The large room was so dark it took my eyes a while to focus. When they did, I gasped. There had to be about a dozen strippers in there, dancing around the poles, giving lap dances. I stayed off in the cut and slowly worked my way around the room looking for Kimbel. There was a threesome going on in the corner and I practically broke my neck trying to see if my fiancé was part of it. Thank goodness, he wasn’t; otherwise, I was going to have to clown his ass. I had walked around the entire room and was about to leave when I noticed a light coming from under a door in the corner. My heart started pounding, but nothing was going to stop me from turning the knob and looking inside. What I saw made my heart stop. Kimbel was screwing some chick from behind. He was so into it, it took a second for him to notice I was standing there. I heard a scream and realized it was me.
“What the hell? Oh, shit! Tiffany . . . what are you doing here?” Kimbel looked like he was about to pee on himself.
I was up all in his face. “Is that all you have to say? It’s the night before our wedding!” The Hispanic girl had the nerve to roll her eyes and look insulted. “Get your flat booty ass away from my man!” I screamed, then grabbed her by her hair and pulled her up out of that closet. Kimbel had the nerve to come to her defense.
“Tiffany . . . why you tripping? Don’t act like you don’t know what goes on at these things.” Kimbel was buckling his pants and talking at the same time. He must really think I’m stupid.
“You supposed to love me enough not to do something like that.”
“Baby, I do love you. All I was doing was getting all my playing out the way before I become your husband.” He had the nerve to try and justify his actions. “I had a buildup. If you hadn’t made me wait so long, none of this would have happened. In actuality, it’s really your fault.”
“You know . . . you’re so full of it.” I noticed some of his boys standing around and watching, but I didn’t care. “Tell me something, Kimbel . . . when were you planning to tell me you had herpes?” I stood there and watched him try to hold it together.
His eyes grew wide. “Excuse me?”
I walked over and pointed my finger all up in his face. “You heard me! The cat’s out the bag. You got the package and you didn’t even plan to tell me.” I kid you not, it was like in the movies. Out of nowhere his fist flew through the air and came crashing down against my right cheek. Next thing I knew, I hit the floor.
“Fucking bitch!” he screamed. “If I got it, then I got that shit from you!” He started kicking me in my head and shoulder. All I could do was just lay there and cradle my head with my hands. Thank goodness his best man rushed over and pulled him off me. The music stopped and someone had turned on the lights. Everyone was watching and staring at me lying on the ground.
“Trifling bitch! No wonder you didn’t want to give me any until we were married. You had no intentions of telling me, yet all this time you were trying to pass yourself off as a virgin. Good thing I found out when I had.”
“What’s going on?” I knew that voice. I looked over to find Candace racing into the room. The last thing I wanted was for her to find me like this on the ground. “What the—” She rushed over and dropped down beside me. “Tiffany, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I mumbled, and let her help me to my feet.
“What the hell happened?” Candace screamed at Kimbel.
He was standing beside PJ, glaring at both of us. “Your friend here was trying to infect me with her germs.”
Candace’s hands went to her hip in a defensive position. My girl is not one to be messed with. “No, she wasn’t. You forget where I work? The fucking free health clinic! I’m the one who read your file and told her you had herpes, you nasty fuck. If you have no respect for yourself, at least have some for her. Come on, let’s go.”
She helped me off the floor. I looked out the corner of my eyes at the smirk on his face as he told his boys we were lying. I couldn’t help it. I ran up to Kimbel and hit him hard in his nuts.
“You bastard!” I screamed over and over again. I don’t know how I made it back to Candace mama’s car. In fact, I don’t remember my legs even moving, but the second Candace pulled away from the club, I started bawling my ass off. “I can’t believe he treated me like I was some trick. Can you believe that shit?”
“No.” I could tell she was trying to be as sympathetic as she could be. “He had no business putting his hands on you.”
“You were right. I shouldn’t have gone in there. I don’t know what I was thinking, but then that’s the problem. I wasn’t thinking.” I couldn’t believe it. My entire future blew up in my face in a matter of minutes. Now I no longer had a fiancé and the only thing I possibly got out of the deal was herpes.
“It’s a good thing you found out the type of person he is now instead of later.”
“I guess so,” I replied as I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “But now what am I going to do? I don’t have a place to stay and I have a big wedding tomorrow that I need to cancel.”
Candace reached across the seat and squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry about nothing. I’ll take care of everything.”
Maybe so, but there was still my mother to deal with and the possibility that I might have contracted herpes. At the moment, I seriously didn’t know which was worse.
22
Noelle
I was sitting on the couch in the living room when I heard bass thumping loudly from outside. As soon as a blue Dodge Avenger pulled into my driveway, I cringed. I don’t know how many times I had to tell my son to quit driving through the neighborhood with his stereo on blast. We lived in a middleclass neighborhood and were the first black family on the block. Folks stereotyped us enough as it was. Next thing we know, my neighbors will start putting FOR SALE signs in their yards.
“You’re daddy’s home.” I looked down at my grandbaby and smiled. Sierra was such a sweet baby. It was just a shame she had a couple of dummies for parents.
Scott turned the car off, then took the stairs two at a time and came plowing through the door. “Whassup, Mom?”
“What’s up is that I told you to come home three weeks ago.”
“I had things to do. Coach is serious about grades and football camp.” He shrugged like it was no big deal. Well, I’m here to tell him, I was holding the big deal.
He gave me that irresistible grin that while growing up made it hard for me to stay mad at him. Scott was a beautiful baby who grew into a handsome man. And I’m not just saying that because he’s my son. Fine is fine. That’s why I understood why the women loved him. Like his father, he had looks and a personality to match. A natural-born salesman, he had the gift of gab and used it to his advantage. Through high school my son never had a job, yet he always had money in his packets thanks to the stupid females who believed everything that came out of his mouth. And as I said before, part of that was my fault. The second he hit junior high, I schooled him on women and the games we played so that he would never be a doormat to some female. Sometimes I think I trained him a little too well. He’d been breaking hearts ever since.
“What you need to be doing is trying to be a father to your daughter.” I held her up for him to see. Scott leaned forward, took one look, then headed to the kitchen.
“I thought Aisha had a boy?”
“That’s not your baby, but this one is.”
He called from the other room “Mom, she’s cute, but she ain’t mine.”
I rose and followed. “You barely looked at her, yet you know this isn’t your child.”
“Man, quit playing!”
“Man? How many times I got to telling you I ain’t your man or anyone of them knuckleheads you hang with.” You would think he was a bad kid instead of a B-student with a full athletic scholarship.
“Sorry, Mom, but she’s not mine. Do you know how many women would love to have my baby? Believe me, if it was mine, I would know.”
“It’s not an it, it’s a her.” Damn, now he had me sayin
g it.
I heard him mumble “whatever” under his breath. So help me God, I was only seconds away from knocking him upside his head. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know my granddaughter when I see her. She’s got the same thick curls and hazel eyes. Come and look at these feet.” I held her up so he could take a closer look. “Those are Gordon feet.”
Scott gave a strangled laugh. “Mama, those can be anybody’s feet.” Walking over to the refrigerator, he removed an orange soda, popped the tab, and brought it to his lips.
“So, you’re saying you always used a condom? Because you said something different a couple of weeks ago.”
He grew quiet. “I almost always strapped up.”
I looked at the stupid expression on his face. “Almost isn’t good enough. Is it Sierra?” I cooed in a baby voice. She smiled up at me. “Look! Look at how she looks when she smiles.” Scott looked, but he still wasn’t convinced. “You know what, Scott Marquez Gordon? You better knock that smirk off your face and take this shit serious.” I hated to curse around the baby, but I needed to make sure he knew I meant business. “This is serious. One of those chicks left this baby on the doorstep and I advise you to quit wasting my time and find out which one it is.”
He blew out a long breath. “Fine. I’ma go turn a few corners and see what I find out.”
“You do that.”
“Do what?” Grant said as he stepped into the house. “Hey, Scott. When you get here?”
“About five minutes ago and Mom’s is all up in my face.”
Grant gave me a look but remained quiet. Good choice. Grant knew better than to mess with me, especially after the stunt he pulled, waiting until he had already accepted a teaching position overseas to inform me. We’d hardly spoke two words since. “I sure was all up in his face. I told him he needed to figure out which one of them chicks he’d been sleeping with left this baby on my doorstep.”
Grant shook his head, reached for a beer, and proceeded to leave the room. “I’m gonna leave the two of you alone to figure it out.”
“Grant, he’s your son. The least you can do is talk to him about taking care of his responsibilities, because if you had talked to him about using condoms, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“If I’m not on my job, then by all means you handle your business. Like I said, I’m not getting in it.”
That was always his answer when he felt like I was butting in someone else’s business. Hey, if I didn’t get involved, then what? If I stayed out of it, neither Scott nor his suspect baby mama would live up to their responsibilities. “Fine, go on in the other room. I always have to handle everything.”
My husband gave me a look that said, You’re pushing your luck. He was pissed again, although I doubt he ever stopped being mad at me. Grant could be so stubborn at times, Well, guess what? So can I. I watched him move into the other room. Scott started to follow.
“Uh-uh, I’m not finished with you yet. This little girl needs a father and a mother. Get your butt out there and find her!”
He strolled out the room, said a few words to his father, then I heard the loud thump of his music again. That boy better not come back until he’s found Sierra’s mama.
I went upstairs and put Sierra in her crib, then moved into the bedroom in time to catch Grant changing his clothes. “Where you going?”
His eyes darted around the room, making contact with everything but me. “Out for a minute.”
“Out where?” I asked suspiciously. “You just got home.”
“Damn, Noelle, get off my back!”
I winced. His outburst had struck a nerve. Even so, I wasn’t about to let him walk out that door before he gave me a straight answer. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
He gave me this look like I had a lot of nerve questioning him, but I didn’t care. Something was wrong with our marriage. I learned a lot in my thirty-eight years, and I was far from being a fool. We hadn’t made love in weeks. Last night I reached over to him and he ignored my advances. I had a right to be nervous because Grant messed around on me before. It may have been nineteen years ago, but he messed around. He never admitted it, but I saw the signs. Even back then he was distant. Going out all hours of the night. We argued a lot and eventually, Grant moved out of our apartment and in with one of his college buddies. For three months I spent every second I wasn’t doing hair trying to track his every move, but never discovered anything. We eventually got back together, and when I asked him if he’d been seeing anyone during our breakup, he swore to me he hadn’t. I forced myself to believe he was telling me the truth. By then I was pregnant with Scott and all I cared about at that point was making my marriage work.
“I’m leaving in ten days and thought I’d go to the game with the boys tonight.” He couldn’t even look at me as he spoke.
I felt my stomach clench. My gut told me he was lying. “You’re leaving the country in ten days. What about spending some time with your wife?”
He gave a sarcastic laugh. “For what? Half the time you don’t even notice I’m here. You don’t have time for me. When I asked you on Saturday if you wanted to go out, you said no. You’re too busy with the baby. In eighteen years, ever since Scott was born, you never have any time because you’re too busy raising kids.”
I didn’t answer because he was right. Sierra had become my life. Wednesday, Grant had asked me to go out to dinner and since I couldn’t find a babysitter, I declined. But as far as I was concerned, neither of us was in a position to be selfish right now. We had a granddaughter who needed us.
“I bought that new Tyler Perry movie at Walmart today. How about we have a movie night?”
Grant looked like he was undecided, and that threw me for a loop. Any other time he would have jumped at the chance to curl up on the couch with me and watch a movie.
“And how long will that last before the baby starts crying and interrupts the movie?” Grant looked at me pointedly, waiting for my reply.
“If you’re wanting some kind of guarantee that won’t happen, then I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”
“Maybe tomorrow.” He barely looked at me when he answered.
I moved over in front of him and took his hand. “Grant, what’s happening to us? We don’t spend any time together. We rarely talk. I’m not understanding what’s going on.”
He sighed, then just stood there staring at me. “I don’t know what’s happening.”
I gave him an evil look. “Answer one question . . . Do you want this marriage?”
Grant flinched. “What the hell kinda question is that?”
He just didn’t get it. “One that I want you to answer, because the way you’ve been behaving lately, I would say the answer is no.”
“That’s not true. I love you. Always have. I’m just having trouble adjusting to the fact that our lives are changing.” Backing away from me, he regained his personal space. “There has never been just you and I; there has always been us plus two or three. When are we going to have our time? Just you and me. I planned a vacation hoping to start our new life together and look what happened. We’re now grandparents.”
So that’s what it was. Sierra. “I’m sorry that you’re having a hard time accepting that you are now a grandfather, but life isn’t always the way we want it to be.”
“And that’s the problem.”
“So where do we go from here?” I asked, trying to blink back tears. I was scared.
“I’m not sure where we go from here. Maybe the distance will do us some good.” He came over and wrapped his arms around me. “When I get back from Korea, we’ll sit down and work on us . . . I promise.” He kissed my forehead, then stepped away and moved inside the bathroom.
When he got back? I had a feeling if I waited that long to fix my marriage, it would be too late for us.
23
Tiffany
It had been five days since that fiasco at the club. After spending an evening crying my eyes out, I went
to stay at Mama’s while she and Candace went to church and announced the bad news. If I thought I was going to get sympathy from my own mother, I was badly mistaken. The second Mama got back from apologizing to our family and friends, she tore into me. I was lying on the couch curled up in a ball when she tossed a shoe at my head.
“I have never been so humiliated in my life!” she screamed.
“Mama, it’s not my fault,” I pleaded, but it was useless.
“Yes, it is, because I taught you better than that!” I thought by telling her the truth, she would have at least a little bit of sympathy. What a joke. “That’s what you get for spreading your legs! If only you listened to me. Now nobody will want you!” By the time she was done, I was crying all over again. Mama was not at all moved. She made herself a gin and tonic, then called me every kind of slut she could come up with. The more I cried, the more she yelled at me. Hell, she might as well have spit on me because I was left feeling like crap.
The next day I packed my bag and decided to go on my honeymoon anyway. After all, it had already been bought and paid for. Why waste more money if I didn’t have to? I had hoped spending five days in sunny Jamaica would brighten my spirits, but by day three, happiness was far away no matter how much rum punch I drank.
I made myself get out of bed, then slipped into a cute pink bikini and headed down toward the beach. I remember when I bought the outfit, I couldn’t wait for Kimbel to see me in it. Well, because of me and my big mouth, that wasn’t going to happen.
I followed the path to the white sand beach. It was beautiful. The grounds were filled with palm trees and other tropical plants. Reggae music was coming from the bar. Everybody was laughing and having a good time. If only Kimbel was here with me, then this trip would be perfect. I don’t even know why I was wasting my time thinking about that asshole after the way he beat me upside my head with all his friends watching. Kimbel didn’t have any respect for me or our relationship. I had simply been a joke to him. My love had meant nothing, and that hurt more than anything.
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