“Sure,” I said, but the word was barely out of my mouth when Damon declined.
“I’d love to, but I have to get home and finish up some details for this big event I have next week.”
My grandparents accepted his explanation, but I didn’t. Something had set Damon off, and I felt his suspicion.
He said, “But Tiffanie, you can go on with your grandparents. You’re free to do whatever you want to, right?”
Before I could answer, Gram said, “No, she’s not. She’s married now and y’all should do things together.”
“That’s right.” I nodded and tried to make my smile bigger. “If you’re going home, I’m going with you.”
He shrugged as if he didn’t care and fear washed over me. What had happened?
We kissed my grandparents good-bye, and when Damon put his arm around my waist and led me from the church, I pushed away all negative thoughts. I didn’t need to focus on what had happened, I only needed to look forward with the plan that God had given me. I could never erase what I’d done, but I could make up for the two mistakes I’d made and put them so far behind me that I’d never think of them again. The silence that had accompanied us to church remained as Damon drove, but it gave me time to focus on what I had to do. My plan that I would begin as soon as we got home.
32
Damon
It was as if the life I was living didn’t belong to me and the wife in my bed wasn’t the one I’d married. Anybody else would have been happy with what had gone down in my home this past week, and I should’ve been, too. It was just that Tiffanie was so . . . different.
This journey into the life that was not mine began on Sunday, in church, where Tiffanie was praying. Her head was bowed, and so, I bowed my head in solidarity with my wife. I didn’t know what she was praying for, but whatever it was, as her husband, I wanted God to give her the desires of her heart.
But her prayer, which began in silence, came out of her in a whisper.
Lord, help me. I need that way out.
At first I wasn’t sure that I’d heard her right, until she repeated it.
Lord, help me. I need that way out.
Even now, as I repeated her words in my head, my eyes squinted with my thoughts. What kind of out did she need? Her grandfather had been preaching about temptation; what kind of temptation did she have?
That question troubled me all the way through the rest of the service, and even afterward, when we visited with her grandparents. By the time we got in the car, I was looking at her sideways.
Lord, help me. I need that way out.
I couldn’t figure out her prayer and planned on asking her about it, but I didn’t get a chance. The moment we got home, right after we took two steps into our house, my wife attacked me like some kind of starving beast. Before I could even figure out what was going on, she had me pressed against the wall, kissing me like I was the oxygen she needed to live.
And she kissed my questions right out of me. After the first couple of seconds, all I wanted to do was take my wife up to our bedroom. But then she began to strip me, even as we walked, with lips locked, toward the stairs. I was down to my briefs and socks when we got to the staircase, where she stopped and pushed me down. A moment later, only my socks were left. She didn’t take off her clothes; she just pushed up her dress, mounted me, and then rode like she was trying to win the Kentucky Derby.
Now, I wasn’t no stiff, I was the kind of guy who loved to get my freak on, and I could prove it by the fact that I’d had sex everywhere, in all kinds of positions, with females doing all kinds of things to me and each other. But all those females? They’d been nothing more than random chicks, strippers without a pole.
My wife was better than that. And that’s why, with Tiffanie, I liked it straight, missionary-style mostly, and in our bedroom always. That’s why I bought that big ole bed. Because that’s what my wife deserved—she was classy and I treated her with respect, especially in bed.
But there was nothing I could do to stop her on Sunday, and while the sex left me spent, her aggression left me more confused. Now I had her prayer and her behavior to figure out.
I might have been able to put some kind of spin on Sunday until Monday rolled around. First, Tiffanie was up, out of bed, and dressed before I turned over to hit the alarm at seven.
“What are you doing up so early?”
“I wanted to get to the office.” Her voice was chipper, as if she’d been awake for hours.
I pushed myself up to get a closer look. “This early? What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I’ve been away for a week and want to get back into the swing of things. We have the opening coming up, remember?” Then she kissed me and, I’m telling you, she skipped out of the room.
It took me a couple of hours to add that morning to the day before and make it equal something that made sense. Then, about twelve hours later, I came home to find my wife wearing an apron and standing next to Glory.
“Hey!” She greeted me with a kiss when I stepped into the kitchen. “I’m learning to make that beef stew.”
“And a whole lotta other things,” Glory added, shaking her head and giving me a side-eye. “I can’t believe you’re trying to domesticate this career woman.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” I said.
Tiffanie was all smiles when she said, “I told you, Glory, this is all my idea. I want to learn to cook for my man. I’m gonna be taking lessons for a week.”
After that, every night, I came home to a meal fit for Thanksgiving. And over the three or four courses, she told me all that was going on with the spa:
“I had to have the windows redone, the tinting was off, but I handled it without a hit to the budget.”
Then, “There was a problem with the plumbing today and before the plumbers even got there, I had it figured out.”
And “I decided to go ahead and have Utopia wired for Wi-Fi. I want women to come there and relax, but in reality, if someone can’t check their email or Twitter . . .”
Every night I listened to her in amazement. She was holding it down at the spa, even with this Susie Homemaker routine. Then every night, after all of that, Tiffanie took to our bed like she was trying to make those dozen babies that I wanted.
It was all good.
But it was all different.
And I didn’t know what had changed my wife so suddenly.
I sighed. Why was I trying to figure it out? Having a woman who worked hard, cooked well, and could bring it in bed every day? Who wouldn’t want that?
I would . . . if it weren’t for my gut.
“Knock, knock!” Trey’s voice broke through my thoughts. When I looked up, he added, “Is it okay if I come in?”
I nodded. “Sure.” When Trey stepped into the VIP office, I asked, “How did you know I was here?”
“I went to your place on U Street, and your assistant told me. I wanted to know if you could hang out for a couple of hours.”
I shook my head. “Sorry, son, I got lots of work to do.”
“It’s all good.” He paused and looked around at the space, which was darkened by the two black walls, but then lightened by the other two walls, which were all glass and looked down onto the club’s floor below. “This place is the truth. DC After Dark? I like the name.”
I nodded. “It’s only been open for a few months; this is their first big event.”
“Cool. They’ve really done something over here, haven’t they? I remember when you came to this part of DC at your own risk.”
As he stood at one of the windows looking down, I answered, “They’re trying to turn all these old warehouses into something. All part of the gentrification of Southeast.”
“I see. When Hillary first gave me the address and told me it was over by the Navy Yards, I thought she was kidding. I di
dn’t know what kind of event you’d be having down here.” He shook his head. “But, man, did you see all of those restaurants on the Potomac?”
Watching Trey rediscover DC would’ve been something I would’ve enjoyed if I didn’t have so much work on my plate and so many thoughts on my mind. “Yeah, come back tonight and it’ll be packed down here. Even I’m trying to figure out how to capitalize on it. I bought a couple of the warehouses next door a few years ago, though I haven’t done anything with them yet.”
“For real?”
“Yeah. I’ve been holding on to the property, trying to figure out the best way to monetize the spaces. After Tiffanie opens her spa, I’ll makes some decisions.”
His head bobbed as he took a seat in the chair in front of the desk. “You’re really making moves.”
I shrugged. “I do what I do.”
“I guess so.” He grinned. “And now, you’re putting together this thing for that phine Jaleesa Stone. You think you can hook a brutha up?”
For the first time in the hours since I’d been sitting at this desk, I smiled. “I can if I can get you past her bodyguard-fiancé.”
Trey leaned back in the chair. “You know me. There ain’t a dude on earth who scares me. I fear no man.”
I swallowed the words that I wanted to say; I wanted to tell him that his lack of fear would one day be noted on his tombstone. But I said nothing because I’d given him a lifetime of lectures. This time around, when we partnered up, I was gonna let Trey be the man he needed to be. I’d be fair, I’d give him a warning or two, and after that, I’d have to cut him loose.
“So, when are we gonna hook up and talk more about us working together?”
“Yeah, yeah. I really want us to do that, for sure. Maybe we can figure out what to do with these warehouses. Just let me get through this event and we’ll sit down. We can do it on Monday if you’re free; you’ll still be here, right?” I didn’t give him a chance to respond. “You’re not making moves back to the ATL, are you?”
“Nah, at least not yet. I’ve been waiting on you to see what you wanna do. So, we’ll talk on Monday and then I’ll make some decisions.”
I felt my eyebrows bunching together. I’d been so self-absorbed this week that I hadn’t made any real contact with Trey. Except for his text letting me know that he was checking out of the Willard, I had no idea how he was spending his time. Yeah, he was grown, but he was still Trey Taylor. Free time wasn’t a good look for him.
“So what have you been up to?” I asked, my way of doing a brother-brother check on him.
His shoulders hardly moved when he shrugged. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that.”
His words made me uneasy, because if he was already involved in something shady, I wouldn’t bring him into the fold. “You still with Ms. Irene or have you hooked up with a shorty?”
“Nah. I’m using this time to reconnect with my grandma.”
“I know Ms. Irene is glad about that.”
“And that shorty?” he said, making a left turn back to the second part of my question. “I’m still working on that.”
“The one you met over at the Willard?” I asked.
“Yeah. We’ve hooked up a couple of times.” He paused. “And it’s all good. She might be a keeper.”
“Really?” I still found it unbelievable that Trey was ready to settle down with any female. “Well, you’ll have to bring her around. Tiff and I would love to meet her.”
For some reason that made him laugh. “Yeah, well, we’ll see about that. Anyway . . .” He stopped for a moment and looked around the office once more. “Is there anything I can do to help you with this rollout?”
“Nah, I got it together.”
After giving me a long stare, Trey said, “Okay, bruh. Talk to me. What’s going on with you?”
I frowned.
He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. “I can see it all over you. We’ve known each other too long for me not to know when something’s got you worked up. You wanna talk about it?”
In the next seconds that passed, I sifted through all the things in my head from the past week. And, added to that, all the things that Trey’d said all along. “Can’t say that anything’s wrong. Just got a lot on my mind; in particular, what we talked about when I first got back from Dubai.” His frown told me that he had no idea what I was talking about. “How you don’t trust women.”
“Oh, that.” He leaned back and shrugged. “Just my rule of life. I told you, I’ve never met one who wasn’t in it for herself.” He paused and gave me a stare that made his next words sound cold and hard. “I would even doubt your wife.”
I returned his stare and told him the truth. “Tiffanie’s not like that.”
“She got a vagina?”
That muscle in my jaw starting pulsing, and right away, Trey backed up. He raised his hands in police surrender mode.
“Look, you asked the question and I’m telling you how I live. You know this, you used to be the same way.”
Maybe that was true. But that was before.
He continued, “The way I see it, all females are the same. Now, some are classy with it and maybe that’s how Tiffanie is . . .”
“My wife ain’t like all those other females!”
“Whoa . . . okay.” He paused. “I thought you wanted to have a discussion, but you’re protesting kinda hard.” Then he chuckled a little. “What? You figured out something already?”
Even though Trey was my boy, I’d never been one to talk to him or anyone else. I handled my own business, never bringing anybody else into it. It wasn’t necessary, since I wasn’t usually the emotional type and always handled situations on facts. But this . . . this was emotional because I had no facts.
So, if there were ever a time to talk to someone else, this was it. And if there was ever a person, Trey was the one. He knew me; he could be trusted.
“What’s up?” Trey pushed. After another moment’s pause, he added, “Ah, hell nah! Don’t tell me you found out she’s cheating on you already!”
“Nah!” I shook my head. “That’s not it at all. It’s just that . . . I don’t know . . .”
He gave me a second to provide a better explanation before he asked, “So you don’t think she’s screwing around on you?”
“Nah, nah. It can’t be that. We just got married and I’m holding it down.” I thought about our honeymoon, I thought about our week since we’d been home, and all of that made me shake my head even more. “It’s not that, I’m sure of it. But something’s off.”
“What?”
I had to ask myself, did I really want to go there with him? Especially since I was missing facts. “I don’t know. She just switched up.”
At first I thought he was just studying me. Then he cracked up. “Oh. She’s not letting you hit it?” He laughed even harder now. “I heard how women change up after they get married.”
“She’s changed, but not in that way.” I left out the personal details, that was none of Trey’s business and that wasn’t my purpose for having this talk. I just wanted to hear my words out loud, see if I could make what I was thinking make sense.
Trey said, “Well, if she’s acting differently, maybe she’s pregnant.”
That made me pause. That would be a great excuse for what had been going on.
He asked, “Have you talked to her about it?”
I shook my head. I did have lots of questions, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to ask. Why do you go to work so early? Why are you cooking every night? How come you’re sexing me like you can’t get enough?
I said, “I haven’t said anything, because there’s really nothing to ask. It’s just something that’s going on in my gut.”
He nodded, leaned forward. Even though we were alone, he lowered his voice. “Listen, bruh, I know you love
your woman and I pray that there’s nothing going on, but just make sure you watch her. Because what I know . . .”
This time I was the one to hold up my hands. “You already said it.”
“I’m just telling you. They’re all scandalous. So if you want to make sure, you need to ask her straight out. Ask her if she’s hittin’ anybody else, if she wants to hit anybody else, if there is anybody else.”
Even though I was still shaking my head, I asked, “So you think my gut . . . you think this is about another man?”
He shrugged. “It always is . . . another man . . . for sex, drugs, or money.”
Trey really was my brother; I’d had the same thoughts.
He kept on. “She doesn’t seem like the drugs type and you got plenty of money, so unless she’s looking at God Himself, it ain’t that.”
He chuckled; I didn’t.
He said, “So, what’s left?” He stayed quiet, leaving me to answer his question. Then he hit it home: “Since I’ve known you, your gut has never been wrong. You’ve never been wrong.”
He stood, gave me a fist bump, then walked out of the room as if he had just dropped the mic.
Trey was right. I had never been wrong. And my gut was talking. The problem was, I had no idea what my gut was saying.
33
Tiffanie
Our honeymoon was a faraway memory, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Damon and I were back on the grind, only now, husband-and-wife was added to our list, and for me that came with many more responsibilities. I was doing everything I could to handle the candle on both ends, working all day, working all night, taking care of the spa, taking care of my man.
I’d been handling it for the last two weeks, even though I have to say all of that had left me beyond exhausted. I was so tired that my bones ached, but at the same time, exhilaration flowed through me.
I was winning.
In truth, I loved taking care of Damon and, with the way he was responding, it was just like grandmother had promised, I really was the great wife that she told me I’d be. But the first chance I got, probably right after my spa opened, I was going to turn into Rip Van Winkle. Well, maybe I wouldn’t sleep for twenty years, but I was looking forward to being in bed for seven days straight.
Lust Page 23