by Naomi Niles
“Hey. Um, I just wasn’t feeling it today. Plus, I knew I had a lot of work to do, so I just wanted to get started on it so I wouldn’t be here all day.”
She put the small box of doughnuts on my desk and took a seat. “A lot of work? Honey, that never stopped you before. What’s wrong? You aren’t your normal, joyful self. Something wrong with your boyfriend? What’s his name? Davin? Shavin?”
“Gavin.”
“Yeah, him. Trouble in paradise? I know that is something that would throw me off. That is, if I could ever get my hands on a decent man.”
I flipped through my notepad to look at my schedule for the day. There was a lot going on between us, but I didn’t want to talk about it. The thought was strong enough to send pain through my heart. “Nothing. Just um, I guess we just hit a rough patch. I’m not sure if it will last though. I mean, I started off good, but now? I just don’t know. I guess that is the story of my life though, you know? Things start off well, but eventually, it all goes to shit.”
“Shit? Wow, you must really be going through something. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that language before, especially here in school.”
“Yeah. That’s just how I feel right now, you know?”
Sharon pushed the box of doughnuts closer to me, “Well, go ahead and eat something, girl. Ain’t no use of you starving yourself. Take a bite and get some energy, then deal with whatever the problem is later. That’s what helps me.” I looked at the box on top of the desk as she stood up. “I will come back in here and check on you later, okay?”
I nodded my head as she closed the door behind her. I had no idea how I was going to make it through the rest of the day, especially since everyone would know that something was wrong with me. I didn’t want to answer a million questions about what was wrong and why I was acting weird, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to avoid them. The bell rang at 8am, signaling the start of the day, and with that, I grabbed a few papers and headed to Principal Jones’ office. “Good morning, Bethany,” he said with a wide grin.
I forced a smile onto my face, “Good morning. How are you this morning?”
“I am well, thank you.” I put the small stack of papers on his desk. “Great. These must be the forms I had St. Mary’s fax over to me last night.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” He leaned his head to the side, “Is something wrong? You don’t seem like yourself.”
“I am fine, sir. Just had a long night. Didn’t get a lot of rest.”
“Oh, I see. Yes,” he smiled as he leaned back in his chair, “I remember those nights. Hanging out with the guys, throwing back a few brews until the morning hours. Yes, those were the days. The only thing about that is if I try to have those days now, I would need to take at least a week off from work.” He chuckled. “Yeah, we are not as young as we used to be. Well, me in particular. You look like you can still hang out a little bit.”
“Yeah, I can, but it’s not that. I just had a lot of work to do, that’s all.”
“Okay. Well, hopefully, this day will go by fast so you can get some rest. You are like a morning cup of coffee for the majority of people here. I would hate to see you lose that spunk.”
“Yeah. Well, I should get going. Thank you, Mr. Jones, and if you need me, I will be in my office.”
“Sounds good.”
I left his office and made a beeline straight back to my room and closed the door. I usually kept it open, but I didn’t want any visitors today. I just wanted to sink into my chair and disappear from the world. If only things were that easy. I stayed under the radar as the day went on and afterward, I didn’t stand outside with the children. It killed me because they were usually the ones that helped brighten my day, and vice-versa, but right now, I didn’t feel like anybody could. I left the school and went straight to April’s house.
She was in the kitchen preparing a meal for the evening when I showed up and flopped into her kitchen chair. I put my head down on the table as she stood near the stove; her belly protruded a lot more than I remembered. “Are you still depressed over Gavin?”
“He still hasn’t called me or anything. What else am I supposed to do?”
“Call him.”
I lifted my head up, “No. I am not calling him just so he can hang up or treat me like dirt. No.”
“How do you know he will do that?”
“I don’t, but I don’t want to take the chance, either. I’ve been embarrassed enough, and I don’t think I can stand anymore.”
She turned off the eye of the stove, then sat down in a chair across from me. “Look, I don’t think you need to hang yourself up on him. Honestly, there are plenty of fish in the sea. All you have to do is throw the line out there again, and I’m sure you will snag somebody else. How about we get you back on the site and find somebody else? If he contacted you that quickly, then I am sure somebody else will.” She reached for my hand, “Come on, let’s go see–”
“No, April. I don’t want to do that again.”
“Why not?”
“Because. Listen, with my past? I don’t think any guy on there will go for me. I may as well go back to the gutter of society if I want to find a man. Who knows? Maybe I’ll luck up and find a diamond in the rough.”
She raised one eyebrow above the other and folded her arms over her chest, “Um, no. I am not going to let you do that, Beth. You are better than that, and you are not going to go searching through the gutter for somebody else just so they can abuse you again. No. If you are going to do that, you may as well go back to Anthony.”
“I was thinking about it.”
“Beth. Don’t be stupid.”
“I don’t know, April. But one thing I do know is that I am not ready to go on that website or any other website like that. Not now, and maybe not ever. I had the perfect guy, and like I said before, things are just not meant to end well for me. I see it now, and I understand. Completely.”
She scooted closer to me and put her arm around my shoulder. I wished that I could find somebody like Mark. Somebody who could accept my crazy past and still love me like I didn’t do anything wrong. I mean, after all, it was my past, and April was right. I’m sure he did some fucked up things back then as well, so it didn’t make sense that he would hold this against me. The more I thought about it, the more I started to get upset about how he was treating me. I wanted to call him and tell him how I felt, but I knew that wouldn’t end well. I’d rather let things go the way they were going and not worry about it. If we were meant to be together, then we would be, and if not, then, we would just go our separate ways. It was a hard pill to swallow, but I just had to deal with it.
I stayed at April’s house until 8pm; then I headed home. She tried to get me to spend the night over there since Mark was out of town on business, but I wanted to be alone. I wanted to curl up in my bed and get back to reading my love novels. I felt that I had to live my love life vicariously through the lives of fictional characters just so I could imagine what it was like to be completely in love. I left April’s house and made my way home. In my rearview mirror, a truck eased behind me with its high beams on. They blinded me when I looked into the rearview mirror. Fucking jerks, I said as I shifted my mirror away from the bright lights.
It wasn’t until the third light that I realized the truck was following me. Each time I moved to another lane, the truck behind me moved to the same one. If I sped up to make it past a yellow light, the truck sped up as well. I couldn’t see what kind of vehicle it was because the high beams were too bright, and from there, I felt a chill sweep over my body. I thought it was Anthony. It had to be him. I gripped my steering wheel and accelerated on the gas, swerving in and out of lanes as I tried to get away from him. The truck stayed right on my tail, swerving through lanes with ease, as if it were a smaller vehicle.
My hands shook as they gripped the wheel. I was too nervous to call anyone, but then again, there was nobody I could call. April was pregnant, and she was not
in the position to help me right now. Gavin was pissed at me, and after what he found out about my past, I knew he would be the last one to help me if things got rough. I felt a sickening feeling shoot to the pit of my stomach, and for the first time since I left Richmond, I felt completely alone. I wiped the tears from my eyes as I pushed down on the gas, flowing through intersections as if I were the only car on the street.
Every time I glanced up, I was blinded by the headlights. From there, I hoped that I would whizz past a police officer or something. I just needed to get someone’s attention. I slid my foot on the brake and slowed down, then accelerated into a right turn. A car honked its horn at me when I almost swerved right into it. The blinding light appeared once again in my rearview, but with open road in front of me, there was nothing stopping me from flooring it as hard as I could. Trees whipped by me in the blink of an eye as I created distance between me and my pursuer.
Suddenly, I saw flashing blue and red lights in the background. My heartbeat slowed down as I gladly pulled to the side of the road. The truck drove by me, the same color and model truck of the one Anthony drove, and after that, I knew it was him without a shadow of a doubt. I patiently waited for the officer to come to my car as the white truck continued down the road until it made a right turn and vanished.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
GAVIN
“Hey, Dad, when are we going to hang out with Bethany again? We haven’t done that in a while.”
I looked to the left as Vinny’s bus headed down the block. I hadn’t spoken to Bethany in days, and as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t bring myself to look beyond her past. I couldn’t tell Vinny the truth about it though, especially since he still had to see her every day at school. “Yeah, I know, son, I know. Just not right now, okay? There are some things going on between us that we have to figure out.”
“Are you two fighting?”
I wrinkled my brows. “Son, that doesn’t concern you, okay? You just focus on getting on your bus and doing well in school like you have been, okay?”
He sighed. “Alright, Dad.”
“Good. Now, have a good day, okay?”
“You, too, Dad.”
After his bus drove away, I went home and got ready for work. Sarah’s quitting day was coming up soon, and I didn’t know what we were going to do to replace her. We had been having trouble trying to find someone to fill that role permanently, and when she left, I had no idea what we were going to do after that. The day went by smoothly and afterward, I decided to hang out with Mike. Vinny had some after school activities that he had gotten involved in, so that gave us free time around happy hour, so I met him at one of the bars not too far from our neighborhood.
“What’s up, fucker?” he said as I walked to our table. He was already seated with drinks on the table when I arrived.
“What’s up, man?” I took a seat with no much expression.
“Aw shit, let me guess. You and that Beth chick are still at odds, right? Man, you never told me what the fuck happened anyway, so now that we have time, and Vinny’s ass isn’t around eavesdropping, we can talk. So, what the fuck did she do that was so fucking messed up?”
I took a swig of the Corona, then slid it back onto the table. “I know I shouldn’t be so hung up on this, but I found out something about her past.” I took another swig. “We were out getting something to eat last week, and all of a sudden, this guy walks up to our table. He goes, ‘Hey, Mystique?’ And when he says it, I’m looking at him like, ‘what the fuck?’, you know? I’m thinking he is clearly mistaken because Mystique sounds like a fuckin’ stripper name or some shit. But anyways, she tries to play it off like he doesn’t know what he is talking about, but the guy is adamant about knowing her. Soon after that, she admits to me that she used to be a stripper and the guy was one of her customers or some shit like that.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
He looked to the side as a group of women walked by us. He gave them a sexual glance as one of them returned it to him. “Yeah, I’ma have to talk to her before we leave. You can tell she wants me.”
I kicked his leg, “Come on, man, stay focused. I’ve got a fucking dilemma here.”
“A dilemma? Because she was a stripper?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly it. I mean, come on, you know what kind of girls they are. No morals. Willing to do anything for a buck. Like, I don’t even want to imagine the things she did while she was working. I know the things those chicks did when we went, and I always told myself that I could never date a chick like that. I mean, I didn’t see how guys could come in there and fall in love with them. I still don’t see it, and the irony is that I feel like I’ve become one of those guys.” I shook my head at my backwardness as I took another drink.
Mike laughed out loud at me as my eyebrows furrowed. “What the hell is so funny?”
“You, man. You are hilarious.”
“Why?”
“Let me ask you this. How many perfect women do you know in the world? How many women do you know that have a squeaky-clean past? I’ll wait.” He took a drink of his beer.
“No, Mike, I know where you are going with this, and it’s not the same.”
“Like hell it’s not the same. Look, one way or the other, these chicks out here have fucked or sucked or did some strange shit with a guy or two in their past. The only difference is she got paid for it. Now, just because she was a stripper doesn’t mean she was having sex with those guys because, whether you believe it or not, there are some strippers out there that won’t cross lines. Trust me,” he smiled, “I know that for a fact because I’ve tried it, and they always told me no. So, just because that’s the image they have, does not mean that is how all of them are. Now, I’ve only spoken with Brettnay–”
“Bethany.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said. Anyway, I’ve only spoken with the gal a few times, and she seems like she is a different person. Now, if you’re going to walk around judging people based on their past, then okay. But, if I remember correctly, your past is not the best. You’ve done some fucked up shit a lot of different times. You weren’t out there stripping, but I know you have a laundry list of women that you’ve run through like a fucking NFL running back.” He laughed and slapped his hand on the table, then took another drink. “Yeah, buddy, you’ve done a lot of dirt, and honestly, it is fucking hypocritical of you to smear her just because she stripped. So what? Did you ask her what she stripped for? Did you talk to her about any of that shit before you jumped the gun? Shit, I know my dollars are putting a lot of these chicks through college, so um, yeah, I think you need to do some more research before you attack her.”
For the first time I could remember, Mike gave me some advice that made sense. Maybe it was the alcohol in his system that helped him think outside the box, but either way, he said what I needed to hear. I leaned back in my seat as Mike fixed his attention on the group of girls that had walked in a little while ago. I knew he was setting his sights on the one that smiled at him. I reached into my pocket and grabbed my phone. I flipped through my photo album and came across pictures of Bethany and Vinny. They looked as though they were enjoying each other’s company, and I would hate to take that away from Vinny. More importantly, I would hate to rob me and Bethany of a future because I was so stuck on her past. I owed her an apology, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it through a text message.
We stayed at the bar for another hour until it was time for me to leave and pick up Vinny. I left Mike at the bar and made my way to the school. I had hoped that I would see Bethany while I was there, but when Vinny trudged out of the school, I had a feeling that she was gone for the day. “What’s up, kid? How was science club?”
“It was okay. We were just prepping for the dissection tomorrow.”
“Dissection?”
“Yeah. We are going to be dissecting frogs.”
My lip curled as I looked at him. “That is nasty. You like that kind of stuff?”
“Hey, if you like it, I love it.” I looked towards the building, “Is Bethany gone?”
“Yeah. She normally leaves at 4 pm after the kids leave. She never stays later than that. Why?”
I put the car in drive, “I was just asking for myself. That’s all.”
“Okay.”
When we got home, I fixed Vinny some food, then walked into my room. My phone rang as soon as I laid in my bed. “Hello?”
“Gavin. Hi.”
“Hey, Karen.”
“How are you doing?”
“I am good.”
I made the mistake of calling her a few days ago when I was upset with Bethany. We talked for about an hour, and during that time, I realized one thing: we would never become more than what we were a few years ago. Throughout the whole phone call, all I did was compare her to Bethany. Our connection was unparalleled, and Karen’s sense of humor had changed by leaps and bounds since the last time we were together. I was searching for something that only Bethany had, and after speaking with Mike, I knew that she was where I wanted to be. “Hey, Karen, listen. I thought about what you asked me a little while ago and, at one point in time, I would’ve wanted to give us another shot. But, right now, I don’t think I am willing to give it a try. I think we are too different now. A lot different than we were back then.”
She exhaled into the phone. I would have loved to bring our family back together, and if Bethany weren’t in the picture, despite what I just told her, I think I would’ve given us another run, but it would’ve been for Vinny. He deserved it, but right now, I felt that if I wasn’t going to be with his mother, then Bethany would be the only other woman he would accept, and I was completely okay with that. “Well, I can’t say that I am not disappointed, but I understand. You’ve found somebody else and honestly, in the back of my mind, even with all the bullshit we went through, I felt that we would get another shot at this later in life. But things don’t always go the way I want them to.”