Truth & Consequences: A Miss Independent Novel

by Leach, Kiki

  “Oh, fuck.” She ripped her pillow from behind her head and smashed it across her face. “No, no, no, no, NO! Go the fuck away, PLEASE!”

  But they wouldn’t.

  “Shit!”

  She ripped the blankets from her legs as fast as she could and ran a comb through her hair as she made her way downstairs.

  “Who the hell is it?” she called out. But the person on the other side didn’t answer.

  When she looked through the peephole, she didn’t see anyone standing there, which made her nervous.

  “If this is a crank, I’m calling the police!” she called out, slapping her hand against the door for emphasis.

  After a few seconds of silence, she turned away.

  And then it blared again.

  “FUCK!”

  As soon as Vanessa opened the door, a hand thrusted out from around the frame, holding a medium sized purple box. She jumped back, terrified at what was inside, what it meant and who the hell it was from before the person holding the box rounded the corner and dipped his head inside, smiling.

  “Nathan!” she screamed out as soon as his face entered her doorway. Furious, she threw her hand out and smacked him directly in the middle of his forehead.

  Nathan grabbed his temples and tumbled back toward the stairs, nearly dropping the box in his hand.

  Bending forward, he screamed out. “AH, V! What the FUCK?!”

  “I could say the same about you, you crazy ass son of a bitch! What the fuck are you thinking scaring me like that, huh?”

  “I wasn’t trying to scare you.” He moved his fingers around to his forehead and pressed down hard to stop the throbbing sensation vibrating throughout his skull and down to his ears. “Shit.”

  “If you weren’t trying to scare me, then what the fuck is up with you standing on the side of my door instead of in front of it like a normal human being? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing is wrong with me.” He dropped his hand and stood straight. “But I’m starting to wonder if your ass is suddenly so damn slap happy because you haven’t been--”

  She rushed out of door and stood directly in front of his face. He lifted his head back and nearly tripped back on the stair behind him.

  “Don’t.” She lifted a single finger and pointed it directly toward the center of his face. “Don’t you dare start in on some shit like that with me when you can’t seem to keep yourself from whipping that thing out left and right and yet, it makes absolutely no difference on your personality or who you are from one day to the next. In fact, it seems like the more you get, the more stupid you become. What the fuck are you doing here anyway?”

  He grunted and lifted the box. “I came here to give you a peace offering.”

  She stared down at the size of the box again and stood back, knitting her brows and lowering her eyes to look for anything sticking out around it. “What the hell is that?”

  He lifted the box even higher and slightly leaned his head while clinching his jaw, irritated. “It’s a fucking peace offering, V. A gift.”

  “Yeah, I’m really gonna buy that garbage with the way that you keep saying it. Take that shit and get the hell out of here before I call the police on your ass again, and this time, no one will be coming down there to bail you out.”

  She turned away from him and went back inside her house, but he was quick on her tail. So quick that she hadn’t any time to close the door in his face before he was inside as well. Shutting it behind him, he moved forward and raised his other hand to stop her from potentially attacking him at close range again.

  “I didn’t come here to start any shit with you again, V, alright? I came to offer you some peace,” he said in a cool voice. He curved his lips up into a genuine smile in the hopes of making her believe it, but Vanessa couldn’t read much of anything from his expression except for more bullshit. “I just want peace.”

  “Me too. Let’s start with getting you the hell out of my house.”

  “I’ll go.” He shoved the box toward her again. “After you open this first.”

  “I told you that I’m not opening that thing. It’s probably ticking like crazy as we speak and you’ve just got some kind of silencer around it to keep me from hearing the actual sound it’s making.”

  “You think I’d actually do something like that to you, Vanessa?”

  “You know what, Nathan? As far as I can tell over the last few months and especially within the last few days in dealing with your crazy ass, you are absolutely, positively capable of anything, good or bad. Therefore, nothing you do or could try to do to me or anyone else that we know surprises me anymore. And I’m not opening that thing because of it--”

  “It’s a bottle of perfume,” he said, trying to reassure her. “The kind you used to wear when we were together, called Fearless? It’s rare now because it’s expensive as hell, which means I had to go through a lot of shit to actually get it for you, and on time since I just ordered it for you two days ago. I swear to you that what’s inside this box is not a bomb or anything else that could cause any kind of harm to you--”

  She looked down at the box again and crossed her arms over her chest, still disbelieving. “It’s a bottle filled with poison,” she mumbled.

  Exasperated, he placed the box on the table near the door. Then he stared at her, just as she stared down at that box.

  Realizing he wasn’t going to leave until she at least took a closer look, she gradually stepped forward.

  “Why the hell would you bring me a peace offering anyway?” she asked. “We were fine after I left you at the jail.”

  “I want us to be more than fine.” He bent his head down toward the box. “Open it.”

  Vanessa paced back and forth a few times and wiped her hand across her mouth.

  Standing on one foot, she tipped forward and tossed her hand out to thumb the box, then jumped back. Nathan chuckled.

  After taking a few more seconds to realize that he hadn’t been lying and had in fact brought her something not intended to cause her any harm, at least on the surface, Vanessa snatched the box from the table and shuffled to the other side of the room.

  “If this isn’t the exact kind that Alexander first bought for me on my fifteenth birthday, I’m gonna beat you silly with one of the broken legs on that railing.”

  He looked over at her stairs and gulped. “Understood,” he said. “I remember you telling me once that you didn’t wear anything else outside of that because it made you sick.”

  Slightly impressed that he could remember something like that as she had mentioned it offhandedly after sex, Vanessa backed into the living room without saying another word and placed the box on the edge of the bookcase.

  Nathan followed her inside and stood near the frame as he watched her open it with caution. It wasn’t until she pulled out the purple diamond shaped bottle with a glass cork covered in pink diamonds that he actually saw an honest smile cross her face. Her eyes seemed to shine as bright as the sun and for the first time, she didn’t look as if she had the urge to toss the bottle at his head.

  He was relieved.

  Until she turned around with the bottle in her hand. He looked down and noticed that she was clutching it the way a pitcher would his baseball. He stood straight and puffed out his chest, preparing for severe damage.

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “You’re asking me that like I put in some sort of special request to you for this bottle, which I didn’t.”

  He anxiously ran the palm of his hand back and forth across his forehead. “I know that you didn’t put in a request, V.”

  “Then why ask me a question like that?”

  “Why the fuck are you giving me grief for doing something nice for you?”

  “Because you didn’t do something nice for me. The gesture itself, yeah, that was nice, thanks. But the sentiment behind it sure as hell isn’t, you want something. If you didn’t come here to chew me out for something or tell me some sh
it that you know damn well I have no interest in learning about, then you want something. God knows you didn’t just show up here out of the goodness of your heart with a thirty-five thousand dollar bottle of Fearless perfume.” She rested one hand beneath her elbow and raised her arm high while holding the bottle in the palm of her other hand. She arched a brow and sucked in her cheeks. “Tell me what the hell you were thinking with this and why you’re really here.”

  “I told you that it was about offering peace.”

  “You’re proving that second by second with the way you continue to speak to me like an asshole. You either tell me the truth, or this bottle gets poured down the drain and goes straight into the trash. Thirty-five thousand just wasted on your ass.”

  Nathan watched helplessly as Vanessa spun the bottle around her hand and feigned dropping it a few times.

  “V, I told you that I went through a lot of shit to get that bottle for you.”

  “Then I guess you should start opening ya muthafuckin’ mouth and tell me exactly what it is that I need to hear,” she told him. “Don’t pussyfoot around and don’t give me half-truths, because I’ll find the shit out one way or another and you’ll still be screwed and looking stupid while also being out of a cool 35k.” She lowered the bottle to her side and held it by the neck as if she could drop it at any second.

  “Alright,” he said, pushing himself away from the frame. “Alright.”

  “Go.”

  “I heard about Nikki’s ‘opening night’ party – something about it being held at Bar Nineteen next week.”

  She shrugged. “So?”

  “Well, I got to thinking.”

  “Aw, shit. That’s terrible for all of us who seem to know you oh ‘so well’--”

  “About maybe showing up there to give her my support.”

  She made a face. “What the hell makes you think she wants any kind of support from you of all people, Nathan? She and Mo might be on better terms now, but you’ll be on that list as soon as Sheila gets there, which will be never.”

  He opened his hands and bent his head forward. “Actually, Sheila’s already there.”

  “What?”

  “She’s going to the party, V.”

  “How the fuck is that even possible?”

  He clamped his teeth together and blew virtual steam through his nose. “Adrian’s planning to take her.”

  Unsure if she had heard correctly, Vanessa backed up and wildly waved her hand in front of her face. “Wai—Wai—Wai—Hold on a second, back up. Adrian? As in, Adrian Samuels – Professor Adrian Samuels…” She leaned in and pointed at her chest. “My former Adrian Samuels is taking her to this thing?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you’re just sitting back and allowing it to happen?”

  “What choice to I have in that, V?”

  “Um, I don’t know, how about the choice of you two still being engaged.”

  He walked over to the couch and slumped down to the edge. “She gave the ring back to me yesterday.” He draped his arms over his legs and leaned forward.

  Vanessa nervously ran her hand down the front of her throat and stared down at Nathan as he kept his eyes focused on the coffee table in front of him. She placed the bottle down in the middle, but he never shifted his focus.

  “Did she happen to tell you how serious things have gotten between them?”

  “Not really,” he said. “She was sort of vague about it. But I got the feeling from the way she talked about him that something more might have happened. I can’t prove it, but--”

  “For the love of God and everything else holy, please don’t ever try.”

  “I won’t,” he said. “To be perfectly honest, I’m not exactly surprised she left. I’m surprised that it took her so long after the shit I put her through.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s something about you that seems to put a spell on us even when you do us dirty,” she said. He arched his brows and grinned with satisfaction. Vanessa felt like vomiting. “That wasn’t a compliment of any kind, Nathan.”

  “I know.” He momentarily looked up into her eyes and laughed.

  “So what exactly do you plan to do? And how exactly are you planning to use me to do it?”

  He leaned back and turned his lips downward. “What makes you think I plan to use you for anything, V?”

  “You didn’t come over here to bring me that expensive ass bottle out of the goodness of your heart, so just stop.”

  He pressed his hand down on the edge of the couch and sat back. “Alright. Around the same time I found out that Sheila was going to this thing with Adrian, I found out that your boy was taking Melanie.”

  That was like a record scratch in Vanessa’s brain the moment those words came out of Nathan’s mouth. She heard them as they strung together, the sounds they made as each word bounced off of his tongue and knew intrinsically what they meant.

  And yet, she still couldn’t manage to decipher what she had actually heard.

  “What?”

  “Mo is taking Melanie to this party.”

  “How the fuck do you know that?”

  “Sheila met with me at uh, The Bean,” he said, keeping his eyes on her face, knowing that if he lost a single ounce of himself, she’d figure out that he was full of more shit than a clogged toilet. “After she left, I sat there for a while to think about what she told me, and then Melanie walked in.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah. She was telling the girl behind the counter that she’d have to close up on her own next weekend because she would be out with a friend. Being who I am, I strolled over to her and decided to ask her about it.”

  Vanessa looked closely at his face and shook her head in complete disbelief. “You just went up to a woman you barely know and asked her who the hell she was hanging out with? It’s a wonder she didn’t mace your ass.”

  “She knows who I am, V. Just, not very well.”

  “My point exactly. What did she say?”

  “After a few minutes of going back and forth, I finally got her to admit that she was taking Maurice. Or that Maurice was taking her.”

  She started to squirm. The thought of him being out with her at a public party meant that they were more than likely moving things further than she had originally anticipated. Maybe what Melanie had to offer him as a companion, as his woman was a hell of a lot more than she ever could. Meaning a lot more ‘conventional’ and a hell of a lot less ‘crazy’.

  Nathan chewed on his lip while keeping his eyes locked on Vanessa’s every reaction, move, stance and look. He didn’t want to make her feel worse than she already did about Maurice and whatever the hell he had going with Melanie, not at all, it was the last intention he ever had. After seeing them together for the second time on the night he and Maurice were hauled off from her house in a police car, and talking to each of them separately about their relationship and what it meant to each of them, he was finally able to understand the truth of what it was all about.

  And why he truly never had a chance in hell with her again once she had finally given into Maurice after years of resistance. What they had couldn’t be faked or tamed or felt by anyone else. It was all them and there wasn’t a single person on earth, him included, that was ever going to have the chance to truly come between that without coming out the other side alone, broken and damaged by the hurricane which consisted of nothing but what they felt for each other, what they had always felt for each other and always would feel for each other.

  But Nathan, above all else was an opportunist. And as much as he didn’t want to see a woman he once loved in pain, he also knew that there would be no way in hell she’d ever think to take him out in public again after all the shit he had done to her unless she was certain that she could use his presence for her own gain. Getting under her skin about Maurice and Melanie was just the tip of the iceberg. He wanted the entire boat to come crashing down.

  Once Vanessa managed to get her thoughts together, she looked do
wn at Nathan and began to question his sincerity.

  “Did she say anything along the lines of him actually asking her?” she said. “Or was it something that they both just decided because he had an extra ticket? Because I know damn well that she wasn’t invited and if she were, she wouldn’t go.”

  “She made it seem as if he asked her flat out if she would be willing to go with him.”

  Vanessa closed her fingers inside her palms and threw her fists into the air. “FUCK!” She strode back and forth in front of the table a few times and pressed her hands against her back. “And you said he wasn’t with her?”

  “No,” said Nathan. “Like I said, she was alone.”

  “Okay.” She pressed her fingers against her lips. “Okay, then it must have been after Nikki and I saw her at the B&G.” She stopped for a second to stare at him. “Which leaves me to wonder, how do you know that she was even telling you the truth?”

  “Why the hell would she lie to a stranger, V?”

  “You two may not know each other all that well, but she damn well knows that you know me and Mo and she’s also aware of what went down between you two. She could’ve easily told you that Mo invited her because she assumed that you would come here to gloat about it.”

  As he felt himself losing her, and thus his plan, he decided to play every card he had.

  “You still plan to go, right? Even if Mo is really going with this chick?”

  “Of course. Just like I’m going to the play, it’s all to support Nikki above anything else. Even if Mo sees it fit to take her along as a date. It’s too damn bad she can’t tie a fountain to her back seeing as how she’s so damn parched.” She pressed her hand over her mouth to imitate a cough. “Bitch.”

  “You really think he might try something with her?”

  Vanessa’s head whipped in his direction and she glared. “No, Nathan. He’s not you.”

  “He’s not me, but he’s still a man with a dick that probably hasn’t been sucked since you two ended.”

  “You are so fucking disgusting.” She spun away from him and crossed the room. “Mo wouldn’t do something like that. I mean, he would have and did before we got together, but he wouldn’t now. Not if he thinks that there might be a chance for us to make things right, and better.”