by S. Ann Cole
We remained silent for a while, with just the calming strokes of Trevillo’s long fingers in my hair. It was beyond my comprehension why he always made time to see me, to ensure that I’d eaten and gotten a day’s worth of laughs. Maybe he’d discerned that I wasn’t over my break-up with his brother and knew that I needed a friend? Seeing that Lovello was making certain that Trudy wasn’t available to me anymore?
“I’m leaving for Jamaica tomorrow. Need to make a surprise visit and check in on the progress of the resort I’m building there. I have a feeling the contractor’s slacking up.”
“How long will you be gone for?”
“About two weeks.”
“Okay,” I responded, feeling that loneliness befalling me again.
“You’re gonna be okay?”
And there it was. He was trying to keep me happy.
I turned my head on his lap to look up at him. “Why? Why do you insist on being good to me? Who do you risk your relationship with your brother? You know they probably think we’re sleeping together, right?”
“My brothers know me well enough to know that I wouldn’t sleep with you, because … I like you too much.” His eyes flitted away from me and out to the pool. “Sex ruins a lot of good things. Not all the time you discover something good with someone means you should incorporate sex. Good things can just be good things. Not because you find that you click with someone does it mean you should turn it into a sexual conundrum. Men and women can be friends. If they just let it be what it is without overreading things.”
“In others words, you like me but…”
He chuckled lightly. “You’re not mine. I’m not stupid…” he trailed off, then pinned me with a serious stare. “Scratch all that sissy boy shit I just said for a second. I want to fuck you so bad and so hard, Axia, that I don’t just have blue balls when I’m around you. I have raging red balls that burn with such searing heat that even my asshole hurts. It’s not a good feeling. But that’s all I want to do. Fuck you. I’m not like my brothers with the whole hearts and feelings shit. I’m … fucked-up.”
When I only stared back at him, speechless, he laughed. “That’s the real truth. But let’s pretend I didn’t divulge all that and go back to the sissy boy talk. You’re safe there. Believe me.”
His eyes shifted back out to the pool. “That day at the wedding when you told me you loved him, there was such fire in your eyes. A burning force emanated from you, so strong that I felt it. And when someone outside of a relationship can feel the love you have for another, there’s no doubt it’s real. Then that night when you were leaving The Golden Seven and I approached you, when you’d turned to me, the pain that was there in your eyes rendered me speechless for a moment. And again, it’s like I was feeling that pain.” He trailed his thumb over my eyebrows and down my nose. “I felt it incumbent upon me to take away that pain from you. Don’t ask me why. I wanted to do whatever I possibly could to make you smile. But every time I look at you, I see that the pain is still there. And even though I’m trying to help to soothe your pain, I know I’m also fueling it. Because, each time you turn your eyes away from me, I know it’s because I’m reminding you of him.”
How right he was. The majority of the time when I looked at him, all I saw was Lovello. The three brothers resembled each other so well that it was impossible not to be reminded of Lovello when Trevillo was around.
Tracing the curve of my lips with his forefinger, he said, “I want to tell you something, and if you ever say it back to anyone, I’ll burn your gym down to ashes.”
I laughed out.
“Axia, you know I’ll do it.” And his face was deathly serious.
“Oh, I sure do, Devil Boy.”
He closed his eyes. “I’ve always thought the concept of love to be stupid. I’ve never desired it and I take precautions in fending off any such disasters. It’s one reason I avoid younger women. But honestly, the way I’ve seen Natalio look at Sadie, and the blaze I see in your eyes when you talk about my brother, make me wonder about this ‘love’ thing. I almost want to — remember, Axia, I will burn your goddamn building down — I almost want to know what it feels like.”
A goofy grin split my face. “That’s the big secret? That’s not a bad thing, Trev.”
“For me, it is.”
I reached up and stilled his moving hand on my cheek, squeezing it for him to open his eyes and look at me. “Trev, it’s the most amazing thing when you have it. The world just seems right and sensible. Living just seems easy. You’ll cry for no reason, and you’ll laugh for no reason. Your heart will ache, but only because it’s swelled with emotions. Sometimes you’ll feel so overflowed with love that you’ll just want to climb the highest mountain, spread your arms wide, and scream. Just scream nothings out to the world. All because you’re so happy in love. Yes, it makes you that giddy.”
“And when you don’t have it?” he asked quietly.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and leaned into his palm. “It can be harrowing. Heart-wrenching. You just don’t have a reason to do anything anymore. Because everything you’ve ever done was for that person. And now that you don’t have them, why bother? Sometimes you don’t even want to breathe. Because they’re not breathing your air with you. You dream about them, you think about them, every goddamn second of your day. It makes you angry. It makes you sad. It makes you feel small. Pointless. Without purpose. Without it, living is hard…”
Silence stretched between us for a while, before Trevillo encouraged, “You should fight for him, you know.”
“No. Why couldn’t he fight for me?”
“Axia, I know my brother. Meaning, I know that’s what he needs. Someone to prove to him that he’s worth fighting for. You see, Nicole never even second-guessed leaving him when my father disapproved of her. She just left without a fight. There’s the difference between her and Sadie. Sadie fought for Natalio, valiantly going head-to-head with my Dad. That’s something none of us would dare do. I believe that’s why Love’s so drawn to her. Because she fought.”
“Oh, so I don’t need him to prove to me that I’m worth fighting for? Why must the woman always be the sex to display weakness? Are men so caught up in themselves that they can’t show even an ounce of vulnerability?” I scoffed. “At least Zane thought I was worth fighting for.”
Trevillo answered with a scoff of his own. “You know exactly which one was love, and which one was infatuation. You and Zane broke up and you got over it. You and Love broke up, and what did you do? You branded him on your skin.”
Shock blew my eyes wide and I instinctively clutched my towel tight to my body. “H-how did you know?”
“Let’s just say I’m a lot more observant than you think,” Trevillo laughed.
In Vegas, I’d snuck away one afternoon to a tattoo parlor and got the word LOVE tattooed over my rib, right beneath my heart. I’d convinced myself that it was simply the word love. Just love. That’s all. But I knew, like Trevillo knew, exactly what that ‘love’ was short for.
“Just one question, though,” said Trevillo. “Why there?”
A grin popped on my face for no reason whatsoever. “Well, if you’re familiar with Genesis, then you’d know that when God decided he needed to make a partner for Adam, he caused Adam to fall asleep and then he removed one of his ribs and made Eve from it. And what were Adam’s words when God took Eve to him? ‘At last, this one is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone, she will be called woman because she was taken from man’. I just believe that every man out there has a woman who’s his. Flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, because she was unwittingly made from his rib, just for him. And when they find each other, they’ll just know.”
“You think that you’re Lovello’s? That you were made for him?”
I nodded.
“And yet you don’t think you should fight for him?”
Refusing to answer, I turned my head in his lap to the direction of the pool and closed my eyes while he continued
stroking my hair, lulling me to sleep. Again, my near-sleep was disrupted. By Tish’s voice this time.
She stood at the doorway of the pool room, looking flushed. The only time she had that flushed look was whenever she was afraid to tell me something, not knowing what my reaction would be. But Trevillo had gotten me so relaxed, I don’t think I could’ve gotten angry right now even if I tried. “What is it, Tish?”
“Um, it’s, er … you have a visitor,” she stuttered.
“Does the visitor have a name, Tish?” I asked, my eyes shutting down again to the even strokes of Trevillo’s fingers.
Tish coughed. “Uh, yes, her name’s … Nicole Allen.”
All sereneness gone, my eyes flew open. “What? For what reason?!”
Tish shook her head. “I don’t know. She just said she wanted to speak with you.”
I turned to look at Trevillo in question. He shrugged, seeming just as confused as I was.
Well, this ought to be interesting.
XXVII
“Catch up, later,” Trevillo said, as we left the pool room and traveled down to the stairway where Nicole stood.
She was glamorous as always in a red pencil skirt, a white ruffle top and killer heels. Her hair was scissored in a shorter and edgier style, with more prominent highlights of platinum blonde. Being so striking to the eye in a way that made it impossible not to zone in on her from head to toe, she really ought to consider modeling. There wasn’t a doubt she would make it, big time, in that industry.
There was zero acknowledgment from Trevillo towards Nicole as he left. Nicole stiffly avoided him, too. Which left me wondering if they weren’t on speaking terms, and why. Curiosity was evident in her expression as she side-eyed him, though.
Hands fixated on hips, I stood before her, waiting to hear what this visit was about. Expressing discomfort, she shifted on her feet and eyed Tish with uncertainty. “Can we go somewhere private to talk?” she asked in her soft, airy voice.
Assuring Tish that all was good, I lead Nicole up to my office.
“Gimme a sec,” I told her, as I grabbed shorts and a tank from my gym bag and slipped into the bathroom to get dressed.
Most women would’ve flipped the attitudinal ‘I’m better than this shit’ card, chasing away the rival with a “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. Please leave.” Or a “We have nothing to talk about. I have no time for this.” Sorry, but I wasn’t one of those idiotic women. Heck yes I wanted to hear what’s going down. Eager, too! But, of course, that eagerness would be hidden.
When I returned from the bathroom, I noticed her eyes were darting from corner to corner of the office. My office wasn’t ‘I’m-a-billionaire-CEO’ style, but it was capacious and sumptuous. There was a bathroom that wasn’t small, a kitchenette, an eating table that could seat four, a huge serpentine white leather couch, a sixty-inch high-definition flat-screen T.V., and all the luxury needed to grant me a comfy office. The one thing it was short of was a floor-to-ceiling window with a view. Other than that, my office kicked ass, so I let her fill her eyes.
Bundling my damp hair into a stringy mess atop my head, I sank down in the chair around my desk, leaned back and stared over at Nicole expectantly.
She gave a tentative smile. “You have a very nice office.”
“Gracias,” I said, voice clipped.
“You could do well with a vista view, though.”
Bitch.
“If I’d wanted a view, I would’ve paid someone to knock the walls out and put glass in instead. There’s nothing hard in it. And it’s most definitely not out of my reach.”
Silence stretched as I waited for the woman sitting across from me to skip the chit-chat and say whatever the hell she came here to say. But her eyes kept shifting from here to there without a word. In fact, she seemed nervous. I made her nervous? This woman was dressed to the ninth and here I was, as bland as they came, with messy damp hair, tank top and shorts, and I made her unnerved? She’s the one who’s got the guy. She won. I lost. What did she have to be nervous about?
On an anxiety-striated laugh, she said, “You’re not very friendly, are you?”
What in the … ? “Are you serious? Look, lady, you need to kill the damn tongue wagging an —”
“I broke up with Ty,” she blurted.
Ty … Ty … ah, Lovello. “And you came all the way here to tell me this because … ?”
“I just thought that since we’re not together anymore that —”
“I could collect his sorry ass now that you’re done with him?”
Nicole licked her lips and shifted in her seat, her fingers moving restlessly over her bedazzled purse. “Well, not really. I, ah, well, um … I came to be honest with you.”
“Honest with me about what exactly?”
Nicole’s golden eyes made a nervous sweep around the room again before landing back on me. “Ty never cheated on you.”
A blink was all I could afford at that.
When she saw that I was waiting for elucidation, she continued. “I’ve always told myself that Ty was mine. I’ve always loved him. But I’m sure you’ve heard how horrible his father had been to me. So I ran. Truth is, my break-up with him wasn’t entirely because of his father. It was also because Ty was in love with who he thought I was.”
Her tongue made a swift pass over her lips again as she flicked her eyes to mine. “He likes being taken care of. He’s slovenly. Likes to be comforted, and reads his Bible way too damn much. The thing is, I like being taken care of, too. I’m slovenly. I like to be comforted. And I kind of had to be the opposite of that to cater to him. Don’t get me wrong, he did take care of me, gave me comfort and indulged me. But, I didn’t enjoy the job of playing that wifely role for him. I was too young and I just wanted the millionaire that he was, at that time, to pamper me. I didn’t want to play the 50/50 two-way game. I guess that’s what people call being selfish?”
She heaved a heavy sigh. “You might imagine when I went to his home and heard his father utter the words ‘marriage’ and ‘wife’ — not like he was approving of me to be those things — but I got scared. Even though Ty wasn’t proposing as such, if I’d stayed with him, he probably would’ve one day done so, and I couldn’t see myself being a boring wife, cooking dinner every day and cleaning up after a man’s mess. Me, I like to shop. A lot. I like to party and eat out at restaurants, wearing the latest fashion. So you can see, I kinda got a panic attack and just left Ty.”
Nicole uncrossed her legs, then crossed them back again as she took brief respite from her tale. Maybe she was expecting me to say something, but what on earth would that be?
“Armand, my ex-fiancé, I met him a year after Ty. I didn’t love him or anything, but he gave me the pampering lifestyle that I needed, and he didn’t request anything of me but to be an attractive rose on his arm.” She snorted. “Well, that’s what I thought. I later discovered he was cheating on me with some average girl who cooked and did all that shit for him. He’d spend most of his evenings at her house before he came home to me. And then I thought, men seem to enjoy women who are women. So why not be a woman for the man whom I do love? As a result, I broke off the engagement with Armand and moved back here to try rekindling things with Ty; it wouldn’t be that hard. He loved me. He’d never entered another serious relationship after me, so I thought he was never over me. Except I was wrong. Again. Because I only came to find that he had a girlfriend.”
Shaking her head, she laughed aloud. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard Ty use that word before. He always used to refer to me by name.”
“Could you just stop calling him ‘Ty’, please?” I bit out. “It’s annoying the shit outta me.”
Nicole smiled. “I call him that becau —”
“I don’t care to know why you call him that,” I snapped. “Just use ‘Lovello’ here.”
Her smile faltered, and she seemed a bit daunted. “Okay, um … yeah.” Glancing at me uncertainly, she continued. “When I real
ized that ‘rekindling’ was almost improbable, seeing that every next word he uttered from his mouth was ‘Axia’ — Axia this, Axia that — I figured that getting him back was going to take a fight. That led to me befriending Carla. I made her plant a condom packet with missing ones in his wallet. Knowing the slipshod that he is, there’s no way you wouldn’t find them. And the way he went on about you, I knew you guys couldn’t possibly be having protected sex,” she said, raising a brow that asked for my confirmation.
All she received from me was an impassive stare, so she shrugged and carried on. “I listened out for some argument or big break-up over the condoms, but never heard Lovello speak of a fight. So I knew we had to come up with something else. That’s when I remembered his biting habits. Carla and I set up everything with those pictures, Axia. And what better time to take them than when we’re out shopping together?”
“So, you both just hooked up the minute we broke up? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? That in the very minute he learned that I was at his restaurant with someone else, he just said, ‘you know what, Nicole, we should get back together. Let’s stick our tongues down each other’s throat and rekindle our love’?” I laughed out at the hilarity of this woman’s story. “Do you expect me to believe that? Did he send you here to tell me this because things didn’t work out with you two? That a cute little story about you framing him would make me go back to him?”
Nicole’s eyes widened a fraction, her head slightly shaking as she stared at me in disbelief. “You truly don’t believe me?”
“No, Nicole. I don’t.”
“Do you believe that he loved you?”
“No.”
Nicole pursed her lips and looked from left to right, seemingly not knowing what to do with me. “Do you have any idea what that night was about?”
“An important family dinner was all I heard it was,” I shrugged.
On a sharp, exasperated inhalation, she pinned me with her golden eyes. “Axia, Lovello was going to propose to you that night. The pictures that you saw of us, we were in a jewelry store shopping for a ring. For you.“