by C. L. Donley
“Girl, I haven’t had sex in 11 months, and I am batshit crazy.”
“Okay, and so is every other woman that approaches him, apparently.”
“Does it happen that often? With you standing right there?” wondered Mya.
“You’d be surprised.”
“Are y’all swingin??” Kim looked at them both.
“Gross!” exclaimed Mya.
“They live 13 hours away!!” Conspicuously Amara’s protest didn’t seem to address the crux of the question.
“Amara…” said Kim.
“What.”
“You just need to be careful.”
“Y’all, I’m not the naive virgin of the group anymore. Matter fact, I’m the pioneer so just… chill, I got this,” Amara said.
“If he thinks you’re fine with him cheating, then it’s not okay,” Mya urged.
“That’s not what that was, alright? It’s a… inside joke.”
“Right.”
“Did you perceive me the loser in today’s exchange?” Amara slurped her drink through her straw.
They had to give it to her. Wife to Grayson Davis was a formidable task. If they spoke openly about that, they couldn’t imagine what they talked about behind closed doors. They probably didn’t have a single secret.
“Y’all are fuckin’ weird.”
“To being weird,” Amara raised her glass.
The clang of their flutes subtly rang out, overpowered by the noisy club.
In the corner of her eye, Mya saw the crowd part on the lower level of the club, slowly on either side.
Four men sauntered into the club as if they owned it.
People began moving this way and that. They looked behind them before moving aside, as if they were trying to gawk undisturbed. The club was dark and smoky, and if they weren’t dressed in simple v-necks, dress shirts and jeans she would’ve thought it was the police. But no. Mya recognized that floppy head of hair from a mile away. It was her man.
“Shit, the guys are here,” Mya said, rather panicky.
She was panicky because there wasn’t two, or even three of them, but four.
Bel was obviously in town, and he had company.
Amara looked around and then leaned over to get a glimpse of the front door on the lower level through the clear panel balcony.
The four men now were at the bar, including one with Grayson’s gait looking down at his phone.
Amara’s phone buzzed on the table.
We’re here. With Bel. And his brother.
Okay, so…Bel had a brother.
“Bel’s here,” Amara announced.
Here we go, Kim thought.
Well. At least she was going to look hot.
“Should we go down to them?” Mya suggested.
Amara didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely not.”
Forty One
Chapter 41
Bel hadn’t been in a club since his awol binge back in February. And with everything that had transpired in the last 36 hours, it felt a bit pukey to be back. He just wanted to be home. Home with his son. But it was his brother’s first time in the country, and he used the moment to force himself to play host, a task on any other occasion he would’ve enjoyed.
When he caught up with Grayson and Dale at the hotel, he looked a mess. He’d just come from seeing Jabari at the hospital, and he was a dour, raw sight. He’d been crying, traveling, and apparently becoming king in the last day or so.
Grayson too had known of his title, but Bel hadn’t been honest to them about where exactly he was in line for the throne.
“So now you’re the king. Of Ghassan,” Grayson said.
“Now I’m the king.”
“That is some serious Lion King shit, bro,” said Dale.
“So now what?” Grayson asked.
“Anybody wanna buy a company?”
“Can’t afford it,” Grayson shrugged.
“I’d give my left nut for it, but between the both of us we still couldn’t.”
Bel grinned. He’d had the least amount of lead time, and virtually no help, no formal education in software and he’d kicked his two best friends’ asses. Grayson was much better with ideas, however. Good with seeing things that weren’t there yet. Amara kicked both their asses in that category.
“Guess I’m gonna have to call Daryl.”
Daryl Jacobs was the founder of Magellan where the three billionaires met.
“Oh, Jesus Bel,” Dale balked.
“He can afford it.”
“Well, of course, he can, he’s the prince of darkness!”
“That’s no way to talk about our former boss,” said Bel.
“That’s right Dale; you know he can hear you,” Grayson smirked.
“He’s gonna turn it into a fuckin’ Magellan Ads farm, then he’s gonna put fucking 15 second ads in the middle of 30-second ads, and then he’s going to fucking buy America.”
“We’ll make a deal that makes sense,” Bel assured them.
“Can’t you be a king and a CEO?”
“…Not really bro.”
“Dude, just hire Grayson to run it. He needs a job anyway.”
Bel puckered his lips as if he was thinking. Then he suddenly introduced his brother Fahid, as if he’d forgotten.
“Does he speak English?”
“A little,” Fahid answered.
“Which means he’s fluent. He wants you to underestimate him. It’s a habit,” Bel said. He turned to his brother then and said in their language, “don’t worry, these are my friends.” He turned back to Grayson and Dale. “He’s still a man of few words as you can see. Not a huge sense of humor either, but obviously I need that.”
“So basically he’s Bryan.”
“Fuck. He’s exactly like Bryan.”
“Who is Bryan,” Fahid said more than asked, as if averse to admitting he didn’t know something. The guys didn’t mean to but they instantly laughed, and Fahid’s humorless expression was not aiding their recovery. Bel put an arm around Fahid and patted him loudly on the back. Fahid only looked at him as if he was the only one awake in a dream world.
Their father was dying, probably dead. Both their mothers in danger, Bel’s son in the hospital and he and his friends were laughing like wild donkeys. He didn’t understand. He hadn’t seen Bel like this since they were young, since he’d looked up to him and idolized him. The way Bel had idolized his older brother Marcus.
Bel’s older brother, in Fahid’s opinion, was not worthy of idolization. He was not a bad guy, but he did not make a habit of being kind to people who did not somehow immediately benefit him. He was sorry that he died but relieved he would never be king. He knew instinctively that the poor would’ve been swept clean out of the eyes of the country under Marcus’s rule.
Bel’s words dissipated his thoughts.
“Fahid, would you like to see more of America? It’s my first time in Nashville too.”
“Where are we going?” asked Grayson, already knowing the answer.
“I have to see Kim,” Bel said, sounding a bit more desperate than he intended.
“Dude… I got a bad feeling about this whole thing,” Dale confessed, his distaste for Kim coming out in his words.
She was a barrel of laughs, a female version of him probably, but Dale was concerned for his friend’s heart.
Instantly the energy changed and Dale knew he’d overstepped the fragile grounds of their intimacy. But he couldn’t help himself.
“It’s not your problem, bro,” answered Bel.
“She was all over Grayson at the hospital,” Dale suddenly blurted out, his hail mary attempt to get through to him.
Bel’s jaw clenched.
Dale was taking the risk, and while Bel was pissed that he’d done it, pissed at the information, it was Dale’s underlying love that assuaged him.
“She said she wanted to climb me like a tree,” Grayson confirmed, in his patented way of somehow making it funny by making it worse.
&nb
sp; Bel could feel Fahid’s contempt beside him and experienced his first contentious decision as king.
He had no choice but to laugh it off. Aside from the fact that it had no effect on his feelings for her whatsoever, they hadn’t known how much of it was his fault. And that he’d deserved it. He tried and failed not to picture it.
Dammit, Kim.
First, she’d had their baby without telling him, attempted to keep working and raise him alone, with the help of paid strangers, and of course failed within months. If she’d had the prince of Ghassan in the palace, her feet wouldn’t have touched the floor for a year. And now he has to find out she was hitting on his best friend.
Kim was acting like a loose cannon. With her every move she was goading him, daring him to go off in a rage, to join her in the fiery dance of passion that abandoned all rationale.
“She’s just low on vitamin D, bro,” Bel replied smoothly.
Dale put his hands up in surrender, knowing there was nothing else he could say. He dreaded the inevitable sight of her at this club, likely surrounded on the dance floor by what would look like a thousand men, and Bel lining them up to fight every one of them. She was the mother of his child now, after all. Fuck’s sake! Suddenly he noticed Bel was looking at him, smiling.
“What?” Dale said.
“You look good,” said Bel.
“Thanks, I feel good.”
Bel gave Grayson an elaborate grin with his tongue in his cheek. He shook his head.
“Davis you’re a fuckin’ genius bro,” he finally said.
“I know,” Grayson replied.
“Um, if this little self-congratulatory session is about Mya, you can stop right there, because you did nothing.”
Bel just looked giddily at his friend.
“Bro, what are you grinning about?” Dale said.
Bel kept the same expression, but now he was slowly, emphatically nodding his head.
“Dude, I’m not telling you shit.”
“You don’t have to.”
“She’s gonna be my wife, bro.”
“Dale!” Bel exclaimed, every appendage on his face raised.
“He hasn’t even asked her yet,” said Grayson.
“He’s just saying that to annoy me, he knows why I haven’t asked her yet.”
“Why haven’t you asked her yet?”
“Because I’m doing a thing, okay? It’s gonna be a whole… thing.”
“He’s planning the entire proposal and wedding and reception all at the same time, on the same day,” Grayson blurted.
“Bro, I bought an island.”
“He bought an island.”
“Her mind’s gonna be fuckin’ blown.”
“Bro, that’s like…an intense amount of planning,” Bel warned.
“I know,” Dale raised both eyebrows.
Dale prided himself on having an unusually high level of attentiveness to his girlfriends. He was used to them expecting a certain level of accommodation and was convinced that such an expectation was a trustworthy indication of a high-level woman. But Mya never failed to react like he was fuckin’ David Blaine, and he had to discipline himself from going bankrupt in the constant pursuit of this reaction. He simply wasn’t accustomed to that depth of appreciation. He’d foolishly settled for mutual attraction, thinking ego boosts were leftover traces of misogyny from the past. But no no. It had now become prerequisite. And he was pretty sure it didn’t get any better than Mya. And this wedding was going to be his magnum opus.
“Clear your schedule, next June, bro. Santorini.”
“I think if you fly her to Greece, she’s gonna catch on, Dale.”
“Not to the shit I got planned. She already knows we’re going to Greece.”
“What about the dress?”
“Already picked out. It’s…I’m telling you now, I’m gonna be a giant snot ball.”
“She doesn’t want to pick out her own dress?”
“She doesn’t even like trying on dresses, let alone picking them. It was a bitch to get her measurements. Plus, it’s like her job to dress up like a five-year-old girl.”
“Dale, she’s not your type!”
“At all, bro!”
“And you’re in love with her!”
“I cannot…remember… any of my life before last year.”
That got them all right in the feels, Bel in particular. All those nights Dale spent crying in his beer as it were, reminiscing about this one or that one, and what he’d done wrong. Suddenly the past was like a distant dream. The very same thing had been happening to Bel, except he was fighting it.
“I’m happy for you, Dale. You deserve it.”
“…Okay, I’ll tell you one thing.”
Bel smirked. “One,” he resolved responsibly.
“And it’s not… race-based okay. Fahid, close your ears.”
“Bro, Fahid is special forces, he’s a fuckin’ steel trap.”
“And if this gets back to Amara, I’ll freakin’ cut your balls off,” Dale said to Grayson.
“I’m pretty sure whatever it is she already knows,” Grayson replied.
“Bro, just spill it,” Bel taunted him.
“Okay. Have you ever been with a girl that has like…silent orgasms.”
“Yes,” Grayson smirked.
“Bro, that sounds creepy as fuck,” Bel silently confessed.
“No, it’s not, it’s hot,” Grayson assured him.
“It is… extremely hot,” seconded Dale.
“What’s hot about it, it’s like having sex with a corpse.”
“Dude, she’s not silent the entire time, just during climax.”
“So what, is she like holding her breath?” asked Bel.
“Dude, haven’t you ever watched porn?” Dale sneered.
“Bro, for what?”
“I bet it’s hot when a black woman does it,” offered Grayson.
Before Dale could stop himself, he gritted his teeth and started making unintelligible growls of agreement while he shook his head. Bel grabbed Fahid by the shoulders and hung his head as he silently laughed. Even Fahid had to crack a smile.
Fahid was starting to understand. Bel’s life had always walked a tortured line of somber duty and public tragedy. He suffered all the same tragedies as a commoner and hardly tasted the benefits that his position afforded him. He was still too poor to pay the cost of bringing back his loved ones from the grave. He wanted for many things. But in America those extremes were manageable. Now that he was king, he would have to return to them permanently. This was the only room in the world right now where Bel was not a king. And sometimes, that’s what a king needed.
“Dancers have freakishly strong legs,” Grayson reminisced, “I always found it a bit of a turn-off.”
“Dude, you’re crazy,” Dale answered, sounding offended.
Bel was cracking up again at Dale’s late journey of sexual discovery.
“Dale, you like strong legs, bro?”
“Bro, I almost died giving head once, and I was at peace with that shit.”
Bel was in tears. He hadn’t considered the notion that he’d needed to laugh, but clearly, he did. It’d been a hard 24 hours, and after all the tears, the joy was viscous across his heart. It might’ve been the first time he had laughed since the wedding, the last time they were all together. He’d dreaded confronting Kim in his current state, but his bros had come to the rescue. Now he felt lighter.
When they got to the club, Bel noticed the environment was much more laid back in Nashville. A lower concentration of pretense Bel thought, but not for lack of trying. The women were more conservatively dressed here than in Cali, which he expected. Still, he could still feel Fahid’s discomfort. America may as well have been another planet.
Things were very traditional in Ghassan. While there were nightspots, Fahid wasn’t the type to indulge. He’d married young, having been betrothed to a prince’s daughter in a neighboring country, a woman he’d only met a few times in very
controlled environments with family present.
Bel had done the same such courtship dance with Leilani, and he’d relished every moment. They were eons apart, the man he was at present and the man he used to be. Young Belkacem was dutiful, sensitive to a fault. He’d worshipped his older brother. He’d only ever loved one woman, and he considered himself lucky. Equally, Leilani only had eyes for him her entire life. She’d wanted to go to America for her education, but he’d persuaded her to stay and married her. Wasn’t it what a man ought to do who loved a woman? Had he not been so selfish, would her life have been spared?
Once a few camera phones started emerging at the trendy nightclub, the men were on the move. They walked upstairs to the VIP section, and there were Mya and Amara, but Kim was nowhere to be found.
“You cut your hair,” Amara began.
Bel had cut all his locs off while he was in Ghassan and now his hair was cut in a low fade. He wore a faded burgundy v-neck, fitted gray jeans hanging low on his hips and mirrored pilot shades he couldn’t possibly need.
Kim was going to jump his bones when she saw him, she thought.
Kim had a weakness for middle eastern men and bad boys, and now Bel was blurring the lines between both.
“Where is she?” he lowly demanded.
“Can we at least meet your brother?” Amara stalled.
“Later.”
“She didn’t know she was pregnant, Bel.”
The guys looked at each other. Bel’s jaw was clenching again.
“How do you not know.”
“The doctor thought that maybe it was twins. She lost one, but Jabari was still in there.”
“Holy shit,” Dale said.
Bel was in a trance. The same bizarre coincidence had happened to his own father when he was born.
“She’s on the terrace outside,” Amara confessed.
Bel brushed past her and headed toward the exit doors on the balcony.
“Why was she working?” he added as he walked.
“I worked at MeTV when Sam was that age…and Sam was in daycare!” Amara quickly yelled in his direction.
Bel walked away in a huff. He’d worked up his resolve to chastise Kim for Jabari’s injuries since seeing him in the hospital and, of course, Amara was dissipating it. Like she did at work to get her way.