by Kiki Leach
“Then why aren’t you there?”
“This guy that I’ve been dating, Charles--”
“You’re dating someone? Does Alexander know about it?”
“No. That’s part of why I came to talk to you and not my mom because she would just tell him and I wouldn’t have a chance to explain myself. My birthday’s in a few weeks and I wanted to invite him to my Sweet Sixteen and introduce him then. Out in the open in front of my friends is the only time I know my dad won’t flip his shit about me dating. But I won’t get to do that anymore, because Charles and I broke up.”
“Why is that?”
She dropped her arms to the chair and began sobbing uncontrollably. “Because I found out that he cheated on me with some box-bodied bitch in the showers at the school gym!”
Vanessa raised her brows and glanced back at Maurice, who appeared both perplexed and uncomfortable. “Did you actually see this happening?” she asked.
Gina quickly bobbed her head, swinging her hair this way and that. “Someone told me about it and then I went and found them.” Maurice grabbed a tissue from Vanessa’s desk and leaned forward to hand it to her. “Thanks.” She dabbed the tears from her face and blew her nose.
“How long have you been seeing this guy?”
“The last few weeks.”
“That’s not very long.”
She looked up at her sister and sniffed. “How long were you with Nathan before he cheated on you?”
“That was different. Was this girl a friend?”
“I don’t even know her last name – she’s some freshman.”
“And have you known this boy since you were toddlers?”
“Why does it matter, Vanessa? He caused me pain and I’m hurting inside. What sucks is the reason why he did it.”
“Which was what?”
“To be famous. I found out he only wanted to be with me in the first place because you’re my stepsister. He said he read an old article about you and Nathan and Sheila from high school and thought that if I got mad enough, I would spill his name to the press like you did with theirs.”
“Well, that’s tacky and unoriginal – and no matter what anybody tells you, not all press is good press. It’s just bullshit. That being said, I never spilled their names to anyone. They just” – she shrugged – “sort of got out, which I always assumed was because of who we were.”
“You never found out who did it?” Gina asked. Maurice sat back in the chair and looked up at Vanessa with a disconcerting expression.
“I don’t know if anyone ever did anything,” she began, “but it doesn’t matter because what was done had been done and there was no changing it or taking it back.”
“Weren’t you embarrassed?”
“Of course. There were days I didn’t even want to leave the house or get out of bed because I was so mortified over what happened. But what could I have done about it? They were going to learn about it one way or another, so it was probably better that it leaked when it did. Look, if this guy means that much to you, maybe you should tell him how you feel. And if he doesn’t, then just tell him to kick rocks and keep it movin’. If I knew seven years ago at your age what I know right now in this very moment, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time being so damn angry. I’d still be pissed, don’t get me wrong. I just probably wouldn’t be so bitter about it. At least, I’d like to hope not.”
Gina wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and balled the tissue. “I want to make him suffer for what he did to me.”
“Been there. I’ve learned that the best thing that you can do is just tell him to go and fuck himself and then move on. Because it doesn’t seem like this guy gave a damn about you anyway, so why bother giving even a single ounce about him?”
Gina peeked behind her at Maurice. “What do you think?”
“He,” Vanessa interjected, “thinks that I’m right. Right?”
“I think your sister is very right,” he emphasized. “The best thing you can do is move on from this punk. You might actually find somebody better once you finally forget about him.” Vanessa looked aside and smiled.
Gina nodded and eyed them both somberly. “Maybe…” She sniffed and wiped her nose. “So what were you two doing in here before I came in?”
Vanessa craned her neck. “I told you, he brought me lunch.”
“I don’t see any boxes in the trash, and he said he hadn’t eaten yet. Unless…” She raised a hand and pointed at the both of them. She scrunched her face in disgust and leaped from her chair. “Eww.”
“We weren’t doing anything that would warrant an expression like that,” Vanessa replied.
“Then what were you doing?”
“Shouldn’t you be getting back to school before they call Alexander to tell him that you skipped?”
“Fine.”
“Hey.” Vanessa took her by the arm. “You know that you can come and talk to me anytime, about whatever. Even if my door is closed.”
“And locked?” She smirked. “Thanks.” She embraced her sister in a hug. “You won’t tell Alexander I was here?”
“I won’t tell yours if you don’t tell mine,” she replied. They bumped fists and Gina went to the door.
“Bye Maurice.”
“See you, Little Bit.”
Her shoulders sank as she left the office.
Vanessa chuckled. “She’s gonna forever hate you for calling her that, no matter how many different ways you try and say it.” She spun around to look at him as he stared up at her with admiration. “What?”
“I’m just in awe of you sometimes,” he said.
“Stop it.”
“I mean it, V. You’re an inspiration.”
“Now you sound like a Hallmark card.”
“But that was a pretty good line. You think I could make a profit from it?” He got up from the chair and took her in his arms. Samantha came to the door then, souring as she felt she was interrupting an intimate moment between them. Maurice caught her staring from the corner of his eye and backed off. He cleared his throat and smiled at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, cringing from her own discomfiture as she came into the room. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but you’ve had six phone calls from Sheila in the last thirty minutes. I’ve tried putting her off for as long as I can, but…” She handed over the messages.
“What the hell does she want?” Vanessa mumbled, rummaging through each one as they all said the same thing.
“She didn’t say. She only told me it was urgent that you call her back.”
“Yeah, sure thing, because as always that woman is at the top of my to-do list. Thanks.”
She nodded at the both of them and returned to her desk.
Maurice followed Vanessa’s movements as she walked over to her own desk and pulled the trashcan from beneath to toss the messages. “You don’t even care what she has to say?”
“I know exactly what she has to say and I’m one-thousand percent not in the mood to hear it.” She placed her hand on her forehead and he realized her good mood had quickly faded.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Something, V. You know I can always tell when there’s something up with you. No point in hiding it.”
“Alright, um…” She rested her hands at her back and exhaled. “Nathan came by here earlier today.”
He grit his teeth and flared his nostrils. “I should’ve known. What the hell did he want? I thought you said he wasn’t allowed inside the building anymore?”
“He isn’t. But Benita thought he might cause a scene in the lobby if I didn’t go down and see him or if he didn’t come up here to talk to me.”
“So he came up here.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t stay long.”
“What did he want, Vanessa?”
“To talk about Sheila, because she wants to write a few columns for the magazine, pre and post wedding. Apparently they went out to dinner with Eddie and Keisha and sh
e had some kind of stupid epiphany or something.” She waved her hand and turned her chair to sit down. “I told him there was no way in hell I was going to allow that woman to write for my magazine, and about her wedding and marriage at that. There’s plenty of other places for her to go.” She placed her arms on her desk and folded them in.
He pulled the chair from in front of her desk closer to him and sat down. “You don’t seem so sure when you said that.”
She lowered her shoulders and shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just that after talking to Gina, I don’t want my emotions to keep getting the best of me with this whole thing. I mean, the moment he mentioned it and I said ‘no’, I was certain I was doing the right thing, because let’s face it, the woman can’t write worth shit. I saw those English papers before she paid some people to do them for her instead.”
He raised his hand and became solemn. “Guilty as charged.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“The money was good, V.”
“Says the man whose parent’s bought him a yacht for his eighteenth birthday.”
“Yeah, but we had some damn good times on that boat,” he said, reminiscing.
“Mm-hm. Maybe you should bring it back out for the 4th in a few weeks.”
“Is that a request or a demand?”
“A little bit of both.” She grinned. “Anyway, I just want to make sure that what I’m doing in not allowing her to work for me is more professional and not personal.”
“If you didn’t know Sheila from any other woman on the street, would you have hired her to write these columns?”
“After seeing those papers and the misspellings of her own first name from time to time? No, probably not.”
“Then, there you go. That’s your answer. Wedding or not, she’s not good enough to work for you.” He slapped his hands together. “Now that that’s taken care of, I was serious about lunch.”
She swerved back and forth in her chair and looked around her office, wincing. “I’ve got so much shit to do here today, I don’t know if I can.”
“We can make it a quick one, just relax…” He got up to close and lock her door again and went back around her desk, bending down and grabbing the arms of her chair, spinning her around so that she faced him. He fell to his knees in front of her and smiled so wickedly that even though she was sure of what was coming next, she didn’t know whether to fear it or embrace it head on. “I had planned to take you out for something in Midtown. But if you can’t leave, then I’ll just bring everything to you.” He placed his hands on her legs and slid them up to her thighs, pushing her dress up to her stomach. He bent down and reached for her panties with his teeth, pulling them down to her ankles and removing them one by one. He draped his arms around her waist and brought her closer to the edge of her chair.
“Mo.” His name sounded like a melody from a well-tuned violin as it escaped from between her lips.
“Shhh….” He placed his index finger across his lips and gently pushed her legs a part. He moved his face between her thighs, kissing each one, and she placed her hand behind his head to hold him in place. Within an instant of him dragging his tongue across her pussy, stroking every bit of her that was made available to him, she fell into a deep trance and nearly cancelled her last meeting for the day because of it – in part because she suddenly couldn’t seem to remember what it was even about.
As her phone rang, she reached for every button her fingers could find, stopping the sound to keep from breaking concentration and her feelings on what was happening. For twenty minutes, it remained just the two of him as he provided such an immense and inexplicable amount of gratification to her body. It felt like she was on a high that she would never fall from. She came so often that she finally had to stop counting. He may not have had the chance to make love to her just yet, but he knew other ways to drive her absolutely insane – this being the best way imaginable. Once he finished, he promised to leave her with something else to come home to and kissed her until she almost fainted.
During her last meeting for the day, in which she was forced to give a quick presentation at the front of the room to her own employees, she stood with her legs clamped together the entire time, thinking about that kiss and the way he knew how to use his tongue.
Part Six
An hour and a half later, she returned to her office and found a vase filled with yellow roses sitting near the edge of her desk. They hadn’t been her particular favorite since she was in college (she preferred lilacs), but she smiled anyway, convinced that they had come from her mother as a flag of truce. She sat her folder and notepad on the arm of the couch and went over to smell them, picking one out and taking note of the small card that was placed behind it. Her name was sprawled across the front in messy letters. She knit her brows and pushed the rose back inside the vase with the others so that she could open the card. Her eyes glazed over in a downright panic as she read what it had to say:
I need to talk to you. This can’t wait much longer.
She saw Adrian’s name at the bottom and in a fit of rage, immediately ripped the card into the smallest pieces she could and flung them high in the air, watching as they fell to the floor around her feet like tiny snowflakes. She crumbled the envelope between her fingers and leaned over the edge of her desk. She breathed in and out, certain that was the only relief she was going to get as she had no time to make it to the gym for another well needed kickboxing class.
When she heard Samantha’s voice coming up from behind her, laughing and discussing something with another worker before they returned to their side of the room, she tossed the envelope into the trash and picked up the vase, hurrying it out of her office as if her dress had just been set on fire.
Just as Samantha sat down and pulled herself up to the desk to place a phone call, Vanessa put the vase next to her phone and rested her hands on her hips. She was practically shaking, she was so angry.
“Well?”
Samantha grew timid when she saw the harrowing expression on Vanessa’s face and sat up straight in her chair. She stared at the flowers with terror in her eyes and distress in her heart as it thumped against her ribs. “Well, what?”
“Well where the hell did these come from? You’re my assistant, you should know these things.”
Samantha looked closer at the flowers and noticed the card had been removed. She shifted her eyes from left to right as Vanessa’s gaze never left her face. “Where did you find those?”
“I didn’t find them, they found me. I saw them on my desk just a few seconds before you showed back up. Where did they come from?”
“The florist.”
Vanessa clucked her tongue. “Don’t get smart.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Samantha said. “I apologize. They were hand delivered by someone.”
“Who?”
“A UPS man.”
“Alright. Okay. When did they get here?”
She ran her fingers through her hair then nervously crawled them around her throat and exhaled. There was no use in stalling, she knew Vanessa was sure to learn the truth at some point, and that it was best to come from her before anyone else in the building given the circumstances. “If they’re the same ones I put downstairs, then they arrived a little over an hour ago. They came for you when you were…” She gulped. “Otherwise occupied with Maurice in your office. Once I saw who the card was from, I meant to throw them out before you could see them.”
“If you meant to toss them, how the hell did they manage to end up on my desk? I know it can be a bit messy from time to time, including now, but don’t ever mistake it for a dumpster.”
“I didn’t, Vanessa, honest. I don’t know how they found their way back into your office.”
“Someone must have gotten them from the trashcan, then, and placed them on my desk as some sort of sick joke.”
“How could they if no one else knows the truth about them?” She looked aside and tried lowering her voice. “I knew y
ou didn’t want to see them because of who they had come from, but at the same time, I thought they were too pretty and expensive to get rid of. So I decided to put them in the break room to brighten it up a little bit.”
“That’s all well and good, but you didn’t think to remove the card beforehand?”
“I thought I had.”
Vanessa folded her arms over her chest, staring down at the flowers in absolute dread. She was about to ask Samantha another question when she heard a loud bellowing sound coming from the other end of the room, near the front of the glass doors. She turned her head a little and saw Harold next to the watercooler talking with another assistant and the guy who worked in the mailroom.
“Son of a bitch is already starting to make a scene. And friends,” she mumbled as Samantha looked on. When he saw her staring at all of them, he waved the other two men goodbye and headed over. Vanessa spun around. “There are so many different ways we could’ve handled this situation without my mother hiring him. So many.” Samantha eyed her in a peculiar manner, but didn’t question her words. Vanessa massaged her temples and counted to fifteen, hoping to lower the anxious feeling building up that would lead her to strike Harold across the face again the moment he came just close enough for her to reach.
“Can I get you anything?” asked Samantha. “Some water? An aspirin?”
“How about a pint of vodka instead? Or bourbon.”
“I don’t think I have any of that in my desk.”
“I don’t either at the moment, but it’s okay. I’ll buy you some in case of emergencies that arise such as this one. I’m sure you’ll need it at some point, anyway.”
“I’ve been pretty good without it so far.”
“It’s been a few months. Give it three or four more and you’ll be reaching for it quicker than I ever was.” As Vanessa saw Harold coming closer, only stopping a few times to greet other people around her office, she leaned in to keep him or anyone else from overhearing their conversation. “Listen, I hate to even do this, but I don’t have any other choice. I need you to call Adrian and tell him that I will see him. Get me a time, a date, and an address. Make it short, sour, and to the point with this fool as soon as you hear his voice. You do it any other way and he might start to get ideas, and I don’t need any of this shit right now. But the only way that I can stop this from continuing on is just to give him what he wants in that respect. At least, somewhat.”