Never Say Never

by Victoria Christopher Murray

  I didn’t dare wish, I didn’t dare hope. I just closed my eyes. But as much as I tried, I still couldn’t pray.

  35

  Emily

  The October breeze wrapped around me while the sand tickled my toes. It was chilly, but I strolled on the edge of the Pacific, taking in the sounds of Saturday in Santa Monica. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had an afternoon like this. It almost felt like a day off, though I had worked this morning. One client, just LaTonya.

  Once that appointment ended at ten, I had to deal with my own life, and I’d come home. It didn’t take me long to realize I couldn’t spend another moment in that condo, staring at the antique-white walls. So I’d trudged outside to enjoy the afternoon in a way that Jamal and I loved, walking along the beach.

  I blew out a long breath. Did every thought have to be about Jamal? Couldn’t I think of one thing that was just about me? I hadn’t always been in a couple, though it felt that way. Especially in the last four days.

  Reaching into the pocket of my sweatpants, I pulled out my phone and clicked on the message icon. There were over twenty, though not one was from Jamal. I didn’t know why that made me feel bad. He’d stopped calling, but he hadn’t stopped texting.

  He texted me about everything.

  He texted to let me know where he was staying: I’m at the Westin, Em. Remember? I love you and I’m so sorry. As if mentioning where we spent our honeymoon was supposed to affect me.

  He texted me about what he was doing: I’m just sitting here, thinking of you. I love you and I’m so sorry.

  And now his latest text: Em, sweetheart, I’ll be in church tomorrow and I hope you’ll be there. I love you and I’m so sorry.

  I shook my head. Now he wanted to go to church? Well, thanks for the warning because if he was going to be there, I wasn’t.

  Then I checked my visual voice mail. I had two messages from Pastor, and five from Michellelee. Funny, I hadn’t heard from Michellelee since Tuesday when she was worried about Miriam. But since last night, she hadn’t stopped calling. I deleted all the voice mails without listening to any and then stuffed the phone back into my pocket.

  If Pastor was calling me so much, that meant Jamal was calling her. So if she was talking to him, she didn’t need to talk to me. And Michellelee . . . I couldn’t yet wrap my brain around Jamal’s betrayal. So I didn’t have extra room for what Miriam had done, or for Michellelee, because if she was really my friend, she should have told me what was going on.

  Ugh! Now I was back in that ugly place and I needed to get away from this agony. But how? Go back to my apartment? No, I’d only cry there.

  I was only a block away from my condo when I climbed up the sandy hill, slipped on my sneakers, and then sat on a bench facing the ocean. Stuffing my hands into my pockets, I gazed at the afternoon surf. The wind was really brisk, and on any other ordinary day I would have rushed to the warmth of my apartment. But my life no longer had ordinary days.

  It was time to make some decisions so that I could move forward.

  At least the biggest decision was made. I hadn’t talked to Jamal, but no details of his affair would make me change my mind. I didn’t care if Jamal had been cheating on me for one week, one month, one year, or the entire time that we’d been married. It didn’t matter if he’d cheated with only Miriam or if he had a stable full of women who’d done his bidding. The only thing that mattered was that Jamal had cheated. And cheating put a period on our marriage.

  The wind swooped down from over the ocean and wrapped around me, making me jump up and scurry across Ocean Boulevard. I rubbed my hands together to warm up a bit, then turned in to the courtyard of my building. I was digging into my purse for my keys, with my eyes down, when I bumped into someone.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  “That’s okay, I have about eight other toes. I’ll get along just fine with those.”

  Michellelee laughed, and I smiled, until I remembered.

  “What’re you doing here?” I asked without saying hello.

  Her forehead crinkled. “You got a problem?”

  “No problems. I just asked a question.” And then I asked her again, “What’re you doing here?”

  “I’m here to see you. And why would you ask me that anyway? Or has it been so long since you’ve seen me that you’ve forgotten you love me?”

  “Oh, I love you?” My eyebrows shot to the top of my forehead, the way my mother’s always did when she disapproved of something. “Yeah, that’s right. I love you probably about as much as you love me.”

  I pushed past her, and really, I wanted to say so much more. But the concierge was looking at us with curious eyes. Of course, he knew me, and he knew Michellelee. Not only was she there often, but she and Miriam had “no-call” privileges. They could come up to our condo without being announced.

  So I said nothing else. When Michellelee followed me into the elevator, I didn’t push her out, even though that’s what I wanted to do.

  “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Michellelee asked.

  I just stared at the elevator doors.

  “You know you’re acting like a child, right?”

  I wanted to punch her in her face. I was acting like a child? After what she’d done to me? After what Miriam and Jamal had done? Every single one of them should’ve been happy that I hadn’t behaved like a child.

  She said, “This is not the Emily I know.”

  She was right about that. The Emily she’d known was gone. Her body had been pulled under by the tsunami of tears she’d shed since she’d found out the truth about her life.

  When the elevator doors parted, I stomped off the elevator and Michellelee followed me inside and tossed her bag onto the sofa before she posted her hands on her hips. “What is your problem?” she asked, like she had a right to demand an answer from me.

  “You want to know,” I exploded. “My problem is you. My problem is having a friend who doesn’t have my back.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, though now her words were softer and her hands slipped down to her side.

  “Jamal and Miriam.”

  I watched her swallow.

  “Yeah, I thought so. You know, don’t you? Jamal. And. Miriam.”

  “Emily—”

  “You knew they were having an affair and you didn’t tell me.”

  She held up her hand. “Now wait a minute. It was not my place—”

  “Oh, yes it was! If you were my friend, it was your place to tell me.”

  “Let me finish, Emily! It was not my place to tell you something that I wasn’t sure about.”

  “So you suspected that they were together? When you told me that she was seeing someone, you suspected that it was Jamal?”

  “Oh, come on, Emily,” she said, throwing up her hands. “I suspected it was Jamal, but I was going to keep the secret from you, so I was only going to tell you half of it? How much sense does that make?”

  Okay, she had a point.

  “So,” Michellelee said, “maybe now you can shut your mouth and listen.”

  I really didn’t want to hear it, but I was trapped in my home with a woman who I knew wasn’t going to leave until she had her say. So to get it over with, I bounced down onto the sofa, folded my arms, crossed my legs, and pouted. But I kept my mouth shut the way she’d asked.

  “Thank. You.” Michellelee took a breath. “I did not know. When I called you and told you that Miriam had a new man, I had no idea. I didn’t suspect a thing until I went over to Miriam’s house on Tuesday. Remember when we talked and I told you I was going over there because I hadn’t heard from her?”

  I didn’t acknowledge her question.

  Michellelee continued, “Anyway, I walked in and Jamal was there and Miriam looked like she’d been crying and there was this energy . . .”

  She stopped when I inhaled deeply.

  Then she said, “Everything in my head started clicking and when Jamal left, I asked Mir
iam if anything was going on and she said no.”

  “And you believed her?”

  “No, I didn’t. And I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I wasn’t going to come to you with just my suspicion. What kind of mess would that have started?”

  “Turns out that your instincts were right.”

  “I just found that out, Emily. Just yesterday, I found out that what I suspected was true.”

  I unfolded my arms and legs.

  “Miriam called me, ’cause she hadn’t heard from you and she hadn’t heard from Jamal.”

  I’d wondered if Jamal had left me and gone straight to Miriam.

  “She said she called Jamal on Tuesday and got disconnected . . .” Michellelee paused and I could see the dots connecting in her mind. “You heard her call, huh?”

  I nodded. “We were in Jamal’s car and his phone rang. I saw it was Miriam, and I connected the call without thinking.”

  “And Miriam talked without thinking,” Michellelee said.

  “Yup, it was on Jamal’s Bluetooth and I heard about their affair in surround sound.”

  Michellelee looked at me for a long moment, then sat down. “Honey, I’m really sorry about all of this.”

  I pressed my face into my hands. “I never thought I’d be in this situation. My best friend and my husband. This sounds like one of those cheap paperback novels, right?”

  “Yeah, so, what’s going on? What does Jamal say?”

  “All he ever says is ‘I love you.’ ”

  She shrugged a little. “That’s a good place to start.”

  “Really, that’s the end for me. I don’t need to talk to him, I don’t need to hear a word he has to say.”

  “So he’s not staying here?” She took a quick look around as if she was looking for some sign of my soon-to-be ex.

  “No, I haven’t seen him or talked to him since Tuesday. Not since I heard Miriam . . .” I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping to block out the sound of her voice.

  “So, you haven’t heard his side?”

  My eyes popped open. “His side? There’s no side. I’m one of those women who has an issue with my husband having an affair with my best friend.”

  “From what I understand from Miriam, it wasn’t an ordinary affair.”

  I let those words settle in. “No ordinary affair, huh? I didn’t know there were ordinary and unordinary affairs.”

  “Well, before I talked to Miriam yesterday, I would’ve agreed. But after listening to her, I gotta tell you, I’m mad as hell at her, but there’s a little part of me, that . . .” She paused. “Now don’t get upset, but I can see how it happened.”

  “What? What did Miriam say?”

  Before I had even finished asking her, Michellelee was shaking her head. “No. You’re not going to hear this from me. Not secondhand. You need to talk to Jamal.” I rolled my eyes. “And you need to talk to Miriam,” she had the nerve to add.

  I laughed out loud at that one. “You really think I will ever be in a room with that woman again?”

  “I hope so, because I’m telling you, it didn’t go down the way you think. This isn’t what it looks like, it isn’t what it feels like.”

  “You’re going to have to explain that to me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “So, you’re still keeping secrets.”

  “You know that’s not what I’m doing. It’s just not my place to tell you. You have to hear it from Jamal. You can’t make decisions without knowing anything.”

  “I know enough.”

  “You don’t know squat. All you know is one end of a short phone call.”

  I leaned back on the couch and once again assumed the position: crossed my arms, crossed my legs, and glared at her.

  She shook her head. “Fine.” She grabbed her purse and stood. “When you’re ready to talk and ready to listen, call me, and I’ll be right here.”

  I didn’t say a word as she stomped toward the door. But then she turned back. “You need to fix this. You need to work this out with everyone.”

  “Are you kidding me? I’m the only one in this crazy foursome who didn’t do anything.”

  “And you’re the only one among us who is trained to understand people and trauma and tragedy.” She paused as if she wanted her words to hang in the air. “Work it out, Emily. If there is anyone who can, it’s you.”

  And then she walked out of my door, leaving me seething in the truth.

  36

  Miriam

  I had been waiting and waiting and waiting. It had only been a little more than twenty-four hours, though it felt like twenty-four days.

  Finally, I saw it. Michellelee’s number on my caller ID. I grabbed the phone before it even had a chance to finish the first ring.

  “Hi,” I said with a cheer in my voice that I didn’t feel.

  “Hey, girl. Listen, if you can find someone to stay with the boys, let’s get together tomorrow after church. We can do brunch.”

  Well, first of all, I wasn’t going to church. And secondly, I couldn’t possibly wait to hear if Michellelee had spoken to Emily.

  “Uh, I’m not going to church,” I said.

  “Oh . . . kay.” She asked, “Does this have anything to do with what’s going on?”

  Yes, that was one issue, the other being I still didn’t see any purpose in going to church. But all I said was, “No, I have something to do.” I crossed my fingers the way I used to when I was little. Even though I didn’t feel close to the Lord right now, it wasn’t like I wanted to take any chances. And lying about anything that had to do with God couldn’t be a good thing. “Did you talk to Emily?” I asked, needing to get to the point.

  “Yeah, I did. I’m just leaving her place now. But I was really thinking that we should talk in person and I’m on my way to meet up with Craig, so I can’t come over to you.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “And anyway . . . Please don’t make me wait, Michellelee. I have to know. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep . . .”

  “Okay, okay, I get it.” She breathed. “You’re right, she knows.”

  The phone slipped right out of my hands. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” I said as I picked it up. “Does she hate me?”

  “Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”

  “Oh, God!” I stumbled over to my bed, not able to stand any longer.

  “But it’s only because she’s really hurt,” Michellelee explained.

  “I’m just so sorry.” I really was, but there was this other side of me. The other side that pushed me to ask the next question. “So, what’s going on with Emily and Jamal?”

  I had to ask, because I couldn’t imagine Emily ever forgiving Jamal. Faithfulness was important to her, just like it was to me. At least before I became unfaithful.

  “Well, it’s not good right now,” Michellelee said. “He’s not there with her.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Miriam, I’m not going to talk to you about this. Just like I told Emily, it’s not my place. What’s going on between the two of them needs to stay between the two of them.”

  “Of course,” I said, though the wheels in my head were churning so fast it was hard for me to keep up with my own thoughts. “I was just asking.”

  “Yeah, I know. But I really believe that with the right amount of time, the right amount of space, and lots of prayer, they can work this out.”

  No, they can’t! I shouted in my mind. Michellelee knew that about Emily, too. How many conversations had we had where we all said we would never stay with a man who cheated?

  Michellelee said, “She gave up a lot to be with him. She’s not going to let this break them apart.”

  If the circumstances were different, I would’ve asked Michellelee if she wanted to take a bet on that.

  She continued, “And Jamal is not going to let her go.”

  He wasn’t going to have a choice, but of course I kept my mouth shut.

  She kept on, “Like I said, Emily is really h
urt, but her heart will soften. She’ll open up to Jamal, and maybe even to you.”

  Now, that was never going to happen. Even if Emily could stand seeing me, there was no way I could face her. I couldn’t imagine the day when I’d be able to look into her eyes.

  “Well, I don’t know if she’ll ever talk to me again, but I really hope that she and Jamal will get back together.”

  There was a pause, and then Michellelee said, “Do you mean that?”

  Oh, my God! Had Michellelee heard something in my voice?

  “Yes, I mean it,” I said in a tone that let Michellelee know I was insulted by her question. “I don’t want Emily hurt.” Now, that was the truth. “And I really feel bad for the part I had in all of this,” I added, meaning every word.

  “Good, because like I said, this can be worked out, but the thing is, you and Jamal can never, and I mean never, make that mistake again.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m serious, Miriam.” Michellelee spoke to me as if I was a child. “Whatever chemistry the two of you had needs to burn out.”

  “I know that. I get it. It’s out!”

  “Because—”

  “You don’t have to say it again! I feel bad enough.”

  Michellelee said, “Okay, I know. I’m sorry. Just pray for them.”

  “Okay, well, I know you have to get going.” I was so ready to hang up. “Thanks for letting me know.”

  “I’ll check on you in a couple of days.”

  I was pacing before I even clicked off the phone, already thinking about the next call. Michellelee had told me to pray, but as I stared at my cell, the only words I could gather were, “Please, God.”

  Then I pressed the contact number for Jamal. It rang, and went to voice mail.

  “Jamal, this is Miriam. Please call me.”

  I hung up and pressed his number again. What I’d just learned had given me newfound courage. I knew Emily. This was the end of their relationship for her.

  And her end could be my beginning. Was anything wrong with that?

  So I called him again. And again. And I left him another message. And then another. I called him until I lost count. I called him until he finally answered.