Afterwards

by Nia Forrester

  “She’s over there in the limo,” Deuce said. “You can tell her.” And then he turned his attention to Robyn, smiling at her, giving her the quick once-over.

  “Nice to meet you, Deuce.” Robyn extended a hand, which he took for a brief shake.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” he mumbled. He barely made eye contact, shyly letting his chin drop when he spoke.

  Despite the sourness of her mood, Robyn smiled. So handsome.

  “I’ll be back in a second,” Chris said. “Lemme just say hey to Sheryl and then we can go.”

  So Robyn was left alone with his son, both of them silent and awkward in the other’s presence. As the adult, the impetus was on her, so Robyn smiled again.

  “So I hear you’re a football player,” she said.

  Deuce nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Offense or defense?”

  Deuce smiled. “Linebacker,” he said, looking relieved to have something to talk about that he actually found interesting, to have a question he knew the answer to.

  Over his shoulder, Robyn watched Chris knock on the window of the limo and the window roll down. Sheryl leaned out and the look on her face was as cynical as Chris’ had been when he watched her walk down the aisle. He said something to her and she smiled, shaking her head. Then she presented him with her cheek which Chris quickly kissed. The exchange took only a few seconds and then he was on his way back.

  Robyn sighed her relief.

  She was feeling tired again, remembering that the pointlessness of getting into Chris’ son’s good graces had only just been made clear to her about an hour and a half ago. Chris was going away for six weeks and hadn’t even seen fit to tell her. Not only that, maybe he’d actively concealed it, because as part of the Pouvoir Noir team, she should have been one of the first to know but had inexplicably been kept in the dark.

  Now, she just wanted to leave. It had been news to her that they weren’t going to the reception, but if that was the case, they were going to have to stop and get some breakfast somewhere, because she was feeling fully capable of eating a horse.

  “Deuce!”

  One of the other groomsmen was calling him, so Chris’ son turned toward the voice.

  “You’d better head out,” Robyn said, giving him permission to leave her alone. “Looks like the wedding party’s about to leave without you.”

  “Yeah. Nice meeting you.”

  And it was only once he was walking away that Robyn realized that no one had bothered to tell him her name.

  ___________________

  By the time they stopped in Mt. Vernon for breakfast, Robyn was almost herself again. Almost, but not quite. She was talking, and responding when he talked, but underneath it all, there was a little reserve, like only part of her was there with him, and she had already mentally moved on to the next thing. While they drove, she didn’t even ask him why he’d changed his mind about going to the reception. She told him Deuce looked like him and was handsome, and then that was that for comments about the wedding.

  Instead, she talked about Pouvoir Noir and his trip to Paris, beginning her task of prepping him as Frank had instructed her to do. For them to talk about work during personal time was not typical. It was so atypical, Chris began to wonder whether she was sending him a message; a message that there would be no personal time between them any longer. That maybe all they would have from here on out was business. But it wasn’t like Robyn to ‘signal’ things. If that was what she wanted, then she’d just say it.

  “You coming back to the house with me?” he asked, testing her.

  Robyn shook her head. “I may as well get some of my errands done,” she said, taking a bite of her pancake.

  “What? Dry cleaning, grocery shopping, hair-washing?” he said, trying to coax a smile out of her.

  “All of the above,” Robyn said, giving him the smallest of smiles. “And maybe I’ll take my mother out to dinner. I’ve been pretty scarce lately.”

  “Okay,” Chris said leaning back. “Let’s just cut the bullshit. Are you still all pissy about me going to Paris?”

  Robyn shook her head but seemed not to want to speak. And were those tears in her eyes? Chris leaned forward to look more closely and she looked down at her plate.

  “Baby,” he said.

  It surprised him just as much as it did her, and Robyn’s looked up. He’d never called her that outside of the bedroom before. But the moment passed and she looked down, concentrating on her breakfast once more.

  “I’m not pissy about you going to Paris,” she said.

  “Then what’s with the . . . the face, the . . . attitude?”

  To say she was giving him attitude wasn’t exactly fair and he knew it. She never gave him attitude. Not about anything except for the one time when he’d put the kibosh on that first deal her ex-husband had going with Jamal. What she did give him was her time, her attention, her companionship . . . her body. The gifts he gave her, he gave because they were a currency he understood: things. The more they were worth, the more the woman would know she was worth to you. The Birkin bag had been a pain in the ass to get, but it was worth it, because she was more than worth it. Why couldn’t she see that?

  “I know we work together, but most of our time together is outside of work. So when I hear about you taking a six-week trip like any other . . . employee might hear about it? From Frank, and not from you? That’s hurtful,” she said. And then she shrugged. “That’s all.”

  “So I should have told you.” He said it like a question and a statement at the same time. Chris wasn’t even sure which he intended it to be.

  Robyn shrugged again. “I wish you had. Instead of sending me some overpriced purse to make up for it in advance.”

  “Do you want me to take back the overpriced purse?”

  “If you try, I’ll cut your hand off,” Robyn said, stifling a smile.

  Chris lifted himself partially out of his seat and leaned across the table, pulling Robyn toward him and kissing her. She tasted like pancake syrup and bacon. When he pulled away, she was smiling, but it did not reach her eyes.

  Even after that, Robyn insisted she had to go home, so Chris dropped her off, and headed for his place. Mrs. Lawson had the weekend off, so he would have the premises entirely to himself. When he pulled up and went in, loosening his tie, he remembered Robyn asking him once: why’d you buy a house so big?

  Yeah. Why?

  In his office, he switched on his computer and scanned email. Near the top was the email from Frank to Robyn, copying him, giving Robyn instructions to prep him for his trip and going over five points that he wanted her to remember to focus on. Fucking Frank, who’d fucked up his weekend by letting the cat out of the bag prematurely. But hell, what was the point not telling Robyn about the trip in the first place? He’d forgotten now. Something about it maybe being over between them by then, and him needing Paris to make it a clean break.

  Clean break, his ass. And over between them? A man looking for an out with Robyn would be hard-pressed to find one. Hard-pressed to make himself truly want one. All Chris knew was that it felt like it might be time. They were in that danger-zone, where before you knew it, you were in a bonafide relationship, complete with commitment and monogamy, and promises of a future. And he couldn’t give her that. She was going to get past this crap with her ex-husband and make someone an amazing wife. Some guy who would have the comfort of going to sleep every night for the rest of his life knowing that Robyn had his back. And that was saying something because Robyn was no lightweight.

  She was stubborn, determined, ambitious and loyal to a fault. The way she still stood up for that piece-of-shit ex of hers pissed him off, but he admired her for it as well. Not too many people could look past their own hurt, and try to give someone who had done that kind of wrong a fair shake. There couldn’t be even an ounce of vindictiveness in her nature for her to have come to him, pleading that asshole’s case the way she had.

  Either that, or she still had feeli
ngs for him. Most of the time, it didn’t seem likely, because when she was present, Robyn was truly present and in the moment. She wasn’t the type to be mooning about her past, or in fear of her future; she was all about taking action. Hell, even the news about him going to Paris she’d shaken off pretty well, even though it was obvious he’d hurt her.

  Hurt her. That was the damn problem. He didn’t want to, but if they kept going like this, it was inevitable. One day she’d realize he wasn’t going to be the man of her dreams and look at him with disappointment—the way she had in Paris when he went after Ballard, the way she had today.

  At the smallest sign of her displeasure, he was reeling, not knowing what to do with himself or where to settle his thoughts. Going to Sheryl’s wedding had been eventful enough on its own. Seeing her walk down the aisle in that white dress, like he couldn’t call her up and get some whenever he wanted, was laughable. And then add to that the thought of that look on Robyn’s face when she asked him about Paris.

  Reaching for his phone, Chris dialed a number on a whim and waited through three rings. Finally, Karen picked up.

  “Chris,” she said, sounding surprised. “What’s going on? Everything alright?”

  “Yeah, fine. The kids there?”

  There was a long pause. Long enough that he looked at the phone to make sure she was still on the other end of the line.

  “Karen?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” she said. “Ahm, no they’re not. Gwen took them out with their cousins for pizza. But they should be back later this afternoon.”

  “Oh, okay, well tell them I called.”

  “I will,” Karen said. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”

  “Yeah everything’s okay. Why d’you keep asking me that?”

  “Because you hardly ever call, Chris. That’s why,” Karen said. “For awhile after the Take Your Daughter to Work thing, I think Jasmin was hoping . . .”

  “Hoping . . .” he prompted.

  “That you’d be different. That she’d hear from you more. I was hoping the same thing.”

  “You know how busy I get,” Chris began, realizing immediately how slender the thread of his excuse was.

  “Yes, I remember well,” Karen said. And there was bitterness in her voice, a note he was accustomed to from Sheryl, but not from her.

  “You have something you want to get off your chest?” Chris asked. May as well hear it from all sides today.

  There was another long silence while she contemplated. Scared of her own shadow, Karen was not one for confrontation. Chris figured chances were sixty-forty that she’d back off altogether and tell him to forget it, or that it was ‘nothing’.

  “Well,” she began, surprising him. “You know I would never deny you access to your kids, or make it difficult in any way for you to see them . . .”

  Nor could she, since he paid for damn near everything she owned. But he didn’t say that.

  “. . . but you have to think long-term, Chris. Don’t just call them on impulse and then disappear for weeks at a time after that. It’s confusing. After having such a great time with you at your office, Jas was so jumpy for weeks, thinking every time the phone rang that it might be you. It was heartbreaking to watch. So you have to be careful when you make calls like this, and decide that you’re going to stick, not just drop in on them and then turn ghost all of a sudden.”

  A part of him wanted to remind her that he wasn’t the one who’d dropped in. That it had been her idea that he take Jasmin to work with him. But what kind of dumb-ass excuse was that? All Karen had asked him to do was stuff he should have been doing anyway, spending time, getting to know his daughter. Chris recalled what Robyn told him, about how she felt when her father finally decided it was time to come around: It was too late, she’d said. I was indifferent.

  “I hear you,” he said.

  “I hope you do,” Karen said. “So, with that in mind, do you really want me to tell them you called?”

  Chris hesitated. He was going to Paris in a week and would be gone for a month and a half.

  “No,” he said quietly. “You probably shouldn’t.”

  Karen exhaled. “Okay, Chris,” she said sounding resigned. “‘Bye.”

  The phone went dead in his hand.

  ___________________

  Mrs. Lawson was nothing if not efficient. Later, when it began to grow darker and Chris realized that he’d been working all afternoon, he went into the kitchen to find something to eat. He didn’t used to notice when he hadn’t eaten, but lately his meals had been more regular because even when she wasn’t with him, Robyn had developed this new habit of calling him around lunch and then dinner time, casually reciting details of her own meal, which Chris finally figured out was just subterfuge so she could ask about what he’d eaten, or remind him that he hadn’t.

  And whenever she worked late, she stopped by his office on her way out, knowing that more often than not, he would be there past six. Mostly she lounged around in the sitting area near the door, skimming the entertainment magazines that he read as a barometer for how his artists were doing in popular culture. And sometime around a quarter to seven, she might wander over to his computer, and sitting on his lap if she had to, ordered dinner for him online, waiting until it got there and he was eating it before she left. A few times she stayed and ate with him, and they locked his office door and made out on his office sofa, Robyn on her back, Chris lying alongside her, touching her through her clothes and aching to do much more than that.

  They never had sex in his office, because she said it would ruin his mojo, whatever the hell that meant. He would do it wherever she wanted, whenever she wanted. But in spite of her adventurousness in the bedroom, that was where Robyn preferred it: in the bedroom and on the bed. And lately, no matter how they began, she liked to finish in missionary position, him looking right at her, her looking right at him.

  Chris laughed at himself. He started out thinking about food and about his resourceful housekeeper and wound up thinking about Robyn, and about sex.

  There was a plate of roast chicken and asparagus in the warming tray. Either he was crazy or Mrs. Lawson was making different kinds of meals for him lately as well. Less salt, few starches and very rarely any red meat. Every other day was chicken, fish, shrimp and very seldom a small, lean steak. There, too, he suspected a conspiracy with Robyn. He should have been annoyed at her interference, her presumptiveness but instead he was . . . touched.

  Chris ate in his office, and watched the lights on the property outside automatically turn on as night fell. In his living room and foyer, and upstairs, the nighttime blinds would be descending, the house closing in on itself to keep out prying eyes of potential intruders, just as he’d been trying to close in on himself.

  And Robyn was the intruder.

  With his meal done, he returned the dishes to the kitchen and headed for the stairs, thinking that there was probably a game on that he would watch. And then, thinking of a better idea, he went outside, going into his garage.

  He took the Ducati because it was the one he was most familiar with, and it had been a long time since he rode at night. It handled smoothly and the engine hummed as he pulled out of his gates and onto the main road. Traffic was light, because it had only just begun to get cool in the evenings, and the world was still hung over from the long, lazy summer days.

  It used to be that this was the time of year Chris would be thinking about flying out to Paris Fashion Week, just to see and be seen, to bang models and buy expensive clothes, much of which he would never wear. He’d go to parties on the yachts of people he barely knew, but who wanted him there because he was famous and they were famous, which bred a false sense of familiarity, a superficial kinship. Those were long days and crazy, hazy nights when Chris drank too much, and smoked too much, and cursed up a storm; young, arrogant and thinking he would live forever.

  Where was Deuce then? Jasmin and Kaden? He couldn’t even remember sparing a thought for his kids,
and definitely not for their mothers. The only reason he was at the pinnacle he was at today was because he’d worked with the same frenzy that he played, and over time, the work took priority and the party pals fell by the wayside, leaving only a few trusted friends—Shawn, Brendan, a couple of others—dudes who themselves had taken the long, hard road to a slowdown.

  Last week he’d stopped by Brendan’s place in Brooklyn, where he and Tracy lived almost full-time now. The house was in a state of organized chaos and smelled like diapers and baby. When Brendan let him in, Chris glimpsed Tracy walking by at the top of the stairs, wearing only a tank top and the briefest of underwear holding the soaking wet, squealing, squirming baby in a fluffy white towel. New mother or not, her body was still damn near perfect. It was only fair that given Tracy’s . . . idiosyncrasies, Brendan should have the benefit of her physical beauty, so Chris didn’t begrudge him that.

  Following Chris’ gaze, Brendan turned and saw his wife standing at the top of the stairs semi-clothed. She’d been crouching a little to see who was at the door and upon spotting him, then did some squealing of her own when she realized Chris had seen her nearly naked.

  Sorry Chris! Tracy called down trotting out of view.

  No, Chris said keeping his voice low. Thank you for the peepshow.

  Brendan rolled his eyes. Let’s go around the corner and get a drink, he said. I’m going stir crazy in here.

  On the way out, Chris had laughed at his friend. Feeling a little buyer’s remorse? he asked.

  Brendan, locked the door to the townhouse and followed Chris down the steps and out into the street.

  Remorse? he said, looking at Chris as though he’d lost his mind. You kidding me? I would kill or die for my girls.

  ___________________

  At least the lights were still on inside this time. It was just after eight p.m. when Chris pulled up in front of the townhouse, cutting off the bike’s engine and sitting there for a few moments. Securing the helmet, he walked up to the front door and rang the bell, hearing voices and movement inside. Then the door opened and he was facing Carolyn, Robyn’s mother.