I Will Remember You

by L. Jaye Morgan

“You don’t have to.”

  “It’s okay. I want to.”

  He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “Well look, I ain’t gon’ say no to some food. I was trying to get some coffee but I couldn’t figure out your machine.”

  She stared at the coffee maker and cursed herself for not stashing it in a cabinet somewhere. “I’ll put some on but you’re gonna have to take it all with you when you go. I’m not supposed to have any yet and the smell...it’s too much temptation.”

  Tremaine chuckled. “Yeah, I definitely don’t wanna tempt you.”

  Gianna blushed, her mind somewhere it shouldn’t have been.

  “I’mma jump in the shower real quick,” he said as he exited the kitchen.

  She took the opportunity to run to her bathroom. She’d already washed her face and brushed her teeth but her face was still bare. She grabbed her makeup bag and got to work.

  By the time Tremaine came back downstairs, Gianna had put on her face and a pot of coffee, scrambled some eggs, nuked some bacon, and heated up some muffins. He wore grey slacks and a white wifebeater, his dress shirt in his left hand and a messenger bag in his right. Gianna tried not to stare. “It’s ready,” she said as she handed him his plate.

  “Thanks. This looks really good.”

  She frowned. “It’s just a little something.”

  He took his first bite. “It’s good, though.”

  She said nothing and set about straightening up the kitchen. She was too nervous to eat, although she couldn’t pinpoint the source of the nerves. Was she scared to be alone again once Tremaine left for the day? Was she still worried about the person behind the letters? She tried to clear her mind and think positively. She had a session the next day. She only needed to hold it together for 24 hours. She could do it.

  “You okay?” Tremaine asked, interrupting her thoughts. A half-eaten piece of bacon dangled in his right hand.

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “Aren’t you gonna eat something? You need to. I feel like you’re wasting away,” he said, his eyes roaming her body. She suddenly felt self-conscious because she wasn’t wearing anything under her robe. Could he tell?

  She had thrown the silk robe on quickly when she heard Kaya turn off the house alarm, wanting to hug and kiss her goodbye before she left. Now, alone in the kitchen with her deceased husband’s best friend, she was wondering if, subconsciously, she did it on purpose. It had been two long months and she was lonely.

  “I’ll eat eventually. I don’t have an appetite right now.” She smiled at his empty plate. “You ate enough for both of us.”

  He chuckled and looked at his plate, seeming embarrassed. “I guess I did. I told you it was good.”

  He rose and walked toward the sink. As he rinsed his plate, she felt herself flush with heat because he was less than two feet away from her. She looked at the floor, determined to get out of this without embarrassing herself.

  He turned off the water and moved to his right until he was standing directly in front of her. He reached behind her to get a paper towel. “Excuse me,” he said, and she almost laughed at the absurdity of the moment. He could have easily grabbed a paper towel by walking around her, or simply by asking her to move. He’d done it on purpose, she was sure of it.

  A few seconds passed before she realized he wasn’t moving. He stood in front of her, slowly drying his hands, so tall she had to look up to see his face. She wanted to ask him what he was doing, why he was doing it, and how it would look, and if he felt like he was betraying his best friend, or if he felt grimy for doing it, because he was, and by extension, so was she for enjoying it, but the only thought she could muster at that exact moment was this: he smells so good.

  Tremaine inched a little closer until his chest was almost touching her nipples, which were hard and sensitive and undoubtedly visible by now. They throbbed with anticipation or, depending on how you look at it, perhaps in warning. Stop! Danger ahead! Abort!

  “What are you doing?” she said, her voice thin and reedy.

  He paused, a sigh escaping his lips. “I don’t know.” It was so honest, so genuine, and so filled with emotion that Gianna teared up. This was crazy. She was scared to move and she didn’t know what to do or how to get out of this. One thing was clear: he felt it, too.

  He put his hand on the small of her back and kissed her forehead. She closed her eyes before tilting her head up, an open invitation, and he obliged, pressing his lips softly onto hers. It was the sweetest kiss she’d had since she could remember. It set her body ablaze.

  He pulled away and she looked up and into his eyes. He ducked his head, low enough that their faces were parallel, and smiled, his dimples lighting up his face. She was falling. She was weak.

  “Do you want me to stop?” he asked her, still inches from her face. This was it. He was giving her a choice and she had to decide. Would it be so bad to give in? She was sad, and lonely, and afraid, and Tremaine was big and strong and he cared about her. It wasn’t like she was picking up some stranger at a club. Her husband was gone, and a lifetime of celibacy would not bring him back. Besides, she was already a cheater.

  Before she could answer, Tremaine backed away from her. She opened her mouth to speak but he cut her off. “I’m gonna get on the road. I don’t wanna be late.”

  “Tremaine—”

  “It’s okay, G. I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.” He grabbed his things and walked by, refusing to even look at her. “I’ll be back tonight. For Kaya.”

  She let him leave because she hadn’t worked out the words to say to him. He hadn’t made her uncomfortable at all. It was quite the opposite, actually. And now she wanted more.

  She would have him. Maybe not today, but soon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  TREMAINE BARELY SPOKE to Gianna when he got home from work last night. Never one to push, she returned the favor and it made for a miserable evening. It was messy and ratchet and completely wrong but she wanted it. She wanted it more than she had wanted anything in as long as she could remember.

  Emmy would call it lust, and Beverly would agree. The former would say “get your head in the game. Lust makes you stupid.” The latter would say “lust ain’t nothin’ but the devil. Ask God to deliver you.” She knew them well. But the more important question, the real heart of it was this: What would Gianna do?

  “I thought some more about what you said last time,” Gianna said, picking at the lint on her chair.

  Dr. Ferris raised her eyebrows. “Oh? Which part?”

  “About my relationships being transactional.”

  “And what did you come up with?”

  “I think you might be right about that. But that’s not what’s bothering me.”

  “Go on.”

  Gianna hesitated. “It sounds weird to say but...I’m not sure I know what if means to love somebody.”

  Dr. Ferris nodded. “How do you define love?”

  “That’s the thing...I don’t know.”

  “Okay. Who do you love?”

  Gianna was embarrassed. “The only people I’m 100% sure I love are my grandmother and my daughter.”

  “And what does that feel like? Or look like?”

  Gianna closed her eyes so she could see their faces. “I feel like I want nothing else in the world more than for those two to be happy. I would make sacrifices in my own life to make that happen. I want to please them and I care about their opinions of me.” She opened her eyes. “Is that love?”

  “It can be. What about other people in your life? Your mother, your father, your late husband?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t feel the same way about them.” She looked down at her hands and felt terrible.

  “If you don’t love them, what is it you feel for them?”

  “I feel...I guess familiarity. They’re my family I’m comfortable with them. I’m okay with them being around, but I don’t need them in my life.”

  “Even Justin?”<
br />
  Gianna’s eyes filled with tears. “I miss him, I think. I’m sad that he’s gone, but mostly it’s because my daughter is so hurt by it. God, I sound like a horrible person. Right?”

  Dr. Ferris cleared her throat and sighed. “No, you sound confused. And that’s okay. Death often makes saints out of people when the reality of who they were is much more complicated. It’s perfectly normal to feel conflicted at a time like this.”

  Gianna nodded and wiped her eyes. Dr. Ferris picked up the tissue box from her side table and handed it across to Gianna.

  “Thanks.”

  “Mm-hm. Why do you think you have such confusing feelings about love?”

  “I don’t know that I’m confused about love itself. Like I know for a fact that love is painful.”

  Dr. Ferris frowned. “In what way?”

  “The people you love...the people who love you...they always hurt you in the end. When you love somebody, you invest so much into your relationship with them and then one day, without fail, they hurt you and you realize you basically made a bad investment.” She sat up a little straighter and lifted her chin. “So now I’m risk-averse, and I always hedge my bets.”

  “Well let’s disabuse you of the notion that love is supposed to hurt. It—”

  “Wait, I didn’t say it was supposed to. I said it does. Because people always let you down. The Bible says love is patient, love is kind, et cetera. I believe that. People, on the other hand...people ain’t shit.”

  “What I’m hearing from you is that the only people who haven’t hurt you are your grandmother and your daughter, and therefore those are the only two people in whom you invest.”

  “I think I love my mother, too. I think. But there’s a...a block or something. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive her.”

  “Forgive her for what?”

  Shit. “I’m not ready to talk about that just yet.”

  SHE DIDN’T TALK ABOUT it but she sure did think about it on the drive home. Ms. Beverly Stokes née Terry had done everything she was supposed to do. She was raised in the church and she went to college until she met a nice young man named Samuel Stokes. She married at 20. He worked as an electrical engineer at GE and was a deacon at their church. Beverly kept house. It was an aspirational life for a young black woman at the time. She’d even given him her virginity. Gianna was conceived five years later and everything was wonderful.

  They lived happily ever after until one day Sam up and decided he’d had enough of Beverly and their happy home. He ran off with a church hoe named Latoya and left Beverly and nine-year-old Gianna on their own.

  Emmy said “I told you so,” of course, but Beverly didn’t wanna hear it. Emmy said Christian men talk a good game about wanting a pure, virginal, Proverbs 31 woman but in reality, they want Jezebel. That’s who gets their blood going.

  Gianna brushed a tear from her cheek and inched forward with the other trapped drivers on the road. Things might have still gone well for her if Beverly had picked herself up and kept on moving. But she didn’t have the strength. She buckled and spiraled out of control. Gianna never saw it with her own eyes, but Emmy told her Beverly had a nervous breakdown.

  Whatever happened, Gianna didn’t see her mother for three years. Three whole years. Emmy scooped Gianna right up and deposited her safely in her little brick house on Woodlawn Drive. And Gianna thrived there for three years until Beverly breezed through one day and collected her daughter, her new boyfriend Robert in tow. And to be fair, she seemed happy and she looked fabulous doing it. Gianna was impressed and willing to forgive, and since Emmy was powerless to stop it, she simply waited, close by, her eyes wide open.

  She didn’t have to wait long.

  One lovely autumn afternoon, Gianna came home to find newly unemployed Robert sitting on the living room couch watching a dirty movie. She remembered being so shocked at the sight that she wasn’t able to move or speak. She just stared. Robert had heard the door open. He knew she was there.

  A normal adult would have immediately turned off the television and apologized profusely. Or maybe they would have been so embarrassed that they, too, were speechless. But they still would have turned it off.

  Robert wasn’t normal. He turned around, saw Gianna, and grinned. He seemed to enjoy her shock. And then he tilted his head ever so slightly toward the television as if to say “come on in and join me.” It was the type of gesture that’s easily obfuscated when relayed to a third party. The kind of micro action that the viewer second guesses and replays over and over and over again until they’ve convinced even themselves that they were wrong. And Gianna had done that for twenty years because her being mistaken or lying about Robert was the only explanation for what came after.

  She ran to her room and locked the door, and as soon as her mother came home from work, she ran straight to her and told her what happened. Beverly questioned Robert immediately and the two talked for close to an hour while Gianna waited in her bedroom. She couldn’t hear what they were saying but Beverly was clearly upset. Gianna was still a bit shaken but the longer they talked, the better she felt. She’s probably cussing him out, she thought with a smile.

  By the time she heard her mother’s footsteps coming down the hall, it was dinnertime and she was hungry. Maybe they’d order pizza once Robert was gone. Money was tight but pizza was their comfort food. They could pick it up instead of having it delivered. That would be cheaper.

  Her door opened and Beverly entered. “Robert’s really sorry about what happened. You should have never had to see something like that.”

  Gianna nodded. “Okay...”

  Beverly sat next to her on the bed. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you and him to live under the same roof.” She put her hand on Gianna’s back. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  Gianna didn’t know what to say. She put her head on her mother’s shoulder and hoped she wouldn’t be too upset about having to make Robert leave.

  “The only solution I can think of is for you to go back to your grandmother’s house.”

  Gianna sat up and stared at her mother. “What? Why?”

  “I told you why. I can’t be here around the clock to watch the two of you.”

  “But—”

  “And you told me you loved Emmy’s house. It could be good. We can revisit this whole situation after me and Robert get married.”

  Gianna wanted to cry but there were no tears. Just anger. Red rage. She watched as Beverly pulled her little suitcases from under the bed and packed her things. She seethed for a few minutes and then she stood and walked over to her dresser. She didn’t even care about folding; she pulled her drawers out and emptied them all before tossing them to the floor. Beverly eventually moved out of the way and left the room, leaving Gianna to finish packing.

  By the time she pulled into her garage, Gianna was a blubbering mess. She was glad Tremaine wasn’t home yet because she didn’t have it in her to tell him what was wrong.

  She turned the car off and took a few deep breaths. All things considered, she had a better life with Emmy than she would have ever had with her mother. But that didn’t change the facts. Her mother chose Robert over her. And for what? He ended up running off a few months later anyway. Beverly had shown up at Emmy’s little brick house one night crying her eyes out. They made Gianna go to her room but she stood in the hallway listening.

  Gianna’s uncle Odell was there that night, and he had a heated exchange with Beverly. For some reason, Beverly blamed Emmy for Robert leaving and Odell seemed quite smug about that. “You better find a way to get over it, Bev. That nigga ain’t coming back,” he’d said, and Beverly sobbed and yelled until she finally left, slamming the door behind her. It was an odd night, but Gianna slept wonderfully.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  GIANNA GOT UP EARLY and still managed to miss Tremaine before he left for work. She wanted to clear the air after their incident in the kitchen the other day. For his part, Tremaine had been a perfec
t gentleman, not even giving himself or her a chance to be alone together for any significant period of time. It was weighing on her. He was weighing on her.

  Oh well. It was back-to-school for her, for half the day, at least. She was actually looking forward to seeing those bad ass kids of hers and having something to take her mind off of her many problems. She had even planned her outfit, like an eager kid coming back from summer break.

  They used to call it “fresh.” You had to come back to school fresh or you would get clowned. The boys got it worse than the girls, though, but the girls were typically more worried about coming back “fine.” The summer Gianna’s body filled out was the beginning of the end. You couldn’t tell her shit. She catwalked down that hallway with the horns from “Crazy in Love” on loop in her mind, daring anybody to tell her she wasn’t a dime.

  She put on her face and put her twists in a ponytail. She’d decided on her grey houndstooth dress with the peplum that hid her pudge so well. Unlike Ms. Jeffries, her work dresses were work-appropriate. She was curvy but she didn’t need attention from teenagers. She saved the tight stuff for the weekend.

  She slapped on her Uggs slippers and stuck her pumps in her tote. She had her painkillers, her new cell phone Tremaine had picked up for her a few days prior, and her bag of chocolate covered almonds.

  Usually, the last thing she did before she left the house was kiss Justin goodbye. She thought about it for a brief moment before giving the house a final once-over and setting the alarm. It was time to start a new routine.

  IF THE KIDS WEREN’T happy to see her they certainly hid it well. Dr. Grant walked her to class and as soon as she stepped through the door, the kids broke out in applause. It was sweet. Maybe they, too, had lost their memories. She would remind them soon enough.

  Thankfully there were no Sherrod sightings, yet, and she probably wouldn’t have to see him again until she came back full-time. His classroom was on the east wing and hers was nestled safely on the south wing. The only common area they shared was the teacher’s lounge, and her half-days didn’t include lunch.