Bernadette could see that both Arizona and Tess were hanging on her words, so she continued. “From what you’ve told me, he hasn’t even taken the time to acknowledge that you haven’t been sexually satisfied each time you two have made love, which tells me that he checked out after his own needs were met, and that’s just plain, cut-and-dry selfish behavior.”
“You’re right,” Arizona said. “And he immediately goes to sleep like he’s done so much that he’s worn out.”
Bernadette shook her head. “He might not really be asleep.”
“But he snores.”
“Arizona, I can fake a snore right now if I want to. Has it occurred to you that he might be pretending to be asleep in order to avoid having an honest conversation with you?”
“She’s right,” Tess joined in. “Antwan used to do shit like that all the time. Not in the bedroom, but in other areas of our relationship. He’d make up all kinds of excuses for not being able to answer my calls or go out on a date, all so he could avoid having an honest discussion about the messed-up things he was doing. Classic sideline behavior.”
Bernadette closed her eyes to avoid rolling them. She loved her cousin, but at the moment she was close to asking Tess to stop drinking and talking because right now, Arizona needed their help. As Bernadette looked at Tess, she was reminded of something that she already knew—Tess relished being the center of attention, and if she wasn’t, she’d figure out a way to insert herself into any given situation. Tess had been that way since childhood, and Bernadette knew that she needed to talk to her cousin about what drove her need to always bring the focus back to herself. Bernadette knew that as an author, Tess was often alone, leading a solitary life with the characters she created in her head. But she also knew that real life didn’t work that way, and she wondered if her cousin fully understood that at the ripe age of forty. But this moment wasn’t the proper time or place to delve into Tess’s problems because Arizona’s situation was pressing.
“Wow,” Arizona said as if she’d just discovered buried treasure. “All this time I’ve been thinking that Chris was so thoughtful and attentive, but when it comes to the bedroom he’s downright selfish. He’s always been so giving of everything, whether it’s his time, money, or feelings, that I didn’t think he had a selfish bone in his body.”
Tess smirked. “Sex, good or bad, can bring out a lot of things in a person. Take it from me—”
Bernadette quickly chimed in before Tess could get going. “If you two get married, the things you’re experiencing now will only get worse, and eventually his selfish behavior will undoubtedly spill over into other parts of your relationship. When is he returning from his business trip?”
“He’ll be gone for another two weeks.”
Bernadette nodded. “Okay, as soon as he gets back you need to have a serious talk with him, and it has to happen outside the bedroom because it’s clear that trying to have a conversation with him after sex is out of the question.”
“I can’t even stand the thought of having sex with him,” Arizona said with despair in her voice, “so I can promise you that whenever and wherever we talk it won’t be anywhere near the bedroom.”
Tess finished off the remaining pizza crust from her slice and washed it down with a bottle of Pellegrino. “In addition to what Bernadette said about him being selfish, you also have to consider another side of things.”
“Which is?” Arizona asked with curiosity.
Tess leaned forward to emphasize her point. “The fact is this, no matter how thoughtful or understanding he tries to be, not only does he have a small dick, his sexual bag of tricks is empty. You said yourself that he doesn’t kiss you the way you like or caress you the way you like. And the big kicker is that he doesn’t know how to handle his business downtown. If a man can’t do me the way I like, he’s got to go because if the dick fails, the tongue can be a great backup. And honey, let me tell you, over time, a little-dick, non-pussy-eatin’ man will get on your last nerve.”
Bernadette let out a deep sigh. “As lewd as Tess sounds, she’s mostly right. Pleasure can be achieved in many different ways, and if you have a really good relationship, the emotional intimacy can bring great pleasure. But sexual pleasure is a whole different ballgame, and it doesn’t seem that Chis can take you there on any level.”
“No, he can’t . . . or he doesn’t,” Arizona answered.
“I think you were right the first time,” Tess blurted in. “But hopefully, and if he loves you, he’ll at least try.”
Bernadette could see that Arizona was mentally tired and was becoming more and more depressed as they talked. She’d drunk a bottle of wine by herself, but she’d only taken small nibbles of the food that she’d left mostly untouched on her plate. Bernadette knew she needed to change the subject so her friend could have time to clear her head of her worries, and she thought this was as good a time as any to shift the focus to her budding relationship with Coop.
Bernadette knew that having grown up in Bourbon, Arizona could give the real nitty-gritty details on the man. Even though he seemed to be an open book about his life and he was forthcoming about his past, Bernadette was more concerned about his present. She wanted to know about his dealings with women. She wanted to know if he was a love-’em-and-leave-’em type of guy.
She felt that she could take Coop at his word, but she’d also thought she could do the same with Walter and a few others she’d dated in her past, and they’d turned out to be liars, cheaters, and lower than the dirt on the ground. She felt in her heart that Coop wasn’t that way, but she wanted to be sure so that she could prepare herself and cut her losses if she needed to. So she began slowly. “Coop and I are going on a date tomorrow night.”
Tess clapped her hands. “Up until a few days ago you hadn’t been on a legitimate date in five years, and now you’re working on two in less than a week. You might get off to a slow start but you damn sure don’t let any grass grow under your feet.”
Arizona gave Bernadette a sly smile. “I heard that you and Coop got a thing going on.”
“What?” Bernadette said with shock and curiosity. “Who’s saying that we have a thing going on?”
“Girl, ever since Coop took you to lunch at Sue’s Brown Bag, tongues been waggin’ all over Bourbon, because like I told you last weekend at my party, Coop doesn’t have a steady woman, and as far as I know that’s on purpose. He’s had a lot of ‘friends,’ but nothing real serious. He doesn’t even go out in public with some of the women that I know for a fact he’s fooled around with. But in your case it’s different. He’s taking you out in public, during the day, and like I said, that’s big for Coop.”
Half of Bernadette felt special and tingly inside when she thought about Coop. But the other half, which was practical and rooted in levelheaded logic, felt skeptical and downright afraid of the fact that she was stepping into uncharted territory with a man who clearly had the very real possibility of breaking her heart. She wasn’t an authority on love, but she was an expert when it came to feeling the pain of a broken heart. She’d had so many bad experiences with men that she didn’t trust her own judgment. And what especially gave her pause about Coop was the fact that no man as good looking as him had ever been genuinely interested in her.
“What have people been saying about Coop,” Bernadette asked and then paused, “and me?”
“I can see you’re surprised.” Arizona said.
“Of course I am. No one in this town even knows who I am.”
Arizona laughed. “Honey, this is Bourbon, not DC, so everybody eventually knows everybody. But trust me, people know who you are. When you got that fancy job at Bourbon General, word got around that a sista was runnin’ things down at the hospital.”
“See, you’re a celebrity and you didn’t even know it,” Tess said with a wink.
Arizona nodded. “Yep. And if you think folks was talkin’ about you before, just wait ’til they find out that Tess Sinclair is your cousin and she�
�s stayin’ with you out here in the Palisades. Folks in Bourbon gettin’ ready to lose their natural minds.”
Tess’s eyes grew big. “Don’t tell a soul that I’m here. I want to be low-key until I finish this book, so that means no distractions. Other than my mother and my editor, I haven’t told anyone that I’m staying here.”
It struck Bernadette that as much as Tess enjoyed being the center of attention, she was adamant about anonymity when it came to her writing process. When she was in her writing cave she acted as though the outside world didn’t exist and was able to block out anything that distracted from or interfered with completing her book. But once her manuscript was finished, she was ready to emerge into the world and spread her wings with all the attention that a blossoming butterfly could command.
“Okay, I understand,” Arizona said with slight disappointment.
Bernadette once again knew that she needed to have a separate conversation with Tess, but for now she wanted to move the conversation back to her and Coop, because she knew Arizona could give her the answers she wanted. “So, tell me again, what exactly are people saying about Coop and me?”
Arizona pepped up. “That you’re Coop’s woman. Not his main woman, but his woman.”
“So he’s been seeing multiple women?”
“Honey, let’s be real. A man as rich and fine as Coop is gon’ have women, period. But the thing about him is that he keeps all his personal dealings on the low, and he don’t let anybody know what he’s doing when it comes to his love life. But he had you up in Sue’s, all out in the open, which isn’t his style at all.”
“But that was only a lunch date.”
Arizona nodded. “And that’s what makes me know that Coop’s really into you. Sue’s holds a special place for Coop because it’s named after his sister.”
“I remember he told me that,” Bernadette said.
“Yes, and he was very close to her up until the day she died. Sue used to visit him every single weekend when he was locked up, and after he got out she gave him a chance and a place to stay when no one else would.”
“She loved her brother and it’s apparent that he loved her.”
“Yep,” Arizona agreed. “So for him to take you on your first date to the place that’s named after someone he loved dearly, that means a lot, and as far as I know, I don’t think Coop has ever taken any of his women to Sue’s.”
“He’s that much of a player?” Tess asked with skepticism. She gave Bernadette a cautious side-eye.
Bernadette knew that Arizona’s words hadn’t swayed Tess’s opinion one bit and that Tess was mulling over the very same thing that she’d initially thought; that Coop was a middle-aged playboy with more women than he knew what to do with. Bernadette knew that Coop had had a lot of women because he’d told her that during one of their many conversations. He’d been very open with her about his past and his present, and she knew that he loved the ladies. But he’d told her that a few years ago he’d reached a point in his life that he was finally ready to settle down, and when he met the woman he wanted to share his life with, he’d know it.
“I’mma tell you what my mom told me that Coop told her a few years ago,” Arizona said, “’cause you know they go way back, seeing that they both grew up in the Bottoms. Anyway, he told her that he wanted to settle down and get married and when the right woman came along he’d know it, but until then he was gonna have fun and wait for that special one to come into his life.”
Bernadette nearly fell off her side of the couch. She thought about the conversation she’d had with Coop about the very same thing. “That’s interesting,” was all she could bring herself to say.
Tess leaned back into the love seat and looked at Bernadette. “Are you falling for this guy . . . after just one week?”
Arizona jumped in. “One week or one year, what does it matter? At her age,” she said, looking in Bernadette’s direction, “it doesn’t take a long time to know if you’re fallin’ for somebody. Right?”
Bernadette cleared her throat. “I think it depends upon the individuals and their specific relationship. As for me, I’m not ‘falling’ for anyone. I enjoy Coop’s conversation and his company, and I’m going to keep an open mind about everything. I’m going to take things one step at a time and see where it leads. As a matter of fact, I think that’s what all three of us should do; keep an open mind about where we are in our lives, figure out what we really want, and then see what happens.”
The three women sat in silence as they pondered Bernadette’s words. And even though Tess hadn’t said anything, Bernadette sensed that trouble was on the horizon.
Chapter 17
TESS
Tess was sitting across from Bernadette at the breakfast table, eating a large bowl of oatmeal and drinking dark roast coffee from her favorite mug that she’d brought with her from home. She eyed Bernadette as her cousin talked in between tiny bites of her veggie egg white omelet and whole wheat toast. The two were deep into a conversation that had started last night, which was the subject of Bernadette’s and Coop’s new romance.
Tess saw last night and even more this morning that no matter how much Bernadette tried to convince her that she wasn’t falling for Coop, her facial expressions, tone, and mood spoke something entirely different. Bernadette’s obvious affection for the man was evident in the way her voice changed to a soft pitch when she mentioned Coop’s name.
Tess knew that seeing Bernadette happy should have made her happy as well, but it didn’t. Instead, she felt cautious and skeptical of Coop because the man simply seemed too good to be true, and her instincts told her that he was hiding something.
“That man is up to something,” Tess had said to herself two days ago, “and I’m going to get to the bottom of it!”
Because Tess was experienced at doing research for her books, she had become astute about how to investigate any subject, especially people. So naturally, she did some internet snooping during one of her writing breaks because she wanted to get the low down on Coop.
Tess had typed the name Cooper Anthony Dennis into Google, and what she’d found gave her even more concern about the man that Bernadette was going on a date with tonight. When Tess saw the photo of the handsome man in Google Images, she had to do a double take. To say that Coop was good looking was like saying the Grand Canyon was a cluster of red rocks; it didn’t begin to do the description any justice. Coop was fine, even by Tess’s hard standards, and if he looked this good in his fifties, she could only imagine the heart-breaker he must have been in his twenties. But Tess had quickly moved on from the man’s killer good looks in order to uncover what was behind the magnetic smile, wavy salt-and-pepper hair, and the debonair aura that oozed from her computer screen.
Tess found out that Coop had a criminal record that had started when he was fifteen years old with a charge for petty theft. His illegal activities grew as he became older and eventually led to a ten-year sentence in federal prison when he was just twenty-three years old. He’d been convicted for trafficking drugs from North Carolina to Washington, DC. His sentence would have been reduced, but he’d refused to turn evidence on others involved in the drug ring that he’d been a part of. He wasn’t a snitch, but in Tess’s eyes, he was a fool. That one act, which had been committed in the black community, had cost him five of the ten years of his lost freedom, and it had kept his criminal friends who should have paid for their crimes on the street.
After Coop had served his time and was released from prison he’d returned to Bourbon. But no matter how much Tess dug and dug, she couldn’t find much information about how he’d acquired the apparent wealth he now possessed. According to public records, and articles in which he’d been featured in the local African American newspaper, The Guard, Coop owned over half the land and rental houses in the predominantly black section of town called the Bottoms. He also owned two Laundromats, two car washes, and a very popular jazz club called Southern Comfort, which was geographically situated
on the racial cusp of the city and drew a large and diverse crowd. She remembered seeing the large billboard advertising the club when she’d driven her rental car from the airport to Bernadette’s house.
Tess had to admit that Coop’s “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” story was impressive. On paper he seemed to be the model of a reformed citizen who’d paid his debt to society and had given back to the Bottoms, as was evidenced through his charitable giving throughout the community. But Tess didn’t completely buy it. She didn’t know if it was because of the fact that as a writer of fiction, she had a wild imagination that caused her to create colorful stories in lieu of information, or the fact that the source of how Coop rose to riches was unclear, but what Tess did know was that there was something about the man that wasn’t on the up-and-up, and she didn’t want Bernadette to get her heart broken again, because she felt this time that her cousin might not be able to recover from it.
“So, what time are you and Coop going out tonight?” Tess asked, before placing a heaping spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth.
“He’s coming to pick me up around five for an early dinner, then we’re going to catch a movie, and after that we’re going to Southern Comfort to enjoy the rest of the evening,” Bernadette said with giddy excitement in her voice. “I’ve been wanting to go to that club ever since I moved here six months ago, and now I can’t believe that not only am I finally going, I’m going with the guy who owns the place. How crazy is that?”
“Uh-huh . . . I guess life’s full of strange and crazy things.”
Bernadette took a sip of her freshly squeezed orange juice and paused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
The Other Side Page 18