In addition to all those other things, my man came home to me every night. Whenever I called him, he picked up his phone. Whenever his phone rang when he was with me, he answered it. Of course, that hadn’t always been the case, which takes me back to when I was twenty-five and had first met him. It was around 1997. Everything was all good for the first few months of our relationship, but that’s because we were both starting up new careers and very involved with our jobs. We didn’t spend a great deal of time together, but the time we did spend together was always quality.
For the next couple of months after that, once we were pretty much settled into our new positions at work and our new position in each other’s lives, we started spending more time together. That’s when I noticed that the more time we spent together, the more his pager would end up on vibrate.
“When I’m with you, I just want to focus on you. I don’t want my pager always going off and stuff.” That was the reply Lee had given me when I questioned him about the continuous vibration in his pocket. He’d pull it out and acknowledge it, but then would place it back in his pocket without ever calling anybody back.
“Okay,” I had replied with a smile on my face, all the while waiting for the opportunity to get my hands on that pager. I mean, did he really think I had bought that excuse? Well, if he had at that moment, two days later he hadn’t. I was at his apartment and he was preparing a meal when he realized he was out of an ingredient.
“I have to run to the store right quick. I’ll be back in a jiff,” he said while running out with keys in hand, but leaving his pager right smack on his living room table.
“Bingo!” I shouted, picking up the now very much outdated device. “God is good all the time, and all the time God is good.” And like I mentioned before, I wasn’t even saved back then, but I still knew who to give thanks to. It could have only been a miracle of God that could lead a man to leave his pager behind when he knows darn well he’s up to no good. And no good is just what Lee had been up to.
I went through his pager and found all kinds of numbers and codes; stuff like the “Hello” and the “I Miss You” symbols. I knew these were from women because dudes didn’t do that kind of stuff with each other.
Being the amateur sleuth that I was, I immediately headed to his nightstand drawer because I knew what I was looking for would be there. And so it was; Lee’s address book. I looked through the address book and matched up some of the numbers in the address book with some of the numbers in his pager. Just like I had thought, they all pretty much belonged to women. I recognized some of the names as chicks he had mentioned “kickin’ it with” in the past. So if they were the past, then why were their numbers still in his pager? If they were in the past, then why had a couple of them paged him as recently as earlier that day? Because he was a liar, that’s why.
I figured if he’d lied about that, what else had he lied about? I pouted my way back into the living room and flopped down on the couch in disgust.
All of a sudden there was this flashing light going off. No, not in my head, but on the phone resting on his end table.
“What the heck?” I said as I made my way over to the phone. I looked down at the caller ID screen and, lo and behold, one of the female’s names I’d just seen in his address book was streaming across the caller ID screen. Cell phones might not have been popular then, but caller ID was. A call was coming in, but the phone wasn’t ringing, just lights flashing. I picked the entire phone up, the base and all, without picking up the receiver. I quickly discovered that the ringer had been turned off.
So not only was this fool putting his pager on vibrate when he was around me, but he was turning off the ringer to his land line when he had me over.
“Wow! Really, Lee?” That wasn’t a popular saying back then, but that’s what I would have said if it had been. And that’s what I would have said had I been saved. But it wasn’t and I wasn’t, so those were not quite the words that flew out of my mouth.
I was enraged and not feeling myself anymore, so much so that before I knew it, this word was flying out of my mouth too: “Hello.”
Yep, I had gone and answered that man’s phone.
“Hello,” I repeated, agitated when the caller failed to reply to my first greeting.
“Uh, hello, is Lee home?” the timid-sounding female asked after hesitating.
“No, he’s out at the store picking up something so he can finish up the dinner he’s making me.” I know I was wrong, dead wrong, but remember I was in my twenties and I wasn’t saved. See, that’s the very reason why I know I could never run for president. Being unsaved in my twenties would never be able to stand up to the scrutiny presidential candidates are subjected to. I mean, thank God there wasn’t YouTube and all that stuff back then to prove a lot of what I might be accused of, but still, I’m sure somebody has old pictures and VHS tapes that could have me out of the presidential race quicker than Herman Cain.
“Oh, at the store?” she questioned as if she hadn’t heard me clearly the first time. Still I obliged her.
“Yep, he’s at the store.”
“Oh, okay.” She paused. I gave her all the time she needed to gather her words, because I knew she still had more to say.
“Is this his sister?”
That was logical for her to ask, considering he had two sisters.
“Nope.” I was short. She paused. Again, I gave her all the time she needed to gather her words, because, yet and still, I knew she had more to say; I would have.
“Are you someone he’s seeing?” I guess she decided not to beat around the bush anymore by questioning whether or not I was a cousin, aunt, mother, housekeeper, et cetera. . . .
“Yes, I am. As a matter of fact, I’m someone he’s been seeing for several months now. And you are?”
She didn’t pause this time. She was more than ready for my query as she immediately replied, “I’m someone whose house he just left.”
Now it was me who had room for pause. My brain started churning. When I’d first arrived at Lee’s apartment that evening, he wasn’t there. I had to sit out in my car for a few minutes and wait for him to get home. Once he arrived he’d apologized and blamed work for his tardiness, but now here Miss Thing was stating otherwise.
“Then if he just left your house, then you know he’s not here, right? He’s probably still driving, huh?” Before she could respond I continued. “Is there a message I can give him? Although he might not be able to return your call until after he finishes making me dinner.” I let out a mischievous chuckle. “Make that after I give him dessert.”
She paused, but this time it wasn’t to gather her words. She had no more. “No, no message.” It was a wrap. I’d gotten the “W.”
The line went dead and even though I had the victory over her, I was seeing red.
“That lying son of a . . .” Now how many times do I have to reiterate that I was not yet saved? Hallelu-jerrrrr .
I slammed that phone down and made a beeline to his bedroom. I started rummaging through his stuff like a wild woman. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular this time, just good old-fashioned proof. I was hoping to stumble upon an earring, panties, cards, love notes—proof of just how many women Mr. Lee was entertaining besides me.
I couldn’t have cared less about being caught by him returning home. As a matter of fact, even when I heard him enter the apartment I continued my search. By now I had completed my search in his bedroom and was slinging the pillows off of his living room couch and digging down in it to see what remnants of another chick I could find.
“Musik, what on earth are you doing?” Lee had said to me, entering the apartment with a grocery bag in hand.
“I think the question is what are you doing?” I snapped, picking his pager up off the table and then throwing it at him. Thank God that boy was fast and was able to duck quickly; otherwise, that pager would have split his wig in two. I was on some Kill Bill-ish.
Because now that fifteen years lat
er I am saved, I can’t repeat the rest of my conversation with Lee. The devil himself would have to edit it if he tried to tell it. But what I will say is that Lee and I addressed the situation up until the wee hours of the morning. When all was said and done we’d agreed that we were exclusive and that me having male “friends” and him having female “friends” we’d had past relationships with or had slept with was out of the question. We were officially exclusive. Funny thing was, I, being a woman, had already assumed we were exclusive. After all, I didn’t have any male “friends.”
Once I’d met Lee and knew that he was “the one” I had cut every guy off I had been dating. I mean, I had literally sat by my phone with my address book in hand making calls, ending any type of relationship with the male of the species whatsoever. For some reason I thought the feeling had been mutual and that Lee had done the same. I had settled for better late than never because he had done it that night.
After that episode, I had vowed to never act that way over a man again. I managed to keep that vow for fifteen years, too. But then technology changed and there was more to contend with than breaking into pagers, address books, caller ID, and searching for love letters and cards. Now we have cell phones. And if that isn’t bad enough, some college kid had to come along and make things even harder on women by coming up with some social network site called www.FaceIt.com.
I’d seen on the news once that FaceIt.com had been cited in thirty percent of divorce filings. I never imagined I might become part of that percentage. But will it soon be my reality? What I found after breaking into Lee’s FaceIt page broke my heart. It was now sending me on a much worse warpath than I’d gone on back when I was twenty-five. After all, Lee was just my boyfriend back then. There were no kids involved and no vows. But now I am his wife. Now there are two kids involved. Dang it, there are vows.
Back then I was just out to find proof and confront Lee with it. Now I had found my proof, and instead of just confronting Lee with it, I want to destroy him with it. With the push of just one button that is exactly what is about to go down. I’m about to forward and post information I found on his FaceIt page that will put his lying, cheating self on blast. With just the push of one button, I’m about to reveal to the world who the real Lee is. On the count of three, Lee is going to suffer the same pain and humiliation I’m feeling. The pain and humiliation he was causing me.
One, two . . .
Chapter One
Love at Second Sight
“Excuse me, don’t I know you from somewhere?” Those were the first words Lee said to me all those years ago.
As fine as this chocolate specimen of a man was, at the time I wondered if this dude could have come up with a better line than that? Cats still use this line? As a matter of fact, why would anyone ever want to use that line in the first place? I’d thought. As crude as it may have been of me, and as fine as Lee was, I laughed in his face and continued pushing my cart up the Kroger grocery store aisle.
He himself couldn’t help but join me in my laughter. “That did sound kind of corny, huh?” He smiled.
Okay, so why did he have the most straight, almost bone-white teeth I’d ever seen? I promise on the moon I saw those little ding flashy things flashing on his teeth. The ones they show on cartoons in order to exaggerate the whiteness of someone’s teeth. They practically blinded me.
“Corny is not the word,” I told him, his smile causing me to smile.
“But for real though, I did see you the other day when you were out.”
I couldn’t believe he was going to insist on riding that line out. I crossed my arms and turned to him, still smiling, all the while thinking, Ohhh, I want to do him. And just let me clarify that saved or unsaved, sinner or saint, that thought would have still been on my mind. I’m not trying to offend anyone, just keepin’ it real. Or should I say, “Telling the truth and shaming the devil.” Keepin’ it one hunnid, though, there was no shame in my game that I was about to play with him, a man who hadn’t yet told me his name. But I wanted to play nonetheless. Hey, a kid knows how much fun a toy potentially has just by looking at it. And I was looking, at him, up and down. I was checking him out from head to toe, but somewhat discretely and with a smile on my lips and in my eyes.
Not a single saved sister in the church today could have blamed me either. Half of them prayed every day that God would place a man like this at their feet. Yet He’d chosen to place him at mine, a chick who only called on Jesus when she stubbed her toe.
“So you saw me when I was out the other day?” My words were laced with disbelief. “And just where was it I was at?”
“Satin Saturday’s. The Ohio Expo Center.” He leaned into my ear, his lips close, but not touching my flesh. “And you were killin’ ’em in that gold and cream floor-length dress. I mean, lady, you were crucial.”
I could feel his breath on my lobe. All of a sudden I had goosies running up and down my arms. I felt him pull away and it was in slow motion. My eyes looked up and locked with his. He winked.
It took me a minute to find my voice. I think it was lost in his eyes. But eventually I did. “I guess I stand corrected, so you do know me from somewhere.” It hadn’t been a corny line after all. It had been the truth.
“And now I’d just like to get to know you . . .” He paused, gave me the once-over, and then finished with, “ . . . better.”
Girl, don’t you let that Kool-Aid Man come crashing out your mouth, I scolded myself, feeling a huge Kool-Aid grin coming on. I immediately got my emotions intact. I could not let this guy know that he had me feeling a certain kind of way after not even five minutes of walking into my life.
“And tell me, Mr. . . .”
“Lee,” he filled in the blank. “Lee Royce Hampton.”
“Oh, you goin’ full name on me.” I chuckled.
“Oh, my bad.” He put his head down and tried to wipe his grin away with his hand. “I guess I’m just used to my moms always calling me by my full name.” He looked back up at me. Was this boy blushing?
“Well, my mama only called me by my full name when I was in trouble. So if you’re used to your mama always calling you by your full name, that must mean only one thing: that you’re trouble.”
“Naw, not me.” He turned away from me again. Yes, he was blushing. I was making a grown man blush. And that was rated G versus what he was making me do.
I decided to take the conversation back to where I wanted it to be. “So, Mr. Lee Royce Hampton, just how do you plan on getting to know me better?”
“Well, I’d like to start by getting your phone number. Next, maybe we can engage in hopefully some decent conversation, then maybe go out to spend some time together to see how we connect.”
Connect? Musik, girl, get your mind out of the gutter. This man could be husband material. I could ruin everything if I were to be too open. Open? Stop it. Talk about the mind being a battlefield. This seemed to be a losing battle.
“You look good.” Did I say that? Did he hear me say that?
“Excuse me?”
“That sounds good.”
“Oh, cool.”
Whew. There is a God.
“So how about you write down my number and call me when you get a minute, then I’ll let you finish getting your little”—he looked in my cart—“Frosted Flakes, grapes, Mike Sells potato chips . . . ?”
We shared a laugh.
“Okay. Sounds good.” Who was I kidding? It sounded greeaaatttt! I was just quoting Tony the Tiger from my box of Frosted Flakes.
I used my grocery list and the pen I had been using to cross out items as I placed them in my cart to write down his phone number. “So when’s a good time to call you?”
“With you, it’s all good.” He hit me with a head nod.
Dang this boy was smooth.
“So, I’m going to head on home . . . and go sit and wait by the phone. I’m expecting an important phone call.” He pulled out his car keys and went to walk away.
Noticing he didn’t have a grocery cart, basket, or not even a pack of crackers in his hands I called out to him. “Hey, but don’t you have to do your grocery shopping first?”
“Nahhh,” he said nonchalantly over his shoulder and kept walking. “I already got everything I need.”
He had me. He knew he had me and in more ways than one.
We’d met on a Monday in the grocery store and I called him on Wednesday, even though I so badly had wanted to call him the same day I met him. I wanted to call him the next day even, but my girl, Trina, said that would make me look desperate. Dang, just looking desperate—I was desperate.
Just so there is no confusion, let me clarify that I wasn’t desperate for a man. I had guys I was seeing, dating, just kickin’ it with, just friends with or whatever people call it. So the company of the male of the species was not an area in which I was lacking. What I was lacking was the kind of instant connection, that fire, chemistry, attraction I had with Lee. None of the other guys could do that for me. None of them had done that for me. That’s what I had been desperate for—the infamous fairytale. And if every woman on the planet was to be honest, she’d admit that she, too, desired the fairytale.
We want that “love at first sight” thing. We want indescribable chemistry. We want that man who made us feel like we were the only woman in the world. From the first moment I saw Lee, I just felt that he could be the leading man in every fairytale I’d ever seen, heard, or read. Only this time it would be my fairytale . . . come true.
After three days of talking on the phone, getting to know the basics about one another, Lee finally asked me out. It was a Friday when he asked me out for a date that following day, a Saturday.
“I’ll pick you up at ten-thirty,” he said after I agreed to go out with him.
“Ten-thirty? Dude, you might as well wait until midnight and make it an official booty call.” I was a little offended.
A Woman's Revenge Page 15