Three Is A Crowd

by Chenell Parker

  “Fuck that bitch! I’m sorry but I don’t have a sympathetic bone in my body for her ass. She’s getting back everything that she dished out and more,” Dray argued right as their food came to the table.

  “This look delicious,” Sassy said when she sat his plate down in front of him.

  Once again, Jersi was overcome with emotion. Sassy had the same lobster dish that Memphis had when they first went there. She didn’t know when or if the pain from their breakup would go away but she was tired of crying.

  “Not again Jersi. You’re starting to depress me. Let’s just pack the food up and get out of here,” Dray said as he signaled for the waitress to bring the bill.

  “I got it,” someone said as they walked over to their table.

  Jersi lifted her head and almost jumped out of her chair when she saw Memphis standing there. He took some money out of his pocket and threw enough on the table to cover their bill.

  “Yay!” Sassy dramatically clapped and cheered.

  “Let’s go,” he said as he held his hand out for Jersi to take. Instead of grabbing his hand, she jumped into his arms and wrapped her legs around his waist. People were looking at them like they were crazy but they didn’t care.

  “Damn bitch,” Dray said as he watched Memphis carry her out of the restaurant. Once they got to his car, he sat Jersi on the hood and stood in between her legs.

  “What’s with all the tears? You know I hate that shit,” Memphis said as he wiped her face with the tail of his shirt. He didn’t care that her makeup got all over his white polo. He just hated to see her cry.

  “I miss you and I’m miserable,” Jersi admitted.

  “I miss you too baby,” Memphis said as he pulled her into a tight hug.

  He didn’t remember the exact moment that Jersi went from being a want to a need. All he did know was that he was miserable without her. Memphis was on a date with a woman he’d met in the mall a few days before when he spotted Jersi and her crew walking into the restaurant. His heart skipped a beat when he saw how beautiful she looked. He watched her sitting at the table crying and he knew that she was just as fucked up as he was. He hid his true emotions from everyone but it was obviously too hard for Jersi to do. Memphis felt bad but he ended his date early and apologized for being rude. As soon as his female companion left, he wasted no time going to Jersi’s table. The love that he had for her was beyond understanding and he wasn’t trying to comprehend it.

  “I’m sorry for everything and I swear that it will never happen again,” Jersi sniffled.

  “Stop apologizing Jersi. I listened to every voicemail and read every message that you sent. Trust me, I know how you feel,” Memphis assured her.

  “I don’t have anything to hide Memphis. I’ll tell you everything,” Jersi said.

  “I don’t want to know anything Jersi. I trust you. We wouldn’t be here right now if I didn’t. From this point on, everything that happened is in the past. I won’t bring it up again and neither will you,” Memphis replied.

  In a way, he and Jersi were a lot alike. Being hurt, whether in a relationship or by a loved one, caused people to do crazy things. Her seeking retaliation against her ex and his wife was no different than what he did with his father. She wanted them to feel her pain and he wanted his father to feel the same. He couldn’t cast a stone in her direction because he wasn’t without fault himself.

  “I love you,” Jersi said as she squeezed him tight.

  “I love you more baby,” Memphis replied.

  “I’m starving,” Jersi said as he looked up at him.

  “Yeah, you feel a lil lighter,” Memphis observed.

  “Stressing,” Jersi admitted.

  “Yeah, I know the feeling. We need to stop by your house and then we can grab something to eat,” Memphis said as he picked her up and placed her on her feet.

  “What do we need to stop by my house for? Dray has been staying with me, so we won’t have any privacy,” Jersi noted.

  “We’re not staying. We need to get you enough stuff to last for a while. It’s been a month and you’re not leaving my house no time soon,” Memphis said making her smile.

  Jersi was happy that Dray forced her out of the house. If he hadn’t, she probably wouldn’t have run into Memphis again. For the first time in a while she smiled and felt complete. She had her other half back and she would do whatever it took to make sure she kept him.

  B lake was excited when Jersi agreed to meet him at the park where they used to hang out. He was all smiles until he got there and saw that Dray and Ariel were with her. He had gone all out and purchased her a few gifts, thinking that they were gonna spend some time together. He was confused about a few things but he needed to know what was up.

  “Hey y’all,” Blake spoke as he walked over to them.

  Dray and Ariel spoke back and walked off to give him and Jersi some privacy. Blake took a seat right next to Jersi and turned his body to face her.

  “Hey, I wanted to talk to you about a few things,” Jersi stated.

  After having a long talk with Memphis, he agreed to let her end whatever it was that Blake thought they had. He must have gotten a new number because he’d called or texted Jersi multiple times a day. He was a modern day stalker and it was annoying. Memphis told her not to go anywhere near him alone and that’s why Dray and Ariel were present. Their relationship was back on the right track and they were both determined to keep it that way. She wanted to let Blake down easy in hopes that he would get the point. She didn’t want to be in a situation like the one Dray was in with Donovan.

  “Yeah but I thought it was just going to be the two of us. I got something for you,” Blake said as he grabbed her hand. Before he could bring it up to his lips for a kiss, Jersi gently pulled it back.

  “Blake, listen, I was wrong for messing with you again and I can’t do it anymore. Honestly, me dealing with you at all was more about Mariah than anything else. I was hurt and I wanted her to feel the same pain. I’m sorry,” Jersi apologized, making Blake’s heart race in his chest.

  “I know that what Mariah and I did to you was fucked up and I’m prepared to spend the rest of my life making it up to you. You were my first and I want you to be my last. I’ll do whatever I have to do to make this work,” Blake replied.

  “It’ll never work because it’s not what I want. I’m in a relationship and I’m in love and happy. I’m sorry Blake but this will be my last time seeing you,” Jersi said as she handed him the elevator key to the penthouse.

  “Don’t do this Jersi, please. What do you want me to do? I’ll call Mariah right now and ask for a divorce. I’ll buy us another house and let her and my girls keep the old one. Just tell me what I have to do to make you happy,” Blake pleaded through teary eyes.

  “I’m already happy Blake. Maybe you need to put some of that same energy into making your marriage work so you can be happy too,” Jersi pointed out.

  “I don’t want my marriage to work. I only want you,” Blake said.

  Jersi felt like shit but she was trying to right her wrongs. She could have easily hurt Blake’s feelings by telling him why she really did what she did. Knowing that it would only make things worse, she decided to take a different approach. She thought that seeing him sad and broken would give her some kind of comfort. Instead, it only made her feel worse. She thought that she would want to rub it in his face but she couldn’t do it. She wasn’t that person that she tried so hard to be. She didn’t enjoy causing someone else pain even though Mariah seemed to relish it.

  “I gotta go Blake. Take care,” Jersi said as she got up and walked away. Dray and Ariel followed her to her car before they got in and pulled away.

  “Fuck!” Blake yelled out angrily.

  The few people who were in the park looked at his strangely but he didn’t care. He was hurt and his heart was broken. There were no words to describe how much he loved Jersi. He loved her when she was a child and he loved her even more now. Blake slowly walked away to hi
s car and sat in the driver’s seat. He tried but he couldn’t help the tears that fell from his eyes. He was crushed and he couldn’t hide it even if he wanted to. Hearing Jersi say that she was in love and happy with someone else was not something that he wanted to hear. He knew that marrying and having kids with Mariah hurt her but he was trying to make it right. He would gladly serve Mariah with divorce papers if that meant having Jersi back in his life. They were perfect for each other and he just had to try harder to make her see it. He didn’t know who her new man was but he wasn’t letting him have Jersi without a fight. The history that they had with one another could never be erased.

  After shedding a few tears and sulking for a while, Blake decided to head home. He had a few gifts for Jersi that Mariah was about to get by default. After how down she’d been about the miscarriage, he knew that she would be happy about it. Mariah had been depressed and all she did was sleep and cry. Thankfully, his mother was always around to help him with their girls because Mariah barely looked at them. Blake was trying to be supportive but he was getting frustrated with her. He was happy that he was able to satisfy his sexual appetite with some of the nurses at his job because he wasn’t really interested in sex with Mariah anymore. Since being with Jersi, everything about his wife started to turn him off.

  “Mariah! Where are you?” Blake yelled when he walked into the house.

  Mariah hadn’t been out of the house in weeks so he knew that she hadn’t gone anywhere. She refused to drive her car anymore since she swore that Blake and Jersi had sex in it. Blake hadn’t had a home cooked meal in a while unless he went to his mother’s house. He hated that his mother had basically assumed the role of raising his kids but she seemed to enjoy it. She was a housewife and caring for the twins gave her something to do.

  “Mariah!” Blake yelled out again.

  He searched every room in the house and she wasn’t in any of them. He paused when he looked in his daughters’ room and saw their tablets on their beds. They never left home without their iPad and they had them when he dropped them off by his mother. Pulling his phone from his pocket, Blake dialed his mother’s number and waited for her to pick up.

  “Hey son,” Eva answered cheerily.

  “Are the girls still with you? I see their tablets are here but nobody is home,” Blake said.

  “No, I dropped them off about an hour ago. Mariah wanted me to bring them home,” Eva replied.

  “She’s not even here,” Blake noted as he decided to go see if her car was in the garage.

  “I wonder where she is. She told me that she missed them and wanted me to bring them home. She sounded like she was in good spirits and she looked okay when I saw her,” Eva noted.

  When Blake entered the garage his heart dropped when he saw Mariah slumped over behind the wheel of the car. She had a towel stuffed in the exhaust pipe and the car windows were rolled up.

  “Shit! Ma, send an ambulance to my house now!” Blake yelled frantically.

  He hit the garage door opener and ran to open the car doors. They were all locked and he didn’t have time to get his spare key. He grabbed one of the gardening tools that was in the garage and broke the passenger side window and unlocked the car doors.

  “Oh God no! Please!” Blake cried when he saw his two girls laying motionless in the back seat.

  He forgot all about Mariah as he scooped his girls up and rushed them outside to get some fresh air. One of his neighbors was outside watering his lawn and he ran over to offer his assistance.

  “Do you need some help Blake?” the older man asked.

  “Yes, my wife is still in the car,” Blake yelled as he tried to perform CPR on his girls.

  His neighbor’s wife rushed over and helped him get Mariah out of the car. They laid her on the ground and started doing chest compressions on her.

  “She has a pulse. What about the girls?” The neighbor asked.

  “They have one too,” Blake said excitedly.

  He heard the wailing of sirens in the distance a short time later and was happy to know that help was on the way. He couldn’t help but to think that if he’d been a few minutes longer, his girls would have been dead and gone. Blake looked over at Mariah’s unconscious body on the ground and felt nothing but hate for her. How could a mother try to kill her own kids? If she wanted to die then she should have left them by his mother and killed her damn self. She knew that killing his kids would hurt him and Blake hated her for it.

  “They need oxygen,” his neighbor yelled as soon as the firemen and EMT workers approached them.

  Blake was distraught and he forgot all about being a doctor. He was a parent first and he was concerned about his kids. They were only four years old and they didn’t understand what was going on. They didn’t deserve to be in the middle of the mess that their parents had created. They didn’t deserve to lose their life because their mother no longer wanted to live. As far as Blake was concerned his marriage to Mariah was over. He wanted nothing else to do with her and he didn’t want his kids anywhere around her unstable ass.

  Mariah fully expected to open her eyes in the pits of hell but even death rejected her. Instead, she opened her eyes in a hospital room with her father sitting at her bedside. The entire room was spinning and her head was pounding. She didn’t know how long she had been in there but she wasn’t ready to be released. She was too afraid to face Blake and his family after what she’d done. She didn’t want to see the look in her husband’s eyes after she tried to take away two of the most important people in his life.

  “Mariah. How do you feel baby?” Marvin asked as he stood next to her bed and grabbed her hand.

  “Pissed that I’m alive,” Mariah spat as she tried to clear her dry throat.

  “Don’t say that sweetheart. You’re blessed to be alive and so are the girls,” Marvin noted.

  “I guess Blake is happy about that. They’re all he seems to care about anyway,” Mariah said as she snatched her hand away.

  “What is wrong with you Mariah? You should be thankful that Blake didn’t get the police involved. You would be going to jail for attempted murder if he did. Those are your kids too. You act like you hate them,” her father said.

  “It’s not an act. He wouldn’t have cared if I died or not. As long as his precious kids lived he would have been okay,” she cried.

  “The doctors here think that you need to talk to a professional and I agree,” Marvin said.

  Mariah didn’t know it yet but she wasn’t going straight home when she left the hospital. She was going to a facility for seventy-two hours since she attempted suicide. Child protective services were getting involved as well but Marvin didn’t want to bring all that up to her now. She was going through enough and that would only make things worse. Mariah swore that what happened was an accident but they weren’t crazy. They knew that it was intentional.

  “I’m not crazy daddy. I was perfectly fine until Blake started fucking that bitch Jersi again. Maybe I should have killed the two of them instead of trying to kill myself and my kids. All of this is their fault. I was a good wife and mother until she came back into the picture,” Mariah sobbed as her father stroked her back lovingly.

  Maybe she was crazy but Blake drove her to it. After losing his child, she thought he was going to stay home and make sure that she was okay. Instead, he put in overtime at work and was barley around. Mariah decided to play detective one day when he came home from working an eighteen hour shift. Blake took a shower and crashed and she used that time to go through his work and personal phones. Mariah was sick when she saw all the messages that he was sending to Jersi. He was telling her that she was his soulmate and he wanted to divorce Mariah to be with her. She even found out that he had a penthouse that he and Jersi used when they wanted to be together. If that wasn’t bad enough, she learned that Blake had been sleeping with some of the women at his job too. Mariah couldn’t win for losing and she was fed up. When she searched his locked night stand drawer, she found another ph
one that she didn’t even know he had. That one had even more messages to Jersi begging her to see him again. When she saw that Jersi agreed to meet with him at the park, she waited until he left to call Eva to bring the girls home. The plan was for Blake to find their dead bodies in her car but he came home sooner than she thought he would. She wanted him to live with the guilt of their deaths for the rest of his life. After that, he wouldn’t be any good to Jersi or anybody else. He would probably grieve himself to death soon after.