by Simply BWWM
Tamika was grinning from ear to ear when she shared it with them. She only told them the G rated version of it, that he had picked her up and they had gone sailing in his sailboat out to his private island. She told them about swimming in the cove and having a picnic lunch on the beach, and about the sunset sail home to Los Angeles.
They all three swooned, and Danny told her to marry him immediately. He made it clear that he expected to be invited to the private island when Tamika married Shane, and she only laughed and shook her head, telling them that she and Shane were just friends, and that she was in a committed relationship with Maurice.
Every one of them booed Maurice and told her to go for Shane as well. She admitted to them that her sister told her the same thing, and they all fully supported Janet’s perspective on it. That afternoon, while Tamika was at her desk, a package was delivered to her, and Danny was perched on the edge of her desk as soon as it was in her hands.
“What did you get? Who is it from? What is it?” he peppered her with questions.
She laughed at him and shrugged. “You know as much as I do,” she told him, but she had a sneaking suspicion that she knew exactly who it was from, though she had no idea what was inside of it, until the paper came off of the box. The box was aquamarine blue.
“Tiffany’s! Oh honey, it’s from Tiffany’s!” Danny immediately gasped and clapped his hands together. “Oh, open it, please! I love Tiffany’s the most.” He was nearly drooling on the box.
“There’s an envelope!” Jane giggled and grinned as she made her way with Carol over to Tamika’s desk.
Tamika opened the envelope first, just to torture Danny a little. Danny was more anxious than she was about what might be in the wide, flat, blue box. The envelope opened easily and there was a note inside.
‘I had the time of my life yesterday. I can’t wait to see you again, so please come with me tonight, and let’s make this a perfect evening.’
She felt her heart flip over several times in her chest as she looked at the rest of the contents of the envelope. “It’s tickets… they’re to the symphony tonight,” she said quietly as she read the print on them.
“Oh wow… those are the best seats in the house,” Danny said seriously as he read them over her shoulder. “This is from Shane. My god. Honey, if you don’t date that man and marry him, then I will.”
They all chuckled at him, but he looked completely serious. Tamika set the tickets and the note down on her desk. “I can’t go with him to the symphony,” she said quietly, wishing with so much of her heart that she could.
“Of course, you can. You went to his private island with him yesterday. Why not go with him to the symphony tonight? You don’t have plans with Maurice, do you?” Danny asked matter-of-factly.
Tamika shook her head as she thought about it. “No, I don’t. I guess… I guess it wouldn’t really be any different than yesterday, but I don’t feel like it’s the right thing to do. I mean… there’s Maurice.”
They all three groaned at the mention of his name, and Danny nudged her shoulder. “Okay, I’m done waiting. Open the Tiffany box.”
She laughed a little at him and slid the lid off of the box. They all gasped. Inside was a beautiful golden necklace with a diamond pendant in the shape of a heart. The diamond was enormous.
“Marry him! Don’t even wait for him to ask you; you just go right ahead and ask him! Do it!” Danny pleaded and begged of her. She shook her head and ran her fingertip over the beautiful piece of jewelry.
“I can’t.” It was all she said. She was running out of believable reasons why she couldn’t. She couldn’t remember the last time that Maurice had bought anything for her or treated her so well or been so thoughtful or done anything even remotely romantic for her. There was a night and day difference between Shane and Maurice, and she was quickly losing sight of the reasons why she was staying with Maurice, no matter how unfair it all sounded to her in her head.
She put the lid back on the box and tucked it and the card back into the bag that they were in when they were delivered to her. “I have to get back to work.” She was trying to put Shane and Maurice both from her mind and focus on the task at hand, more as a distraction from her romantic life than as a productive effort in her economical life.
All three of her friends spoke about how amazing Shane was and how she should be with him as they returned to their desks. She spent the rest of the afternoon thinking more about customer service than she ever had in her life.
When work was done, she thought long and hard about what she should do, and she realized that the best thing she could do was to go and talk with Maurice. They still hadn’t talked about what they were going to do with the money, or where they might begin looking for a place to move into together.
They needed to talk about all of the decisions that they were going to make, and they needed to do it soon. She felt that if they got it all worked out, then they could move in together, and the sooner they did that, the sooner she would be able to let go of Shane, and the easier it would be on her heart and her mind when the billionaire was no longer there in her life.
She drove to his apartment and noticed that his sports car wasn’t in the parking lot, but she went up to the first floor to see if he was home anyway. When she got to the door, she knocked on the door, and the sound of her knock made her blink. There was something strange about it.
The door opened, and she started in surprise when she saw a strange man standing there. He looked at her expectantly.
“Yeah?” he asked plainly.
“Is… is Maurice here?” She asked, wondering what was going on. Then she looked behind him and saw that the apartment was empty. There was absolutely nothing in it at all. She gasped and walked inside, right past the man who was holding the door.
“Naw, he ain’t here. He just moved out.” The man looked at her curiously. “I think I seen you here before. Did you used to date him?”
“Who are you?” she asked, turning to face him, realizing that the strange sound that she had heard when she knocked was the echo of her knock sounding off the empty walls in the empty room behind the door.
“I’m the landlord. I own this place. You need an apartment?” he asked, looking at her interestedly.
She frowned. “No, I don’t need an apartment, I need to know where Maurice is!”
The landlord sighed and pushed his hands down into his pockets. “You do, huh? Well, he and his girlfriend Lisa moved out of here yesterday. They went to the new place. Bought ‘em a house.”
Tamika’s expression darkened considerably. “Lisa is not his girlfriend. I am. He and I are the ones buying a house and moving in together.”
The man shrugged. “Well, how do I know? She was here with him every single night this week, so I thought she was his woman.”
Tamika felt her stomach tighten into a knot. “Do you happen to have the address where he moved to?” she asked hopefully.
“Yeah, here.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, and then began fishing around in it. He dug out a piece of paper and handed it to her.
“Thank you,” she said dryly as she took the paper and looked at the address. Without another word, she walked out of the apartment and got into her car. It wasn’t long before she was parking her car in front of the house at the address on the paper. There in the driveway was Maurice’s sporty new car.
Giving it a dirty look, she went to the door and rang the bell. A minute later, the door opened, and Maurice was standing there in a brand new stylish suit with a grin on his face that disappeared as soon as he saw her. “Oh crap,” he mumbled as his eyes met hers.
Chapter10
“Oh, crap is right, Maurice!” she shot at him angrily as she stared at him in utter disbelief. “What in the hell are you doing? You moved out and didn’t tell me? What is this place? Are you renting this? Is this the house we’re moving into? You haven’t even talked with me about this. We were going to talk about it
before we went looking for a place, and here you are in some strange house, and we haven’t even talked about it yet!
What in the hell is going on, and why does your landlord think that Lisa Latimer is your girlfriend?” She shot all of her questions at him like bullets from a gun, with barely enough of a pause to catch her breath.
He stood there, still and staring at her for a long minute before he blinked and stood back from the door, holding his arm out in a welcoming move. “Come on in. Let’s talk about it.”
She marched into the house and looked around to find boxes and furniture that she had never seen in the living room, some kind of sitting room or sun room beyond that, and a kitchen and dining room further off.
Turning to face him, she planted her hands on her hips and gave him a sharp look, waiting for the answers to all of her questions.
He drew in a long, slow breath and began speaking in an even tone.
“Well first of all, I did try to call you, but your phone was off; I don’t know if you was out of range or if you had it turned off or what.” He was giving her a look that a scared animal would have if it was trapped in a corner.
She was practically dripping with rage, and she knew he was well aware of it. When he mentioned her cell being out of range, she thought of the island, and realized that it was possible that he had tried to call her while she was there, but then the immediate follow up thought to that came to her. “So, why didn’t you leave a voicemail for me or send me a text?”
“I was busy! Look, I know things have been crazy between us, and things weren’t so good last time I saw you.” He sounded as if he was trying to gloss over the last time that they had seen each other.
“You were screwing two women the last time I saw you, and you threw me out of your apartment so that you could keep going on screwing them!” she shouted at him. She had the barest control of her anger at that moment.
He nodded. “Yeah, well we talked about that. I told you why I was doing that, because you had been off with that rich guy and screwed him four times, and I was looking to get even, and that was all. So, I done it, I got even; we’re fair and square now, and I ain’t doin anymore women. Just them. Just that one night.”
She ground her teeth and narrowed her eyes at him. She knew that he was justified, and she didn’t dare mention that she had been with Shane a second time, but she hated that he had done it all the same.
“What about what your landlord said about Lisa being at your apartment every night?” she shot back at him.
He shook his head and looked away. “He’s lying. She was only over that one time. I don’t know why he’s lying, but he is. She ain’t been over every night.”
She didn’t know if she believed him, but she chose to let it go. She had her own secret rendezvous to hide, and she didn’t feel that she could rightfully judge him about his. “What about this house? What in the hell is going on with this house?”
He held his hands up between them defensively. “Listen, that was why I tried to call you, and I couldn’t get through to you. I found this place, and it’s a great place. There’s a pool in the back yard. Except it was about to be sold, and there were these other people bidding on the house too, and I had to act fast or lose it. That’s all. I just had to jump if I was going to get it, so I did. I love the house. I figure you would love it too. It has a pool in the back yard!” He grinned happily about it.
“You said that.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “So, you just went out and bought a house like that, just in a split second, without even asking me or showing me or telling me about it, and then once you did buy it, you still didn’t say a word to me about it?” Her anger was building and growing with every passing moment.
“Yeah, well, like I said, I had to jump on it fast to make it work.” He sighed and shrugged. “So, I got it. I wanted it.”
“You wanted it. Well, I guess as long as one of us wanted it, and one of us can be happy, then that’s fine.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Well, and I was going to tell you about it, but I been so busy moving in here, and there been movers moving stuff in, too. Guess I hadn’t found the time yet, but I was going to.” He nodded his head assuredly.
She lowered her voice. “You hadn’t found time to tell me that you bought a house and you were moving into it. That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. What if I don’t like this house? What if I want another house?”
He shrugged. “This is it. This is the house I want.”
She sighed and closed her eyes, covering them with her hand while she tried to calm down and steady her nerves. Tamika drew in a long, deep breath and lowered her hand, raising her eyes to meet his slowly.
“So, I guess I’ll start moving my things in as soon as I can,” she said numbly, wondering how their life together was going to go, now that they were going to be living with each other in a house she hadn’t even seen yet.
His eyes grew wide, and he shook his head, waving his hands in front of him, almost as if he was in a kind of a panic. “No! No… baby, you don’t want to do that. Uh… not yet, anyway.”
Frowning sharply, she tilted her head as she looked at him and crossed her arms over her chest again. “I don’t want to do that? I don’t want to move into a house I just bought unknowingly with my boyfriend. Why don’t I want to move in here with you?” She felt as if there was something going on that she was totally unaware of, and she didn’t like the way that it felt at all.
He raised his brows and smiled brightly as his voice went up an octave. “Oh, well, it’s just that the house isn’t really in great shape yet, and I hired some people to come and do some work on it. You know, some renovations. Some changes here and there. I don’t want you to move in until they done with all the work, that’s all. There’s just going to be a lot of construction work around here and it’s going to be a mess while they getting it all done, and you shouldn’t be around that.
You’d be uncomfortable. Got stuff everywhere. Listen, just wait until they is done changing everything, and when it’s all finished, then you can move in.” He looked hopeful and worried, as if there was something he was feeling uncertain about, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it might be.
“So, you can live here while they’re working on it and renovating it, but I can’t? Is that it?” she asked in a dangerous tone.
He shrugged and waved his hand in the air dismissively. “Yeah, well, I gotta keep an eye on em, you know, just to make sure it’s all being done like I want it, like it ought to be. Make sure they ain’t taking anything they shouldn’t and that they doing what they supposed to be doin’. Manage it. You don’t want to be here for any of that. Just leave that all to me. That’s all man stuff anyway.”
Tamika felt like reaching out and punching him. She had never been so mad at him, not in all the time that she had known him. “I can’t believe you did this.” She shook her head and turned on the spot where she was standing, pacing back and forth a few times as she thought about everything that he had said. She stopped finally and looked hard at him.
“I don’t suppose you could give me a key to the house.” She held her hand out expectantly.
He looked at her open, waiting palm, and hesitated for a long moment. She watched him and then snapped at him again.
“Maurice! Give me a key to our house!” She was glaring hotly at him then, and he raised his eyes from her hand to her eyes and sighed.
“All right, all right. Don’t get mad about it. I be right back.” He wandered off down the hall into the kitchen, and she heard him rummaging around. He returned a minute later with a silver key pinched between his fat thumb and forefinger. His eyes looked doubtful, and he stood before her hesitantly.
“I really don’t think you need this until we get all the work done here,” he said quietly, studying her face.
She reached her hand up and snatched the key out of his fingers. “Well it’s my house too, and we have it because of me, so I want a
key to it.” She tucked the key into her pocket and looked back at Maurice.
He sighed and looked down at his feet for a minute. She felt a slight twang of sadness then, and she softened her tone.
“Maurice, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. We were supposed to do this together! You know I’ve been wanting to settle down with you and move in together with you for so long, and now we’re finally at a point where we can do that, and you go out and buy a house… buy a house without me, and I have no say in it, and I didn’t even know you did it. I had to find out about it from your landlord! That wasn’t the plan at all. We should have done all of this together, as a couple!” She shook her head as a knot formed in her throat.
“This was supposed to be a happy time for us, and it’s just been nothing but ugliness. I can’t stand it. This was supposed to be so special for us!” She looked at him with sad eyes, and he wouldn’t meet her gaze. He only nodded in agreement.