That made Jaime smile. Pleasure’s dick was like a chocolate-dipped banana built to please. She laughed a little to herself. Soon she didn’t find shit funny when she spied the table Antoine led them to. Both her parents and Eric’s decked out in their Sunday finest, along with Father Richardson, were sitting there waiting for them with serious expressions. Her steps slowed but the anger she felt shot through her body with a quickness.
Eric stepped past her to pull out one of the two empty chairs directly between her mother, Virginia Osten-Pine, and his mother, Kittie Hall. “Here you go, baby,” he said.
Jaime’s eyes met his. He knew damn well the position he was putting her in, blindsiding her with their parents and his clergy, knowing they all wanted nothing more than to see them reunite. She hadn’t seen any of them since she left Eric.
To her it looked like Eric’s eyes dared her not to give in.
Lord knows it wasn’t the time or the place. “What is this, an intervention?” she said lightly. Jokingly but truthful to her actual thoughts.
“It is a family dinner,” her mother said, her hand crossed primly in her lap. “We are a family joined together by your marriage to your Eric.”
Translation: Your marriage to Eric is not over.
Eric pulled the chair back some more.
Jaime noticed that the caramel skin over his knuckles was stretched thin from his gripping the back of the chair so tightly. But she stayed rooted in her spot as she felt the pressure and the tension and the expectations. It was too much. It was just too damn much. She felt nauseous.
She felt everybody’s damn eyes on her.
Her mother’s disapproval.
Her father’s forgiveness.
Mrs. Hall’s nervousness.
Mr. Hall’s contempt.
Father Richardson’s assessment.
And Eric’s pleading.
It was all too damn much.
I wasn’t prepared for this bullshit today.
There was no way she could get out of this easily. It was too many voices, and opinions, and reprimands against her. Just her. The shit wasn’t fair.
I can’t beat ’em, so I’ll join ’em . . . for now. With a cold stare into Eric’s eyes Jaime forced herself forward to finally take the seat he offered.
When his hands landed lightly on her shoulder she fought the urge to snatch up a fork and dig it deep into his flesh. Slick bastard.
He took the seat next to her at the round table and Jaime felt her dislike for him go up a big notch. As they all chitchatted like this wasn’t the most awkward situation, Jaime tuned them all out.
She thought about rolling over in her bed this afternoon, not at all surprised to find she was alone. Pleasure had left while she slept off a sexual explosion from their last go-round in the shower. It had been a day filled with Pleasure. Her body, particularly her pussy, had felt turned inside out.
“What are you ordering, baby. Your usual?”
Jaime side-eyed Eric. “I’m tired of the usual,” she said to him, clearly speaking between the lines even as she ignored the hunger grumbles of her stomach.
Eric was relentless in his desire to reconcile, but Jaime could no way in hell fathom going back into the prison of her marriage. The role of the perfect wife smiling on the outside while slowly dying on the inside awaited, but she couldn’t play the part anymore.
Besides she found it bizarre that he wanted to reconcile. For the last six months of their marriage he pretended to love her in public, tolerated her in private, and humiliated her in bed.
Her annoyance went up yet another notch when he ordered for her.
Bzzzzzz.
Jaime opened her clutch and removed her cell phone, not missing Eric’s eyes on her movements. A text. She left her cell hidden by her purse flap and opened the message.
I feel like eating UR pussy. U Home?
This 1s on me.
Her heart raced. Pleasure. She wasted no time texting him back, not really giving a damn if Eric snatched the phone and read the messages.
NOT HOME. WILL CALL WHEN YOU
CAN CUM.
That made Jaime’s clit swell with life. As she pushed the cell phone back deep into her clutch, a smile smooth as butter spread across her face. Long night ahead, she thought, as the servers began to bring out the steaming hot plates.
“Let’s bless the food,” Father Richardson said, his round and bald head beaming beneath the track lighting of the restaurant.
Eric forced Jaime’s left hand out of her lap and into his own hand. Her mother reached for her right hand and then pulled Jaime over toward her. “I forgive you,” she whispered in Jaime’s ear. That made her mouth drop open.
Remembering the harsh words and lack of support her mother had for her, Jaime didn’t want her forgiveness. She felt her mother should ask for hers.
Jaime focused back on the prayer.
“. . . and we thank you for the reuniting of your children Jaime and Eric,” Father Richardson said.
Jaime’s head jerked up. The what?!
“With their love, my guidance, and most important Your presence in their marriage I know this union will succeed.”
She eased her hand out of Eric’s and then slid it beneath the white tablecloth to tightly grab his dick and balls.
He grunted in pain and shock.
Jaime leaned in close to his ear, whispering, “If you ever pull a stunt like this again I will castrate you and then feed it to you. Understand?”
He nodded once.
Jaime released him and then stood. Everyone looked up at her. “I’m sorry, but Eric has lied to you all. He lied to get me here. We are not getting back together. We are getting a divorce. Please, please respect that this is what I want and . . . it is what we need. Please.”
Before they could throw holy water on her and begin the tirades, Jaime tucked her clutch under her arm and got the hell away from them and the charade.
As soon as they got home, Kingston was called into the hospital and the last thing Aria wanted to do was sit home alone with her thoughts, her regrets, and her doubts. She grabbed her monogrammed Coach duffel and her keys, and headed out of their spacious Mediterranean-styled home to climb into her silver Range Rover. As she reversed down the paved driveway, she paused and turned her head to look up the street at Jessa Bell’s brick and stone French country-styled structure.
The bitch hadn’t been back to her house in Richmond Hills since her coward-ass message. And Aria had spent many a day and night waiting for the bold bitch to return. “Hmph,” Aria grunted, imagining the Brick City beat-down she so badly wanted to lay on Jessa.
“Dumb bitch,” Aria drawled, checking for traffic before she reversed onto the street.
She needed to confront Jessa. She needed to find out who the tramp had slept with and planned to run away and start a new life with. Aria felt like she needed it more than she needed air and water. She needed to know if all her fears about Kingston were true. Had her friend put him in the corner and forced him to come out?
Aria pounded the wheel in frustration as she cruised at fifteen miles per hour through the winding streets of the cul-de-sac. Richmond Hills was the very epitome of suburban upper-middle-class living, but she saw none of the well-manicured lawns, perfectly maintained homes, and clean streets. For all outward appearances it was the epitome of nothing but happy homes.
“A bunch of bullshit,” Aria muttered, cruising past the security station and through the electronic wrought-iron gates to the world outside of Richmond Hills.
She listened to some classic R&B as she made the forty-minute drive to her mother’s house in her hometown of Newark. Although she didn’t get home weekly like she used to, Aria always felt a different energy as soon as she got into her hometown and began to reminisce on the days growing up in the city. She’d gotten her street smarts from growing up on Sixteenth Avenue, her book smarts from her full scholarship to Columbia University, and her common sense from her mama. All that equaled one b
ad chica not taking no shit.
She floated easily between the roles of the doctor’s wife and the inner-city girl willing to deliver a cussout and a beat-down.
Aria knew she had come a long way from her past to being an award-winning journalist and writer married to a prominent surgeon. She was proud to be a ghetto girl who had fought hard for her dreams. And that’s why it was damn hard to think of life without Kingston. Or a life where she had to swallow him cheating on her.
She didn’t want her happily ever after fucked with. But if she discovered Kingston had cheated with Jessa—or any other woman—could she forgive and forget?
Sighing, Aria turned the Range Rover off Springfield Avenue onto Seventeenth Street. She smiled a little as she passed her old school, South Seventeenth Street Elementary, on her left and Westside Park on her right. Eighteen years of her life were spent in this part of the Central Ward. There were so many memories she would never forget . . . and many she wished she could.
She parked in front of the three-family apartment building where she’d grown up. Aria grabbed her purse and made sure to lock and alarm the Rover before she stepped up onto the sidewalk.
Aria was headed up the brick steps but paused at the sounds of laughter and music coming down the alleyway in between the two apartment buildings. She headed that way, knowing her crazy, tell-it-like-it-is family was in the backyard.
Sure enough her family was scattered about the small yard. Her mother and three aunts were in the middle of the paved backyard laughing and doing the Electric slide.
“All right now,” Aria said loudly, raising both her hands in the air as she rushed over in her Guiseppe heels to join them.
Her uncle and cousins, scattered around the yard sitting in chairs, cheered her on. Heather Goines, an older, slightly shorter, and far curvier version of Aria, winked at her daughter as she rocked her hips down to the floor and then brought her body up with a sassy little kick and a big laugh that echoed from deep within her.
Aria loved her mother endlessly.
Heather was a no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is woman who loved to laugh, to dance, and to help everyone.
Just laughing, dancing, and chilling with her family, Aria was almost able to forget about the troubles in her marriage. Almost.
“I didn’t know you was coming down,” Heather said as they all left the makeshift dance floor.
“And I didn’t know y’all was chillin’ and grillin’,” Aria countered as she hitched her purse up higher on her shoulder before taking a seat next to Uncle One-Eye.
He turned and peered at her through the oversized shades his optometrist had given him thirty years ago when he had surgery on his left eye, a casualty of a car accident during his young and running wild days. “Ain’t seen you in a while,” he said, the smell of his AXE body spray heavy in the air around him.
Aria blinked as her eyes filled with tears. She leaned back from him. “I’ve been busy with work, Uncle One-Eye.”
He leaned over and nudged her with his shoulder. “Your mama brag on you all the time, making all that money and married to that doctor.”
Aria reached in her purse, not at all missing the hint, and folded a couple hundred dollar bills in her palm to slide to him. While in college, it had been her mother and her uncle scraping to send their last so that she had money in her pocket. Now that she made a good living, Aria made sure to take care of them.
“Hot dayum. That’s my niece. Heh-heh-heh!” Uncle One-Eye laughed like he’d won the lottery as he slid the bills into his shirt pocket and stood up to shuffle onto the dance floor.
“Aria, you want something to eat?” her mother called over from the smoking grill positioned by the rear door leading into the apartment building.
“Yeah, Mama.” Aria reached for her cell and dialed Kingston’s cell number and office number. Both went straight to voice mail. That made her stomach nervous as hell.
Was he really at the hospital or was he locked away with Jessa Bell?
Aria closed her eyes at a vision of Kingston’s dark and strong buttocks clenching as he stroked between Jessa’s thighs. His mouth on her breasts. His hands on her body. His words of love whispering in her ear. His seed filling her womb.
Heat filled her chest. It was a mix of anger, mistrust, pain, and complete frustration.
Aria kept calling Kingston’s phone, unable to explain her need to keep trying to reach him. Knowing with each failure to reach him that her emotions were running high and she was likely to go off on her husband, Aria stood up and headed for the alleyway.
“You leaving?” someone hollered out after her.
Aria shook her head and kept it moving up the long alley. Kingston’s voice mail came on again.
Beep.
“Kingston. I don’t know where you are or what the fuck your sneaky ass is up to, but I am not the one to fuck with . . . and you know that. You better call me ASAP or shit ’bout to get real motherfuckin’ hectic—”
“Hey, cuz, can I talk to you for a sec?”
She paused, turning to find her cousin P-Nut standing behind her. Did she ear hustle my damn conversation? What the hell?
“What, P-Nut?” Aria snapped, her face filled with the frustration she felt.
P-Nut pushed her hands into the back pocket of her jeans. “I hate to bother you but—”
Aria ended her call and rammed her cell inside her purse. “I don’t have no money.”
“What?” P-Nut snapped, her round and pretty face filling with anger. “I wasn’t gon’ ask you for no fucking money, Aria. I wanted to use you as a reference on a job application. Damn, why you come at me like that?”
Oh shit. “P-Nut, I’m sor—”
“You get on my damn nerves, Miss High and Mighty Ass, acting like everybody need you and your money.”
Aria went from apologetic to pissed. “P-Nut, don’t front like your ass don’t borrow money. Matter fact you been in my pocket for five hundred dollars for the last five years. Since you took it there . . . hello, here the fuck I am, too.”
“Ooooh my God. Lord help me pay her back that five hundred damn dollars.” P-Nut stomped her foot.
Aria raised her hand. “Amen to that.”
“Hey, hey, hey. What the hell going on?” Uncle One-Eye hollered from the end of the alley.
“Nothing but your niece acting like she better than somebody with her nasty-ass past,” P-Nut snapped, eyeing Aria with a head roll that screamed, “Now what?”
And that brought out the old Aria from the early nineties and not the doctor’s wife living in a home worth a quarter of a million dollars. She swung quick as shit but P-Nut stepped back to avoid Aria knocking her the hell out.
Her mother raced up the alley and squeezed past P-Nut to jump in between them. “Oh hell to the no. We don’t play this fighting bullshit. Two grown women in the alley like a couple of drunks. What the hell?!”
“I’m sorry, Auntie,” P-Nut said.
“I don’t have time for this.” Aria just turned and stalked to her Range Rover. Her mind was on finding out just where the hell her husband was. Not family drama.
“Aria Monique Livewell!”
Aria heard her mother but she kept moving until she was behind the wheel of her Range Rover and headed toward home. I’ll worry about that shit later, she thought, pushing her past and her family behind her as she drove as fast as she could. If she came to a red light, she turned and made her way up another street. She laid on her horn at any cars driving slowly or pedestrians taking their time crossing the street.
She was beyond road rage. She was on a mission to catch her husband in a lie.
Images of Kingston and Jessa laughing it up together pushed her. Kingston denied cheating just as strongly as she accused him. The last thing she wanted was to actually catch the love of her life cheating, but she damn sure didn’t want to be made a fool of by him either.
Pulling up outside Kingston’s brick and stone office building, it was hard to miss the empt
iness of the large parking lot. Aria snatched her cell phone up from the console. Her heart was pounding and the anger she felt was becoming too familiar to her lately.
His cell phone rang once.
“Hey, baby.”
Aria pressed the phone to her ear with one hand and banged on the steering with the other. “Don’t ‘hey baby’ me. I’m at your office . . . where you at—”
“Aria, are you kidding me!”
She raised a threaded and shaped brow at the anger in his voice. She fought the urge to throw her cell phone out the window and then crush it under one of her tires. “Where are you, Kingston?” she snapped.
“Home,” he said, his voice hard and cold.
Negro, please. “Hold on.” Aria clicked over to her other line and dialed their landline house number.
It rang once before it was picked up.
Aria felt relief.
“I’m your husband, not your child . . . and if you don’t cut out all this craziness I don’t know how much longer I’ll be that.”
Click.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Renee’s head was pounding harder than whoever was beating down the door to her . . . to her . . .
She winced as she lifted her head from the carpet and looked around from where she lay sprawled on her stomach. “I’m in my bedroom,” she said, her mouth dry as a cotton field as she came out of her drunken stupor.
Renee remembered grabbing her bottle of tequila and fighting like hell to make it up the stairs to the solitude of her bedroom. In between sitting on the edge of the bed sipping her way to the bottom of the bottle and waking up on the floor was a huge indistinguishable blur.
BAM!
“Open up, Renee!”
She frowned at the sound of Jackson’s voice. Taking a huge breath and mistakenly inhaling a small dust ball into her open mouth, Renee struggled and worked her way up to stand on her bare feet. She pulled the dust ball from the back of her tongue, thinking it still didn’t taste worse than the combo of bad breath and stale liquor.
Mistress No More Page 3