The Million Dollar Divorce

by RM Johnson

  Her apartment was a modest one-bedroom, located on the South Side of town. Her furniture was cheap, but well maintained; the decor looked more like something that belonged to a college student than a twenty-nine-year-old woman. None of that surprised Nate, for he had seen her place quite a few times before.

  Tori had made herself and Nate fettuccine noodles, with chicken and Alfredo sauce.

  They had eaten at her small dining room table with all the lights off, her portable stereo playing soft music and a single candle flickering between them.

  They had drunk a wine that had a screw-off cap and tasted like spiked Kool-Aid, but it did what it was supposed to after enough glasses, and that was to soothe Nate’s nerves some.

  After the plates had been cleared and stacked in the kitchen sink, the candle, the glasses, and the bottle of cheap wine were taken into the living room. Nate and Tori sat facing very close to each other on the love seat.

  “So, why are you here? Why, after four years, are you sitting on my sofa again?” Tori had asked.

  Nate had known the question would come. “Because I had a conversation with Barry Atkins from upstairs.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Barry’s wife cheated on him, and he doesn’t know why that is. He thinks it may be because he was at work so often, that he hadn’t paid her enough attention. But regardless of the reason, she cheated, and now they’re getting a divorce. I went to his house today to talk to him, and he was pathetic. He talked about how he had nothing, talked about how he was lucky that he never brought any children into this world so his wife couldn’t use them against him, but I know, could tell by looking at him, that he regretted that.” Nate paused to take a drink from his glass. “I told myself that moment that I never wanted to be like him, but something told me that if I continued to allow what’s been going on, that’s exactly who I’d be like.”

  Tori looked confused. “What does that have to do with me?”

  “Tori, how do you feel about me?”

  A look of even greater confusion covered Tori’s face now. She inched back from him some. “You don’t have the right to ask me that question now.”

  “Why not, when I want to know?”

  “Because you just don’t!” Tori said, abruptly rising from the sofa.

  She was angry, and Nate knew it was because of what had happened those years ago, before he met his wife.

  He had hired Tori one week, and the next they were sleeping with each other.

  She was beautiful, and intelligent, and catered to his every desire, far beyond what she was paid for, but Nate knew their relationship could go only so far.

  They saw each other a couple of times a week, having dinner or seeing a show or a movie out, and then afterward, always back to his place or hers for sex.

  This lasted for three months, Nate telling himself he would let it continue until she started expecting things, until she started developing those feelings that women get for a man, that have them seeing themselves in that man’s future. He would continue seeing Tori until that point, and then he would end it with her.

  At about the three-and-a-half month mark, Tori started asking where they were going, how he truly felt about her, and where he saw them in the future.

  Nate tried his best to simply ignore or avoid the questions, because he was truly fond of Tori. He had looked forward to those nights when they spent time together, but the more she pushed, the more he felt pressured to tell her the truth.

  The night of Tori’s birthday, after they had spent the full day of activities Nate had planned for her, after he had given her the tennis bracelet he had bought for her, they had made love. Afterward, the two of them lay together on a bare mattress, their heads at the foot of the bed, the sheets and blankets somehow thrown to the floor during their wild lovemaking.

  Nate was laughing about something, he couldn’t really remember what, a joke he had told her or something, when Tori asked the question again.

  “Where are we going with this?”

  “Tori,” Nate sighed. “Do we really have to—”

  “Yes, Nate.” She rolled up on an elbow to look down onto his face. “We have to do this, because I want to know. I need and deserve to know. We’ve been seeing each other for almost four months now. I love spending time with you, love seeing you every morning when you walk into your office. I just keep asking myself, why can’t we see each other when you go home too?”

  And there it was, Nate thought. She was talking about marriage, or at the very least, moving in together, neither of which he had planned for her.

  “That can’t happen,” Nate said, softly, but loud enough for Tori to hear.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it just can’t.”

  “Nate, I love you,” Tori said, after rolling over on top of him.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “And why not? I do. Don’t you feel the same way about me?”

  Nate pushed Tori off him and was out of bed, picking up his clothes from the floor.

  Tori followed behind him as Nate stepped into his slacks and walked out of the bedroom.

  “Just tell me why. You always tell me that you want to get married one day, that you want to have a family. Why can’t it be me?”

  Having arrived at the front door, his pants on, and now pushing his arms through his shirt and buttoning it, Nate spun around to Tori, and said, “Because it just can’t! Okay. It can’t. Period.”

  Tori stood naked before him. How sad she appeared. All Nate wanted to do was grab and hold her, tell her that he was sorry, but it would only have her believing that there was still a chance for her, when he knew there wasn’t. Knew there would never be…

  Until last night when, faced with never having a family, Nate was certain that this woman, who loved him so in the past, could rescue him from that fate.

  “So I want to know how you feel about me. I want to know if there is still something there,” Nate said.

  “Why do you want to know this now, all of a sudden? I loved you then, begged to be with you, but you wouldn’t allow it, and now you’re asking me how I feel. What happened then?”

  “I wasn’t ready,” Nate lied.

  Tori must’ve known that, for she said, “You can get out of my house. You dump me, and six months later, I hear you are engaged. If you don’t want to tell me the real reason, then you don’t have to. But then don’t go asking me about my feelings.”

  Tori stood by the sofa and turned her back to Nate, as though waiting for him to consider what she had just said, and finally tell her the truth. He had no other choice, even though he knew it might hurt her.

  “When we first lay down together and had sex, I told myself that that was as far as it could ever go,” Nate confessed.

  Tori turned around. “Why?”

  Nate hesitated only for a moment. “Because you worked for me. I was your employer, and regardless of how you felt for me, how we felt about each other, I couldn’t be seriously involved with my secretary. I had just started my business, and it just wasn’t professional, wasn’t right.”

  Tori lowered her head. “I see,” she said, saddened by the news.

  “But things are different now,” Nate said, jumping up from the couch and grabbing Tori by the shoulders. “And they can work if you just tell me how you feel about me.”

  “I don’t feel anything,” Tori said, bitterly.

  “You’re lying. Why have I never heard you mention another man’s name since me, seen anyone come by, heard of anyone calling? I’ve seen how you look at me sometimes. The same way you looked at me when we were seeing each other. I know when a woman feels something for me, Tori, especially you, so why don’t you just tell me?”

  “Why? So you can leave me again?” Tori said, struggling, trying to free herself from Nate’s grip.

  “No. That’s not why.”

  “Then it’s because your wife can’t have your children, and you don’t want to be like Barry from
upstairs. So you want to fuck me, so I can have your kids. Is that it?”

  “Not quite, but something like that,” Nate said. “And if you still feel something for me, we can do that, because I still care for you, Tori,” Nate said, pulling her closer to him, kissing her on her neck and behind her ear.

  “No! Stop!” Tori said.

  “You don’t mean that,” Nate said, and he knew he was right, for he felt the level of her struggle, knew she was strong enough to tear away from him if she truly wanted to.

  “I loved you, but you left anyway.”

  “I know, but that won’t happen again,” Nate said, continuing to kiss her as he quickly undid the buttons on her blouse, then reached behind her and unclasped her bra.

  “Don’t do this, Nate. Please don’t do this,” Tori begged, but Nate didn’t hear her. He felt her body go weak again, and now he knew she wanted him to do this as much as he wanted it to happen, even though she said differently.

  He bent down and scooped her body up, carried her into the bedroom, and laid her across the bed. Nate straddled her, kissing her again on the neck, working his way down, cupping one of her breasts in his hands and taking it into his mouth, sucking it gently at first, then harder, the way she liked it. Nate felt her body respond, heard her moan, noticed her back arching up toward him.

  He worked his way farther down still, undoing her belt, looping his fingers under the waist of her skirt, stockings, and panties, preparing to pull them all down.

  “Don’t do it,” Nate heard Tori say. Her voice sounded weak, in between her quick breathing. “I almost couldn’t let you go last time. Please don’t start this if you won’t be able to finish it. Please.”

  Nate ignored what she said, quickly pulling her clothing down to expose her bare thighs.

  He peeled his clothes off as fast as he could, then stood there naked at Tori’s feet, his hands grabbing her ankles as she looked dizzily up at him. Nate climbed on top of Tori’s trembling body, the tip of his penis hard and heavy, gently grazing her most sensitive parts.

  Tori looked up at him, her eyes half closed. She reached up, grabbed his face in her hands. “Don’t do this if you aren’t sure.”

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” Nate said, then he slid inside.

  Now it was the next morning, and Nate lay naked in bed beside Tori. He had been drinking, but his recollection of last night was not difficult.

  He remembered last night, feeling his body nearing orgasm, remembered crying out to Tori that he was going to come.

  He felt her hands push into his chest, trying to force him off of her.

  “Pull out! I’m not on the pill. Pull out!”

  But Nate just grabbed her tighter, pushed farther into her, exploding in a painful pleasure.

  She was not mad at him, told him that she probably wouldn’t get pregnant, because she had just finished her period, but she told him she would not be some woman on the side, some baby’s mama.

  “I don’t want you to be,” Nate said. “If you’re my children’s mother, then you’ll be my wife.”

  Even though it seemed that she tried very hard to suppress her happiness, Tori was unable. She joyfully screamed out, threw her arms around Nate’s neck, and kissed him all over his face.

  “So how are you going to work all this out with your wife?” she asked him later.

  That Nate didn’t know, actually had no clue about. But as he gently slid his arm from under Tori’s head, trying not to wake her, and finally getting a peek at the clock, which read 6:08 A.M., he realized the first thing he needed to do was get home.

  21

  Lewis woke up with a start, sitting bolt upright in the reclined seat of his car to see a police officer standing just outside it. The cop tapped a knuckle against the window, as if Lewis was still asleep, and not staring right at the uniformed man.

  “Move it along, or get a ticket,” Lewis heard the cop’s muffled voice say.

  Lewis was still not quite awake and looked at the cop as if he could’ve been part of a dream.

  The officer pointed up to a sign, standing on the other side of the car. “No parking zone. Move it, or get a ticket,” he said louder.

  Lewis understood, nodded his head, as he wiped sleep out of his eyes. He raised the driver’s seat back up, pulled the car keys out of his pocket, and tried the old car’s engine. Thankfully, it turned over on the first try, because Lewis didn’t have the money for a ticket. Lewis didn’t have the money for much of anything now.

  Last night after Selena forced him out for a second time in a row, she told him to give her his house key. He reluctantly pulled it from his key ring and handed it over to her. Now he knew she never wanted him back there.

  He had thought about going back to Freddy’s house, but knew the man wouldn’t let him in.

  He had no other friends’ places he could crash at, and the thought of going to Beasly, asking if he could sleep in the barbershop’s break room, seemed like too much of a burden to the man, after he had already loaned Lewis money.

  So last night, Lewis pulled his car to the curb and parked for the night. He reached over the passenger-side seat, grabbed the bag of White Castle hamburgers he had bought moments earlier, and started eating.

  When the cop woke Lewis up this morning, he thought that he had been dreaming. Not just about tossing and turning, trying to sleep in his car with nothing but his jacket to use as a blanket, but about everything that had been happening to him. Everything concerning Selena and Layla, he just knew was a dream, until he was rudely awakened, and it all came back to him.

  So what was there to do now, Lewis asked himself as he drove slowly east along Eighty-seventh Street. He had asked himself this question a million times since last night, and it pained him deeply trying to come up with an answer but never finding one.

  It was because there simply wasn’t one, Lewis thought, feeling a depression start to come over him. He had a job, but it made him no money. His woman no longer wanted him with her, and that wasn’t the end of the world, because, honestly, Lewis could live without her. But she held his baby, and Layla was someone he would not live without. Unfortunately, he had no way of getting her away from Selena. He had nothing that he could use to bargain, especially a huge sum of money, which he was almost certain Selena would maybe consider.

  Something would come to him. Something had to, Lewis told himself, looking up and, just in time, noticing the pickup truck that was stopped at the red light in front of him. He slammed on his brakes, and to his amazement, his incredibly worn brakes caught and held the car immediately, the tires squealing, the back end of the automobile hiking up.

  Lewis saw the eyes of the driver in front of him staring angrily back at him through his rearview mirror, and Lewis mouthed the word “Sorry.”

  He would have to keep his mind on what he was doing, and not worry too much about his problems, he knew, as he slowly accelerated through the now green light, making a left onto Stony Island Avenue.

  He picked up speed to move with the brisk flow of early traffic, and again his thoughts receded back to his problems.

  Of all the places he could’ve seen himself being, of all the problems he could’ve imagined himself dealing with, Lewis never thought that he would find himself in the hell he lived in. He never thought things could be as bad as they were.

  The traffic light a hundred or so yards in front of him blinked from green to yellow, and this time Lewis was paying attention, so he covered the brake with his shoe and applied pressure, but this time nothing happened.

  It had to have been the wrong pedal, Lewis told himself, trying to quickly steal a peek down at the floor; then, realizing it was the right one, he pressed harder onto it.

  Still nothing.

  The car continued to sail forward, past the slowing and stopped cars on either side of him, even though Lewis was now digging his foot as deep into the car’s floor as possible.

  He grabbed tight to the steering
wheel, yelling prayers to be stopped, seeing the halted car’s brake lights in front of him bleed a bright red as he moved quickly closer and closer toward them.

  After the brakes refused to catch, Lewis knew he would crash. All he could do was brace himself for the impact.

  22

  Nate didn’t go straight home. When he pulled himself from Tori’s bed, he had awakened her, despite his efforts not to.

  “You want me to make you some breakfast?” she asked.

  “No. I really need to be going.”

  “Home to your wife, right?”

  Nate, putting on his shirt, stopped in midmotion and stared oddly at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, walking over, wrapping her arms around him. “You know how I get about you. I loved you then, and just like you suspected, I never stopped. I guess I’m just anxious for that part of your life to end, so ours can start.”

  “Don’t worry,” Nate said. “It will. But I have to go.”

  When he got out to his car, he checked his cell phone, and as he had imagined, there were eleven missed calls. Ten of them were from his wife, and one from his brother, Tim.

  Tim lived not far from Tori, so that was the direction Nate pointed his car in.

  When Tim came to open the door, he was wearing a bathrobe, a T-shirt, and jeans underneath.

  “Nate!” Tim said, surprised. “Your wife has been—”

  “Were you busy, Tim?” Nate said, walking past him into the house.

  “No,” Tim said, closing the door and then walking into the living room. “But Monica has called already three or four times asking me where you were at. After a while, I started to wonder myself.”

  Nate took a seat on the arm of Tim’s sofa. He still had on the suit from yesterday, the tie stuffed into one of his pockets, the shirt un-buttoned at his neck.

  “I’ve been here, Tim,” Nate said, coolly.

  Tim looked bewildered. “What do you mean?”