War.

by Shannon Dianne

  “You smell good,” I tell her.

  “That’s my hair perfume.” I give her a long kiss. “You taste good,” she says against my lips. “I love you.”

  “You know, right now’s probably the worst time to mention this but-”

  “Let’s try for that boy.” She smiles.

  “Took the words right out of my mouth.” I lean over her and take her completely in my arms. The feel of Jasmine, of her smooth chocolate skin against my hands, my chest, my groin, sends a chill through me. “I love you,” I whisper against her lips.

  No, Jacob. You will not take my woman from me. I saw you tonight, I see that you want her. But I also saw her resist you. She resisted you. But you know what? It’s pissing me off that you won’t leave my wife alone. It’s making me angry that you won’t let her move on from you. But you know what? Two can play this game, Attorney Blair.

  DEMETRIUS

  “Yo, what’s up?” I say as I rub a hand over my face. What time is it?

  “I need to talk to you.” Marlon. I look at the clock on the bedside table. 1:36 a.m. Sammie moves next to me, draping her leg across me.

  “Marlon, it’s one-thirty in the morning,” I whisper. Sammie adjusts again. “Hold on.” I slide from under her leg and watch her turn her back to me and readjust herself on the bed. I walk over to the chaise and pull my boxers off of it. I walk over to the lamp post and grab my tee off the shade. Where in the hell did Samantha throw my pants? I use my cell as a flashlight and see my pants hanging off the doorknob to the bathroom suite. “One second,” I say to Marlon as I slide my clothes on. The last thing I need is for my kids to see me, yet again, butt-ass naked, courtesy of their mother. Samantha Rosen is a woman who thinks turning a lock to a bedroom door is inconvenient. “Alright,” I say as I head to the bedroom doors.

  “I gotta make this quick. Can’t be on the phone all night.”

  “You called me.” I walk out of the bedroom and close the door quietly behind me.

  “That was just a forewarning in case I have to hang up on you,” he whispers.

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “Jazz is a light sleeper…wait, hold on.” Dead air. Jasmine. Marlon Kyles has always been a damn sucker for love. Never fails. He was like this when we were younger, when he fell for the girl he knew he’d never be able to have (my baby sister) and then rebounded with another girl to cope with the pain of heartache (some girl in college named Marla), who was also unavailable since she was in love with his best friend (some Cali hippie named Jon). So then Marlon was dumped again by Marla after only three weeks, which made him rebound with a girl who ended up sleeping around on him (his future wife, Jasmine) until her other boyfriend married another girl (my ex, Gwenni). See what I mean about Marlon? Never fails with this kid. He always finds himself in some kind of sucker-for-love situation. “Now what’s the problem?”

  “Jacob Blair,” he whispers.

  “Again?” I walk down the hall towards my kids’ rooms.

  “He won’t leave her alone! Shit…hold on…” Dead air.

  “Marlon, what the hell’s-”

  “Shh. Wait …”

  Silence.

  I peek my head into my three-year-old son, Anthony’s, room to check on him before walking down the hall to check in on Tabitha, my nine-month-old. Sleep. Peaceful. Quiet. Thank God. I love my kids, Lord knows I do, but I’ll be damned if bedtime isn’t my new favorite time of day.

  “Marlon, listen, it’s 1:30-”

  “Yeah, babe, I’m just getting a glass of water. You want one?” I hear him say. Oh God…this man is so damn whipped.

  The last time Marlon called me about Jacob Blair was about four or five years ago when he found out that Jasmine had been cheating on him while they were dating. He was heartbroken. (Surprise, surprise.) He happened to call me, crying and shit over the ‘unfairness of it all’ when he mentioned the name Jacob. Jacob who? I asked him. He told me Blair. Hmmm….Blair is Gwenni’s husband. The story was starting to get interesting.

  Jacob Blair is a goddamn card, everybody knows that shit. Gwen was the only person who didn’t know that he was fucking around on her and then paying his women off. Rumor had that one chick by the name of Jocelyn Banes, a socialite from New York, came to Boston to party one weekend. From what I know, she met Jacob at some spot in Boston called Pirahna’s. Apparently he met her on a Friday night and was fucking her well into Saturday morning. From what I hear, she fell in love with the man. Started getting obsessed and shit. Started coming to Boston every weekend. Eventually, she bought a condo in Beacon Hill, the area he lives in. She was starting to show up at his office. Jacob’s father ended up calling her father, a big time general at West Point, asking him to come get his daughter from Boston. His son was married. Jocelyn’s parents called her and told her to come home. She refused. Jacob’s married. She didn’t care. Jacob doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore. She didn’t believe them. His father just called and told us to bring you home. She was devastated. Mrs. Banes came to get her daughter three days after Jacob’s father’s call, only to find Jocelyn Banes hanging from a rope in her bathroom. Her suicide letter was sealed from the public, but since I was in the military, rumor spread of its contents. I loved you. Jake. I loved you. Haunting ass words. He fucked her. Left her. And went home to his wife. This is Gwen’s husband. This is the man that Marlon’s wife was in love with. And this is the man that Marlon is currently calling me about over Jasmine, yet again.

  “Alright, I can’t make this long,” he says as he comes back to the phone.

  “Yes, you’ve told me that. What’s the problem?” I walk down the winding staircase towards the front door. I’m not a Southern plantation home kind of man, something about living in a home that looks like there should be slaves around somewhere never quite settles right with me. But I ended up with an old money South Carolina Geechee girl. These are the homes she grew up in, or as she says, these are the homes of her people. And I continue down the staircase.

  “Jacob is pulling out all the stops to get my wife.”

  “Again?”

  “Tonight, we all happened to be at the same bar and he was all over her.”

  “In front of you?” I ask as I hit the bottom step.

  “Didn’t know I was there…how many ice cubes, Jazz?”

  “Really dude?” I disarm the alarm and open the French doors. The good thing about living in Charleston is that while it’s freezing in most parts of the country this time of year, there’s a comfortable chill here. I landed in this area when I was in the army. I knew I would stay here once I met Samantha Rosen, a raging feminist and the woman who had me eating out of her hand within a month of our meeting. She was a pretty, caramel-brown girl who went to Spelman and became a feminist her freshman year. She’s a trust fund kid so money was never an issue for her, which is why she became an editor for a feminist magazine called Miss Magazine. It brought home pennies but she was content. I met her when I was twenty-eight and she was twenty-seven, at a coffee shop where we were forced to share a table due to overcrowding. We laughed over coffee and cake for about four hours as we compared stories about families, college and pledging. I asked her out for the next day.

  “I’ll sleep with you, but I’m not marrying you. I’ll have your kids, but I’m not changing my last name. I’ll live with you but we’re putting both our names on the deed. I’ll love you but I’ll damn sure leave you if you don’t love me back,” she told me during our first date at Gerry’s Diner. I liked her fire. I liked her spunk. I liked her drive. I liked her legs.

  “I’m in love with you,” I responded.

  “Please.” She bit into her burger. “You’ll know when you love me. Trust me. It’ll hit you like a ton of bricks.” And she was right.

  Seven years later, I’m living with Sammie. She’s given me two kids. She refuses to marry me. Both our names are on the deed to this house and our second home in Hilton Head. I fly her to Atlanta for drinks, Savannah for her
favorite chocolate, and DC when congress is in session and I’m representing our state of South Carolina. I’d give up my life for her. I’d give up my seat in the senate for her. I’d give up everything for her.

  Which is why fucking around with Gwen five years ago was dangerous.

  “Listen, I can’t really talk now but I need your help again,” Marlon says to me.

  “I’m listening.”

  “An eye for an eye,” he says to me. “I need you to come to Boston soon.”

  “Marlon-”

  “Demetrius, this man is trying to ruin my life. He’s trying to steal my wife away from me. All I wanna do is give him a dose of his own medicine.”

  “Again.”

  “Yeah, again.”

  “Because the last time I did it and I ‘happened’ to be at the same club as Gwen, just when she was getting divorced from her husband, it turned ugly. The media almost caught wind of that shit.”

  “And we paid them off.”

  “Regardless. If Sammie would have killed my ass then, imagine what she would do two homes and two kids later.”

  “She’s not going to find out. All you have to do is come to Boston, flirt with Winnie for a week or two, get Jacob riled up and then leave. Come on, where’s that devil-may-care Philly boy I know?”

  “He’s had two kids, muthafucka.”

  “Okay, listen, you’re my attorney and I’m thinking that my wife is fooling around on me. I need legal counsel. And I don’t feel comfortable exchanging information over email…or even over the phone. There’s no telling what those Blairs have going on. Remember, I saw firsthand what Malcolm and Nat did to that journalist who had that picture of Jasmine.”

  “They’re dirty as hell, Marlon.”

  “They are. So, as your client, I need your professional services. In person.” Oh God, why am I even considering this? Marlon and I go way back; our families are big time up in Philly. They go as far back as the Underground Railroad when it traveled through the city. Of course, the Kyles and the Westlakes were a secret back then, but as time passed, slavery ended, and the conductors were revealed, our ancestors became heroes. Add that to the fact that Marlon’s family made a boatload of money from real estate and my family from oil refineries, and we’re the hope and the dream of the slave.

  But no amount of prestige or money can make a person happy.

  I learned that a while ago while in the military working sixteen-hour days as a lawyer. It wasn’t until I met Sammie, retired and became a congressman for South Carolina that I found that happiness is coming home to your woman, your home and your kids. I feel bad that Marlon, with all of his success up in Boston, can have a wife and two kids and still be miserable. Because, let’s face it, since he found out about Jacob and Jasmine, this dude has been looking over his shoulder waiting for Jacob to carry his wife away. I couldn’t live like that.

  Let me talk some sense into this man.

  “Marlon, you’re still pissed about that picture. Look, Blair is married to Gwen. They’ve got about ten or fifteen kids—I’ve lost count. He’ll never leave her and she’ll always run back to him. That’s their dynamic. That’s what they do.”

  “I’m just asking you to screw around with him. Nothing major. Sammie will never find out.”

  “And what do I get out of this?”

  “My friendship.”

  “Something I couldn’t care less about. What else?”

  “You’ll be helping keep a black family united.”

  “Don’t give me that ‘help a brother out’ bullshit.”

  “One week in Boston is all I need. I’m not trying to get divorced. As a black man with a black woman, you should get that. I’m not trying to lose my family.” Oh God…this dude…

  “When, Marlon?”

  “In about a month, I’ve got some clients that need my undivided attention right now.”

  “So glad we’re working on your schedule.”

  “Congress lets out on Wednesdays, right? So you can come to Boston on a Thursday.”

  “Are you forgetting that I live with Samantha Rosen? A women who will cut off my balls and feed them to me for breakfast if she found out I was going to Boston to fuck around with Blair’s wife?”

  “How is Sammie?”

  “Still a feminist. ‘Nuff said.”

  “One week. I’ll even make it worth your while, put you up in a nice hotel, wine and dine you…”

  “Shut the hell up.”

  “Did you tell your mom that I’ll be back in Philly next weekend? I wanted her to cook me her peach cobbler.”

  “Yes, I told her. Listen, I’m not promising anything with this Blair shit. It was fun fucking with him five years ago when I lived alone and didn’t have two kids sleeping down the hall. But it’s different now. You don’t want to lose your family and neither do I. You get that? I’m not fucking up my family.”

  “It’s just a game, D. Nothing to fuck up your family over.”

  “A game, huh?”

  “Listen, think about it. I’ll call you next week. Cool?”

  “Whatever, Marlon.”

  “Oh and tell Ms. Bea that I like when she crumbles the dough on top of the cobbler.”

  “Shut the hell up. Goodbye.”

  “Talk to you later.”

  I hang up, arm the alarm, and head back up the staircase. Walking as gingerly as I can so the floorboards won’t creak and wake up those two people down the hall who claim I created them, I head to my bedroom. Sammie’s still in the same position as before. I ease onto the bed. She moves and then turns around. Opening, her eyes, she takes in my clothes.

  “What’s the clothes about?” she asks as she begins tugging at my shirt. “What, are you cold? Take this off.” I slide out of my shirt and watch her smile.

  “Anything else, Your Highness?”

  “Your pants.” She slides her hand down my chest, abs and then stops it on my pants. She tugs them and my boxers down so that my dick falls out. I go ahead and take them both off for her.

  “Better?” I ask as I lay down in bed.

  “Yes.” She slides her leg over me before looking at the clock. “Give me five minutes,” she says as she slides her entire body down the bed. “I’ll help you out.” Within seconds I feel my dick in her mouth. She smacks. She licks. She sucks. She’s good.

  “Ready,” I say to her as I pull her up. She smiles as I flip her over, spread her legs and bury my dick inside of her. She lets out a loud moan as she buries her fingernails in my back.

  “Damn, D...”

  “Shh…” I lean over and whisper in her ear. “The kids.”

  MALCOLM

  Red and I have three kids. Three. Fucking. Kids. Two boys. One girl on the way. We go to Sunday Mass. We head to the Four Seasons’ brunch afterwards. We get gelato on summer nights. I sit with Nicky in the kitchen and he and I sneak extra cookies out of the batch that Mrs. Fulton makes, when Red’s off Skyping Cadence for their Thursday night book club. I thought she’d never leave, Nicky says when he and I finally get the kitchen alone. I give Roman a bath, throw all his toys inside of it, fill it with bubbles and listen to him say the new words Cadence taught him. This bath is full of anarchy, daddy, he says as he fights his Batman and Spiderman against each other. Red and I sit on the balcony off our bedroom when the boys are in bed. She puts her feet in my lap. We drink an entire bottle of wine. We listen to the Boston night below us. The car horns. Valet blowing whistles to hail cabs. The laughing women. The hollering from a drunken group of men. We notice the flashing neon lights from the blues club across the street. We hear indie bands crooning Stevie Ray Vaughn, trying to get their big break. They usually sound horrible. We laugh until Red says, I think I’m tipsy. She nods towards the bedroom. I slide out of my chair and lead her inside. I pin her down on the bed until she tells me that there’s no dick on the planet like mine. I bury my tongue in her mouth to stop her from waking the boys up. I bite on it as her pants come closer together. I make her look at me whe
n she’s coming. I bury her in my arms after we’re finished. We go to sleep, wake up and start our day all over again.

  She’s not leaving me. I’m not leaving her. This is our lives we’re talking about here. Fuck a drink. Fuck a brunette in a bar. Fuck a blond.

  Fuck Jon.

  I knock on the door three times. Not hard enough to wake the neighbors, since it is only 6:30 in the morning, but just hard enough to let Red know that I haven’t been to sleep all night and what I really want is to be back in my bed beside her. Listen, I get why she’s mad at me. I understand her reasoning. I’m not blaming her anger on hormones. I’m not blaming it on the baby. I get it; she saw me, laid the hell back, enjoying a Scotch next to another woman and sliding my bank card to the bartender. Here, it’s on me, baby. She’s mad. I’m not going to try to make her see my side of the story. I won’t give her any justifications. I won’t tell her that I couldn’t care less about these women. That I don’t want their conversation. I don’t want their time. I don’t want their pussy.

  I’m not a Monk, I see nice-looking women all the time. Come on, we live in Boston. But why leave Red for another woman? What would be the point of it? Why go sleep with another woman? Just so I can see her dressed in black lace? Or hear her say my name? Or feel her suck my dick? Or feel how wet she is? Or watch her as she rides me? Or slide her on her back and tell her to spread her legs wide? Or hear the clapping sound her ass makes every time it lands on my groin? No disrespect, but can I be honest with you? I don’t have to go out looking for that shit. I get that at home. So why would I cheat?

  I give the front door three more soft knocks.

  I would’ve gone to my parents’ house last night but Red took my keys. So Jacob and I went to the Four Seasons. As soon as I got to the suite, I showered, shaved, put on the sweats, sneakers, a tee and hoodie from my gym bag, sat on the bed and waited until it turned six. Then I hopped up, left Jake a note that I went home, ran downstairs, hailed a cab to Starbucks on Tremont and bought Red and myself tall coffees. Decaf for her with six raw sugars and whipped cream on top. Then I took a cab to my condo building. I know it’s early. I know she’s probably asleep. But I don’t care. I’m not about to lose my wife. I’m not even about to argue with her. I just want back in.