Sorry Ain't Enough 2

by Tiana Grover

  Things were different now. Everything was different now. Sierra had found out the truth about Maria and had confronted me in a way that I would never forget.

  The day after Christmas, she’d showed up early in the morning. I had passed out on the couch, done from throwing back too many shots of Henny with Red. The drunker I got, the more I was able to block out the fact that we’d had one fucked up Christmas.

  “Prince! Get up!” she’d yelled, shoving me hard.

  I woke up and saw her beautiful face in front of me. Instantly, I felt better. I had been mad at her the day before, yeah, but I hadn’t slept without her in damn near a year. I missed her and didn’t want to spend another night without her.

  “Baby…” I’d said as I sat up slowly, reaching for her.

  She easily slid out of my reach. “Prince, I’m only gonna ask you this once. And I want you to tell me the truth. No bullshit. No lies.”

  Hung over as I was, even I knew that spelled out bad news. Whatever question Honey was about to ask me, she already had the answer to. For whatever reason, she just wanted confirmation from me. I decided whatever she asked me, I would tell her the truth. I was tired of all the back and forth with us and I just wanted my woman home with me where she belonged.

  “I promise on my mother I’ll tell you the truth baby. I’ll never lie to you.”

  She scoffed at that. “Oh yeah? You won’t? So tell me, Prince, who was that woman that came over here on my birthday? Is she a judge? Or is she a bitch you knocked up!”

  You ever have a sobering moment? That was mine. I was no longer hung over. I was as sober as a nun. For a brief moment, I wondered how she even found out about Maria before I had the chance to tell her. Then I pushed that to the back of my mind. The fact that she knew was bad enough. I could find out who told her later.

  I looked at her dead in her eyes then put my head down in shame.

  “Answer me!!!” Sierra yelled at the top of her lungs.

  I stood up and reached for her hand. “Baby I wanted to tell you… I just didn’t know how…”

  “It’s true. Oh my God…” she moaned. Then without warning, she fell to her knees and started bawling her eyes out. I felt like the lowest piece of shit on the planet.

  “Baby I’m sorry…” I started but she cut me off.

  “No! No! No! Fuck that sorry shit! I don’t want to hear it! You don’t get to be sorry for this one Prince!!!” she yelled through her tears.

  I kneeled next to her, feeling like my heart was breaking into a million pieces. I never felt so bad in my life. I just wanted to make it better. “Baby…” I started again, but again she cut me off.

  “What is it about me Prince?” she said in a voice no higher than a whisper. “Why do you keep fucking doing this to me? Why? What did I do? I did everything for you to love me and only me. What didn’t I do for you? How come I’m never enough for you?”

  Each word she spoke was like a dagger ripped through my heart and pierced my soul. The truth was, Sierra was as perfect as it gets. She was beautiful, smart, intelligent, independent. I would never find another woman like her that was perfect for me and I knew that. I also knew that I had fucked up plenty of times with my selfish actions. She had no reason to stay with me, but she had. This time I was scared I had pushed her too far.

  “It’s not you, baby,” I whispered as wiped her tears and replaced them with kisses. “It’s me. It could never be you. You’re perfect. I love you.”

  “You don’t love me…”

  “Shhh…” I put my finger over her lips. Then I picked her up and carried her to our room. I laid her on the bed and undressed her. I kissed and licked and sucked on every part of her body. I tasted her until she exploded in my mouth multiple times. When I slid inside of her, it felt like I was home. I propped her foot on my shoulder and sucked her toes while I gave her the death stroke. I pulled out of her, spread her wide open and used my tongue the same way I had been using my dick until she came again. I took my time with her to let her know she was the only woman that had my heart. Nobody else meant shit to me.

  We made love over and over until we passed out asleep. I slept well for the first time in months. Yeah, I was sad that she knew what was up, but at the same time I was happy too. It was a huge load off my shoulders now that I didn’t have to worry about telling her about Maria and the baby.

  When I woke up and rolled over, she was gone. At first I thought she had went to the bathroom until I looked on the nightstand and saw her engagement lying on a piece of paper. I sat up and read the note she’d left.

  Prince,

  I can’t marry you. This time you’ve gone too far and sorry ain’t enough

  To fix it.

  Si

  I tried to call her but I got the operator telling me that the number I dialed was no longer in service. She had changed her number that fast. I went by her place but she wasn’t there. The next day I went to her job but they told me she didn’t work there anymore. It was like she had disappeared into thin air.

  I knew she would be hurt about the baby but I always thought I’d have room to fix it. Now it was going on two months since I’d spoken to her. I missed her more than a fat kid missed cake but she wasn’t fucking with me. When I went past her crib, she didn’t answer the door even though her car was in the parking lot. The keys I’d had to her place didn’t work, letting me know she’d changed the locks. She was really serious about not fucking with me.

  During this time, I’d run into Chloe at her job and fell into a familiar routine of taking her out and fucking her. One thing about Chloe, no matter what she had going on in her life, when I wanted to re enter it, she let me back in and treated me as a top priority. So I began to spend more and more time with her, even though I knew how she felt about me and would more likely than not be harder to get rid of once Sierra took me back. I wasn’t giving up on my baby. Chloe or any other bitch out here was no replacement for her.

  “When are you coming back?” Chloe repeated, bringing me back to the present.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know man. I’ll hit you later,”

  She sucked her teeth. “You always say that and you never do.”

  “I will,” I lied. I had no intentions on talking to her ass later. “I gotta make some moves right now, so I’ll get at you later. Aight?”

  She smiled. “Okay.” She puckered her lips up for a kiss. Kissing was too personal for me, and while I used to kiss her all the time back in the day when I still had all those feelings for her, that was then. This was now and that puppy love was long gone. I didn’t want her. I wanted my woman.

  I pecked her cheek, then left out to meet Maria at her doctor’s appointment. We found out the sex of the baby today.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Kissing you is all that I’ve been thinking of…”

  Total “Kissing You”

  Maria

  I arrived at Magee Women’s Hospital in Oakland before Prince, but I had no worries that he would show up. Even though he wasn’t as excited as I was about the baby, he still wanted to know the sex. He swore up and down we were having a boy. I begged to differ. I wanted a princess that I could spoil rotten.

  He texted me that he was the hospital and I told him where the office was located. When he walked in the room, almost every woman in there caught her breath. Prince just had that something about him that attracted every woman he came in contact with, eight to eighty, blind crippled or crazy. He was fine, yes, but it was something else about him that made women’s panties get wet as soon as he stepped in the room, including mine. Every time I saw him I wanted to pull him close and kiss his sexy lips. I don’t know if it was the pregnancy hormones or what, but I was starting to feel some type of way towards Prince.

  He greeted me with a brief hug and touched my stomach. “How you doing?”

  “I’m getting fat,” I said sadly as I looked down at my stomach. At six months pregnant, I was beginning to show and this baby was becoming a re
ality.

  It was also dawning on me just how fucked up it was of me to fix the DNA results. Prince looked miserable each and every time I saw him. When I asked him what the deal was, he swore it was nothing but I knew better. He’d told me his girl had found out about me and the baby and had predictably left him. I knew he loved that girl, but I never expected him to be so sad about it. He hardly ever smiled. If there wasn’t so much on the line for me, I would tell him the truth and have both men tested. Unfortunately for him, I couldn’t afford to do that. I had too much to loose if it came out that I was having an affair with my very married colleague. So at the end of the day, he would have to continue to being sad.

  “You’re barely showing,” Prince said with a hint of a smile.

  “You know just the right thing to say,” I replied with a laugh.

  He put his hand on my stomach again. “Hopefully he stays still this time so we can confirm it’s a boy baking in there.”

  I laughed. “Hopefully.” The last time we had gotten a sonogram, the baby wouldn’t open it’s legs. We’d left the hospital grateful that the baby was healthy but disappointed that we didn’t know what I was carrying.

  This time there were no disappointments. We got back to the room, the doctor looked over the baby to make sure everything was progressing the right way, and at the end of the visit she announced we were having a boy.

  Prince’s face when she announced that was a Kodak moment. He was in awe. He looked at the sonogram with a huge smile, then placed his hand on my stomach. To my surprise, he leaned in and kissed my forehead. “Thank you, Maria,” he said gratefully.

  The fact that he was so happy that I was having a boy tugged at my heartstrings. There was no way on God’s green Earth that I could allow myself to tell this man that there was a possibility this wasn’t his child. I was doing it for his sake as well as my own. My career was on the line, and so were his feelings. He was ecstatic that I was having a boy.

  When we left the hospital, Prince suggested that we start to get some things for the baby. I had already started of course, but knowing the sex of the child made it more fun to shop. We went to Babies R Us, where Prince bought an entire nursery and paid extra for it to be delivered later the same day. We bought clothes from Burlington’s and Macy’s. Prince even stopped in Kid’s Foot Locker and bought the baby at least six pairs of Jordans.

  By the end of our shopping spree, I was spent. But I also got to see another side of Prince. He was kind, considerate and compassionate. The more time I spent with him, the more I got to see why Bree loved him so much.

  We pulled up to the house I shared with Bree. Prince came to open my driver’s side door and help me out. I noticed Bree’s Chevy Malibu in the driveway and decided to be honest with Prince for once.

  “I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to come in here with me,” I told him. “I haven’t been back here since the day I told you I was pregnant. I haven’t spoken to Bree either. Seeing you with me will probably drive her crazy.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, it probably will. But I’m not letting you carry all this shit in there by yourself. Plus I want to be here when they deliver his bedroom furniture to make sure they brought everything I paid for. We having this baby together so I’m gone be around regardless. Bree will have to just get used to it.”

  I gave him a small smile, then reached up and stroked his cheek. “I can see why she loves you so much, Prince. You are a good man.”

  He lowered his eyes. “I don’t know about all that,” Then he brought his gaze back up to meet mine. “But I’m trying.”

  I stood there, feeling an attraction to him that was so strong it shocked me. The more time I spent around him, the more he did for my baby, the more it endeared him to me. I didn’t care that Bree had loved him first or that he had lost his woman because of me. None of that mattered. Something about this man had me feeling things I hadn’t felt for any man in years. He was magnetic.

  Slowly, I pulled his face towards mine. He wrapped his arms around my waist. When our lips touched, it was like magic. His lips were so soft and he smelled so good. I ran my hand up to touch his dreads and parted his mouth with my tongue. When I did that, his grip around my waist became firmer as he pulled me close with one hand and grabbed my ass with the other. We were in our own little world, kissing like teenagers against my truck until he pulled away.

  He looked at me, touched my face and shook his head. “I’m sorry Maria. I got a lot going on right now so going there with you ain’t really the best thing to do…”

  I smiled at him to show there were no hurt feelings. Yes I wanted him, but the smart thing to do was stop before we got too carried away. He wasn’t the only one that had a lot going on. I had a crazy wife and a jealous boyfriend to deal with. “It’s okay, Prince. I understand, trust me I do. I have a lot to deal with as well, starting with this,” I told him as I nodded my head towards the house.

  He looked at the house too. “Well let’s start taking these bags in. Hopefully she’s sleep or somethin’.”

  I smirked as I grabbed my bag off the passenger seat. “I doubt it. She was probably watching us from a window upstairs.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Just can’t seem to get over/ The way you hurt me”

  Beyoncé “Resentment”

  Sierra

  School was beginning to be such a drag for me. This was my last semester and I was just ready for it to be over. I would get my Bachelor’s in Computer Science and be ready to move on with my life, in more ways than one.

  I was seriously considering leaving Pittsburgh. There was nothing left for me here. My engagement was broken, my parents were barely speaking, my older sister acted like she hated me and the twins, Kiana and Briana, were on their way to Howard in the fall. So there was really no reason for me to stay. I had been looking at job offers in Dallas and the DMV area. I felt like I needed a brand new start once I graduated.

  Leaving Pittsburgh would ensure that I would get over Prince, which was much easier said than done. I had school, work and Leon to take my mind off of him, but I couldn’t get over the way he had hurt me. Cheating was one thing, and I had been foolish enough to let him slide with that but now he had a baby on the way with another woman. That was unforgivable to me.

  The way he had gone about it had been bold as hell too! That woman had came to our home, on my birthday no less, to talk to him about their child. They had both lied to my face about it. He had sent my ass in the house so he could talk to her! Then proposed to me that same day with a smile on his face, knowing he had a baby on the way.

  Thinking back on it now, it all made sense. The way he had become distant over the last few months, barely speaking to me, and when he did speak to me, it was to move the wedding up. What, did he think if I married him I wouldn’t leave his ass over this? He had a baby coming by someone other than me! I couldn’t deal with that. It hurt too much. How was I supposed to handle that any other way but to leave him?

  For the first week, I dealt with my pain alone. I had no choice. I didn’t really have girlfriends since me and my sister were so close, but now that I didn’t have her, it felt like I didn’t have anyone. I called my mother to tell her, but she was still arguing with my father, over Prince’s mother no less. The twins were too young to empathize with me. They had no idea what it felt like to have the same person breaking your heart over and over again. They had no idea how to comfort me.

  I had changed my number the second I left out of Prince’s house. My emotions were all over the place but I wanted nothing else to do with him; of that I was sure. I went home and did the predictable thing, which was cry my eyes out for about three days straight. I had lost my fiancée, my lover, my best friend. I had lost my rib. I didn’t feel whole without him.

  Day four was when I decided I would wipe my tears, pick myself up and try to put the pieces of my life back together. I was tired of crying over Prince and wondering what I did wrong to make him constantly cheat
on me. When I thought back over our relationship, I couldn’t have done things any better than I had. I was there for him, I supported him, I comforted him, I loved him. When he opened his businesses, I was there alongside him as his biggest cheerleader. I wrote the business proposals for him to present to buy the Laundromats and dry cleaners. That how much I believed in him. I made sure he came home to a clean house and a hot meal. His clothes were always washed, folded and put away. I did all of this… while still being a full time student and working after school!

  Putting all of that into perspective, I realized I couldn’t have done more to make Prince love and appreciate me. He either did or he didn’t. And if he didn’t, that was his loss. I changed the way I looked at our breakup, and it changed my outlook. I refused to sit in the house crying over him one more day.

  Day five I called Leon, gave him my new number, and actually got out of the house. We went horseback riding, something very different, and I loved it. I loved the way he treated me, like I was the most special person in his life. He made me feel like I was actually a priority to him, and I liked that. With him, I didn’t have to wonder if he wanted to be around me or even wanted to be with me. I knew that he did. He never hid his feelings from me.

  Everything was going so well for me… but I still missed Prince. I wished I could just get over him and just move on with Leon completely, but I couldn’t. He had hurt me badly. It cut down to the very core of my soul, and while I was learning to live with that pain, that didn’t mean that it stopped. It was still as strong as ever.

  I parked my car in the downtown parking garage, got out and pinned my nametag on my shirt. I had been so serious about not having any contact with Prince that after I changed my number, I changed the locks on my doors and relocated to a different Macy’s. I might have been dying on the inside without him, but I had to show I meant business. I was moving on.