Lust & Loyalty

by Shelly Ellis

  “Well, you told me you weren’t feeling well and Victor mentioned that you had a bad cold. I knew you were up here in Virginia by yourself, so I brought you some tomato soup and Theraflu. That combo always makes me feel better even when I’m at my worst.”

  She shook her head in bemusement. “You drove three hundred miles to bring me soup and Theraflu?”

  “Well . . . yeah.”

  When she continued to stare at him blankly, his smile fell. His shoulders slumped. “If I’m intruding, I can—”

  “No! No, you’re not intruding! It just . . . caught me off guard. But this was incredibly sweet of you.” She pushed her door farther open. “Please come in.”

  He nodded and walked into her apartment. She gazed around her, shamefaced that she hadn’t tidied up the place. Luckily, nothing embarrassing like an empty takeout container or one of her thongs was sitting around for him to see.

  “This is a . . . uh, nice place you have here,” he lied, and she choked back a laugh. She knew her apartment was as tiny as a matchbox and decorated just as elaborately, but it was her home.

  “Thank you.”

  “So where should I set this?” he asked, holding up the soup carton and the plastic bag.

  “Oh, I can take those!”

  “You may wanna be careful with the lid on that, though. I picked it up at the grocery store near here and the only lid I could find was a little bent, so—”

  He didn’t get to finish. The instant she grabbed the soup carton, the lid popped off, making tomato soup gush over the side, sending a bright red splatter onto his sweater and down the front of his jeans.

  “I am so, so sorry, Shaun!” she shouted, scrambling to her small eat-in kitchen. She tossed the empty carton in the sink, ran to the paper towel dispenser hanging on the wall, and grabbed several handfuls before running back to him. The soup was now oozing down the front of him and dripping onto her floor.

  “It’s . . . all right, really,” he said as she dabbed at the stain with the paper towels, making a wide circumference around his crotch.

  “No, it’s not! I made a complete mess of you—and I’m only making it worse.”

  “It’s just soup, C. J. It’s no big deal.”

  She squinted when she realized he was grimacing. “What? What’s wrong? You look like you’re in pain.”

  “Well, it feels a little hot in some . . . some areas,” he said, shifting his stance.

  She motioned to his jeans. “Take off your pants.”

  His eyes widened. “What?”

  “Take . . . off . . . your . . . pants,” she repeated slowly, enunciating each word.

  When he continued to look at her uneasily, she rolled her eyes and dropped her hands to her hips. “Look, Pastor Clancy, I’m not trying to seduce you. I’m just not letting you get second-degree burns because you were nice enough to bring me soup that I managed to scald you with. You can take off the jeans in my room, if it makes you feel any better. I’ll stay out here. I can wash and dry them for you. Hand them to me through the doorway.”

  He hesitated before nodding only a few seconds later. She guessed his scalded balls won out.

  “Okay,” he muttered.

  Ten minutes later, she was tossing his jeans along with liquid detergent into the washer in her kitchen, while he stood alone in her bedroom. She wondered how she had managed to create this mess. C. J. slammed the lid to the washer shut and reached for another wad of towels to clean up the rest of the spilled soup when she heard a knock at her front door again.

  “Who the hell is that?” she murmured before striding out of her kitchen.

  No one else had made the trek from North Carolina to Virginia to check on her, had they? Once again, she stared through the peephole. This time, her heart dropped. All the blood drained from her head.

  “Oh, no! No! No!” she whispered hysterically. “Not today. Not now!”

  “C. J.?” Terrence called, knocking again. “Please, baby, open up!”

  This was some joke, some weird twist of fate. Why had Terrence chosen today of all days to just show up at her apartment? Of course it had to be the same damn day that Shaun was here with her, not wearing any pants!

  “C. J.!” Terrence shouted, pounding his fist on her door again. “C. J., I know you’re home. I saw your car parked in your reserved space. Don’t make me have to get escorted out of this damn building, because I will stay out here until you answer me, goddammit!”

  Despite his threat, she seriously considered ignoring him and hoping he would go away, but part of her longed to talk to Terrence. It was the same part that ached just seeing him on the other side of the door, less than a foot away from her. She was angry at him, but she still missed him. She still loved him.

  Because I’m a damn fool, she thought dejectedly.

  She took a little solace in the fact that he looked almost as bad as she did. Even in the dim lighting of the apartment hallway, she could see that he needed a shave and there were bags under his eyes like he hadn’t slept in a few days.

  “Baby, please talk to me! Just talk to me! That’s all I’m asking!” he yelled, and she felt an imaginary knife twist in her gut.

  She closed her eyes and dropped her forehead against the wooden slab.

  “Please?” he said in a softer voice.

  I’ll make it quick, she told herself. She wouldn’t invite him in. She wouldn’t cave, either, but she would give him a chance to say whatever he had to say, then send him on his way. She was a mature woman. She could handle this.

  She unlocked the door before she could change her mind and whipped it open. When she did, he looked at her, stunned, like he hadn’t expected her to answer.

  “What the hell do you want, Terry?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest, forcing a hard edge to her voice. “Why are you here?”

  He took a tentative step toward her. “I wanted . . . no, I needed to talk to you, babe. You haven’t returned any of my phone calls or texts. I’ve been—”

  “You tossed my purse out of your bedroom and told me to get out.” She inclined her head and raised her eyebrows. “What more is there to say?”

  “I didn’t mean that. You know I didn’t mean any of that! I was drunk off my ass!”

  “You were drunk—but you know damn well you meant every word you said.”

  “C. J.,” he said, reaching for her, but she stepped away from him, knowing she would probably give in if he touched her. He lowered his hand and shrank back with his head bowed. “Baby, look, I . . . I love you. I love you! You know that! Sometimes I say things when I’m angry that I don’t mean. Well, if I do mean it, I don’t mean it in the way I say it. It’s the worst version of what I really feel. But no matter what I said that night, I still lo—”

  “Hey, C. J.!” Shaun called out from her bedroom. “Is it okay if I wash my sweater, too?”

  Terrence fell silent at sound of Shaun’s voice. He blinked.

  “Might as well do both at once, right?” Shaun’s muffled voice continued. “C. J., you out there?”

  Shit, she thought, raising her hand to her forehead. This is exactly what she had wanted to avoid.

  I never should have opened the damn door!

  Terrence’s jaw tightened. A vein popped up along his brow. “Do you . . . do you have some other . . . other guy in here?”

  She quickly shook her head and blew air out of her puffed cheeks.

  This is awkward.

  “Yes, I do, but—”

  Terrence shoved past her, cutting her off and almost making her bump into the adjacent wall. She watched in shock and alarm as he jogged through her living room and down the short hallway that led to her bedroom.

  “Terry? Terry, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” she shouted after him just as he turned the doorknob and shoved her bedroom door open. “Wait! Wait! Don’t—”

  The words clogged in her throat again at the sight of Shaun standing next to her bed, just in his plaid boxers and knee-high whit
e athletic socks, holding his dirty sweater in his hands. As the door whipped open, he jumped and reached for the peach-colored sheets on her bed, feebly covering his partial nakedness.

  For several seconds, the two men stared at each other.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Terrence asked him, breaking their silence.

  Instead of responding, Shaun continued to gape helplessly.

  “Who the fuck is this?” Terrence bellowed, turning to her and jabbing his finger into the bedroom. He glared down at her. “What the fuck is this shit, C. J.? I came here to apologize and run in on this?”

  C. J. winced, mortified that Shaun was witnessing this and furious at Terrence for making a true ass out of himself. She peered into her bedroom around the door frame. “Shaun, I am so sorry about this! I didn’t—”

  “Shaun?” Terrence yelled with widened eyes. “Shaun . . . as in your ex-fiancé, Shaun?” He let out a caustic laugh. “Well, I’ll be damned. I guess I was right all along!”

  “Stop it, Terry,” she said through clenched teeth. “You’re acting like an asshole . . . a complete fool! Just stop!”

  “I’m a fool?” he pointed at his chest. “Oh, I’m a damn fool, all right! I thought I was being paranoid because I was worried you might do some shit like this. Not C. J., not her! But I guess I was right all along, huh?”

  “Look, uh . . . Terry, is it?” Shaun said, finally regaining his voice. He tightened her cotton bedsheet around his waist. “I have no idea what’s going on, but I can assure you that C. J. hasn’t—”

  “Man, shut the fuck up before I shut your ass up!” Terrence ordered, glowering at him.

  “Don’t talk to him like that!” she screeched, unable to hold back her own fury, getting sucked in by all of Terrence’s rage.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying her best to get herself under control, but it was a challenge. She was fighting the dueling tides of anger and embarrassment, and both left her feeling like the floor was rocking underneath her, like she couldn’t get her footing. She couldn’t believe Terrence was acting like this. Yet again, he was letting the hurricane of his emotions take over and she was left with rain pounding on her head.

  “So you’re fuckin’ him, too, huh? Showing him everything I taught you?” Terrence asked with a menacing gleam to his eyes.

  C. J.’s eyes flashed open. She didn’t respond to his question, too furious to articulate an answer. Her silence only seemed to embolden him.

  “Doing all your new tricks? I bet he—”

  “Hey!” Shaun called out, making Terrence whip around again to face him. “Hey, why don’t you just back off and leave her alone, all right?”

  “What did I say?” Terrence snarled. “What the fuck did I say to you about minding your own goddamn business, huh?”

  C. J. watched in horror as Terrence suddenly charged across the bedroom, looking like a jaguar that had locked onto his prey while Shaun was the poor gazelle with no idea he was about to get eaten.

  “Terry! Terry!” She frantically reached for his arm, grabbing the fabric of his sweater to hold him back, but he roughly yanked it out of her grip and shrugged her off.

  Shaun looked absolutely terrified. He dropped the bedsheet to the floor and clenched his fists like he was prepared to fight, then loosened them after giving it a second thought. He took an unsteady step backward, then another. Terrence gave Shaun a hard shove, sending the other man flying. Shaun landed on his ass near her dresser, his feet becoming entangled in her discarded bedsheets. He held up a hand to shield himself from the impending blows.

  “Stop it!” she shouted, running across the bedroom just as Terrence raised his fist. “Stop it, Terry! Don’t do this!” She stood between the two men, pressing her palms against Terrence’s chest, holding him back with all her might. “Please!”

  He looked down at her, and for the first time since he stormed into her apartment, she felt like he really saw her, like he realized exactly what he was doing. He slowly lowered his fist and glowered down at Shaun.

  “Fine,” he sneered. “You can have her, brotha! Just know that everything she does in that bed has my signature written all over it—and I wrote it with my dick!”

  “Get out!” she ordered, shoving at his chest again and pointing to her bedroom door. She was shaking all over, her body flooded with adrenaline. “Just get out! Get the fuck out, Terry!” she yelled, shoving at him again. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this. I can’t stand to look at you when you do this shit. Get out of here!”

  She watched as he turned around and walked back toward the bedroom doorway.

  “I’d be happy to,” he said over his shoulder with finality and ease, like he had already done what he had come here to do. She turned away from him after that.

  She knew he had left for sure when he slammed her front door shut behind him, making the entire living room wall shudder.

  Chapter 14

  Terrence

  “Fuck that bitch,” Terrence kept muttering to himself as he drove back from C. J.’s apartment, breaking speed limits and barely stopping at red lights. When he arrived back at his condo, full of indignation and fury, he quickly dug out Andre’s business card from a pile of discarded receipts and valet tickets on his coffee table. He called Andre and told him that he wanted to try to get back into the modeling game after all.

  “Oh, thank you, Jesus!” Andre exclaimed on the other end of the line. “We’ve got to get you to New York right away. I want you to meet the rest of the folks at the agency. I want to get your portfolio on point. Watch out, world, Terrence Murdoch is back!”

  A few days later, only a couple hours before he was headed to the train station, he called Evan to let him know he’d be back in a few days.

  “Why are you going to New York? What’s up there?” Evan asked.

  “I’m gonna try modeling again. An agency wants me, so I figured I might as well give it a shot.”

  “Modeling again? Wait . . . when did you decide to start modeling again? You never mentioned it before! When did this happen?”

  “I don’t know. It just seemed like the right time,” he said with a shrug, throwing a few more things into an overnight bag. “I’m doing better. My recovery from the accident is done. It seemed like some changes were in order. I’m ready.”

  “Changes, huh?” Evan fell silent on the other end of the line. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with what happened with you and . . . and C. J., would it?”

  At the mention of his ex’s name, Terrence’s jaw tightened. He paused from his packing. “Why the fuck would it have anything to do with her?”

  He had already given his brother the gory details of him stumbling upon her and Shaun Clancy in her apartment. He had no desire to relive them.

  “Well, it’s just . . . you never mentioned modeling again before and . . . and then you guys break up and you’re off to New York to start a new career! I thought she . . . well, she might have something to do with this.”

  “Well, she doesn’t,” Terrence answered succinctly before closing the zipper on his bag. “Fuck that bitch!”

  Terrence repeated the phrase again as he boarded the Acela Express train from Virginia to New York City. While he reclined in his leather chair, he tried to block out visions of what C. J. was doing while in bed with Shaun Clancy. As the train sailed through D.C. to Baltimore and then Newark, he was plagued with visions of what Clancy might be doing to her on her peach-colored bedsheets which probably still smelled of Terrence’s aftershave.

  He bet C. J. had had a good laugh at his expense, carrying on an affair right under his nose. He wondered how many times she had claimed to be held up by some last-minute meet-and-greet for her father or church event when she really was getting freaky with Clancy somewhere, doing things she wouldn’t even do with Terrence.

  Fuck that bitch, he thought again as he fought the urge to punch his fist through the Acela’s double-paned glass window. Instead, he turned up the volume o
f the angry hip-hop tune playing through his headphones. He turned it up so high that his eardrums almost burned.

  When he arrived at Penn Station, his muscles were rigid and the tension in his neck was almost painful. He was breathing like he had just run a marathon. He climbed up the stairs and onto the sidewalk and glanced at the exterior of Madison Square Garden just as he heard a horn blare and pounding dance music. He turned and saw Andre in a blue Audi illegally parked along the curb. The tiny man lowered the tinted window and frantically waved at him.

  “Come on, before the cops get on my ass!” Andre called.

  Terrence jogged a few feet, threw open the door, and hopped inside. The car pulled off the curb seconds later with a squeal of tires just as one of New York’s finest started to walk toward its bumper.

  “How are you doing, gorgeous?” Andre asked with a smile, expertly handling midday New York traffic with awe-inspiring ease.

  “I’m good,” Terrence answered, slumping back into the plush leather seat, gazing at the Manhattan scenery outside his window. He hadn’t been to New York in a while. The city usually gave him a rush, an endorphin high the minute he set foot in Manhattan or the other boroughs, but he wasn’t feeling it today.

  “Good? Just good? Why aren’t you excited?” Andre raised his gold-tinted sunglasses from his face to perch them on his shiny bald head. He looked Terrence up and down. “Are you okay?”

  Terrence nodded and turned back to face him. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

  Andre squinted, scrutinizing him even more closely. “Well, frankly, you’re looking a little worn, my dear . . . more worn than high heels from Payless after a hard night of partying! Seriously, you could carry luggage in those bags under your eyes! What’ve you been doing to yourself, sweetheart?”

  Terrence shrugged listlessly, making Andre shake his head.

  “I’m gonna have to make you an appointment today with my aesthetician on the Upper West Side. There is no time to waste!”

  Andre grabbed his cell phone from the dashboard.

  “Siri, give me Stephan!” he yelled, calling up the miracle worker’s phone number.

  “Calling Stephan,” the phone answered back.