Afterwards

by Nia Forrester

  Afterwards

  Nia Forrester

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without express permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  Copyright © 2013 Nia Forrester

  All rights reserved.

  For Deloris and Sabrina

  1

  Only two figures remained on the dance floor.

  Tracy’s dress, framed by the dim light, looked like the finest gauze, and as always, she was almost inhumanly beautiful. Brendan’s arms were wrapped about her waist, and hers were about his neck. Barely moving, they swayed to the strains of a mournful, R&B tune. Though the music was loud, they were in a quiet, private space. Chris watched them for a few moments—two people who for all their craziness were in this moment, moving as one.

  Out of nowhere, someone nudged him and Chris turned. It was Riley. She hugged his arm and leaned against his side.

  “I think we’re going to take off,” she said. “The kids are asleep, and Shawn’s about to pass out too.”

  Chris looked over to the sofa where he’d noticed Shawn sitting earlier. Still there, he was now partially reclining, his son draped along his thigh, holding it like a lifeline. Still at that age where his parents resisted cutting it, Cullen’s hair was long, curly and fell over his face. Their little girl, Cass, was asleep on her father’s chest, her head just beneath his chin. Riley had dressed her in a yellow and white jumper, and satin soft shoes that were so tiny it seemed almost impossible that there were feet small enough to fit into them. Shawn’s head had fallen back and he was clearly half-asleep himself, but he held the baby securely against him with one arm. With his kids draped over him, he looked almost more comfortable than if he had been lying there alone.

  “It was nice of you to let Brendan and Tracy have the wedding here, Chris,” Riley said. “I know it had to be a big pain in the ass, being so last minute and everything.”

  “Nah, it was no problem,” Chris said.

  Actually it had been a big pain in the ass, but Brendan was his boy so if he had to make it happen, he had to make it happen.

  He thought about the expanse of his custom sleigh bed and wondered whether the cute server from the catering company he’d spotted earlier was around, and whether he might entice her into shirking her responsibilities for a couple of hours. When she slid him his cappuccino pot de crème earlier, she’d lingered just a moment longer than necessary, her breast briefly brushing against his arm in a manner that Chris did not believe for a second was accidental. As she moved to the next table, he’d watched the sway of her hips and wondered what her other moves were like.

  Riley got up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Goodnight,” she said. “We’ll talk later.”

  She turned and headed back to her family, and Chris watched as she reached over to stroke the side of Shawn’s face with the back of a hand, causing him to lift his head and smile at her. Then she was lifting her son, limp in her arms, and resting his head on her shoulder. Without words passing between them, Shawn got up, yawning and following his wife with the baby still pressed against his chest. Seeming to think of something, he paused and looked over at Chris, lifting his chin in gesture of acknowledgment.

  Watching Shawn walk away, Chris wondered what his fans would think if they saw him now; all those women who still tried to accost him in the street and shove their numbers into his palm, and their breasts into his face. No matter how much his life had changed, he was still K Smooth hip-hop megastar to those women, not Shawn Gardner, father of two and dedicated to one woman only. To this day, Chris marveled at Shawn’s transformation, but knowing his wife Riley as Chris now did, it was less of a puzzle. Riley was the rare woman who understood the difference between calming her man down and breaking him down, and it was all the more impressive because as much as Shawn loved her, she definitely had it within her power to do the latter.

  Turning again toward the dance floor, he saw that Brendan and Tracy had progressed from dancing to kissing, just as Patti LaBelle hit her high notes. Now this couple, the newlyweds, were a different story altogether. Meeting them at first, it would be easy to misinterpret their temperaments and think Tracy had the upper hand, but nothing could be farther from the truth. As beautiful, as bratty and as imperious as she was, Tracy lived for Brendan and loved him with an intensity that could not safely be entrusted to a lesser man than Brendan Cole.

  Hell, even for the damn bachelor party, Brendan hadn’t slipped. Not even a little bit.

  The evening before, Chris had taken him and a bunch of other dudes to Sans Souci for a good old-fashioned, balls-to-the-wall, hedonistic romp. It had cost a pretty penny to shut the joint down for a private party, but hell, it was worth it. Brendan and he went way back. Back to the days when it was unheard of for young Black men to control their own professional destinies in the music industry. So apart from renting out one of the most exclusive private clubs in New York, to make the night truly one to remember, Chris had given one of his scouts a unique assignment—find the finest strippers in the Tristate area.

  And the kid had delivered.

  When Brendan entered the club with Chris, Shawn and the rest of their entourage, they’d started drinking right away. Within moments, one by one, ten of the baddest chicks willing to drop drawers for dollars had come strutting out onto the dance floor.

  Brendan, never one to shy away from a good time had looked at Chris and laughed, rocking back in his seat.

  Day-UM, man! You tryin’ to get my ass killed? If Tracy ever hear about this . . .

  This is like Vegas, man, Chris said, giving him some dap. What happens . . .

  But Brendan shook his head. Ain’t shit happenin’. At least not with me.

  And it hadn’t. A waste of ten perfectly good strippers. But not a total waste since most of the other dudes were more than happy to partake, even if Brendan and Shawn were content to drink and talk smack all night about “back in the day” when they used to chase tail. Funny thing was, while they sounded nostalgic, neither of them seemed regretful that those days were gone. Go figure.

  Taking a deep breath now, Chris decided to leave Tracy, Brendan and their guests to enjoy the last remnants of the evening. Almost everyone else had begun to make their way to their cars but at one of the tables, he noticed a woman he recognized as Tracy’s mother sitting alone, watching the couple on the dance floor, her expression inscrutable. Nearby, Brendan’s parents stood side by side. Mrs. Cole was holding Tracy and Brendan’s four-month old daughter, smiling, watching her son and new daughter-in-law with unabashed pleasure. They were Smiling People. That’s how Chris thought of them—like their son, they seemed not to have any other way to look at the world except through smiling eyes.

  Inside, his housekeeper, Mrs. Lawson and the wedding planner had begun to give instructions to the staff and crew who were discreetly beginning clean-up. Mrs. Lawson looked up as he entered and gave him a wan smile. She was dressed up for the occasion, wearing a peach-hued suit that looked like something that she might have worn to a high school graduation or a baptism.

  “How did you make out?” she asked him, and Chris knew she was referring to his headache from earlier.

  “Not too bad,” he said, nodding at her.

  But that wasn’t exactly the truth. He could still feel the tiniest of twinges
at the base of his skull like a little blossom of discomfort that would in short order grow into a drill-like pain if he didn’t get away from the thumping music, and soon. It had begun around the time the preacher started talking about the “inexorable optimism of the human heart.” The only thing that felt inexorable right about now was this headache.

  Occasionally, sleep was the cure, and at other times, caffeine. But there were times—more frequent lately—when nothing helped except the Relpax Dr. Allen had prescribed. Chris hated the idea of resorting to the little orange pills just to live a normal life. Drugs of any kind were a thing for him: he hated them. Unless he was about to be cut open for surgery, his preference was to stay away from any controlled substance.

  Mrs. Lawson was still looking at him as though searching for signs that perhaps he wasn’t being completely honest with her.

  “This was supposed to be your weekend off, wasn’t it?” Chris asked her.

  Mrs. Lawson hesitated before nodding. “Yes, but I had no problem staying, Mr. Scaife. I know you needed the extra help.”

  “You always say it’s not a problem,” Chris told her heading towards his office. “Go on home. Give the rest of the staff instructions and then go on home.”

  “Mr. Scaife . . .”

  Chris stopped and turned to look at her. “Go. Home.”

  She smiled at him and finally nodded. “Okay. You . . . make sure you . . .”

  Chris cocked his head and raised his eyebrows, stopping her in the middle of the admonition—which he’d heard many times before—that he ‘take care of himself.’

  “Goodnight,” he said pointedly.

  Mrs. Lawson wiped her hands on the front of her dress like a woman removing remnants of flour from her skirt while baking a cake. That was how she probably saw him, Chris thought with amusement, as a work in progress, an unbaked cake.

  “Goodnight,” she returned. “Enjoy the rest of your weekend, Mr. Scaife.”

  Watching her walk away, Chris shook his head.

  Mrs. Lawson was tall, with a straight-backed, dignified bearing. He’d hired her because of her posture, funny as that sounded. Something about the precise way she carried herself, and the meticulousness of her appearance told him she would have no problem managing his enormous property and would do so with equal care whether he was there to oversee her work or not.

  She was about sixty, was Chris’ guess. Lines were beginning to make an appearance around her dark eyes, and the barest streaks of grey in her wavy black hair. They never talked about her home life, but he knew she had two kids; one son, one daughter. When she’d first started working for him when he was in his twenties and newly wealthy, she was sending her son off to the Navy and two years later, her daughter off to college. He wondered where they were now.

  Back then, Chris quickly realized that given the slightest opportunity, she would treat him like one of her kids so he’d kept their relationship very impersonal. Only now, after so many years, the carefully-maintained distance was only a mirage and she was as much a part of his life as those people closest in the world to him. She’d been working for him for the last twelve years, after all—through those wild days and long nights, when he treated his new money like a toy, and every weekend at the house meant pool parties, naked women and drunken-knucklehead behavior. A few times, he’d even considered firing her purely because she’d been witness to something stupid he’d done and given him that thin-lipped Momma-stare that all Black women over the age of forty give to Black men behaving badly. But he never would. Mrs. Lawson was as indispensable to him as the COO of his multimillion dollar corporation, Scaife Enterprises.

  “That was a nice thing to do,” a voice said.

  Chris turned toward it and smiled at the slender woman in the charcoal grey sheath and sky-high black satin peep-toe pumps. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite . . .

  “It’s Robyn,” she said, detecting his confusion about who she might be.

  That’s right. Robyn Crandall. One of Shawn’s lawyers.

  But she looked different. Thinner, and her face narrower. Almost skinny, but still with a nice figure. And her hair, which used to be long was now in a pixie-cut with long bangs, and a lighter shade.

  “Hey,” he said. “How’s it going?”

  Holding a champagne glass, twirling the stem between her fingers, she shrugged. “Pretty good. You?”

  He shrugged as well.

  “You too?” she asked.

  “Me too, what?”

  Robyn offered a brief smile. Pretty. He’d never noticed that about her before. And if it wasn’t for this damned headache, he might have been more enthusiastic about this conversation. But the sound of human voices, even those as soft and melodious as hers, was fast becoming an irritant as the sensation in his head began a slow canter from Uncomfortable toward the territory of Downright Painful.

  “Wedding melancholy,” Robyn said.

  “Only women get that disease,” Chris responded.

  Robyn took a sip of her champagne. “You’re probably right.” Breaking eye contact, she looked over his shoulder and into the middle distance.

  The nagging thud at the base of his skull was growing more insistent now, his neck and shoulders beginning to tighten. Chris shut his eyes for a moment.

  “You okay?” Robyn asked.

  “Yeah,” he said reflexively. “Just a headache.”

  Chris looked behind her, realizing for the first time that she’d been sitting in his almost completely dark living room. Alone and far away from the party.

  “So this ‘wedding melancholy’ thing must be deep,” he said. “For you to hiding out, away from your husband, the music, and . . .”

  “No husband,” Robyn said, her eyes flitting away from his again. “Divorced.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  In part because he couldn’t imagine tackling the stairs just yet, Chris joined her in the living room, sitting on the arm of one of the sofas. Robyn’s dress was snug but there was no evidence of even an ounce of excess fat on her. Add another ten pounds, Chris decided, and she would be extremely attractive. Her calves looked like those of a woman who didn’t miss a workout.

  “So that explains the wedding blues,” he added.

  Robyn shrugged. “Probably. But it was a beautiful ceremony, wasn’t it?”

  “I guess so. I was damn near asleep the whole time.”

  Robyn smiled. A very slight parting of her full lips, a brief peek of bright, white teeth. She’d smiled at him a few times now, but still, she did it like someone who was out of practice.

  “How long have they been your friends, Brendan and Tracy?”

  “Brendan for a long time. Only met Tracy around the time I met Riley,” he said.

  Robyn nodded. “Me too. I was surprised when I got the invitation. Since they called off the other wedding and all.”

  Neither of them said it outright but Chris knew they were thinking the same thing. Tracy was a high-strung and challenging personality, and Brendan was going to have his hands full being married to her. But that was Brendan. When he was in a less-than-generous frame of mind, Chris called him the Bitch-Whisperer. With that charm, that swagger, that height, women—no matter how difficult—just seemed to fall at Brendan’s damn feet, legs spread and all.

  Outside, the music changed. Now they were playing Rick Ross’ Magnificent. Magnificent, his ass. Ross was all sizzle and no steak, as far as Chris was concerned. Always talking about his “ends.” In his experience, when someone talked about it too much, they were probably one Bentley away from bankruptcy.

  “So besides getting rid of a husband, what’ve you been up to?” Chris asked Robyn.

  “That was a full-time occupation for a while,” she said, not making eye contact.

  Marriage was one adventure Chris had no intention of ever embarking on. He had his hands full already with two women who seemed to be perpetually asking for something. Last thing he needed was to add another one to the mix on a permanent
basis. Not that marriage seemed to be a permanent proposition these days.

  “You still with Doug’s law firm?” he asked, trying to make conversation.

  “No. I left. My ex-husband worked there too, so I thought it best to move on.”

  “Damn,” Chris said, interested now. “You had to quit your job because of him?”

  “I didn’t have to,” Robyn said. “But I thought it might be better that way. Seeing him every day while we were splitting up, thinking about what it might be like after the divorce . . .”

  Chris could tell there was something else. Something she wasn’t telling.

  “That’s rough,” he said. “Sorry to hear that, Robyn.”

  “It’s fine, now,” she said, looking away again.

  “So where are you now?”

  “A small insurance claims outfit,” she said, taking a sip of her drink.

  Ambulance-chasing. After working at a high-powered firm that represented the likes of Shawn, a.k.a. K Smooth, sounded to Chris like a hell of a step down. She must have been desperate to get away from her ex to take something like that. Now that he was paying attention, Chris noticed that not only was she thinner, but there were dark smudges beneath her eyes that she’d almost succeeded in concealing with make-up. Almost, but not quite.

  “Must be a different pace of work,” he commented, watching her face closely.

  Robyn gave a brief laugh. “Yes. That’s true. A very different pace.”

  “So no interest in getting back into entertainment law?”

  “At some point, sure,” Robyn said. “I’m re-assessing right now. Considering some options. I’ve been thinking about moving to Atlanta.”

  Chris grimaced. “Why the hell you want to do that?”

  Robyn laughed again. This time it sounded genuine. “Why not?”

  “New York’s where it’s at for the entertainment field. With L.A. a second.”

  “Atlanta’s not so bad,” Robyn said. “You New Yorkers kill me. Contrary to popular belief, Manhattan is not the center of the universe.”