by Kenya Wright
A few months later, I stood in Ford Enterprises where Nick asked me out, after the contract signing. Although excited about my new wealth, my broken heart had darkened my days. Nick swooped me up and distracted me. He kept my mind off of the one-who-must-not-ever-be-named. Not that Nick had an easy time courting me. Bearing a damaged heart meant that most of the time, I considered all men douchebags. I’d said no to Nick over and over until he changed his approach and started sending me his poetry.
What a talented man.
People thought that physical attributes ensnared a lover. No way. The mind set the trap. Delicate words strengthened the bars. Considerate actions reinforced the lock. Every time I thought I would give up, take off his ring, and leave his mansion, Nick placed another poem on my desk.
The man jailed me with his words.
My phone beeped. I glanced at Nick’s new text message.
Nick: Sorry, I can’t come tonight. We’ll do something special this weekend. Isn’t your birthday coming up? I’ll have to get you something big. What do you want?
“What?” I scrunched my face up in confusion. “You bought me the laptop for my birthday last week. Don’t you remember? What is going on?”
Was it really from Nick? What the hell is going on?
My phone beeped again. I checked Nick’s new message.
Nick: Sweetie, what do you want for your birthday? I have to go soon. Adrian is starving over here.
Outside my door, footsteps sounded. No one else lived in the mansion but Adrian, Nick, and me. The servants barely walked on this level and when they did, it was with great silence. Those footsteps are Adrian’s. Nick, you’re such a lying bastard.
“So let’s see how far the rabbit hole goes.” I picked up my phone to type a message.
Me: Hmm. What should you get me? Maybe a new laptop to write my books on.
Nick: Sure. I’ll buy you a laptop. That’s a great idea. The best that money can buy.
Me: Do you know anything about buying laptops?
Nick: I don’t know. That’s a weird question.
Me: I’m just wondering. You’ve bought a laptop in the past year, right?
Nick: Ha Ha. I have no need for a laptop. No. It’s probably been years since I’ve bought anything electronic. Adrian usually handles that.
So Adrian bought me the birthday gift and said it was from his father? Why?
The image of Adrian stroking his dick with my shorts ran through my mind.
Oh yeah. Adrian has a crush on me.
My phone beeped again. I didn’t even check to see what Nick had said. As far as I was concerned, Nick and I were done. He’d get the message when he saw my things were gone.
“You can’t just heal a broken heart by rushing into the arms of another,” Mom had said when I showed her my engagement ring.
“He’s a good man.”
“But he’s a man. That’s the problem. You’ve only known him for how long?”
“Enough.”
“Look at you.” She shook her head, picked up her remote control, and returned to Good Morning America. “Enough is what you say? Well, when a man pushes so quickly you won’t get enough. You’re both still in the honeymoon stage.”
“Oh, here we go.” I plopped down on the couch next to her. “We’re not in the honeymoon stage.”
“Every relationship has a honeymoon stage. Everything is so awesome and beautiful.” Mom muted the TV and tucked one of her gray dreadlocks behind her ear. “You love him, and he loves you. Then the honeymoon stage ends.”
“I’ve loved and lost. I know about the honeymoon stage.”
“Then, you should wait till the honeymoon is over to wear that ring.”
I slumped in my seat. “I don’t know.”
“You’re just brokenhearted from Paul.”
“We don’t say that name. You promised me that you’d respect that.”
Mom laughed. “I must have been drinking too much scotch to agree to something so foolish.”
“It’s not foolish.”
“Then childish. If you can’t even hear Paul’s name without feeling like crap, you definitely shouldn’t be wearing another man’s ring.”
I refused to say anything. Mom was a writer herself. She penned relationship books after twenty years of counseling troubled couples. She had several family therapy centers down the east coast. To argue with Mom about relationships was to be wrong.
“What do I do?” I looked at her. “I told him yes. I can’t hurt him like that.”
“Well, if you refuse to put your big girl panties on then I guess you could respectfully request a long engagement. Three to five years at least. By then, the honeymoon stage will be gone, and you both will have clearer heads.”
The next day, I presented it to Nick. He quickly agreed, and I moved in.
Now the honeymoon stage is not only over, I doubt it ever began.
My stomach growled. Since I figured Adrian had probably left the house, I decided to grab some dinner. My watch read 8:00 p.m. It had been a long day filled with a masturbating stepson, erotica-drenched fantasy, and a lying fiancé. It was time to get some food into my belly and then start packing. I couldn’t live in this house anymore. The walls reeked with wickedness.
I opened my door and bumped into a tiny box on the floor. The label on the box read: To Carmen.
From a very sorry stepson.
“Really? Can we just finish the day in peace?” I picked up the box, unwrapped the gold paper, and pulled off the top. Inside, several notebooks rested. However, the one on top caught my eye. My name had been written over and over on the cover. Not by a madman driven crazy with his love, but with delicate strokes amid flowers.
Flowers!
I didn’t know what shocked me more: that Adrian, this eligible, rich bachelor even had the time to write in a journal, or that the man doodled flowers in his spare time.
Oh God. Let’s see what he’s written. If this damn book is crowded with doodles of his dick, I’m going to lose it and beat his behind.
My birthday laptop popped into my mind, the one that I now knew Adrian gave me.
Well, he’s not all that bad. He tried to lift my spirits by saying that the present was from Nick.
I opened the journal and looked at the pages. Poetry. Lots of it, and all with recent dates.
“Wait a minute, this journal starts with the day I moved in.” I leaned against the doorway and turned to the next poem without even reading the first one. The new poem had an explanation in parenthesis written in blue ink.
“Carmen, I wrote this poem after I finished your final book. I read them all in a month, by the way. Your words had me addicted. I just wanted you to know what you do to me.”
And then I read his poem.
Mind Sex
Her words were chaos against my skin,
lyrical thrusts
that
triggered warmth
in the most intimate places.
She was beauty and the beast.
She snared my mind
and encased my flesh with hunger.
Intoxicating.
Wisps of lavender and rose.
My surroundings darkened to a black tunnel
where she stood at the brightened end.
No one else existed.
What was once a crowded life
now withered away.
If this was a hunt,
then she’d captured me.
If she prowled the land as a predator,
then I would lie down in front of Carmen,
and be her prey.
I gulped in my shock and closed the journal with shaking hands. My whole body rocked with turbulence—my brain clouded, heart raced, and sweat beaded around my forehead. Nothing entered a lover like words; not tongue, cock, or skilled fingers. The sweetest sentence could make me come if said just right. Adrian’s poem was foreplay—the writing flickered against my nipples as if he’d lapped at those points himself.
How is he able to keep me unbalanced?
Something else hit me. A hard truth. I reread the poem. Wait a minute. Anytime I read, I studied the words, learned the author’s cadence, and could pick out the author’s work from a few lines.
“Nick never wrote that poetry.” I closed my eyes. “Adrian did. Every last damn poem was his.”
My body tensed.
“Is he Catharsis?”
No one knew the poet’s identity, although he’d been publishing for years. The poet’s bio picture was a black crow perched on top of the world. Had he gotten the image of the crow from his love of Edgar Allen Poe? Could Adrian be Catharsis? Anyone could hide his or her identity from the public for a short amount of time, but to be so well hidden for five years—that took money.
“He just might be Catharsis.”
Excitement surged through my veins. A grin replaced my smile. Warmth crept into all the naughtiest places.
Adrian is Catharsis! Okay. Calm down. It might not even be him. Relax. So what if it’s him? You’re not a groupie.
But in actuality, I’d been in love with Catharsis since his first book. The man could write. There was no denying it. And he looked at things deeper than most—dissecting life like a scientist diced microorganisms in his lab. I had all of his books—The Keeper, Silence, The Blood-Drenched Mother, and even Lonely Heart. A few times I bought extra copies and gave them away as gifts.
Too bad Catharsis was Adrian.
It might have been shocking to admit out loud, but I would lie down in any bed and ride Catharsis until his brains exploded. But that was something I couldn’t do with Adrian. He was Nick’s son. It would be wrong and make everything way too complicated. It didn’t matter that his father was a liar and probably couldn’t give two shits about me. I didn’t fuck my lover’s sons. That just wasn’t right.
But why did Adrian give me his poetry to read?
I blew out a long breath. “And the plot thickens.”
Chapter 6
Here goes nothing
Adrian
I sat at the table right as Carmen strolled into the dining room with a smile on her face and one of my journals in her hand.
Okay. That may or may not be a good sign that she’s holding my poetry.
Many possibilities ran through my skull. Perhaps she planned to knock me over my head. It could’ve been why her smile symbolized happiness. I’d earned a good knocking after all the things I’d done. Many things she had no idea about.
I’ve read enough to know how this ends. The hero never gets the girl when the hero gets caught jacking off in the girl’s room. Many things could happen to him, but not a happily ever after.
Carmen placed the notebook on the table and eased herself into her seat.
I probably should have left her alone and just ate my meal in peace, but I couldn’t be so close to her without at least hearing her voice. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Very sorry.”
Nodding her head, she grabbed the napkin off the table and laid it on her lap. “We’re fine. I assume you won’t be in my room again like a pervert, right?”
Unless you ask me to come into your room. Then baby, I’m your man.
Luckily, I wasn’t stupid enough to say that all out loud. “You’re correct. I’ll be good from now on.”
“Fine,” she said.
“Good.”
“Awesome.”
“Beyond awesome.”
She grinned.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re Catharsis.”
“What?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I read this journal and another that was in the box. You’re Catharsis. When your dad showed me his poems, and I use the term his poems very lightly, when he showed me them, I had my doubts.”
“Okay.” I didn’t know where this was going, but I refused to say too much.
“You wrote the poems that your father gave me. Right?”
I nodded. “True, but it could be dumb luck that I was able to emulate Catharsis.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Your father got his millions from the ground up. You were classically trained in all the arts. You always beat me in our poetry reciting challenge. You’ve got all of the greats memorized.”
Still not confirming her guess, I said, “When I was a kid I used to sit next to my bedroom window, hold a favorite poetry book open, and do my best to memorize every last line. I started with Poe, then ventured on to Yeats.”
“Why?”
“Why Yeats after Poe?”
“No, why memorize poems?”
“It was the only way I could get my mother’s bloody body out of my mind.”
“Oh.” She paused for a few seconds. “Nick told me that your mother...committed suicide, but did you find her body?”
“No, I read the news articles. As a kid, I imagined what my mother looked like dead. Some gas station attendant found her.”
“Poetry helped you get that image out of your mind?”
“It helped. Words healed me. It’s why I named myself Catharsis when I secretly published my work. Catharsis is the process of releasing strong or repressed emotions. That’s what poetry did for me.”
“That’s amazing.”
“I’m going to need you to keep my pen name a secret.”
“Okay.”
“Right now, only you and Dad know.”
She placed her hand on the table. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. I’ve never had a woman in my life to tell. I think you’re that woman. That’s why I shared them with you.”
“I feel honored, but—”
“I know. I’m just telling you why I left the poems at your door.”
The staff brought several dishes out. We both remained quiet until they finished and left the dining area.
Usually, a crystal chandelier bathed the whole room in light. Tonight, I asked the staff to turn everything off and surround the room with candles. They’d done their job. At least fifty were spread out all over the place—on the table as part of a floral centerpiece, near the serving trays, and on every polished mahogany windowsill.
I looked at the window for a few seconds and tried to gain my composure. Carmen had changed into a sundress that mirrored the moon. It was a creamy garment that hugged her body and glowed around her. It brought out the smooth brown of her skin, and I yearned to tear it away to see what lay underneath. Outside, the trees rustled in the wind and ripe fruit dangled, begging to be picked before all of the juices dripped and evaporated.
I turned back to her and noticed the interesting earrings she wore tonight—long roped pearls that fell to her shoulders. When she moved her head just a little, they probably tickled the skin on her shoulders. I’d never been so jealous of jewelry. I breathed her in, inhaling her fragrance of roses mixed with the vanilla aroma rising from the candles.
“Will Dad be joining us this evening?” I asked.
“Nope.” She scooped up a little pasta and set it on her plate. “Apparently, he and his son, Adrian had a busy day at the office. You both are currently rushing off to eat a quick meal and then hurry back to finish more work.”
Dad is slipping. That means he’s done with her. He’s not even taking the time to cover his lies with me.
I stared at her in a daze. “So... ”
“So what, Adrian?”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to finish eating and then pack my bags.” She added roasted duck to her plate. “We can look at this as sort of a goodbye dinner between us.” She grinned. “The last supper.”
I froze. My face probably wore a horrified expression because when she looked up at me, she stopped filling her plate.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“You’re leaving?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because your dad is a douchebag.” She returned to filling her plate th
an stopped. “Oh wait. You know what? I’m sorry. That’s not right to say that to you.”
“Trust me. I’ve known from the beginning that you were more than my dad deserved.”
She raised her eyebrows. “And why’s that?”
“Because you’re...,” I sighed. “Everything about you appeals to the true me. Not the Adrian who’s discussed on celebrity gossip blogs. You complement the real me.”
“You don’t even know me.”
I thought about all the weeks I watched her. “I know you more than most.”
“Prove it,” she snorted.
“Your mother wasn’t a crack whore that sold her body to get by. She’s actually an affluent family therapist.”
She dropped her fork. The metal clinked against the plate. “Umm...how do you know that? Did you have me checked out or something?”
“Even worse, but that doesn’t matter anymore.”
She didn’t touch her food or pick up the fork. “It does matter.”
“Why did you lie about your mother?”
“Because for my first book, no one believed that an impoverished community could be as bad as I said it was in Concrete Rose. The publishers and agents didn’t get it. They wanted an expert opinion, apparently, so I changed my author name and bio and resubmitted the manuscript.”
“You pretended that the character in Concrete Rose was you?”
She bit her lip. “Yes.”
“How did your mom feel about that?”
“She didn’t care. The main character in that first story was her. The whole book was about her life. Mom wanted the story out there as a warning to mothers to be more protective of their children. She also hoped it would heal someone who picked up my book and was going through the same thing. Child molestation is one of her biggest fights. She could not care less how the word got out there, as long as it did.”