Taariq glanced at his watch and saw that he was indeed five minutes late. “Sorry about that, old man. I’ll do better next time.” He winked.
“Make sure that you do. You know I don’t like any of that CP Time nonsense.”
The guys gathered around the mounted twenty-seven-inch television chuckled at the backhanded complaint and then returned their attention to SportsCenter.
Herman, a tall, robust gentleman, had owned the shop for over forty years. The old red brick building was a staple in the community. Most men drifted through to hear Herman’s stories, tough love advice and get sharp haircuts.
Taariq wasn’t originally from ATL, but learned about the place through his Kappa brother, Derrick. The first one in their clique to turn in his playa card for a woman who was technically engaged to marry a prominent politician and fellow Kappa Psi Kappa brother, Randall Jarrett. After rescuing him from a kidnapping situation, Derrick arrived in time to save his future wife from making the biggest mistake of her life.
Of course there was that funny incident with Derrick, Randall and Reverend Williams falling headfirst into a Lady Justice water fountain and duking it out in the front of Washington’s political elite. Good times.
“Come on over,” Herman directed. “I got your seat all warmed and ready.”
Taariq strolled over and plopped into the leather chair.
The bell above the door continued to jiggle as men from the neighborhood filtered in and out, some to get their hair cut and some just to watch the television. Saturday had always been Herman’s busiest day of the week. Six barbers ranging from old school to new school donned burgundy barber jackets with Herman’s name scrawled across the back.
“So what’s been happening, Taariq?” Herman asked, smiling and draping a black smock around his neck.
“Just been chillin’, I guess.”
“Well that’s good. Don’t want to overdo it.”
J.T., the local street hustler, pimped walked his way into the door and made a beeline over to Taariq. “T, my main man. You know I got you today, baby.”
“Oh, really? What you got?”
“Lookee here. I know you’re a ladies man, so I got you the latest Beyonce and Alicia Keys.” He reached into his magic jacket and produced two CDs. “Bam! What you think about those?”
Taariq shook his head. “Nah, these two ladies are a bit too young for me.”
“Too young? Man, you trippin’.” J.T. stuffed the CDs back into his pocket.
“Nah.” He glanced around. “Ayo, where’s Bobby?”
“Lord knows,” Herman said, shaking his head. “His ass is late, too.”
“Hey didn’t school just start? Maybe you should cut the college kid a break.”
“I’m cutting him a check for that damn tuition. The least he could do is show up for work on time.”
Sensing he’d wandered into sensitive territory with Herman’s grandson, Taariq tossed up his hands. “Sorry ’bout that. I didn’t mean no harm. I was just trying to stick up for a fellow Kappa man. You understand.”
“Uh-huh.” Herman clicked on his clippers.
The shop’s bell jiggled again, but this time it was Derrick and Charlie strolling through like regular rock stars. They were greeted with a round of perfunctory, “Yo, whassup?”
“Hey, what’s happening, captain?” Taariq asked, grinning.
“You got it,” Charlie said.
His boys made it over to his chair and exchanged a couple of fist bumps.
J.T. popped his head back up. “What about some DVDs?”
“Will you get out of here with that,” Charlie said, laughing. “You know we never buy none of that bootleg crap. Why do you keep asking?”
“Close mouth don’t get fed,” J.T. reasoned.
Derrick shrugged. “The man makes sense.”
The door jiggled again and a smiling Stanley strolled inside. None of the regulars called the lanky redhead by his first name. Instead, they affectionately called the man “Breadstick” and sometimes “Whitey”—mainly because he was still the only white man to get his hair cut at Herman’s.
“Yo, everybody, whassup?” Stanley said in his best Vanilla Ice impersonation. Everyone was used to the white man who thought he was black and just hollered back at him.
“Looks like we’re all here,” Taariq said.
Derrick frowned. “You mean Hylan is still not back yet?”
The Kappas shook their heads.
“Hell, has he even bothered to check in?” he asked. “It’s not like him to be gone this long.”
“He left me a message a while back,” Taariq remembered and pulled out his cell phone. “I haven’t had a chance to call him back.”
“Get that man on the phone,” Charlie said. “At least so that we know his ass is still breathing.”
Taariq held up a hand. “Herman, could you hold on a second?”
Herman cut off his clippers. “Sure. I live to wait on you guys,” he joked.
Taariq found Hylan’s home number in his cell’s address book and hit the call button. A second later the line was ringing. Then a woman answered the phone. “Hello, is Hylan there?”
“No. I’m sorry he’s not. This is his sister-in-law, Barbara. Can I take a message?”
Taariq pulled the phone away from his ear for a moment and stared at it.
“What’s wrong?” The Kappa boys asked in unison.
“Um, yeah,” Taariq said putting the phone back to his ear. “Just tell him that Taariq called.”
“Oh, would you like to talk to his wife?”
“Uh, no. That, um, won’t be necessary. I’ll just get in touch with him later.” He disconnected the call.
“What was that all about?” Stanley asked.
Taariq looked up. “Guys, how do y’all feel about making a trip to the Caribbean to meet Hylan’s wife?”
Nikki was pregnant.
The nausea and the dizziness might have been her first clue, but the fourth pregnancy test really hammered the point home. What am I going to do? She must’ve asked herself that question about every other minute and so far, she had yet to come up with an answer.
“Are you happy?” Barbara asked, gently.
Nikki lifted her head from the toilet and stared at her sister with tear-brimmed eyes. “Ecstatic.”
“You’re being sarcastic,” Barbara deduced with a roll of her eyes. “I’m serious.”
Nikki pulled herself off the floor. “Barbara, to be honest, I don’t know how I feel and I don’t know what to do.” Last night, she’d finally taken the plunge and confided in her sister about her fake marriage. Her baby sister took the news with her mouth sagging open and her eyes as wide as last night’s full moon.
Nikki apologized profusely for lying to her, but explained how everything just snowballed out of control—especially when her husband showed up.
“But why did he go along with it?” Barbara finally asked.
“He said he liked me.”
That was all it took for Barbara to adore her fake brother-in-law. “Does he like you or does he love you?”
Nikki’s mind quickly recounted the number of times Hylan had said he loved her. Did he mean it casually or did he mean that he was in love with her?
“I mean, he even told Daddy that he loved you, right?” Barbara campaigned. “Surely that’s a big deal, even for a supposed ladies' man. I would imagine that they would go out of their way not to say those words.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Nikki said, turned on the faucet and dosing her face with cold water.
“Well, how do you feel about him?”
Nikki went still with her face still cupped in her water-filled hands. There had been no question whatsoever how she felt about Hylan. She loved him. She was in love with him, probably had been since before he’d even shown up there.
“Never mind,” Barbara said. “I believe I already know the answer.”
“It’s complicated,” Nikki said, straightening and reaching f
or a face towel.
“I don’t know. It sounds simple enough. You fell in love with your fake husband.”
Nikki laughed and moved from the bathroom to the bed.
Barbara followed and folded her arms. “And now you’re about to have his kid. Don’t you think you should at least tell him?”
“What, so he will do the honorable thing? No thanks. I’ve already duped him into one fake marriage. I don’t want to trap him into a real one.”
Chapter 18
It had been two days and Hylan still couldn’t believe that he’d been kicked out of his own house by a family that really wasn’t related to him. And to make matters worse, everybody in Soufrière now treated him like he had the plague. Everywhere he went people glared and shook their heads as if to say how dare he cheat on their beloved angel.
But how could he defend himself? To call Nikki a fraud now would be a bit disingenuous, seeing how he’d gone along with it for the past three months. Three months. What the hell was he thinking?
I wasn’t thinking. I was feeling.
“A lot that does me now,” he said, arguing with himself. He at least needed to see her, but her watchdog of a father wouldn’t let him get anywhere near her. And when he asked his own family members or longtime employee to pass his wife a note, he’d been turned down. It was like he was in some type of Twilight Zone, where up was down and down was up.
One thing was for sure, he needed to do something.
I could just cut my losses and head back home. Let her explain to her family why she couldn’t file for a divorce. That idea wasn’t even the least bit tempting. He didn’t want to leave without her…even though that had been the game plan all along. But people changed their plans all the time, he reasoned. There was no reason why they couldn’t either. After all, he loved her.
No. I’m in love with her.
He laughed at himself. This was the feeling that he’s been trying to avoid all these years? This wonderful warmth that spread throughout his body whenever he thought about the woman he loves—or how about the ache to just touch her that he’d felt the past two mornings? The very idea of never being able to hold, touch, kiss or even make love to her was making him physically ill.
Nicole Dawson. Nikki Dawson. They actually had a nice ring to them. He laughed again. “I don’t believe I’m thinking what I’m thinking,” he said.
Lathan shuffled through the living room, strapping his tool belt onto his narrow frame even though he was still in his pajamas. It was a strange habit Hylan noticed he had for the past two days. Mahina’s husband wore it just in case he had to fix something around the house.
“You had breakfast yet?” Lathan asked as he headed to the kitchen.
Hylan pulled the sheet back and sat up from the sofa he’d been borrowing since he’d been kicked out. “Nah. Not yet. I’ve just been lying here…thinking.” He watched the old man shake his head and drag his feet so his house shoes scuffled across the floor.
“Shouldn’t be much to think about,” Lathan said. “I think that everybody knows what you need to do. You just need to hurry up and do it.” He made it to the coffeemaker.
Did the man always talk in circles first thing in the morning?
Thirty seconds later, the fresh aroma of coffee wafted through the small house and put a smile on both men’s faces. Since he’d already taken a shower the night before, Hylan hopped up and in the bathroom just brushed his teeth and splashed water on his face. When he returned to the living room, Mahina was already there folding up his bedding before tackling breakfast.
“Mahina, I was going to get that,” he said, trying to be as less of a nuisance as possible.
“Don’t worry about it, chile. I got it.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Ain’t you got something to do today?”
Hylan opened his mouth.
“Said he’s been thinking,” Lathan volunteered, cutting him off.
“Shouldn’t be much to think about,” Mahina said. “Everybody knows what you need to do.”
Hylan opened his mouth again.
“That’s what I told him,” Lathan chuckled as he poured his first cup of coffee.
“Everybody doesn’t know all the facts,” Hylan said, making his way to the kitchen and the coffeemaker.
“I know that it’s time to stop playing house and make an honest woman out of that girl. Do I need to bop you over the head with my skillet to knock some sense into you?”
“Uh-huh,” Lathan cosigned.
Hylan almost dropped the carafe. “What? You know?”
The husband and wife looked at each other before Mahina said, “We’re old—not dumb.”
“But—but, I don’t understand.” Hylan sat down at the table. “How long have you known?”
Mahina shrugged. “I’ve known for about a week after meeting the girl. But she seemed nice and harmless. Then after getting to know her a bit better, I just figured that she was just a woman who was down on her luck. She turned out to be a great li’l helper around the property. I could use it, you know. These old bones aren’t what they used to be.”
“Speak for yourself,” Lathan said, leaning back and jamming a finger through his tool belt. “There’s not a damn thing I can’t do now that I didn’t do when I was twenty-five.”
One of Mahina’s brows hiked up.
Lathan coughed and then amended, “Well, almost everything.”
Hylan chuckled and then tried to wrap his head around this latest news. “So…does that mean everybody knows?”
Mahina looked insulted. “What? I don’t be spreading everything I know. I believe most people just took her at her word. When they saw how big her heart was, they fell in love with her.” Her gaze shifted to her husband. “I guess Lathan and I were hoping that you would, too.”
“So you let me carry on with this shenanigan for the past three months?”
Mahina laughed. “I don’t recall seeing no gun put to your head. You did what you wanted to do…like always.”
There was no point arguing with that. Mahina was telling the truth. “Well, her father certainly believes that we’re married…and that I’ve been cheating on her with Shonda for the whole time she was here. He still wouldn’t let me see her or let her take any of my calls.”
“And he still hasn’t put her on no plane,” Mahina countered. “I imagine a father like Nikki’s would have done some investigating long before he showed up and discovered that there was no marriage license. Have you personally gone over there and tried to talk to her?”
“You’re right.” A smile stretched across Hylan’s face as he jumped up from the table. “Mahina, you’re a genius…and an angel!”
“Of course I am. Everybody knows that.”
Hylan planted a big kiss on the side of her face and then shouted as he raced toward the door, “Call Reverend Oxford. See if he can perform a ceremony today. I’m getting married!”
“What’s taking him so damn long?” Wilbur huffed, walking around the kitchen in circles with a cup of coffee in his hand.
Ella sighed as she flipped bacon over in the skillet. “Maybe you shouldn’t have punched him, Wilbur. You got the man scared to come to his own house.”
Wilbur waved the comment off. “Are you kidding me? The man had an iron jaw. It damn near broke my hand.”
Ella shook her head. “You know what I mean.”
Wilbur shook his head, not willing or ready to consider that he may have botched things up. But when he could feel his wife’s heavy stare, he conceded a bit. “Okay. Maybe I did get a little carried away, but I had to make it look good, didn’t I?”
Ella shook her head. “I told you we should just let things take their natural course. It was clear from the moment we met him that he was crazy about Nikki. And she him, I might add. She just has this natural glow about her now. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that…” Ella glanced up at the ceiling as if she could see through the floor and into the master bedroom.
Wilbur
frowned. “You’d think what?”
She returned her attention to her husband and pushed up a smile. “Nothing, dear.”
He shrugged and continued his pacing. “Kappa Psi Kappa men usually go after what they want. I would have thought he’d show up sooner, demanding to see his wife.”
“They’re not married.”
“Well, you know what I mean.”
Ella shook her head. “The sad part is that I do.”
“I expect him to storm over here and fight for her. Not just try to call her on the phone.”
“It takes men a minute to admit that they’re in love,” Ella said. “Especially you Kappa Psi Kappa men.”
The first smile of the morning twitched at the corners of Wilbur’s mouth.
The Jamisons had known for quite some time that their daughter wasn’t married. After Barbara delivered the news two years ago, it took less than twenty-four hours and a cheap detective to uncover the truth. But Ella had insisted on giving their daughter some space to work out whatever it was that she needed to work out after failing so badly with her last play. But when the months rolled into years, she feared that her daughter was considering not returning home.
Their vacation trip was really supposed to be an intervention of sorts to get Nikki to see reason and return home. They were all surprised to see Hylan Dawson and were further thrown off guard by the undeniable affection between the couple.
“He’s gotta love her,” Wilbur said. “Why else was he playing along with that ridiculous charade?”
“He said he loved her,” Ella agreed.
“Right.” He snapped his fingers. “And let’s not forget that he offered to pay back that investment. If that wasn’t a sign of love I don’t know what is.”
Ella started preparing him a plate. "Don't worry, Wilbur. He should be along soon."
Chapter 19
Derrick, Charlie, Taariq and Stanley all gripped the sides of Rafiq’s compact four-wheeler with fear in their hearts while their short thirty-five years flashed before their eyes. They had all hesitated when the chatty driver had first whipped up on the airport tarmac and nearly ran them over, but after he’d mentioned that he and his aunt worked at Hylan’s vacation home, they all figured “what the hell?” Now hell was exactly what they were going through as Rafiq kept his heavy foot jammed down against the accelerator.
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