“I just know how relationships can be. And, we need to be honest with ourselves and admit that this relationship may be a difficult one. I hope we’ll be able to work through our differences and the backlash of your relationship with Jaylin may have some affects.”
Shane was more man than I’d ever had before. And even though I still had some feelings for Jaylin, Shane was causing me to forget about him. For the last several weeks, I had. I also realized that had Jaylin’s and my love-hate relationship somehow managed to work itself out, I would have never known what it felt like to be with a man of Shane’s caliber. He was the bomb.
Cedric buzzed back and informed Shane that we were only five minutes away from our destination. We hurried to put on our clothes and laughed about the mess we’d made. As Cedric parked the limousine, I was sliding up my panties and Shane was stepping into his shoes. When the door came open, I was fully dressed and waited to see what else the night had in store for me.
Shane stepped out first and reached for my hand to help me. As I looked around, I hadn’t a clue where we were. There was nothing but a brick building to the left and a whole lot of land with a fence around it. I couldn’t see what was further out in the grassy covered area because it was too dark.
“What is this?” I asked.
Shane reached in his pocket. He pulled out a blindfold. “You’ll see in a minute.”
I didn’t want my eyes covered, but trying not to be a pain, I went with the flow. Shane took my hand and told Cedric we’d be back within an hour or so. We walked off and I felt nervous about not being able to see. Soon, I heard another voice and Shane asked the other person if everything was ready. We walked for about ten minutes and then came to a stop. The wet grass had my ankles itchy and my feet were uncomfortable.
“Step up,” Shane said, directing me to the step in front of me.
I stepped up and he continued to hold my hand. He said thanks to the other person and he replied, “You’re welcome.”
I could feel Shane standing close to me.
“Are you ready,” he said. “And when I remove the blindfold you’ve got to keep your eyes closed.”
I nodded and he removed the blindfold. I kept my eyes tightly closed.
“Okay, now open them.”
I opened my eyes and all I could see again was grassy land surrounding me. I looked up and saw that I was standing in a hot air balloon with Shane and a white man.
“Hell, no,” I said. “This thing ain’t going up with me in it, is it?”
“I’m afraid so, baby,” he said. “In a few minutes, we will be on our way up.”
My mouth hung wide open. “Shane, I am afraid of heights. If this thing goes up, I swear I am going to cry and scream.”
“Just relax, all right? I know you’re afraid of heights, but I want you to overcome your fears. I’ll be right here to hold you, but you’ve got to trust me on this.”
I closed my eyes and placed my hands over my face. “I can’t believe I’m even considering letting you do this. I’ve been afraid of heights since I was a little girl and fell from a balcony.”
“I know. Jaylin told me the story.” Shane wrapped his arms around me and squeezed my waist tightly. He whispered in my ear. “After we take this ride together, this is one less fear you’ll have in life. You’re going to feel safe with me and you’ll know that I got your back. Now, can we get this thing going?”
I removed my hand from my face and nodded. Shane gave the other man the go ahead, and shortly after, the balloon slowly lifted from the ground. He squeezed me tighter as he could already feel my body trembling.
The higher the balloon got, the more my body trembled. I couldn’t even open my eyes and Shane begged me to take a peek. When I did, I could have fainted. I quickly turned around and grabbed Shane around his neck.
I panicked. “Please take this thing down. I’m so, so nervous.”
“Don’t be,” he said, still squeezing me tightly. “Take a few deep breaths to calm yourself down. You’ll be alright, trust me.”
I took a few deep breaths and continued to hold his neck. I buried my face in his chest, while he rocked me back and forth.
“You are missing this amazing scenery,” he confessed.
“Yes, you are,” the other man said.
I wanted to tell both of them to go to hell but I couldn’t.
“Baby, I can see your condo from here, look,” he said.
I hesitated, and then snapped my head to the side. I took a peek and peeked again. It did look as if we were above my neighborhood, but I couldn’t tell because down below looked awfully tiny.
“Are we in Lake St. Louis?” I asked.
Shane and the other man said that we were. After Shane wiped the tears from my eyes, he turned me around and held me close. My eyes were open, and I had to admit, the scenery and atmosphere were amazing.
“I see somebody’s enjoying this,” he whispered in my ear.
“I won’t say all that, but it is nice. What made you come up with something like this?”
“I already told you. Besides, you and I are going to explore the world, baby. This is only the beginning.”
I smiled and truly felt as if it was the beginning of something different. All I could think about was the many of nights I’d fallen asleep in tears, asking the Lord why this didn’t happen or why that didn’t happen in my relationships. I wasn’t sure about my future, but I couldn’t deny my desire to keep Shane in it.
SCORPIO
24
Life was good. I confessed my love to Shane the other day and our relationship was going strong. Leslie and the kids had been gone since last weekend, and since they had so much fun at Disney World, they decided to stay for another seven days.
That, of course, provided me a lot of free time. I spent most of it with Shane, and tried to get Jay’s in order. I had a few issues with the stylists at times, but whenever there was a bunch of women together, nothing went smoothly. We all were well aware of that, so we tried to keep as much peace as possible.
As for my stalker, surprisingly, they’d kind of taken a chill pill. I guess because my number had been changed and everybody knew I’d been thinking about getting a bodyguard. I talked to a private detective about Spencer, but after keeping an eye on him for two weeks, the detective came up empty.
Around noon on a hot and steamy Saturday evening, the air conditioner decided that it no longer wanted to work. Jay’s was burning up and many of the customers didn’t feel like waiting. I’d called a heating and cooling company to come fix it, but the technician was supposed to be here hours ago. Even Shane said he’d send one of his friends over, but as of yet, he hadn’t showed up yet.
Either way, the fans were blowing, hands were waving and sweat was dripping. I wanted to close Jay’s, but the stylists complained about it cutting into their money. To take our minds off the heat, we all did what we knew best and kicked up a conversation about men. Of course, Miss Evil Eva didn’t like that. She felt as if we were overstepping our boundaries by sharing too much information.
“All I’m saying,” she griped. “Is y’all need to learn how to keep your business private. This is not a place for therapy.”
“Like hell,” Jamaica blurted out. “This is a place to talk about whatever you wanna talk about. I am a woman who offer good advice, so why in the hell would anybody pay hundreds and thousands of dollars to somebody who gon’ go home and tell all of your business to other people anyway ? Hell, I’ll listen for free.”
Eva rolled her eyes. “Bernie, hurry up with my hair. I have a funeral to go to.”
“Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact, everybody needs to hurry up. I can’t take this heat anymore, so once everybody in the chairs are finished, I’m locking the doors.”
All of the other customers griped, and so did the stylists. But, I basically had no choice. It was hot enough for somebody to pass out and I’d be facing a lawsuit if they did.
Within the hour, everybody wr
apped it up. Bernie and Eva were the last two out. I closed the door after them and went back to my office to call Shane and tell him to meet me for a late dinner at J Bucks around the corner. He didn’t answer so I left a message.
I grabbed my purse off my desk and headed for the door. As soon as I turned off the lights, I bumped into somebody standing in the doorway to my office. I hit the lights and it was Eva.
“Did you forget something, Eva?” I asked. She had a disturbing look on her face, almost frightening.
“Yeah, I did. I need to talk to you.”
I didn’t feel like listening to her gripe about how unprofessional my place was. “Eva your concerns will have to wait until some other time. I—”
I paused when I saw the gun she had in her hand. She aimed it at me.
“This can’t wait till no other time. Now, get your butt over there and take a seat on that couch!”
Seeing how unstable she was, I went over to the couch and took a seat. I spoke softly. “What’s this all about, Eva?”
She came close to me. “It’s about my twenty-one-year marriage that you helped destroy. You sit around here with your girlfriends and talk about how you’ve fucked my husband so well and joke about it! Bitch, do you have any idea what you’ve caused me?”
I was stunned. The only married man I’d been messing with was Maxwell and I couldn’t believe she was his wife. “Eva, I—I never talked about Maxwell out there. Nobody knew about us but Bernie.”
“That’s a lie. The last time I was in here, you had your trifling ass back here and I had to listen to everybody out there go on and on about how you, Miss Thang, was capable of stealing anybody’s man away.” She laughed and paced around in front of me. “Girl, they bragged on you as if you were some kind of queen or something. And then when I talked to Maxwell about you, he said he’d met the woman of his dreams. Told me to pack up my shit after twenty-one years and get the fuck out.”
“Eva, but he told me that you left him. He said you’d found someone else. I never would have kept it going if I had known—”
She snapped and shook the gun in her hands, still aiming it in my direction. “You knew damn well that he was lying. Of course he gon’ tell you that, stupid-ass horny bitch! But it doesn’t surprise me that you believed him. You, my dear, have caused me headaches.” She pulled the trigger and the bullet went into the wall behind me. I ducked, covered my face and screamed out loud. “Many hurtful days and nights!” She pulled the trigger again and not knowing where it went, I fell to the floor and continued to scream. “And the loss of a man that I’ve loved my entire life!”
She lowered the gun by her side and looked at me crying hysterically on the floor. “Eva, please don’t do this. I am sorry if I hurt you. I never meant to—”
Just then, Shane appeared in the doorway.
“What’s—” he paused and looked at the gun in Eva’s hand.
“Well, isn’t this just dandy,” she said. “Shane, right?” she asked. He cooperated with a nod. She held the gun steady in my direction and lifted her shirt. She pulled out a large envelope and told him to come get it. Shane cooperated again and eased the envelope from her hand.
“What’s this and what’s going on?” he hesitantly asked.
“Open it up,” she said. “While you were away, your bitch decided to go entertain my husband again. She’s been entertaining him for quite some time and I wish like hell you’d get some control over her.”
I watched Shane open the envelope and I dropped my head when I saw his eyes look at the pictures in disgust. I’d known the pictures were taken from the person I’d seen outside of the hotel’s window.
Shane didn’t even look at me. He dropped the pictures on the floor and one of them slid right in front of me. I looked at it and saw Maxwell’s arm wrapped around my waist with his finger inside of me.
“Please, give me the gun,” Shane said to Eva. “As far as I’m concerned, they can have each other. He ain’t even worth it, baby, and neither is she.”
Eva looked at Shane from the corner of her eye and then looked at me. Tears began to pour down her face. “I loved him with everything I had! I raised his children and not once did I argue with him when he came in late at night. I would have stayed with him no matter what, but he didn’t want me no more.” She wiped the snot that dripped from her nose. “I hope you’re proud of yourself. It’s women like you who destroy what God puts together, and for that, heifer, you will pay.”
Seeing that she was about to pull the trigger, Shane rushed up to Eva and grabbed the gun. It lowered in her hand but the bullet still went off. I thought it entered him, but it didn’t. He held her tightly and eased his hand down to take the gun from her hands.
“It’ll be all right,” he said comforting her in his arms. “Trust me, everything will be fine.”
“But how?” she said, sobbing on his chest. “I shot him yesterday and killed him. How in the hell is everything going to be alright?”
I gasped and took a hard swallow. Shane closed his eyes and shook his head. “Let’s just hope and pray that everything will work out for you.”
I cried even harder. It barely crossed my mind as to how much damage sleeping with Maxwell would cause. Never in my wildest dream did I expect for something like this to happen.
I sat up and wiped the flowing tears from my face. Shane continued to comfort Eva, and when he finally looked at me, he whispered for me to call the police. As I got up to do it, he walked slowly out of my office with Eva in his arms.
The police were there in no time. After Shane told them what had happened, they handcuffed Eva and placed her in the backseat of the police car. I was numb and shaken up, so I sat in Bernie’s styling chair and watched.
Once the policecars cleared out, Shane came back inside and closed the door. His hands were in his pockets, his forehead was wrinkled, and he looked over at me with more disgust.
“I can’t do this with you,” he said. “What you did was wrong and I am fucking tired of you using your body to manipulate people.”
“But—but it was over between Maxwell and me.”
“Yeah, now it’s over because he’s probably laying somewhere shot up and dead! It wasn’t over, though, when I was in Florida, was it?”
“I thought it was over between us. I didn’t know that you were going to call me that night, and after I got your call, I left.”
“Was that before or after you fucked him?”
“That never happened. I swear to you it never ever happened.”
“You expect me to believe you, and I just looked at some pictures with his hands touching on you like that? You must really think I’m stupid. Not only that, but look what you put that poor woman through.” He took a hard swallow.
I got up and stood in front of him. “Shane, you have got to believe me. You asked me to trust you, and now, I need for you to trust me. I am truly hurt by what just happened here and I am saddened by what I did to Eva. I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life, but I don’t want to lose you. I need you now more than ever. Please don’t walk out on me. Please.”
He stood for awhile, and then, reached for the doorknob.
“I need some time alone,” he said.
“How much time?” I sadly asked.
“For as long as it takes.”
“Takes for what?”
“To get you out of my system.”
He pulled the door open and walked out.
I couldn’t do nothing but break down again and cry.
SHANE
25
Two weeks had gone by and my life was still in shambles. Business was good, but my heart had been broken into many pieces. Why or how did I ever get myself in this situation? Especially, after I watched Jay go through his ups and many downs with Scorpio and her games. When the crazy shit unfolded with them, I’d always sit back and shake my head. I’d ask myself, why wouldn’t he just leave her alone or vice versa? If they were causing each other so much grie
f, then why? I knew he’d put her through a lot, too, but damn, what in the fuck did I do? Bottomline, I guess my dick just wasn’t enough for her. If it was, then she never would have run to Maxwell so easily. And then to suggest that they’d never done anything that night. I guess my phone call had that much of an impact on her, huh?
The whole messed up thing about it was, I didn’t even have nobody to talk to about this shit. Brandon was catching hell from his brotha’s wife and he already had too much shit to deal with. In the past, I could always count on Stephon, but since I hadn’t spoken to him in over a year, I wasn’t sure if rehabilitation had done him any good or not. Jay, of course, was my best friend, but I couldn’t even call him and talk about the shit because he refused to discuss Scorpio with me. I’d enjoyed myself so much in Florida, and after seeing the kind of love him and Nokea had for each other, that made me want to experience the same thing.
My body yearned to have a woman who loved me like Nokea loves him. She was his joy, his pride, and without her, Jaylin would be lost. He for damn sure knew what she was worth to him, and during my visit, he expressed that to me over and over again.
On the other hand, I deserved to share my life with a woman who loved me, just as much as she loved herself. Someday I wanted a family, too, and was it impossible to have a life free from a bunch of bullshit and drama. I’d never been a cheater to any woman that I knew for a fact I loved. She basically had everything: my heart, body, mind, and soul. How could any woman want anything less?
I’d been telling Scorpio that I needed time. She was being too persistent and called me almost every single day. I hadn’t spoken one word to her because when I asked for time, I expected to get it. She showed up the other night without calling, and I was forced to leave her outside. It broke my heart to see her so upset, but it was time that she learned from her mistakes. In the past, she and Jaylin would argue, fuck, and make up—argue again, fuck again, and make up again. I knew she thought that routine would go down between us too but she was sadly mistaken.
It was obvious that the only thing she’d learned from Jaylin was how to manipulate people with sex, and how to use it to make them forgive you. And as much as I wanted to answer her calls, I couldn’t. That would make me so much like him and I knew damn well that we were different. Eventually, as long as I continued to be the man that my mother, Ethel Alexander, raised me to be, then something good would come along. And if I had to wait another month, another year, or another lifetime, then I was willing to wait until I got exactly what I wanted from a woman.
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