by Kiki Leach
“Vanessa,” she breathed. “I’m first to admit that that man has always loved you above all others, but it wasn’t as if he was some kind of saint during that time or any time before it.”
“Yes, I know all too well that he’s never been a saint,” she said. “Thank you. His dick has probably seen more vaginas than a gynecologist.”
“Then you should have no problem telling him about your little fling with Adrian.”
“It is not that simple, Felicia – damn it! That is the one thing that you and Alexis just can’t seem to understand! And I admit, that part of it is my fault.” She placed a hand on her chest and breathed out. “Adrian wasn’t just a fling. Yes, I got flung because it didn’t last long but before all of that, before it all went hell, I had created an entire life with this man inside my head. An entire life that because I thought I was going to live it with him, completely accepted. Love or not, I was convinced it was going to happen, and when it didn’t? It gave me a completely different outlook, on life, on myself, on love and other men, on everything. Mo has never been in any situation with any other woman in the same way that I have been with Nathan and Adrian. I’m it!” she hollered out. “I’m it, that’s all he’s ever told me. He’s never wanted anything with anyone else but me and now he’s got it.”
“You’re allowing him to live inside a fantasy that doesn’t exist by keeping this from him, V.”
“So what? What the fuck is so wrong with living in a fantasy? That man is the closest I will ever, ever have to being completely happy – to feeling completely whole within myself and being okay with the shit I’ve been through, because it brought me to him. He is the reason why that part of my life with Adrian, and the life before it with Nathan can go POOF, gone!” Her voice cracked. She pressed her hands together and rested them against her mouth to keep herself from completely falling apart. “I can’t lose that. I can’t lose my reason, Felicia, I can’t.”
She turned away from her sister and dabbed the tears beneath her eyes as they fell.
Felicia watched her sister before coming up behind and running a hand down the back of her hair. “Baby girl,” she whispered in a calming voice, which only made Vanessa more emotional. “By not allowing yourself to live inside the reality of all this? You already have.”
Part Five
While back at The Palace, Sheila hadn’t had much success in getting in touch with Nathan either. In fact, she seemed to have even less luck than Vanessa as she couldn’t manage to get anyone on the phone to even talk to her.
After being ignored by his parents and leaving enough messages on his voicemail to clog a drain, she decided to call the one person she knew she shouldn’t; the one person she had promised to both herself and Vanessa that she would keep away from, from here on out: Adrian.
If she slipped up and said anything to him about Vanessa’s baby, much less her miscarriage, she knew it would be her ass and she’d never hear the end of it.
If she slipped up and said anything to him about their own night together spent on the beach, she knew it would be her heart.
But she had to try.
And because she wanted to hear his voice, she decided that calling would be better than sending a casual text message, questioning Nathan’s whereabouts. His voice gave her comfort when people like Vanessa gave her nothing but grief for even existing. It gave her pleasure when Nathan gave her nothing but pain.
After clicking on his name and hitting the green button, she waited for a few seconds and listened to it ring. After about the third or fourth one, an irrational fear swirled around deep inside her belly and forced its way up through her body and to the stem of her brain. She thought that maybe it was possible he had felt the same way – that it was best to keep his distance, given her continued commitment to Nathan, even if he personally thought that she could have, and should have done better for herself in that department.
As she kicked herself for even trying to call and was about to hang up, a gruff voice answered with a quick “Hello”.
She smiled and took a few deep breaths while moving around the room and responding back with a “Hi.”
Adrian, immediately recognizing her voice after having never looked down at the number, leaned back against the counter in his kitchen and beamed from ear to ear. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to call me after that last text message this afternoon,” he said. “When you told me you were fine and had gotten back to the city safely, I was sort of thinking that I wouldn’t hear from you again today.”
His words threw her entire body into a conniption. Her heart was beating so fast that her thoughts couldn’t keep up. Neither could her hand in trying to stop the pounding sound that she was positive could be heard through the phone. “Do you want me to hang up?”
“No.” He replied so fast he hadn’t even a chance to think of what he was saying. It all came out so naturally for him whenever he spoke to her. “I don’t want you to hang up, Sheila – if you called it was with a purpose right? All I’m saying is I assumed that with you going back home with Nathan --”
She placed her hand down on top of her dresser and closed her eyes. “Speaking of Nathan” – which by now she was no longer certain she even wanted to do, but felt she had to in order to keep the focus from going back to, or remaining on them – “I’m assuming that you haven’t heard from him since we left?”
Adrian paused, which gave her pause as well.
“No,” he finally said. “I haven’t. He’s not there with you?”
“No.” She pressed her hand across her forehead and moved to the other side of the room. “We sort of got into an argument not long after getting back to the hotel room this afternoon and then he bolted. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.”
“Do you want me to come over,” he asked. “Or help you to look for him?”
“No,” she replied. “He’ll turn up eventually. I just thought there might have been a chance he would’ve made his way out there.”
He chuckled. “Why? Have you checked with V?”
“Yes, and she doesn’t know where he is either.” She walked back over to the bed and sat down on the edge. “He just has these moments where he does some really crazy things, like inviting you out to the Hamptons. And he doesn’t have very many friends since him and Maurice stopped speaking long before we were all out of high school.” She stopped. “I don’t know, I was just hoping upon hope that you had seen him.”
Adrian cleared his throat and suddenly stiffened against the phone. He wanted to hear Sheila’s voice. He didn’t want to hear another man’s name being uttered from her lips – lips he had been anxious to taste since last night, and long before.
“I haven’t heard from him,” he said. “But if I do, you’ll be the first call that I make.”
She held the phone loosely in her hand and nervously shook it back and forth against her face while nodding. “Thanks.”
“Sure.” He moved over to his table and pulled out a chair to take a seat. He exhaled through the speaker and Sheila closed her eyes again.
The feeling she had about this phone call wasn’t good. In fact, it almost made her feel nauseated.
“Why do I have such a sick feeling inside my stomach,” Adrian started, “that if I don’t hear or see Nathan that this might actually be the last time that we talk?”
She tried to hide her disappointment in his words behind a smile. “I don’t know. Why do you?”
“I thought I could do this for you. But, you calling to ask me about your fiancé’s whereabouts doesn’t really bode well for any future we might have as friends. I’m not um... I’m not a ‘Maurice Livingston’ kind of guy,” he told her. “I wish I could be that for you, but I can’t.”
She dropped her head and watched a single tear fall to her lap as both her heart and stomach plummeted. “I don’t think a Maurice Livingston kind of guy exists outside of a fairytale. And I’m okay with that.”
“Are you?” he asked sincerely.
They were quiet for a long time before she spoke again.
“Thanks for answering me when I called. I guess nobody else wanted to pick up the phone the moment they saw my number.”
“I didn’t actually see your number. I just heard my phone ringing and pushed the right button. I’m glad I did.” Another long silence ensued before he muttered the two words she would dread hearing. “Goodbye, Sheila.”
As her hand wrapped tighter around the phone, she drew her pinky into her mouth and placed the tip of it between her teeth, biting down hard to keep from whimpering like a wounded animal in his ear.
Before a single word could escape from her in return, she heard a click followed by the dial tone.
Slowly, she pulled the phone away from her face and stared down at his number as the call officially ended. Then she slid her finger over both his name and without hesitancy, hit the delete button.
It was, she concluded, one of the hardest and most painful decisions she had ever had to make. She barely knew this man and what he was about outside of being Vanessa’s ex, and already, it felt like she had just given up a piece of her soul.
Adrian placed his phone down on the table and looked over at his roommate who exited from the backroom.
Shirtless and with a gut that seemed to extend from where he stood to the opposite side of the room, he nodded and trudged past Adrian into the kitchen, his clubbed feet dragging across the floor. “You on the phone?” he asked.
Adrian glanced down at his cell and blinked once. “I was. But that’s over now.”
“What is?” His roommate grabbed a large bowl from one of the cabinets and filled it with cereal and milk. Though his eating habits were adolescent from time to time, the man was well over a certain age and during certain points of argument regarding one thing or another with Adrian, had no problem throwing that fact around and in his face.
Adrian respected him because he was older, but knowing the man’s history after learning more about him and his past life long before he moved in, he wouldn’t have actually called himself a fan of the actual person.
He pushed the chair back and stood up, thinking about his question. “It’s, or it was, nothing.” He wiped his hands against his sweat pants and pointed at the bowl. “Are you going to clean that this time?”
He nodded and leaned his large frame against the stove while dipping his spoon into the bowl. “You good, son?”
Adrian looked down at his phone again, then picked it up and found Sheila’s name in his address book. A quick swipe deleted her from his life, at least physically, for the time being.
“I will be,” he said. “Eventually.”
After leaving his phone on the table and grabbing a book before heading into his bedroom, Adrian’s roommate waited until he heard the sound of his door clicking shut, then walked over and picked up his phone.
The name might have been erased from Adrian’s contact list, but the number itself had yet to be deleted from his recent calls.
When he reached the top, he took note of the first/last number and shoved his brows together.
“Huh.”
After gazing at it for a few more seconds, the memory of the number flooded back like a raging tsunami. It had been years since he had seen it and frankly, he never thought he would again.
As he sat the phone back down on the table and moved back into the kitchen, he dipped his spoon back into the bowl and looked toward the hall.
“What the hell is this cat doing taking phone calls from the likes of Sheila Harris?”
He chomped down on his cereal while considering whether or not asking Adrian or finding out the truth for himself by rolling back into Manhattan, would be the better solution.
Part Six
As the afternoon became the evening and turned into nightfall, Maurice found himself wandering around the city in a haze of what the hell to do about the situation with Olivia. He knew he wasn’t sleeping with her, he had no desire to even if he and Vanessa weren’t together. Sure she was sexy as hell and ballsy to boot, being bold enough to not only proposition him in public but while he was happily taken by someone else.
At the same time, she reeked of desperation, too much to even be considered worthy of a one night stand. And nothing compared to what he had with Vanessa. Nothing ever could, would, or should, at least in his mind.
Now everything he had ever wanted, everything he had always vowed to protect and keep close in this life and the next was threatened with being ripped away from him all within the blink of an eye. He knew one day that either his mouth or his dick would cause him trouble. He never thought that either one would be at the cost of the one and only woman he had ever, and would ever love more than himself.
While taking a seat on a bench in Central Park and contemplating whether or not to come clean to Vanessa at the risk of receiving the wrath she was no doubt bound to unleash upon him once she learned the truth word for word, he heard a woman from a few feet down sobbing into her hands.
Feeling immediately uncomfortable, he tried clearing his throat, hoping that she would either stop or move further away from him. When she didn’t, he begrudgingly looked inside his pocket for something to hand to her so that she could wipe her face, and found a handkerchief.
As the woman’s sobs quickened to the point that she was clutching her chest because she could barely breathe, he rushed over and tapped her shoulder. Frightened, she dropped her hands and looked up at him, her face red and swollen; her eyes grew big in surprise when she realized who he was and quickly turned her head away.
“Don’t look at me like this,” she said between various bouts of blubbering. “Please.”
Maurice frowned. “Melanie?”
She didn’t answer, but he knew even beneath the smeared mascara and blond hair swirling around her blotched skin that it was her. Taking a seat beside her, he reached over and waved the handkerchief in her face. Hesitant to take anything from him at first but unable to stop her tears, she slipped it from between his long fingers and pressed it against her face.
“You mind if I ask what the hell you’re doing out here at night when you’re so upset like this?”
After wiping down her face and catching her breath, she spun her legs to the front and sat back. “My children,” she said. “I didn’t want them to see me like this. I’ve been crying since we got back from the Hamptons and I couldn’t stop. I tried locking myself in my bedroom, but they kept wanting to know why I was so upset. I couldn’t tell them. I still can’t.”
“Is Oscar with them now?” he asked.
She cut her eyes at him before shaking her head and wiping her nose as more tears fell. “No. I don’t exactly know where he is right now, but I have a pretty damn good guess.”
Maurice immediately regretted mentioning her husband’s name.
After a few seconds of dogging her daggers, he was starting to regret having even set down next to her.
But he was still curious.
“Why are you crying?” he asked.
“Because I’m apparently not a good enough lay to keep my husband around or in our marriage, unlike your good friend Nikki, who’s become an expert in having two men wrapped around her finger at the exact same time.” She blew her nose into the handkerchief and snatched her purse from the bench, setting it in her lap. “The minute we got back to the city, Oscar told me that he was leaving me for her, because apparently he can’t seem to live without her. But he can happily live without me and our children and the life that we have built together. All for a pair of half-Latin tits and a pussy that’s become equivalent to a periscope. Or so I imagine.”
Maurice turned straight ahead and reached for the collar of his shirt. To say that he was becoming uncomfortable the longer he sat there was an understatement that even she couldn’t ignore.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I might think she’s a slut, but I don’t mean to dump all of this on you, considering you t
wo are friends.”
“I understand,” he told her. “I’ve never outright called her names outside of being a moocher, but I can see where you’re coming from in a situation like this. I used to listen to V call Sheila some of the same things after she and Nathan broke up.”
“How did she deal with all of this? I know that she was eighteen, but no matter the age, a pain like this runs deep.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and bent his head to the side. “If you heard what happened at the reunion a few months back, then you know she didn’t deal with it very well, even after five years.”
“But she eventually got over it,” she said. “Because she’s with you now.”
“Yeah. But it took a lot of time and a lot of healing for her to move past it. Some days, I still think she may not be over it, but then I often wonder if that’s just my insecurities talking, making me believe that what we have could be ripped from us at any moment.” He smiled up at someone as they passed by, but the expression quickly fell when he thought back on his own reason for being out there instead of back at home with her as he wanted to be.
“I’ve seen the way she looks at you,” said Melanie. “You can’t fake feelings like that. Trust me, I know all too well about feigned feelings.”
Silence abounded until Maurice turned to her and sat up, clasping his hands together and dropping them in his lap.
“You mind if I ask you something?” he said.
“Go ahead.”
“What if you never learned about the affair with Nikki? Do you think you would’ve been better off – ?”