Where I Want To Be

by Maryam Diaab

  “Massai, you are so stupid it makes me sick. I’ve been playing your ass from day one and you let me. I never loved you and, honestly, I don’t really even like you. I used you for what I needed, and now I’m done with you. I was never faithful, and you know what?” she hissed, her face, voice and eyes as wild as an animal’s. “Carlos and I have even had sex in your house, in your bed.”

  Massai resisted the overwhelming urge to wrap his hands around her neck and choke all the oxygen from her body. He felt as stupid and as naive as Eva claimed he was. How could he have been so clueless?

  “I hope Alexis never lay eyes on your ass again. I hope you get injured and never play basketball another day in your life. I will make you regret this for the rest of your days.”

  31

  THE REAL YOU

  “I’m surprised you called,” Kevin said from the couch.

  “Why?” Alexis asked, popping in the Hitch DVD and then sitting on the opposite end of the plush sofa. They had last seen each other a month ago, after their dance class had gone totally wrong. Since then, she had been to her first prenatal appointment and had even seen the little speck with a beating heart during a sonogram. Although she was becoming more excited about the idea of being a mother, she hadn’t told anyone yet. Her family, Kevin and, of course, Massai were all in the dark about the new arrival due in six months. That was the way she intended to keep it, at least for a little while longer.

  “Because since you, Claire and Morgan are back to being bosom buddies, I thought you would kick me to the curb.”

  “Now why would I do that? You have been nothing but a good friend to me, and I really do enjoy hanging out with you. Believe me, we would not be sitting here right now if I didn’t.” Alexis meant it from the bottom of her heart.

  “Yeah, but you know how a woman and her girls are; you and yours are as thick as thieves.”

  “But there’s always room for a lookout,” she said, laughing at her own joke.

  “If you say so. I don’t get the impression that your friends like me all that much.”

  “Can you really blame them, Kevin? They know all about your wife and kids and how you were less than honest with me. They are my friends and are just trying to protect me.”

  “Seems to me like they should worry a little less about you and a little more about themselves.”

  “Well, I think you and I should change the subject before you offend me.” Alexis was half-joking and half-serious.

  “Okay, okay. I see you’re over your little illness. What did you have?” he asked, glad to change the subject, not wanting to upset her by talking negatively about her friends.

  “Just a forty-eight-hour stomach flu. How is work going?” She wanted to change the subject again. The last thing she intended to do was discuss her “flu” with him.

  “Stressful. With the mayor having a scandal every week, I don’t get more than three hours of sleep at a time. Every five minutes it’s something else—drugs, prostitutes…you know he’s not going to be reelected?”

  “Well, I think that a lot of it is the media hyping stuff.” She paused and looked at the television screen. “I hate to be predictable, but can we change the subject again?”

  “Okay, I know what we can talk about,” he said, his voice changing as he slid closer to her.

  She looked at him strangely. “Do you mind?” she asked, deadly serious. He was invading her personal space.

  “Look, Alexis, I think we need to discuss where this is going,” he said, taking her hands in his.

  When Alexis told Claire and Morgan that she and Kevin had reconciled and were now friends, they looked at her as if she had gone insane. They both predicted that it would only be a matter of time before he made his move, and she was beginning to think that this was that time.

  “What are you talking about, Kevin? There is no ‘this’ to discuss,” Alexis retorted, snatching her hands away and moving as far back on the couch as possible.

  “I don’t want to be just friends. I want what we had before, but I want it to be better.”

  She laughed out loud. Not only did she find what Kevin had just said to be funny, but her failure to see through his façade once again was laughable as well. It occurred to her that she seriously needed to work on her character-assessment skills. “Are you drunk?” she asked.

  “I am completely sober.”

  “You can’t be. Because if you were you would know that there is no way that we can be anything more than friends.” Alexis slid off the couch and stood in front of the television set, blocking out Will Smith and Eva Mendes.

  “Give me one good reason why we can’t be together?” he asked, coming toward her again.

  “You want me to limit my reasons to one? Have you forgotten what you did to me? How you deceived me?”

  “That was in the past, Alexis, and I’ve changed since then. I want us to be totally and completely honest with each other. I want us to concentrate on our future together.”

  “If you’re not drunk, then you have been smoking some pretty strong stuff,” she suggested, laughing again.

  “So this is funny to you? I’m pouring my heart out to you and you’re laughing.”

  “Kevin, you have to admit that this is crazy. We’re friends, and that’s all.”

  “Look me in the eyes and tell me that you don’t miss us,” he challenged her.

  She did as he asked and looked him in the eyes. Alexis remembered all the great times they shared as a couple, but those times couldn’t compare to the memory of what she and Massai shared in their short time together. He was the man she really missed, the man she really loved.

  “Kevin, without even rehashing all the horrible lies you told to keep our relationship afloat, we can never be because I still have feelings for Massai.” Admitting out loud that she still felt things for Massai other than hatred not only startled Kevin, but Alexis as well. So telling herself that if she saw him burning on the sidewalk she wouldn’t pee on him to extinguish the flames was a lie. She knew that there was no man she would rather be with. “Kevin, I know I probably shouldn’t have, but my heart just won’t listen to my head.”

  “So you’re going to go back to him? Alexis Hunter is going to settle for being second in command to his baby’s mama?” he said, trying to make her see that Massai was not the man she needed.

  “That’s not what I said. I need to sort through my feelings and depend on myself for a little bit of happiness for a while. But even if I never talk to Massai again, I can tell you one thing for sure, there will never be a ‘me and you’.”

  He stared at her and realized that he was losing to the NBA star again, and he wasn’t even in the room.

  “Listen, Kevin, if being friends isn’t enough for you, then maybe we should just go our separate way—” Alexis was cut off when a set of lips engulfed hers mid-sentence. He grabbed her around her ever-expanding waist and deepened the kiss. She tried to push him away, but his grip and his determination to win her heart were too strong.

  She used her freshly manicured nails to claw at his hands, which were fast making their way under her shirt. Desperate and slightly scared, she bit his bottom lip until she tasted blood.

  “Damn!” he yelled, staggering backward. He raised his hand to his lips and looked surprised when he saw his own blood on his fingertips.

  “I think you better leave,” she said, shaking slightly. She was prepared to snatch up the phone and call the police if Kevin took one step in any direction other than the door.

  Kevin licked his lips and laughed. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a little?”

  “I should have never trusted you in the first place, but I was so desperate for someone to talk to that I overlooked every manipulative and despicable thing you’ve ever done. This time,” Alexis said, walking to the door and opening it for him, “shame on me.”

  32

  WHITE FLAG

  Massai guarded his eyes against the sun as he searched for
Alexis’s car among the cars in her complex’s parking lot.

  It had taken him nearly two weeks after Eva’s confession to decide whether to show up in Detroit and try to convince her to take him back. What other choice did he have? She had not only stopped taking his calls but eventually had changed her phone number as well. Another man would have taken that as a sign that the relationship was over and done with, but he saw it as a challenge. He loved her, probably would all his life, but he wasn’t sure if his love was enough. He was scared that too much damage had been done.

  Recognizing Alexis’s Scion TC, he pulled into an empty spot next to the light-blue car and killed his rental’s engine. Since booking the business-class plane ticket to Detroit, he had been practicing what he would say to her. He wanted his words to be air-tight, leaving no room for confusion. He wanted her to know without a doubt that he was willing to do everything in his power to make their relationship work.

  Massai felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and slipped it out, saying hello after he recognized Malik’s number on the caller ID.

  “I don’t understand why you keep leaving town without letting anyone know,” Malik said.

  “I left you a voicemail.”

  “All that piece of a message said was that you were leaving town for a few days.”

  “Okay…” he said, not understanding the issue.

  “I feel like I’m in the twilight zone or something. If my memory serves me correctly we just had this same discussion a few months ago.”

  “I do remember you saying something similar.”

  “So you finally decided to fly to Detroit and try to talk to Alexis?”

  Massai watched her apartment door and wondered what she was doing inside. “I figured all that going back and forth with myself was just wasting time.”

  “I am going to assume you have the ring, then?”

  “Right here in my pocket. I don’t know if I’ll give it back to her today. I have to see how things go, and then I can make a decision,” he said, squinting his eyes and looking at the door again. This time it opened and a familiar face stepped out onto the landing, licked his lips and straightened his shirt.

  “Are you listening to me?” Malik asked, but Massai could only vaguely hear him; his mind was racing.

  “I need to hit you back,” he said, flipping his phone closed without waiting for a reply from his friend. He watched as the man jogged down the stairs and looked at his rental car with curiosity. Kevin slowed his pace the closer he got to him, and just as he was about to veer in the direction of his own car, the two locked eyes and a look of recognition flickered across his face.

  “Well, well, well. What do we have here?” Kevin asked though the drivers-side window of Massai’s car.

  “What are you doing here?” he stepped out of the car and looked down on Kevin with disgust.

  “I think I should be asking you that exact same thing, seeing that you’re the one making an impromptu visit to my woman. Not the other way around,” Kevin lied.

  “Your woman?’

  “That’s right. See, when you pulled that baby-mama drama and her friends started tripping, I had the only available ear and bed. Life is funny, isn’t it? Your screw-up is my gain, so I guess I should be thanking you right now.”

  Massai stared at him, trying to detect whether or not he was lying. He was getting tired of the drama and sick of people trying to keep him and Alexis apart.

  “Excuse me,” he said, pushing past Kevin en route to Alexis’s apartment.

  “I wouldn’t go up there if I were you,” Kevin said, opening his car door. “Just before we kissed good-bye, she told me how much she still hates you. Do you know she won’t let anyone she knows speak your name? She has all your pictures in a box and it is duct-taped shut. Women can be so dramatic sometimes. Don’t get your feelings hurt,” Kevin finished, hoping that he wouldn’t notice the spot where Alexis had bitten his lip. He got into his car and revved the engine. “My advice to you would be to go home and help the little lady plan the baby shower. I’ve got everything here under control and rest assured,” he said, licking his lips one last time, “she’s in very good hands.”

  He drove away, leaving Massai standing halfway between her door and a rental car with an open ticket back to New Orleans. He knew that there was a chance that Kevin was lying, but he considered that chance to be very slim. If he was lying, then what was he doing coming out of Alexis’s apartment as if he owned the place?

  His heart hurt as he imagined knocking on her door and being told that everything Kevin said was true. He couldn’t take being told by the woman he loved that she hated him and had gone back to her ex-boyfriend. The thought of Alexis and Kevin rolling around in the bed and taking post-sex showers in the exact same spot where he had proposed made Massai feel sick to his stomach.

  Remembering something she had told him when they first met, he slowly walked back to the car, got inside and started the engine. “Sometimes it’s not about giving up, but letting go and moving on for your own good.”

  It was over.

  He needed to move on just as she had. He took one last look at her apartment, put the rental in reverse and left the past to begin his future.

  33

  DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY

  Eva crossed her legs and hopped up and down. She had been waiting to use the bathroom for the past thirty minutes, and she was becoming desperate. The big bush just outside the hall window was starting to look pretty good to her.

  “Would you hurry the hell up?” she called, banging on the door for the fifth or sixth time.

  “Don’t rush me, Eva! You’re in my house and on my time, remember?”

  How could she forget? She held up two middle fingers to her friend Tiffany outside the bathroom door but remained silent. As much as she hated to admit it, Tiffany was right. Since Massai had found out that she was lying about the pregnancy, she was forced to stay with Tiffany and her four badass kids by four different but equally deadbeat dads. Sleeping on the grungy, cold floor and waking up with Captain Crunch cereal in her two thousand dollar weave is what her life had sunk to. And on a daily basis, Tiffany reminded her that Carlos was to blame.

  She hated him more than she had ever hated anyone in her entire life. When Eva left Dr. Warner’s office that day and was forced to catch a taxi to the hellhole Tiffany and her brats called home, she vowed to make Massai pay dearly. But after much thought and careful reflection, and even after he cancelled all her credit cards, sent her car back to the dealership and dumped her clothes on Tiffany’s lawn, she knew that her anger was misdirected. After a late-night weed smoking session, Tiffany had helped her come to understand and accept that it was Carlos who had caused her life to crumble.

  The bathroom door opened and a freshly bathed and fully made up Tiffany stepped out into the hallway. Nearly pushing her to the floor, Eva hightailed it into the bathroom to relieve herself.

  “You know, I got a call yesterday that Carlos was up in The Loft with some hoe?” Tiffany informed her through the crack in the door. She loved drama, and if she wasn’t in one herself, causing one was the next best thing.

  “Girl, Kay and I drove by his house yesterday with a brick on the passenger’s seat. It took all the self-control I had not to throw it through his living room window,” she said, washing her hands and joining Tiffany in the hallway.

  “That’s because you weren’t with me. I would have thrown the brick so far through his window…”

  “That’s because you’re ghetto.”

  “No, it’s because I am not for anyone disrespecting me and telling my business the way Carlos did you.”

  “He was trying to play the good guy. He is just pissed off that I chose something over him—even if it didn’t turn out like I wanted it to.”

  “What we need to do is drive by his house and put that brick to good use,” Tiffany said, smiling mischievously.

  “I don’t think so. It’s the middle of the day, for God’s sa
ke.”

  “So what? All we have to do is jump in my car, roll down his street and chuck the brick out the window. It’s really not that hard.”

  “You’ve done this before?” she asked, frowning at Tiffany.

  “Once or twice,” she answered, attempting to downplay her theatrics. “You’ll be surprised what a woman scorned can come up with.”

  Eva waited by the door while Tiffany told her mother, who doubled as a live-in babysitter, that she would be stepping out for an hour or so.

  While driving to the other side of town where Carlos lived, Tiffany constantly tried to engage Eva in conversation about any and every crazy thing she had done to her past lovers. She learned that breaking windows was just the tip of the iceberg. She realized on the way to his neighborhood that her life was becoming exactly what she had feared. With few job prospects and no savings to speak of, Eva knew that she was mere steps away having no place to go. Of course, Tiffany said that she could stay there as long as she needed to, but she was sure that wouldn’t last. She would bet that as soon as her friend found a new bed buddy and subsequent new baby-daddy she would be out on the curb faster than the speed of light.

  “Isn’t this his street?” Tiffany asked, slowly turning past the white neighborhood watch sign and onto Carlos’s beautiful, quiet, tree-lined street.

  “He lives in the third house from the corner. The yellow one right there,” she answered, pointing. Carlos’s car was in the driveway, and that made her more nervous. She would have never agreed to do this if she knew he was home. “That’s his car right there.”

  “Ooh…Open the glove compartment,” Tiffany instructed, parking her car across the street.

  Eva opened the glove box and an ice pick fell out. Picking up the weapon, she looked at Tiffany in horror. “I am not about to stab anyone.”

  “Pull yourself together, Eva. Do you really think I would tell you to stab him? The ice pick is for his tires. Do you know how much it’ll cost him to have to replace all four tires?”