by Leach, Kiki
“And that’s how the staircase got broken?”
“Yes and no. Mo came by here not long after that and they went Cage Fighter all in the damn foyer like two wild hyenas. I had to call the police and have both of their stupid asses arrested.”
“Are they still there now?”
“No. Mo got out this morning and Nathan just an hour or so ago.”
Nikki leaned forward on the table, her face still in shock, her mouth still agape. “I can’t believe you didn’t call me as soon as all this shit went down, or even right after.”
“I thought about it. I really did, but… I just couldn’t believe things had gotten so bad between them, Nik. You remember when we were all kids and they were tight as hell. Even when Nathan and I started dating, I didn’t think anything would ever be able to come between that shit. I mean, they had each other’s backs even more than we did.”
She bobbed her head. “I remember.”
“That’s why I was so surprised when Mo took my back after I told him about Nathan and Sheila. But seeing that shit disintegrate over the years like it has since then…” Vanessa rested her elbow on the back of her chair and sighed. “Before the shit hit the fan in the Hamptons and Nathan proved himself to be the ass I’ve always known he was, even when I loved him, I thought that when he shook hands with Maurice to form a truce, that there might have been a small part of him that actually meant it.”
Nikki made a face. “Really?”
“Yeah. I didn’t necessarily believe it for myself because he’s given me so many reasons over the years to know that he’s nothing but full of shit more often than not. But Maurice seemed to want that side of him to be true so badly. I feel like he wanted to go along with the flow, you know, go along to get along to keep the fighting from happening like it had been. But in truth, I can’t help but feel like he wanted to believe it at the time.”
“Why?”
“Because I think deep down beneath all of the bullshit and anger between them that he really missed Nathan as a friend. I’m not so sure about that now, but I was pretty sure of it before last night.” She got up from the chair and went to the cabinet for a pair of glasses. Reaching in the fridge, she pulled out a bottle of wine and poured some for both her and Nikki.
“Would you even want them to be friends again?”
“Hell no,” she said, handing her a glass. “But I’d take their relationship over whatever the hell is going on between him and Melanie any day of the damn week.” She sat back down and drank a few sips of wine. “Anyway, I know that it’ll never happen, not because of the fight but because Mo admitted to him that he was the one who spilled the affair to Page Six.”
Nikki grabbed her glass and sank back in her chair. “He did?” Her voice piqued and she took a large gulp of wine. “What did Nathan say?”
“He was pissed, obviously. But by then they were in handcuffs, so they couldn’t do much more damage to each other. Or my damn house.”
Nikki wrapped her hands around her glass and stared down at the purple liquid as it sloshed around on its own.
"Do you ever think that in spite of everything that’s happened, that you and Maurice will find your way back to each other again?"
Vanessa side eyed her but answered the question anyway. "I hope so," she said. "But I don’t know for a fact. Why?"
"Do you think you'll ever go back to Nathan?"
"HALE no!" she said. "And what the fuck kind of twenty questions game is this?"
"It's not a game of twenty questions, V, I was just...” She anxiously ran her fingers through her hair and scratched her scalp. “I was just curious about some things. To know if maybe I could've helped to do something to lessen the damage done between you and Maurice. And you and Nathan, instead of helping to cause more.”
"What the hell are you talking about, Nik? As far as Nathan and I are concerned, we’re irreparable and I'm more than good with that -- hallelu. But Mo... What do you think you could've done to lessen the damage there?"
"Maybe I could’ve suggested that his telling you the truth about Page Six would've been better than keeping his mouth shut about it.” She gulped back the rest of her wine then slammed the glass back down on the table and fretfully peeked over at Vanessa.
Confused by what the hell was being said by her best friend and why, Vanessa sat down her glass as well and turned in her chair. "What?"
She sucked in a large amount of air and blew it out as quick to get rid of the fear building up. "Maurice told me about Page Six when we were in the Hamptons. When he saw that reporter on the beach who got his original information, it shook something up inside of him and he was anxious to say something to you about it. I talked him out of it."
A stumped Vanessa was at a cross between wanting to strangle Nikki with one hand. Or two.
“Why the hell would you do something like that? As if we both didn’t have enough baggage already to deal with, you want to try adding to it by telling him lie to me about something that literally changed ALL of our lives overnight?”
“I’m sorry, Vanessa,” she pleaded. “I thought if he said something that it would cause problems between the two of you that I felt you didn’t need.”
“Obviously it caused a big fucking problem between us, Nicole, because we’re not together now.” She got up from the table and moved across the room, folding her arms and fuming.
Guilt washed over Nikki as she watched her pacing back and forth while mumbling to herself and chewing down on her fingers, essentially running what looked to be a fresh manicure.
“You said you thought you would find your way back to each other. My revelation shouldn’t have changed that.”
“It doesn’t,” she snapped. She stopped pacing and leaned back on the counter. “I’m just so sick and fucking tired of everyone lying to me about bullshit! If he had just told me what he had done, all of this shit could’ve been prevented. Every single fucking thing” – she closed her fist and began hitting it inside the palm of her other hand – “could’ve been prevented from happening as it did.”
Nikki wrinkled her brows. “What are you getting at, V?”
Vanessa waited a few moments before responding.
“I know that he never went out of his way to humiliate me by exposing Nathan and Sheila. Getting at them was his goal and I just so happened to be an unfortunate casualty.” She started pacing again. “If he had just told me what he had done back then, and why, I’d still be hella pissed, don’t get me wrong. But if I had known just how far he was willing to go to have me, our relationship could’ve lasted a hell of a lot longer than what it had. I would’ve put in the effort to make things work. I wouldn’t have run off scared while trying to find what I wanted in him, with someone else that I knew deep down would never allow me to have it.”
Nikki slightly lifted her shoulders, shrugging. “I know that you’re referring to Adrian, but what’s the big deal about it now that he’s apparently sleeping with Sheila?”
“Because I was sleeping with him first.” She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes while turning away from Nikki. “Which resulted in me getting pregnant.”
Every muscle in Nicole’s body fell limp. She dropped her hands down either side of the chair and stared up at Vanessa, whose face was now flooded with tears. “Aye Dios Mio,” she said under her breath. “When did this happen?”
“I found out right before he left town. And when he was gone, I miscarried.”
“Oh Vanessa.” She got up from her chair and raced across the room to hug her friend. As she took her in her arms, Vanessa began sobbing quietly against her shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I was embarrassed,” she said, pulling away. She wiped her face and leaned back. “I had made up this entire life for us together in my head, only to realize that it would forever remain in my head. I wasn’t exactly looking to get pregnant by him, but when it happened, I wasn’t exactly hating it. But then I lost the baby and my gyno said it was due to s
tress. The only other person who knew about it before I told Mo on the night we split, is Sheila. Well, at least until she opened her big fat mouth and told Nathan.”
“Everyone knew but me?”
Vanesa rattled her head. “It’s like a big fat fucked up game of telephone. But my mother is still in the dark about it, and I plan to keep her there for as long as possible.”
“That might be a good idea,” said Nikki, glancing at her from the corner of her eye. “But when the hell did Sheila find out?”
“When we were in the Hamptons, which is apparently the new place to go if you have a damn good story to tell and want everyone, and no one, to know all about it within the same night.”
“You’re not afraid she’ll tell Adrian after blabbing it to Nathan?”
“No. She told Nathan on an impulse, or so she claimed, before he skipped town. But with Adrian, she doesn’t exactly gain much of anything in telling him. Because he would leave her for knowing and keeping it from him, and I know that’s the last thing she wants. Especially since I think she eventually plans to leave Nathan for him.”
Nikki soured. “It’s vergonzoso that she can’t stop having sex with men that you’ve been with first.”
“It is,” said Vanessa. “Especially when you put it like that.”
“Lo siento.” She followed Vanessa as they both went back over to the table and sat down. “How did Maurice take that when you told him about losing the baby?”
“He was pretty devastated that I didn’t go to him about it first, either time – back then and now. I just hate that it’s what prompted him to even tell me about Page Six.”
“At least you two don’t have any more secrets now,” said Nikki. “Everything’s out in the open.”
Vanessa tilted her head. “Yeah.”
Nikki squint. “That sounded pretty weak, V.”
“I don’t know – I just have a feeling that something else might come out before it’s all said and done.”
“From him or you?”
“Both, maybe? Him? I don’t know.”
“Well is the feeling a good one or a bad one?”
“That’s what scares me, because I don’t know. But look, I don’t want to think about this anymore. I’m tired and this day has been shit.”
“I can relate to that,” Nikki mumbled. “By the way, how do you think Nathan is going to react to Sheila finally deciding to leave him?”
“A woman who worshipped the ground he walked on for five years finally deciding that someone else’s dick felt better than his? I’m guessing a firebomb? A hand grenade? To be perfectly honest, I’m not only sure that I don’t ever want to find out, I don’t want to be anywhere near this entire city once it does.”
Part Twenty-Six
After spending most of the day and afternoon in bed and bliss with Adrian, Sheila decided to visit a local diamond shop, Simmons Jewelry, the moment he went back to his apartment in Queens, to determine the exact cost, value and worth of her engagement ring.
It’s wasn’t as if she was actually looking to sell it off once she broke things off with Nathan in order to be with Adrian, but she was curious to know – and had been for years but tried ignoring the nagging thoughts that came along with it – just how much his ‘love’ for her had been worth the entire time. Now was a better time to find out than any, she thought, to learn the truth. God knew that even up until then, he had never managed to show what he felt for her in his actions, unless it was through sex, which often occurred after a fight. Or through his yelling, which was often followed by sex.
At any rate, she was hoping that he had mustered up enough emotion during the time of purchase to pour it all into the price of that flawless 2.1 karat gold diamond.
While waiting on the results and hoping like hell that they were worth the hustle and bustle to Midtown at that time of night, she began exploring other items that the shop had to offer, and instantly became fixated on a 2.1 karat gold diamond tennis bracelet sitting at the very front of a case near the corner. She became so fixated in fact that her face started to hurt from smiling so much. She moved down a little closer to watch it shimmer and sparkle against the tiny light the case had to offer, and kicked her foot up behind her as if she had just been kissed with tongue for the first time ever.
Or felt up in the back of Nathan’s old Escalade.
When the owner, Mr. Simmons returned with her ring in hand, she flagged him down, waving and popping her fingers and pointing down at the glass case beneath her.
“Yes?” he asked dryly.
Mr. Simmons was around his late sixties with slick white hair in the manner of George Washington and eyes as black as coal. People like Sheila were often his favorite kind of customer because they never came out of there with less than they entered with.
As he got closer to her, she bent over the case and tapped down on the glass. “That right there,” she said. “It matches my ring, right? How much is it?”
He placed the ring on a velvet booklet, then grabbed his keys and carefully opened the cage. After inspecting every part of the bracelet, he looked Sheila directly in the eyes and told her, “Fifteen hundred.”
“That’s it? Hm. Maybe I should wait to break things off with Nathan until after my birthday so that I can have this matching set. Because Adrian seems too practical to buy something like this for me, or anything that he probably didn’t make. You can’t really count on someone who’s spent years helping people in the Congo to be into something like this, can you?”
“From my experience,” he said. “No. But you don’t necessarily need someone else to purchase something like this for you. You’re always free to purchase it for yourself.” He waved his hand across the top of the case; wrinkles formed around the corners of his mouth as he smiled.
Sheila laughed aloud. “I don’t do that, especially when it comes to something like this. Just, put it on hold for me. I might come back to it – with someone else’s money later.”
He did as she asked and took down the necessary information to keep the bracelet out of the eye of the public for the next five days.
“Now,” she started. “Onto the actual reason I came in here.” She flicked her finger toward the ring.
“Well.” He placed an eye loupe over his glasses and lifted the diamond to fully inspect it beneath the light. “As you know, a diamond neither increases nor decreases in value overtime. However, after learning that this ring in particular was in fact purchased here--”
“Wait a minute.” Sheila immediately thought she had misunderstood the old man and put her hand up to stop him from talking. “Purchased here? As in your shop – as in Manhattan?”
“Yes,” he said. “In order to learn the exact pricing of the ring at the time of purchase, I searched the serial number. If you look inside the band just behind the diamond cluster and to the right of the ‘K’, you can see it right there.” He lifted the ring to show her, but she was less than interested. “I remember selling this ring to a young man, very young.”
Sheila lifted her hands and spun them back and forth around each other as if she had placed them beneath a faucet. “Was he around eighteen?”
He thought a moment.
“Yes,” he replied. “As a matter of fact, I had to ask for his identification.”
“And I bet you can’t tell me his name?”
“No, no. That little bit of information is confidential.”
“I thought as much,” she said. She dropped her hands on the case and sighed. “What year was the ring purchased?”
“Nearly six years ago--”
“Six,” she muttered. She rattled her head. “Son of a bitch – son of a bitch!”
“Is there a problem, Miss Harris?”
“Hell yeah, there’s a problem, there’s a big motherfucking problem and his name starts with Nathaniel and ends with Asshole.” She snatched the ring from Mr. Simmons and inspected it for herself. “Nearly six years ago today, is that right?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“And on this day nearly six years ago, a bastard was officially born.” She slammed her purse down hard on the glass case, watching as it cracked at the edge, and tossed the ring down to the bottom where she felt it belonged.
Mr. Simmons draped himself over the glass and cursed. “That will be something you’ll need to pay for.”
“I’ll give you my father’s information for that,” she said. She pulled a piece of paper form her purse, quickly wrote down the number and handed it over to him. Then she got a glimpse of the bracelet from the corner of her eye and snarled. “And you can keep that damn tennis bracelet. There’s no way in hell I’m interested in getting it now.”
She stormed out before he even had a chance to confirm the information given.
Sheila was fuming. Steam blew out of her ears and she ran past people up and down the sidewalk like a raging bull on a mission to spear the matador rather than chase after the red cape. When she finally reached the hotel, she raced to the elevator and pushed the UP button so hard that it almost collapsed inside the hole.
After learning from Mr. Simmons that Nathan had purchased the ring long before he had even planned to propose for her, she realized almost too quick that it was meant for someone else. That someone once again being Vanessa.
“Son of a BITCH!” she screamed as she jumped on the elevator. People around her stared and made faces until the doors closed. She kicked the wall and slapped her purse against the doors a few times as it raced up to the top floor. “If he’s here,” she told herself, “I’m going to tell him about Adrian. I’m going to tell him about how many times we fucked and where and when, and I’m going to enjoy it.”
As soon as the doors dinged and opened, Sheila sprinted down the hall and to the room they shared. Once she shoved the door open, she noticed a strange smell floating throughout the room. Then she looked toward the bathroom and heard the water for the shower running.
After weeks of being away and without a single word to her of his whereabouts, Nathan was finally home and showering with a foul smelling shampoo. She wasn’t sure if the smell of the room thanks to him pissed her off more or less than the fact that her ring was nothing more than a hand me down. The ring won by a landslide, but she was hoping even by then that something as minor as the bad smell of a room could take her mind off of it, at least for a little while.