by Kiki Leach
Her breasts were staring at him through her bright orange tank top and he was standing straight at attention at the very thought of unleashing them again. He moved his hand between her legs, spreading them, and pulled her closer against him to feel her. Knots formed in her stomach as what she knew to be real collided with what she felt wasn’t and could never be again.
It wasn’t until a knock on the door that she was jolted back to reality. Her heart beat even harder and even more unsteadily against her ribs. Nathan was out of breath, still pressed against her, his hand resting above her head against the door. When she saw her shirt on the floor, she looked down at herself and slid away, reaching for it and pulling it over her head as quickly as she could to cover herself. She wiped her hands across her face and covered her mouth, shaking her head, wondering how the hell she managed to get so caught up just like she had before.
Nathan glanced at her from the corner of his eye, then turned to look through the peephole. “It’s just housekeeping,” he said. He asked for her to come back later and she nodded while continuing her way down the hall. He went back over to Vanessa, but she moved away before he could touch her.
She looked around the room, rattling her head until it hurt. “I’ve lost myself,” she said. “Who I was, what I am. I’ve lost myself in you again and that’s… not a good feeling. It never was, but it’s even worse now because I think my mother was right.” Vanessa frowned as she caught a glimpse of the bed. Sheets were still rumpled, pillows remained at every corner; nothing had been cleaned or sanitized. “You don’t respect me. But how can I expect that when I don’t even respect myself anymore?” She closed her eyes and breathed out. “I can’t, not with the way that I’ve been acting since you’ve been back. I don’t even ask for your heart anymore, because even having it doesn’t seem to matter. This was a mistake, just like last night, but more severe. I feel like a knife has been put through my chest and I can’t even save myself long enough to remove it. I don’t know what we had, whatever it was, but it’s over.” She grabbed her clutch from the floor and went back over to the door. Nathan jumped in front, blocking her way out. “Please move.”
“We’re not finished yet.”
“We are more than finished,” she told him, firm. “You were going to have sex with me in the same bed as her.” Tears filled her eyes as she looked at him with hate, rage, and disgust building up inside of her. “You were going to have sex with me in the same bed as if those sheets weren’t fresh with your lovemaking. And you sent the cleaning lady away.” She turned her head to wipe her face and rested her hand against her lips. “This conversation is over. You’re disgusting and I want this done for good.”
“It’ll never be over between us, Vanessa,” he said under his breath.
“I don’t care what you say. Right now, I just want you to move the hell outta my way.”
“No--”
“Nathan,” she snapped. “You have never given me what I wanted or needed, before or after our relationship. But I’m nothing to you now. Please just move.”
“You are everything to me, Vanessa. I--”
“Move!” She couldn’t stand to hear anymore.
He furrowed his brows and stared longingly into her eyes. It was the first time he really listened to her words since his return. He took them to heart and gradually stepped aside, opening the door and allowing her to leave at her own will. She stood with her clutch close to her chest, her hair a mess and her clothes wrinkled.
She wanted to look at him again before leaving, making sure it was real, but she couldn’t. Instead she stepped out into the hall and walked as fast as she could to the elevator, jamming her finger against the button that led to the lobby until the doors finally opened. Nathan peeked out from his room, watching closely as she stepped inside. He knew that he loved her and he knew that she was aware of it too. But he also knew that he didn’t know how to love her, and that she was aware of it most of all.
On the way back from a pharmacy, Sheila spotted Vanessa racing out the front doors of The Palace from the backseat of her cab. “Stop the car!” she hollered. In a panic, her driver slammed on his breaks just a few feet from where he needed to be to let her out. She scrambled for fair, tossing whatever dollars and coins she found inside her purse next to bottles of pills, and jumped out before he could even ask her if she wanted the right change. She wrapped her hand around the edge of her mouth as if it were a foghorn and screamed. “VANESSA!” But she was too far gone to hear her voice. Sheila didn’t know what to think upon seeing her there. She knew Vanessa was upset, but coming to see Nathan right after didn’t sit right with her, at all.
She headed inside the hotel and went straight to a waiting elevator. She tapped her foot against the floor in anticipation, wondering what she would find when she finally reached the door to her room. When she did, she took a deep breath and slipped her key into the slit above the handle. As she turned, the door jerked open with Nathan standing directly on the other side. He looked surprised to see her there, maybe even disappointed. Sheila didn’t know which, but if he had just seen Vanessa, then she was sure it had to be both.
“What are you doing back here so soon?” he asked. “When I called and left you that message earlier, I wasn’t expecting to see you again until tonight.”
“I finished brunch early with Vanessa, then stopped by the drug store for something. V and I didn’t end on good terms. I was hoping that staying here at your suggestion would change things, but it seems to keep making everything worse.” She stared directly into eyes trying to figure out what he was thinking as he stared back at her. She came up empty. The longer he remained silent, the bigger her insecurities grew. “Are you going someplace?”
“I’m headed to the gym. I need to blow off some steam.”
“Steam from what?” she asked. He turned his eyes toward the floor and became solemn. “Did you want to stay here instead? Maybe I can help you with blowing off steam--”
“No,” he answered quickly. Her asking wasn’t so much a question as she was more fishing for information. If he stayed, it meant that he wasn’t satisfied. If he was ready to bolt out of the door, it meant he had finally gotten the fix he wanted since returning and like an addict, was seeking ways to obtain more of it in secret. She didn’t want to believe it to be true, but she felt she had no other reason not to. Nathan fiddled with his room key then stuffed it inside his pocket. “I need some time alone.”
“More time than you had while I was gone.”
“Yeah,” he said.
She moved inside and he began heading out, only stopping when she called out his name. “What about the wedding?” she asked.
He spun around on his heel. “We talked about this earlier.”
“You said it’s still happening and that’s wonderful, but it’s not my immediate concern right now. My immediate concern is that you wanted it to take place here instead of California where I wanted it to happen, and where I think it should still take place. It’s more convenient for everyone involved.”
He groaned. “You agreed to this, Sheila.”
“You asked me again during sex last night knowing what my answer would be in the heat of the moment.” She sighed. Realizing he wouldn’t budge, she thought of another alternative. “If you want to have it here, fine. But if that’s the case, then we need to move it up by a few months. Maybe even have it sometime this summer.”
“This summer?” He winced. “There’s only a month of it left.”
“Not if you count August. Nathan, I want to be married to you before the year is out.”
“We will be.”
“When? I don’t see any proof of you trying to help move things along.”
“I helped to personalize the invitations, didn’t I? And I helped you mail them off. For the sake of what’s right, we can’t move the location of the wedding and the date up by five and a half months. We might as well expect no guests to show up.”
“People move wedding dat
es around all the time.”
“You’re asking for a big move, Sheila.”
“They’d get a free vacation!” she said.
“No they wouldn’t because we’d be footing the bill like we always do.”
“My dad is the one paying for this wedding. All we have to do is show up on time and not forget the names in our vows.” She stared at him as he seemed to grow angry and diverted his attention. “Why are you acting so careless and wanting to keep things as they are between us?”
“I’m not acting careless,” he told her.
“Yes you are. If it weren’t for me pushing everything, nothing would be happening like it is. For the record, if you don’t want to marry me, then just say it and we can go our separate ways.”
“What the hell happened between you and Vanessa at brunch? All of a sudden you are so eager to move things up.”
“I just think that this is something we need to think about doing. Once that’s out of the way, we can focus on other things, like us, and starting a family.”
“We’re each other’s family for the time being and that’s just fine with me.”
“You want children. I know you’ve always wanted children.”
He thought for a long time and then looked straight into her eyes. “Maybe not so much anymore.”
“So with Vanessa, children was acceptable and expected but with me it’s not?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then why is it that after we’ve come back here and you’ve seen Vanessa again, you suddenly jumped on the no children track?”
“This has nothing to do with Vanessa, as much as you like to think it does. And I didn’t say that we were never going to have them, but you want them before we’ve even said I do. Kids is just something that we need to think about a little further, that’s all. They’re great, but they can always mess up a lot of things too.”
“Our kid getting into the porn on your computer while she’s trying to finish a science project for school doesn’t count, Nathan.”
He pressed his fingers against the corners of his eyes and jerked his head back. “Sheil’s, I have to go. We’ll talk about this more when I get back later.” He left without saying another word.
“Looking forward to it,” she mumbled as he slammed the door. She immediately reached inside her purse for her phone and began to dial Vanessa’s cell. She hesitated before pushing the last button, but finally did and was more than glad to get voicemail.
“Hey, V,” she said. “It’s Sheila. I’m sorry that I keep doing things to you, but I never meant what happened at brunch to take place. I know that I keep apologizing and it keeps falling on deaf ears, but you can’t blame a girl for trying to recapture her friendship. I hope when you get this that you listen to it and realize how sincere I am.”
She clicked the red button and slammed her phone onto the crumpled sheets. Unlike last night, she didn’t leave this message to be sincere, no matter how she attempted to make it seem. If Sheila felt bad for what she had done to Vanessa back then, she was going to make damn sure that Vanessa felt the same now. But what would it matter if she had Nathan all to herself? It was nice to think that Vanessa had Maurice’s obsession with her to at least keep her distracted from everything else, but that was no longer a guarantee.
Maybe a bigger distraction was needed, one that carried more physical and emotional weight. So she sat back and called the one and only person who could provide her with the assistance she needed in making sure that her life remained as picture perfect as possible, at least to the outside world. She grabbed her phone again and dialed another number.
When the person on the other end finally answered after a few rings, a deep smile came across Sheila’s lips.
“Joan,” she said. She leaned her head and crossed her legs one over the other, swinging that foot back and forth against the bed.
“Sheila! I have been meaning to call you all day!” Joan responded. “What is this I’ve been hearing about the reunion brawl? I’ve had friends and family texting me all day but no one has sent me pictures of anything because they don’t want me to be too upset. And I can’t get online because our wireless is out until tomorrow morning.”
“It’s probably a good thing that you haven’t seen anything yet. Long story short, Vanessa and I got into a little bit of a fight, but we had brunch this afternoon and everything’s--”
“People are really making it sound like you two tried to kill each other! Was that your goal the entire time?”
“Of course not! I was genuine when I told you that I wanted to make up with her. But now, things have sort of changed.”
“Because of the fight.”
“Yes and no. Yes because I think she has something going on with Nathan behind my back. No, because I can’t prove it, but they’ve both been acting strange all day. And then when I came back to the hotel, I caught her leaving out the front doors.”
“Did she see you?”
“No. I tried calling out for her, but she didn’t hear me or refused to turn around. I don’t know.”
“Why would you do something like that?”
“Because I wanted her to know that I was aware. After all the hell she continues to put me through and then I come back to my hotel and see her leaving after she’s more than likely been in my room with my man and in our bed?” She shook her head. “Something’s not right and that’s why I called.”
“What can I do from all the way over here? I don’t have another reunion to plan for at least another five years.”
“It’s nothing like that. I need to know a little bit more information on Vanessa’s professor, that Adrian. What was his last name?”
“I don’t remember. It was Samson, or Samuels or something.”
“Can’t you Google it?”
“I could if I had access to wi-fi. I’m pretty sure it was Samuels, Professor Adrian Samuels. Why do you need his last name?”
“Because I think it’s time the professor came home to have a nice long visit with his favorite student.”
Part Eight
When they arrived home, Maurice retreated to his bedroom to wait for Vanessa to return while Nikki retreated to hers to think about her relationship with Oscar, as well as the one with his wife, and what it meant for all of them now that she knew for sure Melanie was staying in town for longer than anticipated. She sat on the edge of the bed with William’s number in her hand, then looked at her dresser across the room. She sat the card on the bed and went over to it, opening a drawer near the corner and pulling out a picture of her and Oscar that a photographer had taken of them six months ago. It was a duplicate of one that had been used in a feature story on The Bean in one of the local barista magazines.
When she realized the picture had been taken of them together, smiling as they were helping a customer who raved about their coffee and service, she asked for her own personal copy to keep. It was the first time she saw through a lens how they looked together, and she wanted to keep that memory for herself in case anything out of their control were to ever pull them apart. Namely, his wife.
She held that picture in her hand and went back over to the card on her bed, picking it up and holding it in the other. She weighed them against each other and lifted William’s business card higher than the picture of her and Oscar as if her hands were a scale. Oscar held more weight inside her heart for obvious reasons, but what did it matter with his wife never going anywhere? She would help him build up his new shop and they would inevitably grow closer from spending more time together than they had in years, which would make her moving back here a more seamless and welcome transition.
Was she still willing to wait around while everyone continued to tell her that they were right and she was wrong and that the last year she had spent with him really meant nothing? She wasn’t willing to take that risk; not of being wrong, necessarily, but in believing that the last year was wasted on lies – the ones she told herself on top of the lies Oscar had
told to keep her in his life.
Even if she didn’t have him anymore, she learned the difference between a man who was willing to risk his life to be with someone, versus one that was all too keen on hiding in your closet forever, if it meant that he could continue getting what he wanted. Without a second thought, she crumbled that picture up inside her hand. It took a lot of strength to do it. But she knew deep down inside herself that what they were in that picture, together and happy, didn’t reflect who they were today.
For so long she didn’t want to lose what she thought to be true in the face of those who didn’t believe it, but now more than ever she was willing to move forward. She was willing to jump in feet first and didn’t care who knew it, when or how. She held on tighter to William’s number and after a deep breath, went downstairs to the living room and sat in the chair by the phone.
He was walking through the city following one of his usual Sunday afternoon meetings with a former business partner in lower Manhattan when his cell phone rang. He stopped near a building to retrieve it from his jacket pocket and narrowed his eyes at the unrecognizable phone number. He answered cautiously, but anxious to hear who was on the other side.
Nikki sat up straight the moment she heard his smooth voice call out to her with a deep ‘hello’. She almost dropped the receiver to the floor, she was so nervous to speak anything back to him.
“Hello?” he asked again, becoming slightly annoyed at the lack of response on the other end. She had a bad habit of this, calling without giving an immediate response, but he didn’t know that. William pulled his phone away from his ear to see if the time was still running. When it was clear the other person hadn’t hung up, he pressed the phone back to his ear and made a face of wonder. “Is anybody there? Hello?”
“I’m here!” Nikki finally said, placing her hand on top of her head and making a wild face as if she were in pain. She felt embarrassed and foolish for letting it go on for so long. “I already blew it with you, didn’t I?”