“No, the reason we’re not together is because you fucking destroyed my condo. Don’t try to flip this around on me.” Trina turned and headed toward her car. Brendan was walking behind her fussing all the way. He accused her of everything under the sun and brought up everything that she had done to him from the day they first met. When she had put Khalil into his car seat, she turned around to face him as he said, “This isn’t over. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I think you know. I want a paternity test.”
Trina grew a smirk on her face. “Knock yourself out, Negro. It’s your money.”
“Yeah, it is and I won’t be spending it on a kid that’s not mine. I don’t hear you denying the possibility of him not being mine.”
Trina flipped him the finger and climbed into her car. “You make the appointment and I’ll have him there.” Then she slammed her door.
Brendan stood there as she backed out. Tuesday watched the exchange from a distance. After witnessing the confidence with which Trina had carried herself, Brendan thought, Damn, maybe I do have the trait.
After the last series of crunches Nate’s body was glistening with sweat. His abs were in washboard form and his back looked like he hauled bricks for a living. The lights were low, the gym stayed cooler that way. He climbed off the mat and headed for the ring for one last workout. He ended each training session with three minutes of vigorous shadow boxing. His logic was that if after two hours of training he still had enough in the tank to go one more round at a furious pace then he would be fine in an actual fight if it came down to fighting through exhaustion.
It was supposed to be his day of rest, but he had elected to come to the gym without his trainer. He was focused almost completely on the fight. As the timer wound down she shouted, “Thirty seconds,” just as Nate had instructed. Nate began to throw a serious flurry of punches. “Ten, nine, eight, seven…” Nate was throwing at blinding speed.
When he finished, Sahleen made her way through the ropes with a towel and a bottle of water. “Impressive,” was all she said.
“Thanks.” He took a drink from the bottle. The second squirt he spat right onto the mat.
She began to towel him off. “Are you going to shower?”
“Got to cool down a bit first,” he said, eyeballing her.
The only word to describe the way that Sahleen had made her way back into Nate’s life was to say slithered. Nate had told her all about the changes he’d been through and how he came to find Anita.
Sahleen had been intrigued by the Nate she now encountered. He was back on top. She saw no vulnerability in him and found it extremely appealing. What appealed to her, she usually found it necessary to possess. This time was no different.
In their first dealings Nate had given in too easily, but now he seemed happy in his life without her and she needed to do something to change that. Immediately following their hooking up in Atlantic City, Sahleen’s interest peaked to the point where she had to act on it.
Once she made it back to her place in D.C., she played it cool over the first couple of weeks, calling Nate just to say hello. While he was training, she would ask, “Is it okay if I stop and drop something off at the gym? How about a quick bite to eat?”
There were a couple of casual lunches at the organic foods café. After offering to treat him to an evening out several times, a walk in Old Town Alexandria and dinner at the Chart House finally had been the opening she had waited for. From that date on, it became obvious that Sahleen had been on Nate’s mind, just as much as, if not more than, the fiancée he had fought so hard to get. After that, every day was an opportunity for her to recapture Nate’s mind and heart bit by bit. Text messages that read,
I have really missed you,
I missed your friendship,
No man ever moved me like you,
I would never want to come in between you and her,
I wish things would have worked out differently,
I was a fool to let you slip away,
I’m happy that you have someone who makes you happy,
I just want to be your friend.
It had all come down to this. The buildup to a moment in a darkened gym. She stood before him. A cut-off Baby Phat T-shirt and a jean miniskirt that she worn on purpose. She kicked her sandals off as she moved toward him. “I want you” rolled off her lips.
Staring into her eyes Nate thought about everything that he had been through with her. Falling for her the first time had been a mistake. Her beauty was too intoxicating, too much of a struggle to resist. He leaned into her. He had toweled off but was still sweating. She didn’t flinch when she felt his wet body touch hers.
Their mouths met and Nate realized that he felt something, but it wasn’t love. It was contempt. He continued on as he realized that he didn’t like what he was doing. He hated doing something that he knew would hurt Anita. It bothered him that he was giving Sahleen the pleasure of being with him. He was disgusted with himself for being weak enough to deal with her. He thought about how he had dissed Shawn Simmons. Now was the perfect opportunity to do the same to Sahleen.
Within seconds Nate had shoved the one-time supermodel into the corner of the ring. He had placed his hands on the top of her head and was gripping her hair. She smelled the odor and tried to pull away. “You need to shower first.”
“Fuck that,” Nate said. His dick was hard and he swiftly guided it toward her mouth. “Suck it,” he groaned.
“I don’t want to.”
“Do it.” She tried to resist but he tightened his grip on her hair and repeated himself. “Do it.”
Reluctantly she opened her mouth. She was turned on by his forcefulness. She worked him for a few moments until she began to gag when he pushed in too deeply. He was punishing her and she began to sense it. Once she accepted the punishment she began to enjoy it. Once she saw that her submitting to his forcefulness was turning him on she began doing her best impersonation of a porn star and was deep-throating. Before he lost control Nate stood her up and pulled her skirt up. She was naked underneath. Nate eased her up to the corner and put her legs through the ropes. “Hold on,” he said. She wrapped her arms around the pole in the corner and resembled a cat climbing up a tree. Her skirt was hiked up and Nate eased up behind her.
Sahleen let out a moan that turned into a scream as Nate penetrated her from behind. “Ohh shit, Nate. I forgot how big it was,” she mouthed.
“You can handle it.”
She was giving it her best, bouncing up and down, trying to take what he was dishing out. His hands were on her waist pulling her down onto his dick. Nate’s mind began to drift and his subconscious was being overrun with thoughts of how he felt the night he’d walked in on Sahleen with another woman.
He started banging her harder. “Oh please,” she screamed.
He remembered how he felt when she told him that she wasn’t in love with him after he’d broken all of his own rules and fallen in love with her. He now had a fist full of her hair as he was working her over. She was panting like a wounded animal and her arms let loose of the post. She nearly collapsed but Nate caught her and made sure she kept her feet. In one motion he slung her body a foot to the left and now her head was hanging through the ropes like a fighter knocked silly. Nate was thrusting so hard that she had her hands clinging to the ropes trying to keep from falling through them to the floor.
Sahleen had never been taken so violently. Nate kept it up for five minutes until she almost passed out from the alternate waves of pleasure and pain. Finally Nate went over the edge and came inside of her. In that instant he realized that he no longer held any feelings other than contempt for her. Sexing her had been all about his ego and revenge.
He wiped off with the towel and stared down at Sahleen. She was lying on her side on the mat like a beaten fighter. It wasn’t until she heard him speak that she realized that she had been unsuccessful in recapturing Nat
e’s heart.
“Baby,” she said, finally making it to her feet, “can we go get something to eat.
In the coldest tone imaginable Nate responded, “I have to get home to my fiancée.”
Sahleen digesting his disdain replied, “So you don’t have any time for me.”
“No, I don’t, actually.” Nate headed over to his gym bag and quickly hurled a few items into it.
Getting herself presentable to walk outside, Sahleen smoothed out the wrinkles in her skirt, climbed out of the ring, and walked toward him. “So, Nate, what’s up?” Her voice gave away the fear that she’d been used. “I thought we were trying to work on something here.”
“Sweetheart, you thought wrong,” he delivered. “I was up-front with you. I told you that I had someone from the start. You had to know that I wasn’t looking for anything…” Nate had to hold in the feelings of joy that he had welling up inside of him. Sahleen’s bottom lip was quivering and her eyes looked as if they were about to erupt with tears. He had done it. Ripped her heart out the same as she’d done to him. The fact that this was probably more an ego thing for Sahleen than a love thing didn’t matter to him. All that mattered was that he wanted to win. He repeated himself. “I wasn’t looking for anything. At least nothing serious.”
Her arms were folded. She didn’t know what to say so she stood there motionless. When he turned and reached for the bag and motioned for her to exit with him, it was all she could do to move her legs. Her pride was wounded, feelings crushed, and her pussy felt like she’d been screwed by a donkey. Not wanting to let him know how she felt, she did her best model strut out of the door.
When she reached her car Nate asked, “You’re all right?”
“But of course,” she responded, but it was obvious that she was about to shatter into a thousand pieces.
He watched her pull off, and burst into laughter. He was back on cloud nine. It had been a long time since he felt so good. Thinking back he couldn’t recall wanting to put a bitch in her place more than he had Sahleen. Now that he had done it, there was nothing left to do other than win the fight.
He pulled off and thinking about his rise back to the top, he never even noticed the Reverend Lloyd Lawson parked across the street waiting and watching him.
27
Don’t Forget Your Way Home
It had always been hard for me to use the term best friend because I’d always had two of them. Since my fallout with Brendan, it felt like a big part of my past had been erased. All that we had been through, the good times that we’d enjoyed and the way we’d bonded, helping one another through the tough times was now all for naught. Brendan had made it apparent that I needn’t call him if I caught a flat on the highway in the rain, he was no longer going to be there for me.
I would find out to my surprise that Brendan had stopped by my mother’s home on her birthday and taken her flowers and Godiva chocolates, same as every year. When she brought up the subject of our friendship, assuming that she knew the details of our rift, he spoke openly about what had happened between us.
My phone rang five minutes after he left with the demand that I come right over. “There is nothing wrong but I want to see you right away,” she’d said.
“Ma, I’ll meet Brenda there at four to pick you up for dinner.”
“No, I want you over here right now.”
“Ma, what is so important that you can’t say over the phone?”
“Cory, we need to talk in person.”
“I have stuff to do before…” I heard her sigh into the line, signaling she was about to go off. I didn’t want to upset her on her birthday so I said, “All right.”
As soon as I agreed to come she hung up in my ear.
I cruised around the Beltway, wondering what was so urgent, as I took bites of my breakfast from Taco Bell. When I arrived at my mom’s, Mr. Fields, her boyfriend who was also her neighbor from across the street, was in the front yard trimming hedges. He didn’t stop to talk when I got out of my car. Instead he gave me a salute as a general would before sending troops into battle.
“Hey hey,” I yelled, walking through the door. I yelled because Moms was blasting Patti LaBelle’s latest CD. She was indeed Patti’s greatest fan. She made it a point of going to see her perform at least once a year.
“I’ll be right there,” she said.
That meant five to ten minutes, so out of habit I walked into the kitchen and looked through the fridge. I found a bowl of grapes, ran some water on them, and went to work. I was in the family room when my mother came down.
“Happy birthday,” I said.
“Thank you, sweetheart.” She took a seat across from me and wasted no time. “So do you know why I needed you here right away?”
Looking at her, it appeared everything was fine and I was a little puzzled by the urgency of it all. “Actually, I don’t.”
My mother took a deep breath. Then a second that was even deeper. I knew then that she was trying to calm her nerves. “Cory, I don’t know what’s become of you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you are not the man that your father and I set out to raise. Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud of your accomplishments in the business world. You’re very generous to me, your sister, and her children. That’s not what I’m talking about.”
I sat there, a blank look on my face. The one that only a parent or respected elder can put on the face of a grown man.
She went on. “Brendan came over here a couple of hours ago. He told me about what happened. I was so shocked. What were you thinking, son? How could you do something like that? You two are like brothers. Hell, you are brothers as far as I’m concerned. Now that damned Renée, she really surprised me. I had no idea she was that loose.”
“Ma, it’s not like that. She was really vulnerable. She had just caught her fiancé with…” I started to say another man but decided against it for a variety of reasons. “She caught him with someone else. She was hurting.”
“She was hurting. You were hurting. Brendan had just come out of a coma. Your answer to all of that is to fall into bed with her? That’s just what I mean. Where is your head? I expected you to be a much better thinker than that. But you should know by now that you can’t think with the little head, Cory.”
She paused for a second and turned the volume down on the music. “Listen, son, we all make mistakes. Some mistakes are necessary. But I want you to take a look at yours. Remember what your thought process was before you made those mistakes. I’ll bet you were always thinking the same thing.”
She had my attention. It was just like being a kid all over again. “Like what?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m not a mind reader. You would have to tell me. But I’m betting that you were thinking that you were going to feel something. Feel better, feel good, feel happy…I don’t know. But it’s obvious that from all of the silly crap I seen from you in the past couple of years that you’re obviously lost.” I sat and listened to her, wanting her to tell me what I needed to know, but never thought to ask.
“You’re trying to find yourself, Cory. You’re trying to discover who you are as a man. You don’t seem to realize that it’s a combination of what you do and how you do it that will define you. It’s not about what you achieve or what you can get away with that will make you a man or the man. It’s not about which woman winds up on your arm or who you fall into bed with. It’s about what people take away from you when they come in contact with you. Is a person’s life better and richer for having you in it? Have you taught, loved, or blessed your friends?”
I was thinking about all of the people in my circle. The reality was hard. True, I had my good points, but what had I truly added to the lives of those around me?
Almost like she was reading my mind, she said, “Son, you’ve done a lot of wonderful things and most of the time you’ve meant well, but your lack of definition has caused a lot of heartache.”
“Lack of definition?”
“Yes. You don’t have definition. You don’t know who you are. Are you a player hater, or a decent man?”
“You mean player?” I laughed at her attempt to be hip.
“You know what the hell I meant. Are you a dog? If you want to run women, then run ’em. But be up front about it. That’s what a real man does. He tells a woman up front if he’s not looking for anything serious instead of playing games.”
“What if I don’t know what I want?”
“Then tell them that too. That’s what women want. We want honesty, a choice. If we decide that we want to chase you or to change you after you’re up front, then it falls on us. But give a lady a choice. If you really and truly don’t know what you’re looking for, then there ain’t nothing wrong with spending some time by yourself. There are worse things in the world than being alone.”
I nodded my head in agreement.
“As for the way you deal with your friends. You know better. Honesty and integrity are the only way. You don’t screw your friends over.”
I started looking down at the carpet.
“You know what Brendan said to me this morning?”
“No, what did he say?”
“After he and I spoke in detail he said to me that it wasn’t so much what you did. It was how you did it. He considered you two, along with Nate, his best friends. He couldn’t believe that you would keep anything like that from him.”
“But, Ma, it wasn’t like we planned it, or even thought about it. Sometimes things do just sort of happen.”
“Did he catch you the first time?”
“No.”
“Well then. The first time it might have just happened. But what about the third, fourth, and fifth times? At some point you have to think about what you’re doing.”
My mother went on for another half hour and when she was finished I felt about as small as Tom Thumb. She hadn’t said one wrong thing. The last thing she said was, “Son, I need you to do two things. The first is for you to capture yourself.”
Don’t Ever Wonder Page 21