by Kiki Leach
Vanessa glanced around at the crowd and felt mortified at having been so public with her affection. Maurice felt empowered and more determined than ever to make things right.
“I hope I didn’t interrupt much of anything,” Melanie stated as she finally came upon them.
Neither Vanessa nor Maurice took their eyes off of the other as they each shook their heads ‘no’, all the while thinking yes, yes, yes you did – as did everyone else.
“I should probably get to work,” said Vanessa, her eyes remaining locked upon Maurice’s face. “Since I promised Alexis I’d be getting there earlier than she usually expects, she’s probably sitting in my office as we speak and staring at her watch.”
“Yeah, and I, uh…” Maurice stopped for a moment, unsure of what he even wanted or needed to say. “I told my boss I’d be in to see him this morning” – he glanced down at his watch – “in about an hour as a matter of fact, to explain about the face and any potential hazards that may pop up over the next week and a half because of it.” He glanced over at Melanie, but quickly turned his attention back to Vanessa. “Do you plan on telling Alexis about any of this?”
“Hell no,” she said with a soft laugh and smile. He did the same. “The last thing I need is to have her on my ass about you and Nathan, or us, so no. I’m hoping to keep her in the dark about everything that happened last night for as long as possible.”
“Do you really think that’s a smart idea?” Melanie chimed in.
Vanessa instantly felt a chill as she turned to Melanie and took note of her dour appearance, but didn’t give a damn for the reason behind it. “What?” she snapped.
“Your mother finds out everything, doesn’t she? It might be smart to finally tell her the truth about your current relationship with Maurice and even the fight between him and your other ex before she finds out from someone else.”
“Oh really? And would that someone else in fact be you?”
Anxious, Melanie looked up to Maurice for answers, but was put off as he only arched his brows and remained in a silent agreement with Vanessa.
“I’m only saying what you should be thinking,” she finally told her. “With all of the people out here with their phones, someone is bound to pick up this story the moment they get a good look at the bruises all over his face and realize he and Nathan were both in jail.”
“If it happens, I’ll deal with it just like I deal with every other bullshit problem that arises. In the meantime, why don’t you take your own advice and stick to minding your own damn business where all of this is concerned, okay?” She lifted the strap of her purse on her shoulder and turned on her heel. “I have to go.”
“V,” Maurice called out.
But she wouldn’t stop for him this time and continued moving forward with her eyes focused on the concrete as she shook her head to quickly erase the overbearing emotions weakening her every step.
Maurice kept his eyes on her until she finally disappeared into the office building.
Hoping to gather his attention for herself, Melanie moved in front of him and looked up, forcing a smile as she wrapped her hands around both of his thickly muscled biceps.
The raven-haired woman and her strawberry blond friend saw the ‘all too willing’ look in her less than entrancing eyes and arched their brows at one another before quickly paying for their items and heading out of the market.
“You remember what I said to you on the night she told you to get out? That if it’s really meant to be between the two of you,” said Melanie, “then it will be.” Her eyes shifted up and down as she stared at the lipstick stain on the collar of his shirt and discretely tried wiping it away. “But here’s some other advice that I forgot to mention as a ‘just in case’ it doesn’t work out… If you’re meant to move on from her and what you two had, then that’ll happen too. Maybe even before you think you’re ready for it.”
He looked down into her eyes and crinkled his brows. “What?”
“Well what I’m saying is that if you’re meant to move on from her, it’ll happen when it’s supposed to happen, just like anything else. That could be today or tomorrow or--”
“Even if I wanted to move on from Vanessa, no matter what day of the week or month or year, it’s never been something in my DNA. If it were, I’d have found it by now and maybe even taken advantage. But I haven’t, and won’t.”
Feeling immediately shot down and regretful for having even opened her mouth, Melanie dropped her hands from him and stood back. “Oh.”
And then he remembered that this wasn’t just some random woman in which he was giving an instant brush off after a night of quick sex in a cheap motel room that he made her pay for, before skipping out and leaving nothing but a note on the pillow to thank her for a ‘fun’ time. This was a woman who cared enough about him to jump out of bed at 5am the moment she heard his voice on the phone and headed down to the police station with enough money in her pocket to bail both him and Nathan out of jail. He couldn’t speak to her as if he would never see her again, or as if she didn’t matter to him as a person, even if she didn’t matter as much to him as she had hoped.
“I’m sorry,” he told her, his voice now less intense. “I don’t mean to sound like an asshole.”
“No.” She waved her hand across her face and smiled, feigning acceptance. “You don’t sound like an asshole at all. You sound like someone determined not to give up on the woman he loves, no matter how stubborn she might be to accept it. If only my husband and every other man on the planet had your hardiness.” She bent her head and ran her fingers through to the ends of her hair. “So I know that you said you need to get to your office and to be honest, there are a few other things I need to take care of today myself.”
“Yeah.” He gulped. “Melanie, I can’t say enough how much I appreciate you helping to bail me out this morning.”
“What are potential friends for?” she said.
“We’re friends,” he told her reassuringly. “Don’t let anything Vanessa might make you feel get in the way of the truth.”
“She’s not exactly the one leaving me with any uncertain feelings about that,” she said, leaving Maurice unsure of how to respond. “In any case, you better get going. You don’t want to be late to that meeting with your boss.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“As long as I’m still standing, I’ll be fine. Besides, I have to be someplace else soon too. You go.”
“Alright,” he said. “But if you need anything, just--”
“Sure.”
He stared into her solemn brown eyes and gave her a quick squeeze on the shoulder before bouncing away and racing to cross the street.
It was only when he had officially vanished into the hordes of people hustling and bustling right alongside him that Melanie looked around the market and realized many of those who had stayed around for he and Vanessa, or just long enough to conclude that she wasn’t nearly as interesting enough to capture their attention for more than a few seconds, had pretty much disappeared. The only things that seemed to be left behind aside from her and a few elderly couples were the fruit, coffee and newspaper she had purchased for Maurice all before Vanessa came up to ‘greet’ them.
“So much for benevolence,” she said to herself.
She snatched the bag of fruit from the counter and ran to the corner to hail for a cab. When one finally stopped, she quickly hopped inside and slammed the door.
“Where to, Lady?” the driver asked, looking back at her in his rearview mirror as he chewed down on his toothpick.
“Just drive,” she said, her eyes turned to the window. “When we get close enough to where I need to be, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“Sure thing,” he replied, speeding off from the curb.
Part Eighteen
After returning to her room and taking a well needed shower to rinse off the feeling and funk of having slept beneath a pile of mothballs, Sheila stayed behind in her bathroom to sta
re at her naked body in the mirror. And she wondered to herself if she looked any different thanks to her time spent with Adrian long before she was ever forced to sleep on Vanessa’s backbreaking couch.
She lifted her hands to comb her fingers through the wet curls of her hair and twisted her body side to side, taking a good long look at every inch of her silky smooth ebony complexion. The only differences she could see in the light that she hadn’t noticed the night before were the tiny bite marks left behind on either side of her breasts and around her nipples, as well as two on both of her inner thighs, located just below her sex. Her lips parted when she exhaled and grew into a smile as she thought back on how Adrian took her, owned every single inch of her body in the way she always imagined Nathan would do, should do as her fiancé, and ran her fingers alongside and around every single mark left behind.
But before she could fall any further into a trance, she heard someone knocking on the door. She closed her eyes even tighter, hoping like hell that they would just go away and leave her to her fantasies, but after a few seconds, the knocks became louder and more disconcerting.
“UGH!”
Rushing to the other side of the bathroom, she grabbed her robe from the hook on the wall and quickly slipped her arms through each hole. She took one last look at herself in the mirror before turning off the fan above her head and yanking the door back, then found her house shoes near the bed and slipped on each one. When the knocking picked up again, she groaned and anxiously lifted her hair from beneath the collar of the robe, hating the slapping sound it made as large pieces landed against the back of her neck.
Initially figuring the person on the other side of that door to be Nikki wanting to finish what they had started inside Vanessa’s house earlier that morning, she was surprised as hell to say the least when she pulled the door back and saw Adrian standing there instead.
Smooth, suave and almost too well put together for that time of day and with presumably nowhere else to be, he looked even more handsome than he had beneath all of the dim lighting inside his apartment the night before. Feeling flustered before even uttering a single word to him, Sheila pressed her hand against either cheek and felt her unwavering smile expand into a full on beam. Adrian was leaning against the frame of the door, the cuffs of his sleeves rolled up past each naturally flexing bicep and his collar wide open, revealing a few marks of his own. Sheila noticed them circling around his neck the minute he turned his head and remembered his fingers digging hard into her waist and ass as she rode his dick into the sunset and sucked on his skin until her lips swelled and his skin bruised.
When she started pulling at her robe to cover herself and saw drops of water leaking from the tips of her hair down onto her skin, Adrian realized she had just gotten out of the shower and stood up straight. Seeing her standing there, wet and seemingly embarrassed to be seen in such an apparent disarray, was like an electric jolt to his system.
And his pants.
“Hi,” she finally said, her voice slightly shaking as her eyes floated down to the bulge forming against the zipper. She placed a hand on her chest to slow the speed of her heart as she remembered the taste of his dick inside her mouth, and how the warmth of his cum surged against her cheeks.
Adrian arched a brow and grinned, refusing to hide what he had felt and knew she had seen, and seemingly appreciated.
“Hi.” His eyes roamed across every part of her room and he dipped his head. “Is this a bad time?”
“Not at all. I’m alone, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he repeated, his grin more profound.
They stared at each other for what seemed like an entire lifetime, optimistic yet nervous at what to say next, before Sheila finally stepped back and opened the door even wider to allow him inside.
Hesitant but eager to share more space with her, he dropped his hands inside his pockets and shuffled into the room.
Sheila shut her eyes and said a silent prayer, which mainly consisted of hoping that she would be able to keep her legs closed this time. Vanessa was right, having sex with him again while still engaged to Nathan would not be the smartest thing in the world to do.
But damn, was he sexy as hell. His ass in those slacks, his body in that shirt, that color of blue highlighting his flawless, evenly tanned skin.
All logic was beginning to float right out of her skull and through the window on the other side of that room.
She knew then and there that a simple prayer wasn’t going to cut it. Jesus, Mary and Joseph would need to be contacted directly via her ‘Save a Ho’ hotline if she really wanted to keep herself – and her vagina – in check.
Adrian leaned back against the wall and watched her anxiously fiddle with the handle of the door.
When she looked over her shoulder and caught the same suggestive look his eyes flashing across his face as he stared back at her, her knees abruptly buckled beneath her and she fell against the door; though she tried to play it off as if she was fumbling in reaching for the knob to lock it and accidentally lost her balance in not paying close enough attention as to what she was actually doing.
Adrian laughed to himself while admiring the shape of her curvaceous figure, recalling so intently what it felt like when their bodies finally came together and exploded in simultaneous ecstasy. He could tell from the way she had been acting from the moment he entered her room that Sheila recalled it as well, which made his showing up there unannounced all the more worth it.
As she kept her eyes to the floor, unsure of what to say next, Adrian whistled to get her attention.
She looked up at him and smiled again.
“Have you been alone all morning?” he asked her.
She nodded. “Yes. Nathan never came home last night.”
“Why? Did he fall asleep somewhere else he shouldn’t?”
Sheila laughed aloud, though she wasn’t exactly thrilled with the news, or the reason behind his not being there. “That’s actually an interesting story.”
“How interesting?”
“Well…” She paused, thinking of the most appropriate way to tell him what she knew. “He was apparently arrested last night.”
Adrian chuckled and slightly shook his head. “Arrested? For what?”
“Disturbing the peace and assault.” She took a breath. “I--”
But the minute the word ‘assault’ came out of Sheila’s mouth, Adrian was no longer laughing. Within seconds, he had pushed himself away from the wall and raced over to where she stood. Placing his hands around her arms and gently lifting her away from the door as if she was too fragile to move on her own, he visually examined what little of her that he was able to see beneath that white, terrycloth robe; he furrowed his brows and tightened his jaw at the thought of Nathan putting an unwanted hand anywhere on a body he surmised the moment he first laid eyes on it as being hand sculpted by God Himself.
“Did he hurt you in any way?” he asked, his response coated in fury as his eyes traveled up from her body to meet her eyes.
She stared back at him with reservation. “What?”
“Did he do something to you because he found out about what we did last night -- ?”
Sheila, appreciating his concern – something of which she hadn’t been used to before and thus, didn’t immediately understand the same as someone else in her current position with him might have – placed her hands on his chest and exhaled through a soft chuckle. “No,” she informed him. “No, no, his arrest didn’t have to do anything with me – I never even saw him last night.”
“Then where was he?”
“Where else?” she asked.
Slowly, her hands slid down the front of his body. Remembering so easily the softness of his skin beneath the clothes, she wanted him to take her, to own her again, to prove to her that last night meant more than just two random bodies coming together out of loneliness and desperation, and fear of being alo
ne forever or with someone else who really wouldn’t give a damn about either one of them in the way that they seemed to give a damn about each other.
But she backed away and moved across the room before he could do anything, before she could hear the same truth that plagued her mind and often left her filled with disappointment and rage and dread; a truth she had heard too many times from Nathan in the past, and had no desire to hear again from someone else in the present, someone that she could see herself truly falling for, and hard.
“He was with Vanessa,” she finally told him. She glanced at him again before crossing over to the fridge in the corner and grabbing a bottle of water. She pulled another for him, but he waved his hand and declined.
“How do you know that he was with V? Was it in the paper this morning, did it hit the news stations? Because I haven’t heard much or seen anything. Then again, I haven’t been too in tune this morning with anything that’s been going on outside my head.” And then he paused as what she told him began to sink in. “Wait a minute, is she okay?”
“She’s fine. Her house might be a little damaged, but physically, she’s fine.”
“Good, that’s good. But I’m still curious as to how the hell you seem to know all of this. I don’t want to offend you by any means, but even with Nathan being involved, I don’t take you as the first person being on V’s ‘to call’ list. Or his when it involves her.”
“I’m not,” she replied in a quiet voice.
Her throat suddenly felt as if it was closing up and her stomach churned and knotted. She ripped the top off of the water bottle and swallowed back a few gulps before wiping her mouth with the palm of her hand and turning back to give him an answer.
“Instead of coming straight back to the hotel after leaving you last night, I went by V’s house to see her. I felt like we needed to talk about a few things, and maybe get a few others straightened out.”