“Once again, your paradigm is off. A real man is someone who wants an exclusive relationship. A real man is someone who wants to be more than a boy toy. A real man is someone who goes to the source if there’s a question.”
“I don’t need someone who slings allegations at me, Darien. I don’t want to see you anymore. Get out.”
Darien turned and walked to the door. “When you want a real man, you’ll know where to find me. If you want to keep playing the field, then forget it.” And he was gone.
Safire marched over and slammed the door after him, even angrier because he’d gotten the last word. He’d basically called her a slut two times over, and he’d gotten to stroll out as if he was the one who was wronged.
Safire picked up the boxed rose, smacked it against the dining table on her way to the kitchen and flung it in the garbage.
She thought he was getting to know her, but he didn’t know her at all. He didn’t want her to be available to other men, as if she was some kind of trollop just flaunting herself all over the place. He didn’t know if she had feelings for him, as if she’d been seeing him for the past two months just for the sex. That’s what he thought of her. She didn’t need someone like that in her life. Hell, no. That was the end of it.
Come to think of it, she could leave her volunteer work at the Heritage Center at the end of the year. And one of the other law offices doing pro bono work had a paralegal who could do more intake interviews if they needed them, but it was pretty much under control now. By the end of next summer, she would be back in school and wouldn’t even have to worry about that. In fact, soon she wouldn’t have to worry about seeing Darien James at all.
* * *
The next day, Safire packed her things and went over to see her sister. She wasn’t supposed to babysit until Thursday night, but she had called over that morning and had gotten Jeremy, who’d said that he could use some time alone with Angelina over the weekend. Safire hadn’t planned to say anything about Darien, but she wanted the comfort of her sister’s voice.
Now she was heading there to have lunch with the boys so that Angelina could get some papers graded. Then she was going to stay over to help her cousin, Alex, look after Philly. Alex was about to turn twenty-one, and her younger brother was just over seven. Alex could babysit by himself, but Philly had had another seizure last week, so they all wanted to be careful. Alex didn’t drive, so having Safire there with her car gave them all peace of mind.
Jeremy took them to a burger place for lunch. Safire was feeling down and just stared at the juicy piece of meat on her plate. She should have known that they were too different when she found out Darien was a vegetarian who didn’t get out much.
Jeremy chatted about the wedding and honeymoon plans, and he even got Alex to talk a little bit about going to school, which was more than she could do. When Philly was done eating, he took out a little handheld video game that Angelina had gotten him, and he had Safire watch him play.
Lunch kept Safire occupied, which was what she needed. And Jeremy was such a good guy, she found herself feeling a little jealous of her sister. She hadn’t felt that way before yesterday, but now she had no prospects on the horizon, and she couldn’t help envying the good thing her sister had.
After lunch, Jeremy went to collect Angelina. Safire took the boys for dessert and then stopped to let them pick up a movie. Alex also wanted to browse the video games because that’s what he wanted to do—design video games. She asked him if he saw anything he wanted, but as usual, he said no. Safire paid for the movie and got them some popcorn, and then they headed home.
Angelina had already started packing up the home where they grew up, so there were boxes in the corners of every room. The family photographs were gone, and so were all the knickknacks her parents kept in the living room. Her father’s old vinyl records had been boxed, and so had her mother’s china menagerie.
Seeing the old homestead being taken apart made Safire even more melancholy. At least they were keeping the house. After it was gutted and remodeled, which it sorely needed, Angelina and Jeremy were going to rent it out. Safire hoped that the income could put Alex and Philly through school. They wouldn’t have to worry about her. At the same time, her sister probably needed some assistance with all of this, and Safire decided that she could help. She’d be talking to her sister before the week was out. In fact, she’d be back on Thursday to watch Philly again. That might be a good time.
Philly and Alex started playing a video game as soon as they got home. Safire shrugged and pulled out her paperwork. She was almost finished with her applications and financial-aid forms, and she’d be sending them in after she’d had one final look at them. Tonight she read them over for changes and then put them away. She was at the dining table in the kitchen and didn’t want the boys to walk in and find her with the application forms. Then Angelina would know, and Angelina would want to help her pay for school. Her sister had enough on her plate, so that was out of the question.
Safire took a break and got the boys some ice cream. Then she pulled out books for her classes at the Heritage Center. She couldn’t think of the classes without thinking about Darien, and she couldn’t help it when tears stung the corners of her eyes. She wiped them away quickly, wondering what had gotten into her. She never felt this let down by the end of a relationship. But then, she didn’t usually have a real relationship—one that she thought could be going somewhere, and that she wanted to keep.
She wondered briefly if she’d been too quick to get angry at Darien. Maybe she could see why he might worry that she was still seeing other people. Maybe she should have just told him who had dropped her off. Maybe she should be touched that he was jealous and wanted something exclusive. But this logic didn’t sync well. She shouldn’t have to explain who he was as if she’d been caught cheating. She needed someone who knew her better than that, someone who could tell that it meant more to her than the physical. Damn him for being so insecure. And damn him for not thinking more of her.
Safire almost called Camilla, but she didn’t feel like putting her business out there to her friends. Camilla was one of her closest friends, but she had a big mouth. Maybe if her sister was home, Safire could talk to her, but she also hated burdening Angelina, who already had enough to deal with.
She sighed and decided to focus. Her older students were reading a selection of Ernest Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying. Next week was a selection from Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and after that was The Women of Brewster Place and then To Kill a Mockingbird. She liked having the film clips to use, so she was keeping the film-and-literature theme going. She already had her discussion questions ready for Gaines’s text, so she went over those. Tomorrow, she could select clips to show.
The younger class was always harder. This week and next week, they were reading selections from Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters, the award-winning book by Andrea Davis Pinkney. It had beautiful allegorical images by Stephen Alcorn, and Safire got her office to put some of them on disc for her so that she could turn them into a PowerPoint for class. Now she had to figure out how to get the students talking about them—the book and the images. She decided on some vocabulary terms—heroism, symbol, allegory—and worked on her questions for a while before deciding to call it a night.
After Philly brushed his teeth and changed, Safire checked his math homework and then read to him a little bit from one of his schoolbooks. She patted his head as he yawned, almost asleep. Then she turned out his light and cracked his door on the way out.
Since she’d been helping with him more, she’d gotten a real sense of what it meant for Angelina to be responsible for him. It meant being a real, full-time mother.
Safire collected her things and said good-night to her cousin, Alex. She’d be sleeping in her great-aunt’s old room tonight, and tonight this made her sad. Her great-aunt had passed away earl
ier that year, but that wasn’t the reason she was sad tonight. She’d stayed in Aunt Rose’s room before. It was her break with Darien that was bringing her down, and she knew it.
Safire cuddled against her great-aunt’s pillow and felt a tear fall. She wasn’t really a crier, so this was unlike her—as unlike her as when she’d cried that first night she met Darien, and over something as ridiculous as his question about jazz. Safire squeezed the pillow. She missed her mother and her father and her great-aunt.
And she missed Darien.
Somehow this new letdown brought the old sorrows to life again. One bled into the other, and they became an overlapping series of losses.
It felt as if it would kill her when she lost her mother, when the jazz albums stopped playing on weekend mornings. Then when she lost her father, it was as if the music had gone forever. She had steeled herself against those anguishes, had used determination to handle the grief and continue. She’d regained her life, her spirit. But right now, it felt as though these had been sucked away again.
Darien had made her start hoping for something more. Now she was filled with the absence of something she hadn’t fully realized was there—something real.
It was better to keep her eyes on her goals. They didn’t bite you back; they didn’t threaten to break you. They didn’t land you in a spiral of losses.
Safire squeezed her great-aunt’s pillow and then squeezed the remaining tears from her eyes. The sooner she put this behind her and stopped acting like a crybaby, the better.
Chapter 12
Darien wasn’t usually at the Heritage Center on a Thursday evening unless there was extra administrative work that needed to be done. Today, several staff members had met about the upcoming fund-raiser, and since a lot needed to be sorted out, the meeting lasted all afternoon and into the evening. After-school programs were now running, and he had a message for one of the tutors, so he went upstairs to the open labs.
Along the way, he thought he heard Safire’s voice. He peeked through the window of a closed classroom door, and there she was, in front of a class in her usual skirt suit. He would have died if he’d had a teacher that pretty in his day.
She was with a class of students ranging from ages eight to twelve, and she had a projector showing an image on the screen at the front of the room.
“Who wants to start reading the section on Harriet Tubman?” she asked.
Several students raised their hands.
“As we read, remember the questions I’m going to ask. What obstacles did she face, and why does she fit the definition of a hero? How does this image portray her life? These are the same questions I want you to answer next week when you bring your own hero to present to the class. Jason, would you start?”
Jason started reading, and Safire wrote relevant terms on the board.
Soon she stopped him and had another student pick up and then another.
“That’s enough for now. Tell me, how does this image portray Harriet Tubman? Who can talk about the star, the railroad tracks and the tunnel, and the people on her arms?”
Hands were going up all over the room.
“Come up to the front of the room and point to the part of the picture you want to talk about, and then say what it means.”
She pointed to a student, who ran up to the front and pointed to the image.
“The railroad tracks stand for the Underground Railroad,” the youngster said.
“That’s wonderful, Libby.” Safire patted the girl’s shoulder, and Libby beamed. “That’s what we call a symbol—something that stands for something else. The railroad tracks stand for the Underground Railroad. Who can find a passage in the book that talks about the Underground Railroad and what it was?”
Darien turned from the class, perplexed. He knew that they’d found someone to do the children’s reading classes, but he didn’t know it was Safire, and she’d never mentioned it. She seemed great with the kids. She had their attention, and they appeared to adore her.
If he’d known what she was doing, he could have coordinated his art class with her. The kids could have done symbolic images of their heroes to bring next week.
He delivered the note and went back downstairs to find the director.
“How long has Safire Lewis been volunteering with the after-school book-club program?”
“Ah,” Mr. Johnson said. “She started soon after she came to do the interviews for the Legal Assistance Program. She had to get fingerprinted and everything, so it took a couple of weeks, but it’s been... Well, let’s see.”
“How come I didn’t know?” Darien asked. “She’s up there showing slides. I could have coordinated with her.”
Mr. Johnson shifted some papers on his desk. “She wanted it kept quiet. Anyway, she’s just given her notice. She’ll be leaving in a few weeks—at the end of this semester. She’s found someone to take—”
“Why is she leaving?”
Mr. Johnson’s left brow went up into an arch. “I’m not rightly sure that she said. No, just that she was sorry to go but that her colleague would be a great replacement.”
“What time is her class over? Is it one of the four-to-six classes?”
“You got it.”
“Thank you,” Darien said and turned from Mr. Johnson’s office.
Darien suspected why she was leaving—him. And he couldn’t let that happen. He hadn’t meant to run her out of his life, and he sure as hell didn’t mean to run her out of the Heritage Center, not when they needed good people to help staff their programs.
He had another forty-five minutes. He thought about going up to observe her class. He loved seeing her working with the little kids. But he didn’t want to put her off, so he spent the time getting things together for the fund-raiser. When he looked up, it was quarter after six. He gathered his things quickly, hoping that he hadn’t missed her, and went out to the parking lot. The student assistants often waited with the children after class, so she might have gone already.
Darien got to the parking lot in time to see Safire pull off. He jumped into his car and began following her. He couldn’t let her leave the Heritage Center because of their argument. And the truth was that he hadn’t stopped thinking about her in the five days since she’d told him to get lost. These were unrelated, but both propelled him to follow her across North Miami, trying to catch up with her. She drove the way she did everything else—fast.
At first, Darien thought he was following her home, but she didn’t go home. She went to a house just east of Griffing Boulevard. He had to admit that part of his mind was getting ready to get angry with her for finding someone else so quickly, if that was the case.
Safire pulled up in front of a house, and a little boy who had been playing in the front yard came running to her car. She got out of her car with a satchel and a backpack in one hand and lifted the little boy to her hip with her other hand. Darien found a space across the street and parked.
Just then, the man who had dropped her off on Saturday night came out of the house, only he was with another woman, one who resembled Safire a lot but who was a little older and little taller. These two were clearly a couple.
Darien got out of his car and walked up the front pathway to the group. The gentleman took Safire’s bags and then turned to him as he approached.
“Can we help you?”
That’s when Safire saw him.
“Yes, I’m here to see Safire.”
“Darien,” she said, “how did you find me here?”
“I’ve been trying to catch up with you since you left the Heritage Center. You drive like Sandra Bullock in the movie Speed.”
The other two chuckled, but Darien didn’t, and neither did Safire.
“I need to talk to you,” he said.
“Is this him?” the woman
asked Safire on the side, but Darien heard her.
“It was him, but—”
“Maybe you should introduce us,” the gentleman suggested.
Safire sighed and rolled her eyes.
“Darien, this is my older sister, Angelina, and this is her fiancé, Jeremy Bell.”
“This is your sister’s fiancé, the one who dropped you off on Saturday?”
“Yes, and this one—” she tickled the tummy of the little boy she was holding “—is my little brother, Phillip. We call him Philly. And inside is our cousin, Alex.”
“Well,” Angelina said. “I’ve been wanting to meet you. Will you join us for dinner? We’re having lamb. Jeremy cooked.”
Darien looked at Safire, who shrugged and then said, “Okay.” Then she turned to her sister. “He doesn’t eat meat.”
“I’m fine with sides,” Darien said. “You don’t have to go to any trouble for me.”
Inside, Safire put her brother down and introduced Darien to Alex. Then the sisters went into the kitchen. Darien couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Jeremy showed him to a seat on the couch where they could watch the younger brother and the cousin playing a video game. The boys were absorbed, so the two men could talk a bit quietly.
“So,” Jeremy said, “trouble in paradise.”
“Is it that obvious?” Darien asked.
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure where to start. Well, let’s start with Saturday, when you dropped Safire off at her apartment, and she neglected to tell me who you were.”
“I see,” said Jeremy. Then he chuckled.
“Well, some things—like not saying everything that should be said—run in the Lewis family. I didn’t even know that one’s real name until after I tracked her sister down.” He chuckled again. “But I’ll say this. The Lewis sisters are worth fighting for.”
Captivated Love Page 12