by Kiki Leach
“Remaining ignorant?” She thought about it and tried her best to answer the question as honestly as she could. “Some days, I think so because I wanted to keep my family together at all cost. Others, not so much because as much as I never wanted it to come to this, or to be alone, I also couldn’t imagine being made such a fool of by a man who claimed to love me. I could just see people laughing behind my back, all while smiling in my face because they knew what he was doing and where he was going and who he was with when he wasn’t with me, and why. The ones you love are never supposed to be the ones to cause you so much pain. And yet here I am receiving more consolation from a virtual stranger on a park bench than I have from my own husband in all the years we were married.”
“We’re not really strangers anymore now, are we?” he asked with a lick of humor in his tone.
She smiled for the first time that night, her brown eyes twinkling beneath the moonlight, and shook her head. “I don’t know how we could be after what took place between all of us this weekend. I’m not sure who was worse last night during all of that infighting, but I can tell you that I’m extremely ashamed of my actions. And I hope that nothing else in my life ever brings me to a place like that again.” She sniffed back more tears, then looked over at him and pondered. “You’ve been asking all these questions to and about me, but is there a reason why you’re out tonight instead of back at home with the love of your life? You two were the only ones who seemed genuinely happy when Oscar and I showed up.”
Maurice kept his eyes straight ahead. “We are happy,” he told her, though deep down he couldn’t help but start to question that notion for himself. “And I’m going to make damn sure that it stays that way.” He turned his eyes up to the sky then, and stood up showing her his hand. “I feel like I should walk you home now,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she told him. “I don’t really need the company.”
“Then how about the presence of a potential friend instead?”
Melanie looked down in his hand and slid her fingers into his palm. As he lifted her from the bench, she fell into his chest. He held her back and laughed while trying to help her stand up straight.
“Are you okay?” he asked, pushing the hair back from her face and getting a better look into her eyes.
As he held onto her, she turned the color of a bright red beet and tried to hide her enthusiastic expression.
“I’m fine. I’m fine.” She eased out of his embrace and bent down to grab her purse.
As they started walking, she stopped for a second to look up at him. He smiled down at her and she did the same.
“Thank you,” she told him.
He shrugged. “What are potential friends for?”
Potential.
It wouldn’t be long before Melanie would come to realize that Maurice had a hell of a lot of that, and more.
Part Seven
After getting Melanie home safely, Maurice returned to his own home with Vanessa and prayed that she wouldn’t be too pissed about him spending most of the day away from her. And considering the circumstances, there was no way in hell he was going to tell her that he had spent one unfortunate part with the girlfriend of her work nemesis and the other, less unfortunate part with the wife of a husband who was apparently still having sex with their moocher of a best friend.
Or in his case ‘friend’.
When he walked through the front door, he removed his jacket and started to call out Vanessa’s name, but stopped when he heard her voice blaring from the kitchen.
“It is too damn HOT!” she said. “Which is why it’s damn near turning black. Meat sauce is not supposed to turn colors like that.”
“This is how I’ve always fixed it for my girls, Vanessa,” another voice retorted. “And they like it just fine. Maybe your stove is the problem.”
This voice, though familiar to him, was one he hadn’t heard so up close and personal in a good few years.
“Fefe?” he asked aloud.
“Maybe your kids are used to unfortunate slop,” Vanessa continued. Maurice walked up to the swinging door of the kitchen and pushed it back to peek his head inside. Vanessa, now dressed in actual clothes, stood on one side while her sister stood in front of the stove with a spoon in her hands, stirring something inside of a large red pot. Vanessa pointed. “What you’re fixing in there is exactly why those girls will marry chefs when they’re older. Maybe then they’ll finally get to learn what good food actually tastes like.”
“You call what’s in that fridge right now good food?”
“I call it edible and worthy of a few reheats. Which is far from whatever the hell it is you’ve got brewing in there!”
Felicia yanked the spoon out of the pot and pointed in her sister’s face. “You know what, Vanessa?!”
Vanessa stood up and tilted her head as if she was ready for the battle of her life and prepared to win. “What?”
“Looks like I might’ve made it back just in time,” Maurice said as he slipped inside to join them.
Both women looked at him and Vanessa rolled her eyes.
“Barely.”
She snatched the spoon from Felicia’s hand and watched with great annoyance as she quickly left her side and raced over to Maurice, who opened his arms in preparation for a warm and welcoming embrace. Vanessa turned down the fire beneath the pot and began stirring the sauce for herself. She seethed watching Maurice wrap his arms around her sister. Not because she was jealous, but because Felicia had yet to be gone by the time he had finally gotten back home.
“It is SO damn good to see you,” she said, pulling back in Maurice’s arms. She wrapped her hands around his face and wrinkled the tip of her nose while staring up in his eyes. “You are still one of the best looking men --”
“Felicia,” Vanessa chimed in, “his head can barely get through the door as it is. Why do you always feel the need to encourage that? He knows what he looks like, we own mirrors all over this house.”
Maurice jokingly nodded. “She’s right,” he said. He passed Felicia and headed over to Vanessa, wrapping his hands around her waist and pressing his lips against her neck. “We own mirrors all over this house, even fucked in front of a few to see what positions we like best.”
“MO!” Vanessa elbowed him in the stomach and spun around.
Maurice started laughing and backed into the counter.
When Felicia’s phone started ringing from the other room, she happily excused herself to answer it.
As soon as Maurice caught his breath, he held onto his stomach and raised a hand to keep Vanessa back. “Your sister knows how sex works, V.”
“Yeah well, after tonight it’ll be a long damn time before your ass remembers what goes where.”
After finishing up the sauce, she moved the pot from one eye on the stove to the other. Then she tossed the spoon on top of the counter and folded her arms.
Maurice stared down into her eyes, a smile never leaving his face. She couldn’t help but react.
“I wasn’t trying to be a bitch,” she said.
“I know,” he told her. “She does too.” He lowered his head and moved it side to side. “But you don’t always have to try.”
“Fuck you,” she responded.
He laughed again and turned his eyes to the kitchen door. “What’s your sister doing in town anyway?”
“Visiting. I don’t necessarily want her here, but she and Rodney are splitting up so it might be for the best that she’s able to get away from him and their issues for a while.”
“Shit,” he said. “That’s got to be tough on all of them. Does Alexis know?”
“Yep. As a matter of fact, she’s the one who suggested ‘Fefe’ come down here.”
“Because of the situation with Rodney?”
Vanessa looked aside. “Among other reasons. But don’t say anything to her about this, okay? I’m not sure who else knows aside from the family.”
“Of course,” he replied, swiping his index across the bottom of
her chin. She grinned.
Just then, Felicia pushed back on the swinging door and reentered the kitchen. “That was the girls calling to tell me goodnight,” she said, staring down at her phone.
Maurice stepped over to the stove and stared down at the sauce in the pot as it continued to bubble. “Is this all we’re having for dinner tonight?”
Vanessa and Felicia glanced at one another. “No,” Vanessa told him. “There’s, um... There’s noodles in the microwave.”
Maurice grimaced. “What?”
“Don’t look at me like that, blame her! She’s the one who came in here and dubbed herself Chef Boyarshit. I told her that we needed to just wait for you to get back--”
“You never said any such thing, Vanessa.”
“I said EVERY such thing and you’d know that if you learned how to shut the hell up and just listened to what I say for once!”
“ALRIGHT!” Maurice bellowed out, raising both hands to them.
Vanessa defiantly crossed her arms. Felicia pressed her hands together and immediately fell silent.
“I’m going to fix dinner,” he said. “How about that? None of this shit is being served tonight. If we had a dog, I don’t even think that he’d eat what’s here. So go in there and do what you do, and it’ll be ready in five.”
After kicking them out, Maurice quickly made another batch of spaghetti as well as the sauce, while Felicia and Vanessa whispered to one another in the living room.
“Does he always cook for you like this?” Felicia asked her sister.
Vanessa shrugged. “He’s been cooking for me since we were fifteen. You know that.” She picked at the lint on her shirt and sank down into the couch.
“That’s right. I remember even saying back then that a man who cooks for you is worth keeping in your life.”
Vanessa glared at her. “Don’t start this shit up again.”
“Somebody has to, Vanessa!” she hissed. “Do you want to know what a damn good man looks like? That’s it! Right there in your kitchen, putting up with all your shit and cooking your meals, THAT is what a good man looks like. You better watch yourself before he finds another woman actually looking to value his worth.”
“I value his worth, alright? Sometimes I think I value it a hell of a lot more than my own.”
“Then you should prove it by telling him the truth!”
Maurice knocked on the frame, startling them. “We should eat before it gets too cold or dries out,” he said.
During dinner, nearly everything from politics to the weather had been discussed. Everything except for what each of them found the most important.
A few hours later, once the beers were downed and the plates washed, Vanessa encouraged her sister to finally head back to their mother’s house so that she could spend more alone time with Maurice before they were forced back to work the next day. She privately agreed on the condition that Vanessa tell him the truth.
As she grabbed her things and went to the door, unsure that it would come to pass, she stopped for a moment and turned around. She glanced at her sister before turning all attention to Maurice.
“I don’t know if Vanessa told you this, Mo, but Alexis informed me of everything that happened during your trip to the Hamptons. That’s why I’m really here--”
“Felicia!” she snapped.
“And I just want you to know that I’m rooting for you both and this relationship. You are too damn good to my sister even when she doesn’t deserve it. I don’t know many men with the capability to put up with her and her wild antics for as long as you have. Which means you’ll love her through thick and thin, no matter what. Right?”
Maurice slipped an arm around Vanessa’s waist. “No matter what.”
Felicia nodded. “And that right there is true love,” she said. “A man not only willing to cook for you, but loyal to a fault and willing to stand beside you no matter what. He deserves the best that you can give him, V. Don’t you think so?”
Vanessa zipped her tongue across her teeth as her eyes descended to the floor. “Yeah.” She gulped, finally confronting what she knew had to be done.
Felicia flashed her a genuine smile before assuring them that she would return soon enough and headed out the door. Maurice stepped forward to close and lock it, then whirled around to Vanessa, who suddenly appeared conflicted.
He took her in his arms but she hardly moved from place. “Hey,” he said. “Are you alright?”
“No.” She pulled out of his arms and traveled back into the living room.
A nervous Maurice slowly went after her. Standing against the frame, he watched as she placed one hand on the edge of the bookcase and pressed the other against her mouth. She started shaking but tried like hell to hold herself steady.
“Vanessa,” he called out.
She shut her eyes and turned her head to the side. “I slept with Adrian,” she exclaimed.
Taken aback and refusing to believe what he had heard from her, Maurice stepped into the living room and curled his fingers inside his palms. “What?”
“It wasn’t…” She dropped her hand from her mouth and turned to face him head on – her eyes pleading, begging for a forgiveness she wasn’t sure she would even receive, or even deserved if she had. “It wasn’t recently. But it happened.”
“Not recently,” he said.
“No. It was when I was in college, when he was my professor. It was um…” She cleared her throat and gulped again. “Not long after you and I did our dance, whatever it was.”
“Did Nathan know about this? Is that why he brought that son of a bitch out there this weekend, to rattle you?”
“We can only assume. He’s sort of disappeared from the city at the moment, so it’s not like we can actually ask him about it.”
“When the hell did he disappear?”
“This afternoon.” She sighed. “After Sheila told him that I was pregnant with Adrian’s child.”
Maurice lifted the edge of his palms up to his forehead and pressed them down hard against his eyebrows. He wasn’t sure how much more of this he could take.
“How the fuck does Sheila know about any of this before I do, Vanessa?”
“Believe me, it’s not something that I wanted her to know at all, but when Adrian showed up, I thought that she might have been in on it since she was the reason he had come back to town in the first place.”
“And why is that?”
“It’s another story for another time. But the point is that she kept egging me and egging me and egging me on and the next thing I knew, I was telling her shit she shouldn’t know and never should’ve had access to. I haven’t told anyone else about the baby, not even Alexis – not even Nikki.” She walked over to the couch and fell down to the edge. “Felicia said that Rodney has some other family that she had no clue about. He had been stealing money left and right from their joint account to take it to some woman and her child in Studio City. She kept encouraging me to say something to you about this because she didn’t want my secret to screw up what we had. Or blow up for me like the Nathan shit.”
Maurice, struggling with his own pangs of guilt, walked over to the coffee table and sat down in front of her. Taking her hands in his and lifting them up to his face, he kissed each one. Her eyes fluttered as his smooth lips skimmed back and forth across her skin.
“I wish that you had told me about this when it happened,” he said. “I’d have been there for you, been your rock as I’ve always been. We could’ve raised the baby together if you wanted. Unless you -- ?”
“No,” she told him. “I lost the baby due to stress not long after Adrian skipped town and fled to the Congo.” She slid closer to him and pressed her knees together. “I know that I should’ve told you all of this so that we could avoid the conversation we’re having right now. But I had hoped that I would never have to see or hear from that man again.”
“Does he know?”
“No. And I don’t ever want him to because it’l
l be a big mess and he may start some shit that we won’t be able to end. I just wanted to be able to move on with my life once he was gone. To forget those parts of it even existed for me, but I couldn’t. Every time I tried, more shit kept coming back to slap me directly in the face. I don’t want you to think that I kept this some big secret from you because I still had feelings for him, because I don’t. Initially I was only with him because I thought he could replace Nathan but--”
Maurice abruptly dropped her hands and sat back. “So after everything, it was about him?”
“Back then, yes, I thought it was which is probably why what we had was so fucked up to begin with. But I came to realize overtime, long after we were no longer together, that being with Adrian was never really about replacing Nathan or anyone else. I was using him to fill a void inside myself, one that you had so successfully filled for a while. I didn’t see it then, I couldn’t even feel it because I was still so caught up – so wrapped up in all of my anger that it’s what I believed at the time, that it was about him.” She released a breath and slightly lowered her head. “But the truth is that being with Adrian was in reaction to you, Mo. What I thought I wanted with him is everything that I want with you now. A life, a family, a baby, maybe two if my body can stand to handle it.” Her face immediately softened and she smiled. “Everything in my life always seems to lead me right back to you and I tried so hard to fight against that because I didn’t think you’d ever want to settle down and be faithful, even to me.”
His head snapped up.
“Are you kidding?” he asked, as a light chuckle escaped. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted to devote my entire life to, V. The only woman I’d ever give up everything for. There has never been any other woman to make me see that what I want from life is a family and kids and a house – a real house, out in Connecticut or someplace. You’ve always been the only woman to make me want that kind of life.”
He gradually dropped his eyes, and then his head. He furrowed his brows and scrunched his nose. Vanessa caressed the side of his face and he turned his cheek into her palm, embracing her touch.
“I never want to hurt you,” he said. “I never want to be the kind of man that you can’t count on or trust or need when the time calls for it. I want to be everything to you and for you.”