She tucked her knees into her chest. “Yeah. Well, he can have this house and these sorry ass rings if he thinks that all of these material possessions buy my tolerance. How can you buy someone when all of this infidelity creates these intense feelings of betrayal and confusion. Diamonds won’t make me stand by my man.”
“What will?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“Until you do some more figuring out, I suggest you talk to Mason one-on-one. Bring it up and deal with it now before things get further along. You two need to do this in privacy, calmly, and you need to both put a vision together of how you want your life to be. Expect great things and know that your life can be better after something like this. Sometimes, infidelity is not the greatest reason to break up. Physical and mental abuse, financial improprieties and other issues are usually nonnegotiable. Is this negotiable in your eyes?”
“Like I said, I don’t know. I’m at a loss right now. I’ll see you next week.”
“Be strong. And know that it’s not all about you. It’s about a family.”
“Thanks.”
Chapter 18
The kids were fast asleep. Mercedes closed the door to her and Mason’s bedroom and leaned her body up against it. She turned the lock from behind her. “You’re an asshole.”
He looked at her like he’d been expecting her attack. “Mercedes, I know how you feel.” Mason sat on the end of the bed. He took the position of the thinker.
She walked over and stood in front of him. She struggled to keep her tone low. “No, you don’t. Don’t even make that dumb ass statement. You’ve never had your spouse fuck around on you, Mason. You have no idea what I’m feeling.”
“I made a poor decision.”
“That’s what happens when you think with your dick, fool.”
Mason felt his own anger start to build. He stood up, walked past his wife, and then headed for the door.
She turned to face him. “Where are you going?”
Mason stopped. “For a walk.”
“No. Don’t you cop out on me now. You neglected to commit all the way already. So you have to be a man and deal with me being in your face, on your case, in your head, on your nerves, asking questions, yelling, feeling fucked up, slapping you, being disgusted with you, and crying like a baby. You have to fix this. You fucked it up.”
He turned back toward Mercedes. His eyes were full on. “How do I do that?”
She stepped up to him, nearly toe-to-toe. “By doing exactly what I just said. You have to help me regain my self-respect and identity. I don’t know who the hell I’m married to. My parents never told me about how to deal with a philanderer. Oh, excuse me, a philanderer who’s a professional athlete. But I’m one tough woman, in case you haven’t noticed. I won’t crack. And I can’t afford to be naive again. I have a tough spine, Mason. You didn’t fool around on a doormat, so you deal with me. Deal with one hundred percent of my full strength feelings of being fooled around on by my husband of nearly twenty years. Fucking deal with it.”
He did not blink. “I’m committed to you, Cedes.”
She wagged her finger in his face. “Oh, you are, huh? As of today? As of last week? When was the last time you fucked another woman?”
Mason looked away. “It’s been a while.”
“How long is a while?”
“Three weeks.”
“Three weeks. So that makes it just before we went away for our anniversary and you had someone sing to me?”
“Around that time.”
“So that red hair in your car was from when? Since you only fool around with her on the road. Why was her hair in your car, in our car?”
“I drove her to the airport when she was in Los Angeles last month.”
“Why was she here?”
“She had a layover for a few hours.”
“And you fucked her in between flights?”
“No. We just had lunch.”
“When? Was that one of the days you ran out when Rashaad and Star and I needed you to be available. You spent three of your rare, unavailable hours having lunch with her?”
“It was my chance to break it off with her.”
“Break it off over a meal?”
“Yes. Over a meal.”
She gave him a pissy growl. “You jerk. You should have called her and hung up the damn phone in her face after you told her ass to get lost.”
“I wanted to do it in a way that I thought would be best, considering the Titieist connection.”
“Oh, that was a sticky kind of thing, fucking someone who’s in your business circles. You didn’t want to piss her off because she might what? Tell her boss and they’d drop you?”
“I wanted to do it face-to-face.”
“You went from pussy to face, and dick to face, to face-to-face, huh?”
Mason shook his head and crossed his arms.
She stepped back and nodded furiously. “Mason, you were into this woman enough to share meals?”
“We’d never eaten together before. It was only sex. A quickie here and there. No hugging, no spending the night. We did not fall for each other. Not in the least.”
She mocked him with a bitchy edge. “Not in the least. Oh, well thank God for that. At least I don’t have to worry about her being a hormonal stalker who bonded to your dick and refuses to give up her married lover.”
“It was very infrequent and very casual.”
“There is nothing causal about extramarital sex, Mason Wilson. What part did I play in you being such a ladies man? Is it that I’m too heavy for you lately? You know, like those ladies said in the park, I need to keep myself in shape in order to keep a man like you. Was it her slim and trim, flat-ass, pale-skinned, thin-lipped self that turned you on more than my fat butt? Gain ten pounds and your man starts feeling up on new panties?”
“It wasn’t any of that. It wasn’t about you not being good enough. You know how I feel about your body. I love your body.”
“Oh, I guess it was because you’ve just got it going on so tough that they just throw themselves at you, huh? Do you really think your prowess on the course entitles you to bend the rules off the course?”
“No.”
“Oh, yes. Obviously you do. You know, when a man cheats, it’s the ultimate sign of disrespect. I feel so damn disrespected. And what if this were to have hit the media, it would have been all over America. What if someone saw you two during your cozy little lunch appointment last month? Hell, I’m going to write a book called, Rich, Famous, Beautiful and Cheated on. It’s a real fucked up ride.”
He lowered his hands down to his side. “Baby, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t get me started on how sorry you are. And I know you didn’t get this type of behavior from your dad.”
Mason’s heartbeat quickened. His brain wanted to just walk away from the heated emotions of the conversation, but his heart told him to continue talking it out. After all, he thought to himself, Dammit. I brought us to this mess. I have to get us through it. “Look, I messed up. I want to do whatever it takes to repair the damage, Cedes. I’d give all of this up, the house, the money, the career, the fame, just to keep my family.”
“All you’ve really had to give up so far is your hoe. Your white hoe. Anyway, why the fuck a white woman, Mason? Why make it even more insulting by going for what’s considered the prize once a black man ‘makes it.’ How embarrassing and insulting. You picked a horny white woman trying to get some big black dick up in her.”
“The fact that she was white had nothing to do with it. I didn’t end up with her because of her race.”
“Don’t give me that bunch of crap about how women are women. Like you didn’t even notice that she was white.”
“I was down and she was just… there.”
“I could kick her bitch ass.”
“That wouldn’t help.”
“Don’t you dare tell me what would help. A nice foot up her ass would sure give me a ru
sh right about now. So who’s going to be there next time you’re down about a tournament and you get a hard-on?”
He counted to ten under his breath. “No one.”
“Yeah right. How do I believe a word you say anymore?”
“I get what you’re saying. I’m not saying that I understand how bad it hurts. But I get it. I slept with her—”
Mercedes interrupted him with contempt. “Say her name.”
“Natalie. I slept with Natalie one night after a bad day on the course. She came up to my room and we talked about the game that day. And then it happened.”
“What happened?”
“She hugged me and then she kissed me good-bye. We walked toward the bed and the next thing I knew, we we’re… together.”
“You were together because you had a bad game?”
“Yes.”
“A bad game so you turn to another woman?”
Mason looked disgusted with himself.
“And then?”
“And then, she left.”
“There’s so much in between the she kissed me and then we were together, that I could puke. But you know what? I don’t even want to know the gory details. Knowing me, it’ll only serve to replay in my head every waking moment of my life.”
“I want you to know this. We got together again a few more times.” He thought about the times they had phone sex but didn’t dare reveal that to his scorned woman. “It was wrong and I know it. It was…”
“What, exciting?”
“Yes, it was exciting and distracting and, and… cheap. It never made me feel better. It always made me feel worse. But it’s like she knew which golf matches were bad for me, and she appeared.”
“So it’s all her fault, huh? She seduced you?”
“No. It’s all mine.”
She rolled her eyes. “If you wanted excitement and a distraction, you could have rented a fucking Matrix movie, you wimp. Or maybe you could have just fallen off the wagon and had a drink. Even that I could handle.”
Mason sucked his lips and then turned to look away.
“You committed to a marriage and you just stopped working at it. You vowed to take me for the rest of your life and so that means all other women should have been off-limits. You should have been on lockdown from any other sex than with me. Look at me when I’m talking to you. You at least owe me that much,” she said cuttingly.
Mason zeroed in on her direct stare.
“I feel like I went through life with blinders on. I mean, I knew there were groupies, but I never thought you would let one come between what we had. Oh, but there’s that old devilish word, temptation. You let temptation get the best of you, in spite of the fact that I sang your praises everywhere I’d go. Not my man, no, not Mason. I never wanted to have a short leash on you and look what happened. So next time you’re on the road, it will be another open invitation for you to stray again, won’t it? There’s no way I can stay.”
“No it won’t,” he begged.
“Yes it will. Your lifestyle is an invitation to stray, Mason. You can get easy sex with pretty women who shut up just to be with you. And then you have this narcissistic attitude like you just happened to put yourself in a bad situation and you’re sorry. See women like her let you get in, it’s clean and there are no attachments. She just wants bragging rights. And don’t think she hasn’t told all of her friends every detail about how you are in bed. Now please tell me you didn’t have oral sex with her, Mason.”
He responded immediately. “I didn’t.”
“Did she?”
Silence.
“You’re breathing hard, Mason.” Mercedes watched his chest rise and fall. “You know, it’s a husband’s responsibility to be true to his wife, not my responsibility to keep you in line. I don’t want a man I have to track down and spy on like Colette did with Torino. I can’t be on the road with you and baby-sit your ass. And did you ever think about what would happen if she sued you or got pregnant? How dumb can you be? Dammit, you put all of us at risk, not to mention bringing all of her sex partners home to me. What was so wrong with our sex life? Please tell me because I missed that, what with all of the strip club hoppin’, wild ass slapping and sitting on your face and stuff.”
“Not a thing.”
She studied him in silence, staring him down.
His stress lines grew. His guilt owned him. The uncomfortableness of him living in his own skin was evident.
The air was thick. But she spoke again. This time she lowered her voice. “This relationship dishonors me. You’re no role model, Mason. You are foul. Get out of my face.”
Mason did not. He stood in place while she simmered. Sweat covered her nose. She bumped his shoulder with hers, took heavy steps, and banged open the bedroom door as she stormed out.
Chapter 19
During the next week, Mason and Mercedes said few words to one another. If anyone spoke or tried to make conversation, it was Mason. When they were alone, he never got up the nerve to bring up his own infidelity again. He seemed to be dancing around it. But always in the back of his mind he was wondering what Mercedes planned as far as wanting to hang in for the long haul, or not. And yet he also had to decide whether or not to bring up the fact that Cicely was really his sister. He felt uncomfortable, almost praying for a tour date so that he could escape the thick, foul air between them.
They both arrived back at Dr. Little’s office to discuss Star, more for her good than theirs. They both drove separate cars.
Mason asked, “Why would a teenage girl wreck her dad’s car?”
Mercedes replied for the doctor. “Oh, please. It was an accident. She’d gone to pick up Asia because she couldn’t get a ride. She’s a normal teenager.”
The doctor interjected. “I don’t mean to sound overdramatic, but absent dads scar their daughters for life. I’m not saying you did scar her, but she sees you as absent. At least that’s what she says she’s feeling. She doesn’t know how to heal those scars so she thinks that getting attention by any means necessary will draw you to her. That incident was not about the car. It is much deeper than that.”
Mason replied, “I thought so. And for the record, I am far from absent.”
The doctor explained. “You are the first man in her life and she can forever entertain powerful feelings of being unworthy and incapable of receiving a man’s love if your busy schedule includes everything but her.”
“It is far from intentional.”
“Little girls cannot determine intentional from non-intentional. Just like when a parent dies, that’s non-intentional but the bottom line is, they’re not there physically.”
Mason still tried to justify his involvement. “Emotionally, we connect well. I’m around a couple days per week.”
“And what happens on those days?”
“I’m at home and I try to make sure we all have dinner together.”
“But how often does that actually happen?”
Mason replied, “Maybe twice per month.”
“And aside from that, what else do you do to make her feel important?”
Mason sat forward, his elbow to his knee and his fist to his chin. “Doctor, back in the day, parents didn’t have to make a point of making kids feel special. There wasn’t all of this psycho-analyzing. I pay for her private school education, piano lessons, clothes, and shelter, meet her every financial need, show love to her mom, and basically provide a good home. How many men can say that?”
“Not many,” Dr. Little replied.
Mercedes admitted. “She’s far from fatherless.”
The doctor tried to clarify. “Yes, but is she a priority? Do you take time to help her develop confidence in herself by complimenting her and bonding with her? Maybe taking her to get her nails done, to a movie, to the library, to breakfast.”
“Not recently. Do people really go to the library anymore?” Mason asked, looking at Mercedes, who gave him no reply.
“Mason, when was the last time t
he two of you spent an hour together without your son and wife?”
Mason thought back. “When we… that was… well, I took her to school the other day. The day she started her period but at that time she asked for her mom.”
“So maybe that was an important moment but still it was a time when she needed her mother. It doesn’t mean you didn’t try.”
“Right. And I also drove my car home from San Diego and she rode with me. We followed her mom back in her car after they met me down there for a tournament but she wanted to ride back with me.”
“What did you talk about?”
“I think, oh my God, I was on my cell most of the time handling business and then I called Mercedes and we talked about my schedule while we drove.”
“Mason, you can still help Star develop a healthy sense of femininity and help her shape her view of the external world. You’re shaping her view of males in future relationships where she could have fear of abandonment and/or issues of sexual promiscuity. Some girls overcompensate by being top of their class, breaking all of the glass ceilings—all as a clever shield so that no one sees the despair. And then there’s an overcompensation of food, drugs, alcohol, sex, and work. I’m not saying this will happen but it can.”
Mercedes looked like she’d been putting the doctor’s words to good use. “She is a bit of an overachiever.”
“Other aspects are rage and depression. The rage can be a sign of a fierce desire to succeed. Depression and rage turned inward.”
Mason looked overwhelmed, “What are some signs that you’ve noticed?”
“Star, in my opinion, is angry. But mainly when it comes to talking about you. She is very bright and believes that she has you all figured. And you know what? She does. And that means she’s caught on long enough for you to be predictable. You need to be unpredictable. Surprising her with altered behavior can help jerk the energy in the right direction.”
Mason admitted, “It sounds like I really need to work on it.”
Hot Boyz Page 26