by RM Johnson
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Just what was real and what was pretend?”
“Okay, I wasn’t planning on marrying you, because like I said, I was infatuated with Gary. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love you.”
“Right,” I blew, turning my face away from her. “You wanted to marry him, but you loved me. That makes a lot of sense. Do you think I’m going to believe that?”
“Jayson, think about some of the times we had. That time on the lakefront when we had that old man take our picture. We walked for more than an hour, just holding hands, not saying a word. You didn’t feel my love for you then?”
I remembered that time. It was a beautiful night, and she was right, we didn’t say a word to each other, but it seemed fine. I was so close to her that night that communicating through words would’ve felt below us. It was as though we were on a higher plane, speaking telepathically. I did know she loved me that night, or at least thought she did.
“And how about those warm breezy nights when we’d make love outside on my patio, and we’d get so loud that all the dogs in the neighborhood started barking and howling. Remember those times?” Faith said, smiling.
I thought about those times, and how much fun they were. And yes, I remembered feeling as though she loved me then. I felt a smile spreading across my face.
“So you do remember that, don’t you?” Faith said, seeing that smile on my face.
But the smile was gone when I recalled the image of her and Gary in that hotel room.
“Bullshit, Faith,” I said, getting up from the couch. “You didn’t love me, because if you did, you would’ve never used me like that.”
Faith got up from the sofa, and stood in front of me, looking up into my eyes. “I told you, Jayson. I was a fool. I was so infatuated with Gary that I couldn’t see what I had right in front of my face. I schemed, lied, played games with you, but that didn’t mean I didn’t love you, Jayson. Won’t you believe that?”
I wanted to so much, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I shook my head, too angry to say anything.
“What can I do to make you believe?” Faith said, reaching up, taking my face between her warm palms. I wanted to smack them away. I wanted to yell at her, telling her she had no right to touch me that way anymore, and never to do it again, but I couldn’t. Her touch felt so familiar, reminded me of how things were before all of this happened.
“What can I do?” she asked again, moving slightly closer to me, her belly gently grazing mine.
“Nothing,” I said, but my voice was faint, as though I had no power to speak.
“What can I do, Jayson?” she said again, and I felt her pulling my face toward hers, saw her bringing her lips closer to mine. Again, I wanted to stop her, wanted to stop myself, but there was something stronger in me wanting the kiss I knew she was trying to give me. It had been so long since I’d kissed her, and regardless of all the things she had done to me, I still couldn’t say no to her.
Our mouths touched, and I felt my body start to react. I wouldn’t let it go any farther, I told myself. This would be a simple kiss, nothing more than the surface of our lips touching. But then I felt her wet tongue pressing against my tight lips, trying to pry them open. I resisted, warning myself that if this kiss went farther, we could possibly wind up in bed, and from there, I could potentially be in the same position I was just freed from. In love with a woman who didn’t love me, but was just using me to get something else she wanted.
But as I continued to try and fight, letting my lips part just the slightest bit, allowing her tongue into my mouth, feeling my knees go just a little weaker, I wondered why I was even trying to fool myself. I shouldn’t have been wary of falling back in love with Faith, because I’d never stopped loving her. I loved her the entire time we were together, loved her when I saw her making love to Gary, loved her fifteen minutes ago, and loved her this very minute.
I didn’t know exactly what was happening and exactly why it was. I didn’t know if she still had feelings for Gary, and was looking at having sex with me as a way of getting revenge for his being with that woman. I didn’t know if she saw losing Gary as something that she had to account for, realizing that if she couldn’t marry him, marrying me would be better than not getting married at all. Or was she really telling the truth, that she really did love me then, and the reason why she was now steadily walking me back toward her bedroom as she continued to kiss me was because she still loved me now? I wanted to think that was the case.
So as we lay across the bed, and she kissed me gently on the ear and neck, undoing the buttons of my shirt, I didn’t tell myself to fight her. I told myself to enjoy this, because whatever came of it, there was no place I would’ve rather been.
What came of it was our having sex three times that day, and never leaving the bed for the rest of the day, outside of going to bathroom, looking for the remote to the TV, and grabbing a pint of Ben and Jerry’s from the freezer and two spoons.
The following day she called in sick to work, told them she wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week. I stayed there. Not because she asked me to, but because she didn’t ask me to leave. For four days, the majority of our time was spent in bed, making love or just talking. There were times when she’d just all of a sudden start crying. It had something to do with Gary, I knew, even though she denied it every time. She said it had more to do with the child she aborted than with him, and that that child was the reason she had been so infatuated with marrying him.
Again, I don’t know if my vision was clouded because I was so in love with her, but what she was saying was starting to make sense to me.
“I saw him once or twice a week, Jayson,” she said one night before we went to sleep. “All the other times I was with you. How could I have cared for him and not you? How could I have cared for him more than you?”
It surprised me how willing she was to talk about their relationship. But what really surprised me was how willing I was to listen. It could’ve been because I really believed it was over. It had been four days since he’d left here, I remembered counting, and in a few more, he would be gone. He would be gone, and Faith wouldn’t know where he was, and I liked to think that she wouldn’t even care if she could find out.
Neither one of us mentioned it, I guess for fear of jinxing what was now happening between us. It felt like a reunion, a homecoming of sorts. It was like one of us went away on a vacation for a while, then returned, and everything just fell back into place. All the old jokes we used to share were still there, the things we used to do to please each other in bed hadn’t changed, and our bodies still contoured perfectly to the other’s as we fell off to sleep.
On the fifth day, we decided to go to a movie. We both admitted that we had had enough of the house, and the bed, at least for a few hours. The movie was great. Something with Mel Gibson in it. Plenty of violence for me, a little bit of the sentimental stuff for her.
When it was over, we walked out the movie theater hand in hand.
“Oh, déjà vu,” Faith said.
“What?”
“You know what.” Faith smiled. “Look up. Where are we at?”
I looked up at the sign she pointed to. “Cineplex Odeon,” I said, reading the sign. “Yeah, I saw that when we came in. I like it. It’s a nice sign,” I said, joking.
Faith looked sad, her bottom lip poking out. “You don’t remember? This is—”
“I know, you big baby,” I said, wrapping my arm around her neck. “This was where we met.”
She immediately brightened up, then said, “Oh, oh. I have an idea.” She walked away from me till she got to the door of her Camry, which was about twenty feet from where I was standing, stuck her hand in her purse, then without turning around, she said, “Okay, go.”
“What?” I said, having to raise my voice a little so she could hear me. “Go what?”
“You know what,” she practically yelled, still not looking directly at me, but at me through
the reflection in the driver’s side window of her car. “The day we met. Reenactment. For laughs.”
“Oh no, no, no, no,” I said, waving my hands, walking briskly toward her. “For laughs. That wasn’t funny. I was a bumbling idiot that day. I’m not doing that again. It was hard enough the first time.”
“C’mon, Jayson. It’ll be fun. For old times sake.”
“Heckie naw,” I said, shaking my head.
“Okay, then. I’ll do it. I’ll be you, and …” Faith said, taking off her purse and throwing it on my shoulder, pushing me toward the car, “… you be me.”
She ran back twenty feet away from me. “You ready?” she called.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said.
“You gotta face the car.”
I obediently turned around to face the car, clutching my—I mean, her—purse. I saw her approaching through the reflection in the car’s window, and she was pimping, bobbing back and forth, swinging one arm around behind her back with each step she took.
“I don’t walk like that,” I said, looking at her.
“Shhhh. Turn back around and stay in character,” she said, approaching.
Again, I did as I was told and waited.
“Uh, uh, excuse me, miss. Excuse me,” Faith said.
“What do you want!” I snapped, in the highest-pitched voiced I could reach, pretending to be her.
“Uh, uh, uh. I was wondering did you like the movie? I was noticing how beautiful you are, and I was wondering what you liked about the movie and would you fill out a questionnaire, you beautiful woman you,” Faith said, barely able to stop herself from bursting out laughing.
“Leave me alone, you … you wretched human filth,” I said, clutching the purse even tighter. “You got rocks in your head? Do I have a sign taped to my back saying, All nice and handsome gentlemen please ask me about the movie? Now get away. Scoot, scat!” I said, shooing her off with my hand.
Faith raised her hands over her face, like she was Frankenstein being warded off by fire. “I’m sorry, beautiful woman. But when I saw you, I couldn’t help but ask you about the movie, because I knew you’d have all the answers to my problems, and thought maybe I could get to know a beautiful woman like you, and then I would love you, and care for you, and we could have wonderful days together, and we could get married, and have lots of kids, and you would make my life complete.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” I said, breaking character. “I didn’t say all that about the kids, and marriage, and wonderful days, and stuff.”
“C’mon, Jayson. You were pouring your heart out to me, remember?” she said, straightening up, and losing the stupid look on her face, which was supposed to have been my look, I guess. “That may not have been exactly what you said, but that’s what it sounded like then.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Well, maybe you’re right. I guess maybe that’s what I meant then.”
Faith looked at me sadly, as if wishing we could’ve really gone back to that day and started over.
“I messed all that up, didn’t I?”
I couldn’t answer her. Exactly what did she mean by “messed all that up”? She’d done some serious damage to it. But if she meant destroyed what we had beyond repair, I just didn’t know.
“You hurt me, Faith,” was what I said. “And I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forget that.” I wanted to ask her, would she ever want me to? But that would be implying that I wanted us to get back together, and I wouldn’t do that. She would have to approach me with that, and even then, I didn’t know if I’d give it another shot.
Faith appeared even sadder, as if I had just punished her for ruining our relationship. I gave her a hug, and she hugged me back. We stood out there in the parking lot where we’d first met, almost a year ago, hugging for almost twenty minutes.
We didn’t say a word to each other the entire ride home, didn’t speak as we got ready for bed, and didn’t utter a peep as we slipped under the blankets. There was total silence, but not the type we’d enjoyed on the lake that night. This was awkward, the type that had us questioning whether everything we had done up to this point, this new reunion, was a mistake or not.
“I’m going to be leaving tomorrow. I’ve been neglecting work. Gotta get back,” I said, not looking at her but at the ceiling, as I pulled the blankets up to my chest. There was a feeling of finality to the words I had spoken, even though I hadn’t meant them to sound that way.
We lay there, again in silence for a minute, then I turned to click off the light by the bed, when Faith said, “I don’t want you to leave.”
“Well, I gotta work, and I can always—”
“I don’t mean my house, I mean me,” Faith said, sitting up, turning to look at me. “I don’t want you to leave my life.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. After I got over my initial shock, I had to determine whether or not she meant it. Was she being sincere?
“What are you talking about?” I said, not really knowing.
“Jayson, I realize now, I made the biggest mistake a woman can ever make. You are such a wonderful man, and all you did was love me and want to make me your wife. I ruined that, but I know better now. What I had for Gary wasn’t love, but regret for killing my child, and a hell of a determination to try to undo that. But what I have for you is love. It’s truly love, Jayson.”
“And how am I supposed to know that’s true? You said that before, and I know you said you meant it then, but you still hurt me. How do I know that won’t happen again?”
“You don’t,” she said, too damn quickly I thought. But she was right. “I can’t guarantee anything, but I can say that I honestly do love you, and I think you still love me too. Don’t you, Jayson?”
I didn’t want to answer. I was actually afraid, feeling that keeping that fact from her somehow allowed me to maintain the ability to walk away if I needed to. But if I told her how I felt, I was scared that ability would leave me.
“Do you still love me, Jayson?” Faith asked again, and again, I said nothing, even looked away from her, as if her beautiful black eyes could pull the truth from me without my consent.
“I understand you not wanting to say,” Faith said, snuggling closer to me, kissing me on the shoulder. I relaxed some, thinking that she was going to let the entire conversation go, when she said, “You know it’s just six days away from it being exactly a year since we met.”
I nodded slightly, almost unnoticeably, then said, “Yeah,” not wanting her to think that I truly hadn’t known.
“I’m gonna tell you something, Jayson. Then I’m going to ask you a question that I don’t want you to respond to until tomorrow when you wake up. I don’t want to talk about it anymore tonight. I just want you to think about how you feel and give me your answer in the morning. Okay?”
Immediately, I started to feel nervous, feeling a strange need to get up out of that bed and get out of there. I swallowed hard and said a shaky, “Okay.”
“I love you, and all that nonsense that happened is behind us. Jayson, I promise that nothing like that will ever come between us again.” Faith rolled more on her side, so she could stare directly into my eyes, and I hesitantly did the same. She gazed at me intently, then said, “You know that ring you gave me before?”
I tried to answer yes, but there was something in my throat. I guess it was fear. I cleared it, then tried again. “Yes.”
“Then six days from now, on the one-year anniversary of our meeting, I want us to get married. What do you think?”
I lay there beside her, my entire body now covered in cold sweat. I didn’t know how to react, had no idea what to say, and was so thankful that she didn’t even want an answer at that moment, because I didn’t think I was capable of speech beyond the “ga-gas,” and “goo-goos” of a six-month-old.
“I want us to spend the rest of our lives together,” she said, a slight smile appearing on her face. She leaned in close to me, kissed me quickly on the lips, then said, “Let me kno
w tomorrow, if you want that too, okay?” She kissed me again and flipped over, leaving me there, my eyes looking like Grade A extra-large eggs, and my breath coming so fast that I thought I was going to lose consciousness right there in her bed. I slowly rolled over, clicked off the light, and turned back, pushing myself very close to her, holding her tight, fearful that if I didn’t, I might lose a grip on all that was happening around me.
When I woke up the next morning, I had barely slept a wink, but I wasn’t tired. I think I actually felt energized. From the moment I’d turned out the light, my mind had gone wild, thinking of all sorts of possibilities. Thinking, what if she cheated again? Thinking, what if she really didn’t love me? Thinking, what if we were both just making a huge mistake? I raised my head and looked at her alarm clock and saw that I had been doing that thinking for six hours. All that time and I couldn’t seem to come to any conclusion about what I would do regarding her and our possible life together. Then, because there seemed absolutely nothing else to do, I relaxed, and I realized it was actually all the thinking I was doing that was stopping me from understanding how I really felt about all this. So I settled down and asked myself what my heart thought. The answer came right away, and I fell right to sleep.
That was five days ago, and since then, all the arrangements have been made, and we’ve been excited as if this was our first go-round. I still can’t believe I’m saying this, but I can’t wait until tomorrow, when I make her my wife.
44
It was early evening when Asha finally made it back home. She took her time on the road, because she knew the ride was good for her. It gave her a chance to truly accept who she was, and not worry about what everyone else thought. She smiled as she pulled her overnight bag out of the backseat of the cab, there in front of her place.
She walked up the front steps, feeling glad to be home, or at least what was going to be her home for another week or so. She hadn’t done too much looking, but she wasn’t worried about that, because she knew she’d find something in that time, and if she didn’t, then Jayson would just have to wait until she did. She was actually doing him a favor by complying with his wishes. She knew, and she was sure he knew as well, that legally, he couldn’t just kick her out whenever he wanted to, especially without at least thirty days’ notice.