Broken Glass

by J. D. Mason

  Terri returned an introspective nod. “Perhaps, but I want you to leave me alone. And I mean it, Lanette. I really mean it.”

  “I know,” she said, her tone filled with earnest. “But I can’t, Terri.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  Lanette shrugged and sighed, gazing out across the yard. “You saved me.” She smiled. “You don’t even know it, but you did. Now, I’m just returning the favor.”

  Terri laughed, “I don’t need you to save me, Lanette.”

  “Somebody has to,” she looked at Terri, scanning her from head to toe. “You look a mess.”

  “Will you get the fuck out of my yard?” Terri yelled.

  Lanette huffed and rolled her eyes. “You try to act like you’ve got your shit together, but you don’t. No actress, not a good one, would move to a place like this on purpose.”

  Tears escaped down Terri’s cheeks. “I’m trying real hard not to punch you in the jaw,” she admitted, rage seething in her veins.

  “You ever feel like you’re in the world but not part of it?” Lanette continued, her gaze drifting skyward. “Like you’re the moon or some distant planet orbiting around everybody else and you try to get close, but you can’t because gravity won’t let you.”

  “What?” Terri asked thoroughly, and utterly confused.

  “I know. Right?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about me, Terri. I’m talking about you. I see you,” she said, pointing in Terri’s face.

  Lanette’s statement, the way she stared into Terri’s eyes, left Terri speechless and begged the question, how do you argue with insanity?

  “I see your fear, Terri,” she said, smirking. But there was no malice in her expression. Surprisingly, and for the first time since Terri had known the woman, there was a softness in her eyes. “I see your vulnerability and your brokenness.”

  “No, you don’t,” Terri muttered in disbelief.

  “Oh, people like me see everything because nobody thinks we’re paying attention… because nobody pays attention to us.” Lanette smiled and placed a warm hand on Terri’s. “You’re really good at hiding your pain, especially from yourself. But broken people recognize broken people. You see it in me, too. Have from the beginning. Haven’t you?”

  A wave of emotion flooded her chest. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe Terri was just tired, but a strange, unsettling kind of kinship suddenly tethered her to this woman.

  “For me,” Lanette said, pulling off her wig, exposing sandy-brown cornrows of her natural hair. “It’s the hair.”

  Terri marveled at her. It looked so real.

  “I choose to hide my pain in hairstyles that change almost every time the wind blows,” she laughed, nervously twirling strands from the wig in her lap, around her fingers. “Most times it works. A new wig, some braids, a pretty fro can make me feel right as rain.”

  That dark madness Terri was so used to seeing in Lanette’s eyes abruptly returned.

  “Other times, ain’t enough hairstyles in the world to lighten my mood, and so I—” She shrugged. “You, on the other hand, hide in the characters you play, especially the one you play every day, believing that she is you.”

  The weight of Lanette’s words resonated and weighed heavily on Terri. Crazy or not, Lanette nailed it.

  “You ain’t that famous,” Lanette continued. “Oh, you’re more famous than anyone here, but you’re no Halle Berry.”

  Terri looked away.

  “Don’t be sad.”

  Terri sobbed.

  “I imagine that it’s always hard seeing your true self for the first time,” Lanette continued. “But then, as soon as you do see her, you kill her off like the rookie cop you played in that television show. I suspect that you have never really lived. Have you? Never truly loved.”

  Terri sat speechless, locking gazes with a crazy woman who had her all figured out.

  “People like you go to the grave, a fraud if you’re not careful.” Lanette draped an arm over Terri’s shoulder. “The only reason you’re broken now is because you’ve lied to yourself too damn long. And that’s okay. Most cowards do. But the shit’s hit the fan now, Terri. Pain does that. It forces you to open your eyes and take a good, long, hard look at the real you and not the fake bitch you’ve been pretending to be. The real Terri is tired of hiding and being fake, and you can’t bury her anymore.”

  Fake?

  “If this is what it means to be real, then you can keep it,” Terri murmured.

  “You say that now, but you’ve needed this,” Lanette gave her a good squeeze. “You needed to wake the hell up and to be you, messy and silly—you, Terri.” Lanette slipped back on her wing. “So, what did happen between you and Luther that got Nick so mad? Details, girl. I’m here for them.”

  Terri never said a word. Lanette was right. Terri had been playing at being Terri for as long as she could remember. The real her had only ever revealed itself in moments, especially since she’d moved here, away from the noise of her disappointments and expectations.

  The real Terri liked being an honorary board member of the Devastation Community Theater Committee and working with Mavis and Lucy and their incredibly great and awful play. Terri liked fixing up this old house, and five-star hotels. She liked Nona and even Roxy, even though she was mad at her. She even, maybe sort of liked crazy Lanette.

  “I loved a man once,” Lanette finally said, adjusting her hair.

  Terri groaned. “I’m not in love, Lanette.”

  “It’s a funny thing about love,” she said with introspection.

  “I’m not in love with anybody.”

  “I didn’t realize it until it was too late.” She looked at Terri. “And he was long gone.”

  Lanette left without saying goodbye, leaving Terri alone with too much to contemplate. Was she in love? With Luther? If she was, then it wasn’t the fairy tale kind of love. That was for damn sure.

  Bad Moon

  “Hey, Nona,” Terri said to her best friend, on video chat.

  Hours after Lanette left, Terri had gone back to packing only to end up staring at empty boxes and getting absolutely nowhere.

  “Hey, girl.” Nona sipped her tea, looking absolutely flawless, as usual.

  Not a hair was ever out of place with that woman. She always managed to look cover model ready.

  “You’re still coming,” Nona probed. “Right?”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  Nona gave Terri the side eye. “But…”

  “But nothing. I’m coming. I need to.”

  Sympathy filled Nona’s eyes. Terri had given her the rundown on losing that part to another actress, but she hadn’t mentioned getting caught by Nick with Luther. It’s the reason she’d called, but now, Terri couldn’t bring herself to even mention it.

  “You just need time, sweetie,” Nona reminded her. “A good, long self-care retreat will do you good, and you don’t even have to cook if you don’t want to… or clean. You’ll have free use of the pool, the gym… the kids.”

  Terri laughed, “Gee, thanks.”

  “And you’ll have all the time in the world to find yourself, whatever that means for you. Terri the actress or Terri the something even better that she never knew she could be because she’s had tunnel vision her whole life. And you’ll get to your happy, T. I promise you.”

  Terri teared up. “My happy.”

  “And maybe when the dust settles, you’ll meet someone nice, dangerously sexy and aloof with everybody except you, who’ll worship the ground you walk on and know martial arts and have muscles like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Powerful enough to slay dragons and beat back silly ass producers who don’t know a good thing when she’s standing right in front of their silly asses.”

  This time, Terri laughed, “Wow. Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, huh?”

  “He’s going to be the shit,” Nona finished. “I can’t wait for the wedding.”

  “Slow your roll, Nona
,” she responded, softly. “I need to get my act together, first.”

  Terri never equated happiness with having a man in her life. The very thought was archaic to her, but a connection had been made with Luther, even if fleeting and forbidden. Enough of one to show her that—yeah—she could get with the idea of being part of a team. Terri shook off the thought.

  “You still there?” Nona asked.

  “I’m here.”

  “Is something else going on that you’re not telling me?”

  Terri smiled. “You doing that best friend mind-probe thing again?”

  “Been doing it since the seventh grade. What aren’t you telling me?”

  Terri had spilled all the beans about her life to Roxy lately, but it dawned on her how she’d managed to keep her oldest and dearest friend in the dark about what had been happening in her life. Why? Because it was okay for Roxy to know how fucked up she was and not Nona, the most perfect person she knew?

  “I met someone,” Terri offered.

  “O-kaaaay,” Nona replied. “Like a romantic someone?”

  Terri sniffed. “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s good. Right? Or no? No.”

  “It’s not—”

  Good Lord! Why’d she even mention it? It wasn’t as if Terri wanted to drudge up the dreadful details of the sordid threesome. Nona had always thought so highly of Terri and if she admitted what happened with her, Nick, and Luther… Besides, Nick was never what he should’ve been, or could’ve been in Terri’s life. She’d tried. Hadn’t she?

  “It didn’t work out,” she stated, simply but not with Nick in mind. With Luther.

  Nona sighed, “If it was meant to be, Terri, it would be. You finish packing and get your ass down here. I’ve got a masseuse, champagne and chocolate waiting here for you to remind you of how beautiful and worthy you are, sis. You deserve all the good things in life, Terri. I wish you knew that.”

  They ended the call with those words ringing in Terri’s ears, convicting her even more than she’d already convicted herself. Nick had been so angry. No, the two of them weren’t seeing each other, but now he knew why. Him knowing was the part she had to find a way to make peace with.

  And what about Luther? Being with him was like slipping on a warm, worn robe and slippers, the perfect fit and comfortable. But the look in his eyes the last time she’d seen him bore through her like hot iron. He’d destroyed the person he loved most in the world, his son, and in doing so, he’d destroyed more of himself.

  A part of her knew better than to reach out to Luther to see if— What? What would seeing him accomplish? Not a goddamned thing. But, Terri got up and got dressed, anyway.

  Every conversation in the room came to an abrupt halt when Terri walked into Luther’s, and every eye in the place fixed on her. Terri scanned the room for Luther, but when she didn’t see him, made her way over to the bar.

  “Hey, Yolanda,” she said, smiling.

  Yolanda turned to Terri, propped her hand on her hip and cocked a brow. Gone was that warm, welcoming, star-struck girl she’d come to know and love.

  “Is Luther around?”

  Yolanda took her time answering, “He’s upstairs.”

  “Thank you,” she muttered, before sheepishly wading her way through the room and heading up the wrought iron winding staircase to his apartment.

  Terri took a deep breath before knocking lightly on the door. Luther, unshaven and unkempt answered, looking like he had just crawled out of a cave. He paused, met her gaze, then turned and left her standing in the doorway.

  Wearing a wife-beater and jeans, Luther made his way to the kitchen, pulled two beers out of the fridge and handed one to her. Terri took it, but she had no intentions of drinking it. He twisted off the cap on his bottle, sat down and finished half of it before coming up for air.

  She sat on the sofa, placed her bottle on the table and leaned back wondering why in the hell she’d come here at all.

  “I thought about calling him,” Terri admitted. “But I don’t think he’d want to hear from me.”

  Luther shrugged. “That makes two of us, Terri.”

  This time next month, Terri would be in Houston, getting a massage and drinking champagne with nothing but sour memories of what had happened here. She stared at Luther, looking old and weathered, beaten, wondering if what had snapped inside him could ever be repaired.

  “What are you going to do, Luther?” she asked, more to herself than to him.

  Luther cut his eyes at her, then looked away. “What I’m doing.”

  Her question had been unnecessary. The wound shared between the two of them was so raw, she knew it’d never close. That magic connection she’d once felt with this man, was severed. Luther was just a man. Someone she used to know.

  “I’m sorry for my part, Luther,” she eventually said.

  Luther believed he should be the one to shoulder all the guilt, but she knew better.

  He finished his beer and stared at the empty bottle in his hand. “I’d never wanted to fix something more in my life than my relationship with my son,” he said, his voice cracking. “I couldn’t go back in time to fix the past, but the future,” he paused. “I could do something about that.”

  For some dumb reason, Terri said something even more asinine. “Maybe you still can.”

  Luther leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. “How much did I want to, Terri?” he asked, looking at her, the light that once filled his eyes, gone. “If that’s truly what I believed, how in the hell could I risk the most important person in my life to mess with you?”

  He was hurt. Luther was angry and defeated, and maybe he didn’t mean for his words to cut so deep, but they did.

  “Mess with me?” she repeated, furrowing her brow. “Is that how you see it?”

  Luther groaned and lowered his head.

  “The part with Nick in it, yeah. That’s a mess.” Terri swallowed, holding back sentiment he didn’t deserve after a remark like that. “But you and me, Luther… When I’m with you, I don’t feel like a mess.”

  “Terri, stop,” he protested, obviously frustrated or drunk or both.

  “My life is a mess. My career is a fuckin’ mess,” she continued. “I never believed I needed what I felt with you until I had it, and so, no, Luther, I will not let you refer to some of the best moments in my whole, pathetic life, as a mess. I won’t let you diminish what I felt being with you; whole, at peace,” she counted on her fingers, “safe, sane, good enough.”

  “Why is everything about you?” he blurted out, glaring at her. “You. Your career. The leading force in your life is what you do for a living, Terri, isn’t who you are. It’s what you do, and I get it. I get that you’ve been better to it than it’s been to you, but when it’s all said and done, you get to get out of here, move past this nonsense, get over me and Nick and focus all your time and attention where it’s always been—on you, honey.”

  Terri couldn’t believe she thought this man was ever capable of rescuing her from herself. “You mother fucker,” she muttered, staring at him like he’d just crawled out of a dirty pond.

  Luther shrugged. “Nailed it.”

  Seeing him now, stripped down to the lowest common denominator of himself, Terri stopped being impressed. “I may be guilty of feeling sorry for myself from time to time, Luther, but I’ll be damned if I spend the rest of my life rolling around in self-pity like a pig in slop.”

  He grinned. “Oh, so now I’m a pig? I’m a pig because I feel like shit for letting my family down, for not being there for my wife and son when they needed me most?” Luther’s bloodshot eyes locked onto hers.

  “Did Nick really mean that much to you, Luther?” she asked, knowing good and damn well she was hitting below the belt. “When you made love to me, did he matter?”

  Luther released another deep groan and lowered his chin. “What happened between us sours in my stomach every time I think about it. It cost me everything—the only thing in the world
that still mattered to me—my son, Terri. Me being selfish. Me being greedy—for you—cost me Nick.”

  “I don’t even know why I came here today.”

  “Makes two of us.”

  The last time the two of them were together, it was as if two galaxies had come together to form one. As wrong as it was, nothing had ever felt more purposeful, more right than sharing bodies and space with this man. But look at them, now. The two of them so destroyed over this trespass they’d spend a lifetime paying for it.

  Terri would tuck her tail between her legs and slither out of Devastation with her shame and her regret, no longer wondering “what if”. She’d dodged a bullet with Luther. But he was a survivor. Eventually, he’d shuck off the humiliation of this fiasco and shave and polish himself up to look brand new again. People in town would always gossip about what happened but not to his face. Nick would slip in and out of town to see everyone but his father, and Luther’s heart would break every time he did. But he’d go on, more convicted than ever to the fate he’d sealed for himself, until he was old and gray.

  Terri hung her head, awestruck by how she’d gotten everything so wrong. Why had she come to see him? What did she expect? Luther reveled in guilt and regret, but hadn’t she been doing the same thing? If nothing else, seeing him now confirmed one thing. She did not want to end up spending the rest of her life living this way. She would not let the past dictate her path forward.

  As Terri started to leave, Luther went back to the kitchen, pulled out another beer, planted himself in that leather chair again and uttered. “Have a safe trip.”

  A hush fell across the restaurant again as Terri descended the stairs. Yolanda glanced over her shoulder at Terri, glaring at her, like everyone else, as she left for the last time.

  Poison Mind

  Unlike Luther, a man driven by passion and right brain thinking, Nick was more like his mother, where logic and rationality ruled. Those two things are what made his profession a perfect fit for him. Weeks had passed since he saw Terri kissing Luther on her front porch.