Commitment

by Forrester, Nia

  “Yes,” Tracy nodded. “I’m about to. You can’t do this. Not like this. Not so soon. I mean, who is he anyway? Do you even know who he is, Riley?”

  “That didn’t seem to bother you when you wanted me to get you tickets to Streisand.”

  “Streisand tickets are one thing. Trying to marry my best friend is another.”

  “You were the one who said you could see that he loves me,” Riley said, her voice quiet.

  Tracy nodded. “I believe he does.”

  “So what’s the . . .?”

  “Riley. Neither of us is dumb enough to believe that’s the only important thing when it comes to marriage. Right?”

  Riley nodded. “You sound like my mother.”

  “You already talked to Lorna about this?”

  “Sort of,” Riley didn’t look at her. “I told her that he proposed; that’s all.”

  “And that was probably plenty enough for her to be able to tell how much you want to say yes. Just like I can tell.”

  “I love him,” Riley said simply. She looked at Tracy and shrugged. “There. I’ve said it. So if you can tell me how to make that go away, I’m all ears.”

  “Do you want it to go away?” Tracy asked.

  Riley said nothing. Of course she didn’t. Loving Shawn was terrifying and unexpected and defied all common sense but she most definitely did not want it to go away.

  Tracy sighed. “Let’s go get some breakfast before you pass out again.”

  Harambe was crowded with the usual Sunday cast of characters – writers and dancers and assorted artsy types, eating croissant and drinking cappuccino. Riley and Tracy usually ordered the full breakfast, with pancakes and eggs scrambled with cheese and a ham steak on the side, but the tension had robbed them of their appetite. Riley got an americano with a low fat muffin and Tracy stuck to green tea.

  “I’m just scared for you,” she said. “That you’ll get hurt. That he’ll take you for granted, or treat you like some oiled-down video hoochie, or cheat on you or beat you.”

  “So basically, all of the stereotypes about rappers,” Riley said bitterly.

  “Yes,” Tracy nodded. “I admit it. I’m prejudiced. And let’s face it, Riley, stereotypes don’t come from nowhere.”

  “If I do this, Tracy, you can’t be waiting in the wings to say you told me so at the first sign of trouble.”

  “I won’t. But you have to let me catch my breath for a minute. My best friend, my sister . . .” Tracy reached across the table and grabbed Riley’s hand. “. . . is about to get married to a man I don’t know at all. A man she barely knows herself.”

  “I haven’t made that decision,” Riley said quietly.

  Tracy smiled sadly. “Oh yes you have.”

  Riley didn’t deny it.

  “Just promise me one thing,” Tracy said.

  “What is it?”

  “That you won’t buy a Cadillac Escalade.”

  “No chrome rims?” Riley asked with mock seriousness.

  “And no chinchilla seat covers,” Tracy added, shaking her head.

  They both laughed.

  “If he hurts you, you tell him, I will hunt him down and personally kill his ass,” Tracy said.

  “Well. I think I’ll wait to share that until he gets you the Streisand tickets.”

  Tracy smiled. “Good idea.”

  g

  Shawn wasn’t in the suite when she got back so Riley crawled into bed with her laptop and turned on CNN. The hotel wasn’t home, but there was a certain reassurance to seeing his shirt thrown over the back of a chair, a pair of his boots peeking out of the closet. He was gone, but only for the moment. For a change, she had tangible evidence that he would be back. Her own clothes were still stuffed into her duffle bag.

  On a whim, she shoved aside her laptop and began the task of pulling things out and putting them on hangers, folding others and placing them in the cedar chest of drawers alongside Shawn’s. Near the bottom of the duffle was the blue box. She’d brought it along telling herself that it was because she didn’t want to leave so expensive a piece of jewelry in her apartment while she was away.

  She took it out of the box now and turned it over in her fingers. It was the most exquisite thing she had ever been given, sparkling like a star in her hand. Riley inhaled and literally held her breath while sliding it onto the index finger of her left hand. It fit perfectly. She extended her arm and surveyed it from different angles, trying to get used to the sight of it. If she wanted it, this would be hers. But more importantly, Shawn would be hers, and there was no question that she wanted him.

  She kept the ring on her finger even after she was done putting her clothes away and resumed her work on the laptop, testing how it might feel to wear it all the time. After a few minutes, she didn’t even remember it was there and her fingers moved as nimbly across the keyboard as they always had. Halfway through the outline of an article she was proposing for the March issue, she heard the door to the suite.

  It was Shawn and Brendan dressed as though they’d been to the gym, but the grass and mud stains on their sweats told her they’d instead been outside.

  “Did you guys get into a street fight or something?”

  “Football. Prospect Park,” Brendan explained, collapsing on the sofa. Shawn dived into bed and Riley put her laptop aside, making room for his head on her lap.

  “How was yoga?” he asked.

  She raked her fingers over his scalp. “Fine until I fainted.”

  Shawn sat up abruptly, his eyes concerned. “What happened?”

  Riley shrugged. “It was Bikram.”

  “What the hell is Bikram?” Brendan asked idly as he flipped channels.

  “They call it fire yoga,” Riley explained. “They keep the room really hot. I wasn’t properly hydrated, that’s all.”

  “But you’re okay now.”

  Shawn was still looking at her as though checking for broken parts. His gaze stopped at her hands, and something flickered in his eyes, something that could only be described as elation. And then Riley remembered.

  She was still wearing the ring.

  Shawn’s eyes rose to hers once again, silently questioning. She looked down and took a breath. He put a hand beneath her chin and tipped her head upward so they were eye to eye once again. She could have said it was a misunderstanding. But it wasn’t. Admittedly, she hadn’t thought it completely through yet, and for sure the timing wasn’t what she would have planned, with Brendan sitting sweaty and dirty, less than ten feet away watching ESPN. But the truth was, of course she would marry Shawn. Of course, if the alternative was to lose him.

  So she mouthed the word ‘yes’ and watched as his face opened up into an unbelievable smile.

  g

  Chapter Five

  The darkness surprised him as he stepped out onto the sidewalk, and Shawn turned on his phone, disoriented for a moment. It was almost ten-thirty; he had been in the studio for eleven hours. Eleven hours and he’d accomplished absolutely nothing. Brendan exited the building right behind him and looked up.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t realize it was this late,” Shawn said. His phone chimed as it powered on and a series of text messages flashed across the screen.

  “This is how it starts,” Brendan laughed. “Not even your wife yet and blowing up your shit.”

  Shawn ignored him and scanned the messages. Riley letting him know she was leaving work, another letting him know she figured he was working and so was going to meet Tracy for drinks. A third, telling him they were at Harambe and she would be back around midnight.

  “She’s out with her girl,” Shawn said, scrolling through the messages. “C’mon take me back to the hotel.”

  “Which girl? Tracy?”Brendan asked, interested now.

  “Yeah.” Shawn looked at him. “B, believe me when I tell you, you are most definitely not her type.”

  Brendan laughed. “Don’t sleep on your boy. Tracy and I shared a moment in L.A., many m
oments in fact.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah, when you and Riley were beefin’ I took her shopping that morning.”

  “She was using you for the ride, B.”

  Brendan shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, you want to humiliate yourself, let’s go find them,” Shawn said.

  “What time is it?” Brendan glanced at his wrist though he wasn’t wearing a watch. “I guarantee you I will be balls deep by one a.m., you watch.”

  “Maybe we should put some money on that.”

  Brendan shook his head. “No. Because that would be crass.”

  Shawn laughed. “Shut up, man. Let’s go.”

  It took them only twenty minutes to find Harambe Café with the help of the GPS, but parking was a lot more challenging, so Brendan dropped Shawn off out front and went in search of the ever-elusive free downtown parking spot. Inside the café, it was thankfully dark, so no one seemed to notice him other than the hostess, who smiled and nodded her recognition, asking whether he needed a table. Everyone else was focused on the stage where a brother with waist-long dreads was doing some kind of spoken word performance, his mouth close to the mike, his voice a soothing, baritone hum.

  “A spot at the bar would be good,” Shawn told her, keeping his voice low.

  The bar was in the dimmest section of the café, and would give him a vantage point from which he might spot Riley. The hostess walked him toward the bar with a flashlight which she aimed downward, like an usher in a movie theater. Shawn chose a seat that was at the far end that looked to have just been vacated, if the abandoned beer glass in front of it was any indication. The hostess, a pretty sister who was rocking an Angela Davis ‘fro, signaled to the bartender to clean it up, and nodded her confirmation that Shawn should take the seat.

  “It’s open mike tonight,” she whispered. “You think you might want to get up there and give our customers a surprise performance?”

  Shawn shook his head. “No thanks. I’m off the clock.”

  “Understandable. But I think you know that I had to ask,” she said squeezing his leg.

  He glanced down at her hand, which had lingered just a moment too long to be casual.

  “I’m Marnie,” she said. “If you need anything.”

  “Thanks Marnie,” he said. He turned to face the stage so she would know she was being dismissed.

  The place was jam-packed, with only a few empty seats in the whole house, and from what Shawn could tell, those seats were only vacant because so many people had chosen to sit on the floor, directly in front of the stage to be closer to the performers. He looked around, taking it all in. It was Hipster Central in here. Just about every woman was rocking a natural of some kind: dreads, braids, nappy and curly ‘fros. And the brothers all looked like some variation of Maxwell, circa 1996.

  So this was Riley’s tribe.

  He recognized traces of her in the distressed clothing everyone seemed to be wearing, and the casual disregard for conventional standards of beauty. No one in this crowd would be rocking Prada or Dolce and Gabbana, that was for damn sure. Even if they could afford, it, these were the folks who shunned labels on principle. Daily, he was being oriented to that world bit by painful bit. Just last week, Shawn had told Riley a bold-faced lie when she asked him whether her engagement ring was made of conflict-free diamonds.

  He searched the tables for her with no luck and then completely unexpectedly, saw Tracy. She was one of only a handful of women in the whole place with straightened hair and tailored clothes that looked like they actually fit. She was listening to the brother onstage with an expression of mild interest, but nothing like the rapt attention that almost everyone else was displaying. So clearly this was not her scene as much as it was Riley’s.

  Moments later, Shawn spotted his fiancée. Riley was about ten feet away from Tracy, in a corner of the cafe, not looking at the stage at all. Instead, she was completely focused on someone who, though their back was Shawn, seemed familiar all the same. Her face betrayed signs of strain and she was shaking her head emphatically, as though denying something. And that was when he knew who it was. Brian.

  His immediate impulse was to get over there and put some distance between them, but Brian wasn’t actually touching Riley, so Shawn forced himself to take a deep breath and bit down on his lower lip. He took in every detail about her gestures, trying to read what was being talked about. But of course, he knew what was being talked about; most likely the fact that she was about to be married. And to the guy she’d cheated with, no less.

  Shawn was surprised that he felt absolutely no sense of empathy for his rival. Given that he knew what it felt like to almost lose Riley, he would have thought that he could muster up something. But no, all he thought looking at them across the room together was about how to get Riley as far away from Brian as possible.

  Fuck this shit, he thought.

  She was with him now. No way was he going to sit here shadow-boxing while Riley had a heart-to-heart with her ex-boyfriend. He shoved himself up off his bar stool and tried to make out the best path to her. He didn’t care if she was mad or not, he was putting an end to this little tête-à-tête.

  Maybe it was his movement that caught her eye but the next thing he knew, Tracy was looking directly at him, squinting somewhat in the dim light. She turned to look at Riley and inclined her head in the direction of the exit. Shawn narrowed his eyes, not comprehending for a moment until she did it again and turned on her heel to push her way through to crowd and toward the exit.

  What the hell did she want? Chances were, she’d set the whole reconciliation up. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Tracy did not approve of him, but he’d decided for the sake of peace in his future household not to address it. For better or for worse, Riley came with an extra, troublesome appendage.

  When Shawn got outside, she was already there, not wearing her coat, so clearly her plan was for this conversation to be a quick one. Rubbing her hands together to ward off the cold, Tracy took a deep breath and advanced a few steps to meet him.

  “Riley didn’t mention that you were coming,” she said.

  “She didn’t know,” he said, looking in the direction of the café. “Obviously.”

  Tracy rolled her eyes. “Look,” she said. “I’ve known Riley a lot longer than you have. So a word to the wise; don’t go in there and make some kind of ghetto-ass scene because she’s having a conversation with someone.”

  “Wha . . . do you know me or something?” Shawn said.

  “Believe me, I’ve heard all about you,” Tracy said. “And I was in L.A., remember? When you emotionally blackmailed her into . . .”

  “Tracy, this is none of your business,” Shawn said, struggling for composure.

  “I disagree,” she said, her voice clipped. “But in any event, I’m telling you that Riley is not the kind of woman you try to hem up. So if you go in there and try to get into some kind of dick-measuring contest with Brian, I can almost guarantee you there will be no wedding.”

  That got his attention, as she had to know it would. Tracy blinked and her expression changed from confrontational to triumphant.

  “And I should believe you because you really want there to be a wedding,” Shawn said.

  “You know I don’t. But she does.” Tracy shrugged. “I don’t understand it, but there it is. She wants you.”

  Hearing the words spoken by someone who had no interest in them being true, placated him somewhat. But still . . . Shawn glanced at the café again.

  “He was her friend, too, Shawn,” Tracy said, her voice more sympathetic this time. “Try to understand that. She lost a friend, as well, not just some guy she dated.”

  If that was supposed to make him feel better, it had the opposite effect. To be reminded that there were layers to her relationship with Brian went right to the core of what worried Shawn most about his comparatively new connection with Riley. No matter how you looked at it, they were only just
now getting to know each other. Every single day was a revelation.

  Waking up with her, sharing meals, watching television – it was all new territory, and all of it was good. The last thing he needed was to be reminded of the dude who had tread all over that ground before he even got there. The photo of Riley and Brian that he’d lifted from her apartment spoke of events, good times and a shared history that Shawn had not yet built with her.

  “She made her choice,” Shawn said shrugging. “It is what it is. Now she’s supposed to pat him on the head and make him feel good about it?”

  Tracy sighed. “So you’re going in there, is that what you’re saying?”

  “I didn’t come here to bust anybody. But I’m sure as hell not sneaking out like some punk. She’s about to be my wife, Tracy. All this other shit? His hurt feelings and what-not, I couldn’t give a fuck about.”

  Before she could respond, Brendan showed up. Tracy looked at them both and heaved a deep sigh, turning on her heel and heading back inside.

  “What the hell did you do now?” Brendan asked.

  “Riley’s ex-boyfriend’s in there. Tracy was trying to get me to leave. You believe that? I should leave.”

  Brendan laughed.

  “I’m going back in,” Shawn said. “You coming?”

  Brendan shrugged. “As long as they have a bar. But something’s telling me you messed my whole deal up.”

  “What deal?” Shawn said, shaking his head. “She was never going to give you any.”

  “That’s what you say,” Brendan mumbled under his breath.

  By the time they got back inside, the stage was empty, the patrons had resumed their chatter, and the room was in motion once again. Shawn scanned the crowd, looking for Riley and found her not far from where she’d been talking to Brian, but this time she was with Tracy alone, and was looking about the room, searching the faces. When she found him, she came toward him with no hesitation, wrapping her arms about his waist and smiling a greeting at Brendan.

  “Hey,” she said. “How was the studio?”

  “Lost track of time,” he said.