“What?” she asked almost as if she couldn’t believe what I had said. Her face was twisted in a sneer. “Are you fucking serious right now? Chyanne, who was there for you when you found out your ex was cheating on you?”
“April please,” I said and chuckled, although there was nothing funny about the way I was feeling at the moment. “Who was there for you when your parents died? Who was there for you when Jonathon started cheating on you? Who was there for you when you lost your last child? Who was there for your ass when Jonathon walked out and left you? Me. No damn body, but me! Who paid your damn mortgage a couple of months ago? Me. Who paid your car note up for six months so you could catch up? Me. Exactly what have you done for me, huh?”
I was so loud that I scared myself when I realized it, so imagine the look on her face. “I didn’t ask you to do shit for me!”
“You didn’t have to. That’s what friends are for, but you’re too damn stuck on yourself to get that.”
“Bitch please. I always carried your fat ass around—
Before I knew what I was doing, I had slapped her down to the ground and she fell hard. She tried to get up and I slapped her again. Open-handed slaps . . . as hard as I could give her. Tears stung my eyes and I slapped her again for good measure. She started swinging her arms wildly and tried to grab me to no avail. I stepped back and allowed her to get up. She dropped her purse and decided she wanted to come for me again, but I shoved her so hard she fell back against the grill of her car. Her face grimacing in pain as the wind got knocked out of her.
“Get the hell out of my driveway April. I’ve been nothing but a friend to you,” I said through tears and I had to wipe spit from my mouth. “All I ever did was try to help you and those boys and all you’ve ever done was treat me like crap. No more. Get the hell out of my driveway and I won’t say it again. And just for the record, Aric is married. So we both played the fool.”
Too late, I realized my neighbors were looking on. I snatched my purse and keys off the trunk of my car and looked back at April one last time. Tears stained her reddened face and for some reason I felt bad for what I had just done. I had just lost the only person that I had left. I jammed my keys into my front door to unlock it and slammed the door so hard that a couple of vases fell over on the end table nearest the door. I plopped down on the couch and I cried. I cried for both the parents that I had lost; cried for the friend I thought I had . . . a friend that I lost. I cried because, for the first time, I realized that I was really all alone.
I cried myself to sleep and woke up a few hours later to my phone ringing. At first it startled me and I jumped up from my couch like someone was after me. Once I realized it wasn’t my cell phone, I raced to my house phone in my bedroom and by the time I picked up my answering machine had come on.
“Just wanted you to know that when he finished fucking you, I fucked him.”
At first I had to grip my mind around who was on the other end of that message. When it came to me I shook my head and stood with arms folded trying to understand what would make a grown woman play on another woman’s phone. I could hear my cell phone beeping signaling me that I had text messages. There was another message from her. That one telling me to stay away from her husband or she would whoop my ass. I guess she meant like she’d done the last time, right? I laughed to myself and picked up my cell phone. I had several text messages from a number I didn’t know.
I opened the first one and almost dropped my phone. It was a video of Aric and his wife having sex. I didn’t know what to do, or what to say, at first, as I watched her ride Aric as her life depended on it. The only saving grace was that I didn’t look at it long enough to see if Aric was enjoying it or not. I quickly erased it and looked at the next message. It was a picture of Aric’s manhood and he was fully aroused. The message underneath the picture read “I already had the dick for the day, now it’s your turn.” I erased that one and another popped up. The next picture was of her posed naked in the same bathroom that I had been in countless times while I was at his house.
Her body was flawless. She was the standard of beauty according to America. Underneath that picture the message read, “You know you’re no competition so stop playing yourself!” I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or scream and punch a few walls. How did I find myself fighting with a woman about a husband I didn’t know she had? Why was she wasting all of her time sending me things so intimate to my phone? Seeing her and Aric having sex gave me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I mean I wasn’t stupid. I figured that he’d been having sex with his wife, but I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t prepared to see it full frontal. So not only did I have to deal with the fact that he and April carried on a sexual relationship, I had to deal with his and his wife’s sex life being thrown in my face as well.
Aric had such a strong hold on my heart. Don’t ask me why. I couldn’t help who I fell in love with. I figured there’d be plenty who would think that I was dumb for even falling in love with Aric, but the man got into my mind first. He took care of me when I was sick, bought things for me, made me feel special at times. We spent a hell of a lot of time together. Yes, there were times when he acted an ass. There was the time that... that incident happened in his office when Gabe and I went to lunch. Aric didn’t like that so he pulled me into his hide-a-way office and to this day I don’t even know what to call what happened. He’d sat me on the desk and roughly taken me sexually. It wasn’t until I cried out that he was hurting that he stopped. I hated to even thinking about that. Then there was the time he backhanded me across my bed. But, to me, his good had outweighed his bad until his wife showed up and a couple of those times I think I provoked him. Yes, I said I think I provoked Aric at times when he showed his ass. I mean he had told me on several occasions what he liked and what he didn’t like and at times I did things he didn’t like.
I’d missed five calls from Aric. I knew that sometimes he’d stay up late working so I took my chances on returning his phone call. As I looked at the clock I realized I had slept longer than I thought I had. It was a little after midnight. If his wife had answered the phone, I’d already made up my mind to hang up on her. Aric and I had sex the night before and although when I woke up I felt bad about it, I couldn’t deny that it was mind blowing. Aric knew what to say, what to do, and I finally found out what that spot was that everyone kept talking about. I’d found that out the first time I’d had sex with him. I didn’t know what made me go there with him again. It could have been the mood. It could have been because I was horny. It could have been because Aric was so sexy to me and I couldn’t resist him. His body was the stuff that girls like me could only dream of. Or, it could have been because I needed to prove to myself that, no matter what his wife said, he still wanted me. In a sense, I wanted her to feel us having sex so she would know that no matter how many fat bitches she called me, her husband still wanted me.
The phone rang three times. She answered. I hung up. I called right back and she answered again. I hung up again. The next time I called back the phone went right to voice mail. She’d turned his phone off. I smiled and shook my head. If it wasn’t so late I would have driven to his house and used the key to let myself in. Yeah, I was being evil and vindictive, but the woman annoyed me to no end and I was still pissed about her putting her hands on me, threatening to take my child away from me, and about all the mess she had sent to my phone.
With a devious smirk on my face, I dialed the home phone. He answered.
“Hey, you called?”
“Yeah,” he answered.
Either he was sleeping or he was tired. His voice still washed over me and melted my insides.
“What the hell were you doing that you missed my call five times?” he asked me with a little attitude in his voice that made me smile.
“I was sleep.”
“Yeah, right. How’d the testing go?”
“Everything went well. I feel fine.”
“Did they say when the resu
lts would be in?”
I sat down on the side of my bed thinking of how sexy he sounded on the phone. No matter what this man had done, I couldn’t break whatever hold he had on me and I wished like hell I could.
“Didn’t you pay for one to three day results?”
He chuckled a bit and it traveled through the phone through my ear and settled in my stomach.
“Don’t be a smart ass Chyanne. It isn’t becoming of you.”
I heard his wife in the background. “It’s after twelve in the damn morning Aric. What the hell could be an emergency at this time of morning? Is she in labor? Is she having a miscarriage? The fat bitch could have said something when I answered your phone instead of hanging up!”
It was a while before he said anything and I imagined him giving her the same look he gave me when I annoyed him.
“Get the hell out of my office with that shit Stephanie,” he told her.
Something else was said but it was muffled as it sounded like the phone dropped and I couldn’t really hear what was going on. I heard her yell something and then a door slam. There was a lot of noise as he picked the phone back up.
“Hello,” he answered.
“Yeah. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”
“What did you think calling here at this time of night would cause? A party?”
I was silent. I wasn’t expecting him to say that.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said. “I called your cell—”
“Yeah. Don’t worry about it. What’s done is done? Do me a favor and try not to call the house phone unless you really need me.”
My feelings were hurt. “Okay,” was all I could say.
“Call my cell anytime you want. Just don’t call here because I don’t want to hear her mouth.”
So there I had it. That devious feeling that I’d had earlier all but disappeared. He’d put me in my place about calling his home. His wife’s happiness was more important to him than anything I had to say to him. I sat there like a child that had been chastised and picked at my fingernails feeling like a fool all over again.
“Chyanne?”
“What?”
He paused. “What the hell do you have an attitude for?”
“Nothing.”
“What? Now you’re mad at me too?”
I didn’t say anything. I let my silence speak for me.
“So, now you don’t have anything to say to me?” he asked. “The fuck are you mad at?” He yelled and it scared me.
That pissed me off and I hung up the phone. He called back four times and I ignored the calls. To ease my mind and to keep myself from going insane I started to clean. I vacuumed my front room, took a shower, and found a movie to watch. I was too worked up to sleep, had too much on my mind and I was about to make my way to bed anyway since there was nothing else to do when head lights in my driveway blinded me. Wondering who it was I was on my way to look out of the window when I heard a door slam and sat back down. I had a clue as to whom it would be and didn’t even bother to look out of my window like I was going to do. A couple of seconds later Aric shoved my front door open.
“What the fuck you hang up on me for?” he asked as soon as he opened the door and it was so low in his throat that he sounded as if he growled it out. “And then you want to play games and not answer the phone when I call. What the hell is wrong with you?”
He still had on half of his suit from the work day; the black dress pants and a white wife beater, and his eyes were furious behind the black-framed Cartier glasses on his face.
“Apparently your wife was more important to you at the moment,” I said before I could catch myself.
“Don’t you go and start this shit with me ,Chyanne. Too late at night for bullshit.”
“Didn’t you drive over here this late at night for bullshit ?” I countered with a little attitude clearly laced throughout my tone.
He balled his lips, exhaled, and looked pointedly at me. “Got something you want to say, Chyanne? Go ahead and get that shit off your chest and let this be the last time before I have to say something to you that would hurt your feelings.”
I stood with the bowl of fruit I had in my hand and rolled my eyes at him on my way to the kitchen.
“Roll your eyes at me one more time.”
I didn’t respond to the lethal promise of the threat that went unspoken in his tone. Although I didn’t think he would put his hands on me while I was pregnant, I wasn’t going to try and test my theory. I put the bowl of fruit away and walked back to my couch to sit. His eyes were still watching me like he was an eagle watching his prey.
“You drove all the way over here to stand there and look at me?”
Aric scared me at times, but there was a defiance that sparked in me every time I thought about how he’d made me fall in love with him knowing he was married. The thought that he had used me made my eye twitch as we stared at each other. I knew I was seconds away from being snatched off of my sofa but, at that point, I didn’t care.
“Go on and say what you have to say Chyanne,” he snapped at me.
“Who said I had anything to say? You’re the one who barged in here like you had a problem. I don’t have a problem . . . oh, other than the fact that you forgot to mention you were married, had sex with April four or five times, and now I have to deal with being called a fat bitch every time I call your phone.”
I gave a sarcastic half second smile and turned the volume back up on my TV. It was only five seconds before he snatched the remote and turned the TV off. He dropped the remote on the table and stood directly in front of me. I either had to look up at him or stare at his dick in my face. I chose to look up at his face.
“April?” he repeated it like a question and frowned. “We’re back to talking about that bitch now?”
“Oh, now she’s a bitch? She wasn’t that when you were having sex with her!”
“What? I had sex with her once. She sucked my dick once. That’s it. Last I heard she was giving Gabe the same treatment. She didn’t mean shit to me. A quick fuck is all she was and I’ve been telling her the same thing I’m telling you every time she’s called my phone. I’m quite sure I’ve told you this before . . .”
For some reason it made me feel a little better to hear him clarify things about him and April. Hearing her tell me that they’d had sex that many times unnerved me and made me feel as if she would always have one up on me when it came to Aric. So hearing him tell me one more time that she didn’t mean anything to him solidified to me exactly what she’d meant to him, but that still left his wife to deal with.
“And what about your wife?” I asked folding my arms across my chest.
“What about her? Look, I have a wife. You’re going to have to get used to that for now just like she’s going to have to get used to the fact that if this is my baby, you’ll always be around.”
I cocked my head back to the side and looked at him like he was nuts. “I don’t have to get used to anything!”
“You don’t really have a choice now do you? As the mother of my child, it’s imperative that you do. For the time being Stephanie isn’t going anywhere.”
“I didn’t even know there was a damn Stephanie. In the world according to Aric, he didn’t have to mention he had a wife until she sucker punched me,” I snapped sardonically.
“I told you there was some shit that I had to handle—”
“Didn’t say it was a wife.”
He rubbed his left hand across his bald head and then down his face. “So that’s it? You’re mad about the wife.”
It grated my nerves how he made it seem like him having a wife wasn’t a big deal and how he seemed to negate my feelings on the matter.
“I’m mad about being put in the middle of something I had no idea there was! I’m mad because I have to deal with your childish wife sending videos of you and her having sex to my phone, pictures of your penis to my phone, and pictures of her naked to my phone. That’s why I’
m mad, Aric!”
“I get that, but what the hell are you made at me about it for? I didn’t send that shit to your phone and I didn’t know that she had sent it. Get your number changed if it bothers you that damn much. And I can promise you what she sent you of her and me having sex is something old she pulled up on her phone,” he said.
“I shouldn’t have to get my number changed because you can’t control your wife! I didn’t start this mess and I don’t want to be in the middle of it anymore.”
“So what does that mean?”
“That means I’m done.”
I watched as he folded his arms across his chest, his thumb and pointing finger rubbing his chin before asking, “Done with what exactly?”
I knew what he was asking so I was trying to think of a pleasant way to say I was done with him. I couldn’t think with his presence looming over me like he was a menacing giant. I tried to get up and he used his right hand to gently push me back down on the sofa. He leaned forward and both of his muscled arms caged me in, his face so close to mine that I could feel his breath on my nose.
“Done with what Chyanne?” He asked me again.
I felt my head spinning and my heart beating loudly as I looked up at him trying my best not to cower under his stare. His cologne usually turned me on, now it made me nauseous.
“I’m done with this Aric, with us. I don’t want to fight another woman about her husband. It’s not right on any level. I don’t want to be your ‘other’ woman.”
“Who said you had to be the other woman?”
“You made me the other woman when you . . .”
“When I what?”
A shiver ran through me. I’d told him I loved him in a text message, but I didn’t know if I wanted to come out and tell him to his face. He was already making it hard for me to breathe being so close to me. I guess you could call me a sad case because, in that moment, it proved that he really had me shaken. I was afraid to express my feelings in my home.
Tell Me No Secrets Page 10