by Shana Burton
Garrett hugged him. “You just need to get to know him, that’s all.” He released Namon. “I’ll see you around.”
Garrett turned to walk away. Lawson gripped his sleeve. “Garrett, don’t go!” He broke her hold on him and kept walking.
“Shh, just let him cool off,” advised Sullivan, draping her arm about Lawson. “He feels betrayed right now, but he’ll be back.”
Mark approached his son. “Namon, if it’s all right with you and your mom, I’d love to take you somewhere to eat and we can start getting to know one another.”
“No, it’s not all right with me!” screamed Lawson. “Why don’t you get out of here? Go home, Mark. You’ve done enough damage for one day!”
“You can’t keep him away from me! I’m his father!” yelled Mark.
Namon shot back, “No, you’re not, and you never will be.” He ran to catch up with Garrett.
“Namon!” called Lawson. He ignored her.
“I’ll go after him,” said Mark.
Lawson held him back. “No, that’s the last thing he needs. I’ll go.”
“No, Lawson, you stay here and get this straightened out with Mark. I’ll check on Namon and Garrett,” offered Angel. She raced to catch up with the two of them.
Lawson pounded Mark in the chest and shoved him. “What were you thinking?”
“How could you be so stupid, Mark?” asked Sullivan. “Do you think he’s going to want anything to do with you now?”
Mark defended his actions. “All I wanted was a chance to know my son.”
“Then what was the point of blabbing to Garrett about the proposal? You lied to him. You knew that I didn’t pick that dress to wear for you. That was plain cruel.”
Mark pointed to himself. “I’m cruel? Weren’t you just laughing it up with your friends about how big of a sucker you think I am and how you were going to string me along until you got what you wanted?”
Lawson was livid. “What have you been doing, Mark, eaves-dropping? Lurking around my house so you could listen to my conversations?”
“No, a reliable source told me.”
“What source?” Lawson shook her head and exhaled. “It was Reggie, wasn’t it? Of course it was. She’s the only other person who could’ve told you that. My sister really played you. She used you, Mark, to get back at me, and you walked right into it.”
“That’s the same thing she says about you.”
“If you had been patient, none of this would be happening right now.”
“Patient? It’s been fourteen years! If you had been more concerned about your son than your boyfriend’s ego, it wouldn’t have come down to this!”
“Don’t you dare mention Garrett! And if I lose him over this stunt you just pulled, I swear to God—”
“Both of you just chill out,” issued Kina. “The most important thing is making sure that Namon’s okay. The two of you going at it like this isn’t going to help anybody.”
“She’s right,” agreed Sullivan. “You’re in it together now. You’re stuck with each other, so you might as well find a way to make it work.”
Angel returned. “Garrett is taking Namon back home. He said he’ll wait there with him until you come back.”
Lawson hugged her. “Thank you, Angel. How did Namon seem to you?”
“He’s confused, but he’s a tough kid. He’ll be okay,” Angel replied.
“And Garrett?”
Angel sighed. “I don’t know . . . I don’t know if he can get past this,” she admitted.
Lawson glared at Mark. “Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted?”
“All I wanted was for my son to know who I was.”
“Well, you got what you wanted, didn’t you, Mark? Now, instead of us sharing him, we may have both just lost him.”
Chapter 39
“You couldn’t come to this conclusion before we had sex?”
—Sullivan Webb
Sullivan fell back on the bed. “You sure know how to put a smile on a girl’s face.”
Vaughn reached into his nightstand and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “You want one?” he asked as he and Sullivan lay sprawled across his bed while Charles beat the campaign trail.
“I haven’t smoked since I was about eighteen.”
He passed her a cigarette and lit it. “Here’s to being eighteen again.”
“So, tell me, Vaughn, why don’t you have a girlfriend?” she asked him, exhaling the smoke.
“I have a few friends who I kick it with every now and then.”
“Are they friends or lovers?”
“Both, I guess,” he replied casually. “We have sex sometimes, but we’re still friends.”
She blinked. “Just like that—you sleep with all your female friends?”
“Not all of them, but for the ones who are down, we all know what we want, we get it, and that’s that.”
“What about love and commitment?”
“What about it?”
“What’s making love without that?”
“We’re not talking about making love, we’re talking about sex.”
“How can you be intimate with someone and not feel anything for the person?”
“I’m pretty much a loner. I don’t have time to get caught up in relationship drama. I’d rather just get in the studio and do my own thing. I don’t need a lot of people around me to do what I do. In fact, people get in the way of my creativity.”
She sat up. “What about what just happened between us? Am I just sex too?”
“You have a man, and you make love to him. We have sex. That’s all you should want it to be.”
“Is that all you want it to be?”
He blew out a ring of smoke and closed his eyes. “You think too much and ask too many questions.”
“Are you afraid of the answer?”
“Nope.”
“Then why are you avoiding the question?”
“I’m not avoiding the question, I’m avoiding the consequences of answering it.”
“Why?”
He seemed annoyed. “Because it’s a messed-up question. There is no right answer. If I say I’m just sleeping with you, you’ll get offended and start acting all hurt. If I say I want more, it puts you in a difficult position with your marriage.”
“The fact that you care so much about how I might react says a lot.”
“Don’t read too much into that. I care more about how your reaction will affect me than how it affects you. I don’t want to say or do anything that might trigger a stalker or a violent reaction from you, that’s all.”
“Whatever, Vaughn.” She ground up the cigarette and turned over in bed.
Vaughn glanced over at her. “Hey, don’t get too comfortable over there.”
“I told you that Charles wouldn’t be home tonight.”
“I don’t let women sleep over at my place. It sends the wrong message.” Vaughn rose and slid into his boxer shorts. “It’s time for you to bounce.”
“We’re still in afterglow here.”
“Afterglow is for couples. You and I just have sex.”
Someone knocked on the door. “Are you expecting company?” grilled Sullivan. “Is that why you’re in such a hurry for me to leave?”
Vaughn grumbled something inaudible and opened the door to an over-zealous campaign aide who thrust a flier in Vaughn’s face.
“A vote for Willie Tucker is a vote for equality,” he sang, peering into the studio apartment, giving him a clear view of everything inside, including Sullivan.
Vaughn balled it up and tossed it over the railing. “Nah, man, I ain’t interested.”
“Perhaps if you have a few minutes, I can change your mind, and together we can make sure that William Tucker gets re-elected for another term.”
“Did you hear what I said?” asked Vaughn in a cool but threatening tone.
The aide nodded, taking the hint. “Thank you for your time. Have a nice day, sir.” Vaughn slammed the door shut.<
br />
“I guess he won’t be counting on your vote,” joked Sullivan.
“That li’l dude’s been coming around here every day, non-stop,” griped Vaughn.
“I must say, Charles is doing better than I thought he would. He’s got Slick Willie running scared.”
“Got to be for them to be coming to this neighborhood.” Vaughn turned to face her. “You ought to go on and get out of here. They might come back around, and they don’t need to see you laying up in my bed.”
Sullivan buttoned her blouse. “Yeah, you never know who Tucker has got on payroll snooping around here.”
Vaughn grabbed a beer out of his refrigerator. “I think maybe we ought to just chill out for a while.”
“What?” exclaimed Sullivan. “Why?”
“It’s been cool, but I don’t think we need to do this anymore. Do us, I mean. It’s getting hot, and I told you I don’t do drama.”
“You couldn’t come to this conclusion before we had sex?”
“Why are you trippin’? You got what you came for. It ain’t like this was some romance type of thing.”
“Then what was it?”
He shrugged. “You had an itch, and I scratched it.”
“So, I violated my vows, risked my marriage, and broke enough commandments to earn me a cozy little corner in hell because you thought I had an itch?” posed Sullivan as she wriggled into the rest of her clothes.
“It is what it is.” Vaughn clicked on the television with the remote and crawled back into bed.
“How can you lie there and act like what we had was nothing?” she demanded.
“What are you talking about?” Vaughn seemed genuinely perplexed. “We looked at a few paintings, we shared a couple of laughs, and we had sex. That’s all it was. What more was there supposed to be?”
“Feelings!” she blurted out.
“Sullivan, let’s be real. You’re not going to leave your million-dollar mansion to come be with me, and I don’t intend to give up my lifestyle to please you.”
“That’s not the point!” she contended. “I thought we had something special.”
“I’ll put it to you like this.” Vaughn took a pull from his cigarette. “In my business, some cars are loaners, some are keepers. I always saw you more like a loaner.”
“A what?” That’s when the reality hit Sullivan like a ton of bricks. For the first time since she spotted Vaughn in the garage, she saw him for who he truly was. More importantly, she saw herself for what she had been. She and Vaughn weren’t kindred spirits; they weren’t even friends. She finally understood what it was like to be used.
“I am such a fool,” surmised Sullivan. “All this time, I thought you were some force that had come into my life to restore all of the excitement that I was missing with Charles. But you’re none of those things. You’re an immature, self-indulgent kid who knows nothing about life outside of this dingy apartment or that rusty garage.”
Vaughn adjusted the volume on the television. “Lock the door on your way out.”
Sullivan couldn’t believe that she’d been played . . . by a twenty-three-year-old . . . a twenty-three-year-old mechanic . . . whose whole apartment could fit into her bathroom with room to spare. More specifically, she had allowed the devil to enter into her life and take control over her mind, body, and spirit.
It was the longest drive home she had ever traveled.
Chapter 40
“The truth can change your whole world in an instant.”
—Kina Battle
“Here are the books you wanted,” said Lawson, unloading various textbooks into Kina’s arms. “Just try to keep up with them. I need them back. The school doesn’t know that I borrowed them yet.”
Kina returned the books to Lawson. “I don’t need them anymore. E’Bell doesn’t want to go back to school, so he doesn’t need to take the entrance exam.”
“Why not?”
Kina shrugged and let Lawson into the house. “He says he’s too old to try.”
“That’s nonsense! We’re practically the same age, and I just finished school myself. Heck, half the people in class with me were over thirty.”
“Lawson, you know E’Bell. He’s got all that pride and doesn’t like to look stupid in front of anyone. Between you and me, I think he’s ashamed.”
“What is he ashamed of?”
“Needing glasses. I tried to study with him the other night, and he couldn’t read the print. It made him frustrated, and he didn’t want to try anymore.”
“I’ve never known E’Bell to have vision problems.”
“Me either. I think it’s just when he reads. He does everything else just fine.”
“If he’s that self-conscious about wearing glasses, he can just get contacts. There’s no need to forgo his education over something as minor as that.”
“It’s not just that, Lawson. It’s something about school period.”
Thoughts began to churn in Lawson’s mind. “What kind of student was E’Bell when we were in school?”
“Average, I guess. He clowned around in class and slept a lot. He never wanted to do any of his work, and I usually ended up having to do it for him. He hated going to class, especially English. All he wanted to do was go to lunch, P.E., and football practice. I guess you get a lot of kids like that.”
“Does he ever read around the house? Magazines, the newspaper, the Internet?”
“E’Bell reading?” Kina laughed. “You can’t pay that man to pick up a book.”
“He doesn’t even read the sports pages as much as he loves football?”
“He gets all his scores and highlights from TV, so he doesn’t have to.”
Lawson took mental notes. “What about helping Kenny with his homework or reading to him? Does he do that?”
“He leaves all that to me. I told you—he hates anything having to do with school. It’s probably because he has to work in one.”
“I guess he doesn’t read the Bible much either, huh?”
“I try to encourage him to, he says he’ll wait for the movie.”
Lawson took a deep breath. “Kina, have you ever considered . . .” She exhaled and shook her head. “There’s no easy way to say this, but E’Bell is exhibiting all of the signs. Sweetie, it sounds like E’Bell can’t read.”
“That’s impossible. I mean, we all went to school together, we saw him graduate. I know that he was never an honors student, but he did enough to get by.”
“E’Bell was a jock, and a lot of teachers feel pressured to pass the athletes. I see it every day at work.”
“Lawson, no one can go to school twelve years and not know how to read. I just don’t see it. Besides, I live with the man. I think I would know if he couldn’t read.”
“He might be functionally literate, reading at maybe a second or third grade level. Between teachers who are burnt out or don’t care and pressure from the coaches, it’s very easy for someone like E’Bell to skate through high school without knowing how to read.”
Kina shook her head. “I just don’t believe that.”
“Think about it, Kina. You admitted that he never reads to Kenny or picks up a newspaper. Have you ever seen him reading anything around the house?”
“I’m the bookworm in the family. He’d rather watch TV or play video games.”
“The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. It would certainly explain why he never went to college.”
“He did that for me, to help me raise our son.”
“He could’ve gone to school locally and still been a father to his son and a husband to you. Look at the kinds of jobs he’s had since graduating. There was his job as a fry-cook, his pizza-delivery gig, and now his job cleaning up at the high school—all low-level positions that require minimal education and no reading. He’s never been promoted or been given any responsibility that will require him to read or to write.”
“Lawson, you know you can’t get a good job without going to college these
days,” rationalized Kina.
“There are still lots of jobs he can get without a degree, but the decent ones will demand that he read or write at some point, so he shies away from those.”
“I hear what you’re saying, but I know my husband, and I know he can read. He just doesn’t like to.”
“Kina, do you know how many classes and programs there are out there to help him become literate? Most are free and accommodating to his work schedule. There’s help out there for him, and he doesn’t have to be ashamed. Neither do you.”
Kina collapsed onto the sofa. “Lawson, you don’t understand. Everything I’ve put up with and gone through has been because I thought E’Bell gave up his life’s dream for me and Kenny. If it turns he never had a shot at that dream in the first place . . .”
“I don’t want to upset you, Kina. Don’t jump to any conclusions without getting all the information. Talk to E’Bell. Talk to some of his old teachers. Do whatever you have to in order to get to the truth.”
“Okay, so I find out the truth. Then what?” Kina lifted her eyes toward Lawson, desperate for answers. “Do I confront E’Bell with it? Do I leave, or get him the help he needs? How can I forgive him if he’s been lying to me for all these years? Do I even have a right to be mad at him for not knowing how to read?”
“Kina, I can’t tell you what to do other than to pray for the strength to face whatever comes next. I know that if it were me, I’d want to know the truth. Learn from my mistakes with Mark. The truth always comes to light whether we like it or not.”
“It’s scary, you know? The truth can change your whole world in an instant.”
“I know, but you have to ask yourself what’s scarier: finding out the truth or living a lie.”
Chapter 41
“What’s done is done. Just don’t do it again.”
—Lawson Kerry
“I didn’t think you’d have the nerve to show your face around here after that stunt you pulled,” directed Sullivan to Reginell as she and the other ladies collected donations for the church’s holiday toy drive.
Reginell smacked her lips. “Hey, if you don’t want these—”