ended up calling my assistant, Clarine, to go to the store and get me five fans and bring them to me. Luckily, she was already up studying, and she would do anything for me.
After Clarine brought me the fans, I plugged them all up on high and had them pointed directly at me. By the time I had fallen back into a deep sweaty sleep, I had the worst dream in the world. I had a dream that I was having sex with Lawrynn, and she was pregnant with my baby. The dream was so vivid that you would have thought I had taken a melatonin to fall back asleep. I woke up in worse shape than I was when I woke up to find out that my air had gone out. After that, I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I stayed awake and stared at the ceiling until my alarm went off.
When my alarm went off, I got up, took care of my hygiene, and got dressed for work. By the time I was in the car, I had called the air conditioner place and told them to fix my shit. They told me that they wouldn’t be able to get to my house until two days from now. After I gave them a few words of encouragement, they put me on the list for today. I told my housekeeper that she didn’t have to go in until twelve, when the air conditioner people got there, because she would have a heat stroke in that house.
On the way to work, I was enjoying the cool air blowing in my Escalade and getting just a few more extra minutes of sleep… until somebody ran into the back of my shit! At that point, I was ready to fight the air. The young girl hit my shit in a beat up ass Honda… red Honda. So, yes, there was red paint on the back of my truck, not much though. I blacked out on her ass, talking mad noise to her, telling her that she should have been more careful of where she was driving. Once she started crying, that infuriated me even more. Why? Her day couldn’t have been as bad as mine, but here she was… crying. She was talking about how she couldn’t afford to get my truck repainted as if I didn’t already know that. Enrique, my driver, told me that I was doing too much, and told me to get back in the truck so he could handle it. When I got back in the truck, I went right to sleep.
Finally, when I made it to work… my happy place, I started to feel just a little bit better. I thought that I was just having a bad Monday morning… nope. As soon as I made it to work, I got my coffee from Clarine and went into my office. I sat down at my desk, I thought I was setting my coffee on my desk, but nah, I missed the desk, and the hot coffee burned my thigh. I just shook my head and started laughing.
I was so pissed at myself that I had Spence to lead the Monday morning meeting, while I stayed in my office and got a quick nap in. Two hours later, when the meeting was over, he came and gave me the notes. I told him about my day, and he started laughing at me…talking about we all have bad days, and that I needed to power through it. He told me that you could either own the bad day or let the bad day own you. I knew what that meant, I was just too tired and frustrated to even engage in a conversation with him, but I did let him know that I was going to invite Jasmine over for dinner before he walked out the door.
I finally made it past lunch. The two-hour nap I had on my office couch was so nice. That perked me up until Clarine came into my office, talking about Jasmine was on line three for me. I picked it up, and she was ranting about some girl commenting on my Instagram picture, and I hung up on her. I ain’t have time for that. I didn’t care who you were, please don’t come to me about some social media shit. I looked at my phone, and I had so many messages from her about how our transition from sex buddies to a relationship should have been easy and another long paragraph that I didn’t read.
Knock Knock!
“It’s open,” I called out.
Clarine eased into my office and smiled at me.
“Your last client is here for you. I already have the conference room set up for you. How are you feeling? Do you need anything?”
“No, everything is fine. Thank you for everything, Clarine. I really appreciate you. Remind me to give you a gift card or something for coming through for me with the box fans early this morning. I don’t deserve you,” I spoke honestly, making her blush and look at the ground.
“Anytime, Mr. Spencer,” she said and eased out of my office.
Walking in the conference room, Mr. Phalec Grant stood and greeted me. I sat across from him, and we got the meeting started.
“Mr. Grant, so…”
“Call me Phalec, please. Listen, I heard through the streets that this is the best place to get my new gym the way that I want it. I have three locations, but I plan on closing them and building one big gym in Atlanta.”
“Okay, we can do that,” I replied.
I took out my pad and pencil and started drawing up a mock building as he was speaking on what he wanted. I loved being an architect, and ever
y time I had a pencil in my hand, my adrenaline started rushing. Much like Travis, my dad put a pencil in my hand told me what I was going to do with my life. I ain’t have no problem with that because when I was younger, I wanted to be just like my father, and still did. I looked up to him. A selfless man, who loved his family and his job more than anything. He worked his behind off to keep this company running just as my grandad did.
After listening to Phalec talk about his gym for at least fifteen minutes, I had the rough draft of the gym made up. I slid it over to him, and I couldn’t read his expression, so I was waiting on pins and needles for him to speak about his thoughts.
“Hmm, I can’t believe that you drew this up listening to me talk. I like it. How much,” he asked.
“We use a contractor by the name of…” I paused when I thought of Alton. It was weird because I’d talked to him a couple of times since we had been back from Hawaii, but it seemed weird. I’m not sure if it was because Lawrynn was having sex with him, literally hours after waking up in my bed. I wondered if Lawrynn knew everything about him. I’m not a hater and would never stop a man’s check.
“Weird pause, Mr. Spencer. Is everything okay with this contractor?” Phalec asked me.
I inhaled sharply and then cleared my throat. “Yes, all is well, Mr. Grant. His name is Al… Alton Sayer. I’ll get you his card.”
“You sure everything is okay with this guy?”
“Yes… my mind just went somewhere. The billing department is on the floor under this one. I’ll give them a call as soon as I walk you out.”
“I see. Thank you for all your help, Mr. Spencer,” Phalec said and stood up.
Looking down at his ring finger, I saw that he was married. “I see that you’re married. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“How long have you been married?”
“A few years now. Dr. Zolar Grant is everything I ever dreamed of in a woman. When I first laid eyes on her, I knew I wanted her—”