Jeremy slammed the bags onto the hall table, keeping his eyes on DeShaun. “That ain’t all I got that was yours.”
“What?” DeShaun took a step toward him and squared up. “What did you say?”
“Jeremy,” I said, “everything is cool. Just relax. I’m handling this.”
DeShaun laughed. “Oh, yeah. I thought I recognized your corny face. Man, you couldn’t wait ’til I was out of the picture before you snuck in the back door like the snake you are.”
“I didn’t have to wait long, did I?”
“You also don’t have to wait long for this beat down you’re about to get, if you don’t get outta my face.”
“DeShaun!, Jeremy! Stop it!” I yelled. “This isn’t a who-has-the-biggest-balls contest. Knock it off!” I turned to DeShaun. “Please, just go.”
“Yeah, go,” Jeremy chimed in. “You ain’t wanted around here. You fucked up and you’re out.”
“Stop it, Jeremy!” Why wasn’t anyone listening to me?
DeShaun balled up his fists. “Says who? You?”
They stared each other down. DeShaun, at least four inches taller than Jeremy, looked down on him like a ferocious lion about to tear apart his prey. Jeremy wasn’t backing down either. He stood toe-to-toe with DeShaun, staring up at him like he was about to enter a championship cage battle. DeShaun would probably tear Jeremy apart with his bare hands, but, to Jeremy’s credit, he would come back at DeShaun with every bit of strength he had.
I grabbed DeShaun’s arm and pulled him toward the door. “Go before it gets worse. We’ll talk some other time.”
DeShaun pointed to Jeremy as he headed toward the door. “You are a lucky man, today. That don’t mean I’m not gonna find you.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Jeremy said calmly. “I am lucky. I am lucky enough to be having twins with your soon-to-be ex-wife. That’s how lucky I am.”
DeShaun stopped in his tracks. He turned, looked at me and then back at Jeremy. “What did you say?”
Both men glared at each other, waiting for the other to make the first move. It was only a minute, but it seemed like forever.
DeShaun lunged at Jeremy and both men fell to the floor, beating and punching each other like their lives depended on it—and for one of them, it did.
Epilogue
I didn’t believe it possible, but the other side of the prison gate was even more dismal than the gray, water stained concrete of the outside. I headed toward a guard who opened the gate and led me through to the caged world of anguish and despair. I smelled the faint scent of Pine Sol and fresh paint with wafts of urine permeating through.
Each step down that long, black and white tiled hallway brought on more tears. This was the third time I had come to see him. The first time, I had missed visiting hours by ten minutes and the guard wouldn’t let me through even though I had traveled from Pennsylvania to New York. The second time, he was detained in a surveillance cell. He had gotten into a fight with another inmate and was under twenty-four-hour close supervision. This time I made sure to call ahead first.
“First time here?” the supervising guard asked me. She was young, looking no older than her late twenties.
I shook my head, scanning the immaculately cleaned walls and floor corners. “I’ve been here before.”
“A regular, huh?” We walked halfway down the corridor before she turned and asked, “What’s your dude in here for?”
“Second-degree murder.”
“Oh, sorry.”
We stopped at a heavy metal door with several keyless locks attached. In the top center of the door, there was a square tiny glass window with thick metal bars running down it. She stood on her tippy toes, peeked through the glass window, then banged on the door twice, yelling, “Open up!” She turned back to me. “This is where you get off. The guards will take you the rest of the way.”
There was a loud buzz and then the heavy door swung open. Three guards—two male and one female—motioned for me to come over. The male guard took my purse and placed it onto a scanner. The female guard told me to raise my hands. When I did, she ran a plastic gadget up and down my entire body, front and back.
After her very thorough search, another male guard came up and asked me to follow. He took a key fastened to his belt and unlocked another solid metal door. The guard led me down yet another hall and to another secured door. Before he opened the door, he rattled off a list of rules and then asked if I understood. I nodded. He unlocked the door and I walked through, into a large room with several people sitting in sectioned off cube-like structures. On the opposite side of the bulletproof cube, inmates wearing navy blue jumpsuits sat and talked with their visitor via telephone.
Halfway down the line, I spotted him.
DeShaun’s hair was cut lower and he was smaller than when the trial began. Like the other inmates, he was wearing a blue jumpsuit with neon orange lines running up and down it. His eyes lit up when he saw me.
I sat down across from him and he nodded toward the black, worn-looking phone, fastened to the wall of my cube.
“Hey, Mimi,” he said, when I picked up the phone. “You’re looking good. You’re letting your hair grow, huh? It suits you.”
“You look good, too.”
“Thanks.”
Our eyes connected. We were trying to read each other, trying to find that connection that we held for so long. On my way here, I had a million things to say and to ask. Now I couldn’t think of one.
“How’s baby Mia?” he finally asked.
“She’s getting so big,” I told him. “I’m having her second birthday party next week.” I thought of the picture so I reached for my purse, but then remembered I had to leave it at the guard station. “I’ll send you a picture of her.”
He looked disappointed. “Good. I’ll look for it.”
“How are you doing?”
He smiled weakly. “The best I can. How about you?”
“Good. It’s been rough. I think of Mia’s sister often.”
DeShaun shook his head. “I’m so sorry that you lost the twin. So much bad happened that night. I wish I could—”
“Don’t worry about it,” I interrupted. I never wanted to think about that night ever again, but I did often. It wasn’t as frequent, but I still had reoccurring nightmares about Jeremy lying on the floor in a pool of his blood.
“I came today to let you know that Mia and I are moving back to Atlanta next week to be with my mother,” I told him.
“Is she still sick?”
“You know my mother. She says it’s not too bad, but doctors tell me different.”
“Sorry to hear that,” DeShaun said. “That means you and Mia are going to be farther from me.”
I nodded. “That may be best for awhile.”
“Are you ever going to bring her for a visit?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Not right now.”
He nodded. “I understand. Will you ever tell her the truth?”
I sighed. “I suppose, when she gets older.”
I looked into his eyes, still searching. It pained me to see him hurt like this. When I relocated, he would have no one to visit him. But, I had no choice. I had to take care of my mother and my baby. I had to move on.
“Remember when we first met in the Bahamas?” he asked, laughing.
“How could I not? We were at that bar, having a good time and you punched out that dude.”
“You took off after that,” he said. “But I didn’t blame you. I was a nut.”
The thought made me smile. “You weren’t that bad.”
“And then when I called you after you left.” His eyes sparked with the recollection. “I’m surprised you picked up.”
“I almost didn’t.”
“Are you sorry you did?” he asked.
“Never.”
I didn’t know what to say next. “I guess I’ll write you and send pictures of Mia.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
> DeShaun was in jail for another six years for involuntary manslaughter, and I wasn’t sure where our relationship would stand after that. Our divorce became final two months ago and I was under no obligation to continue to trek up to New York and see him.
But my heart didn’t want to let go.
Months ago, I was ready to release all of those unanswered questions. As time went on, I felt like I had to know, for closure. “DeShaun?”
“Yes?”
“Did you ever sleep with her?”
He shook his head. “I never ever slept with Jenn. I promise you. I may have wanted to, but for some reason or another, it never got to that point. She left for Japan and I haven’t seen her since. I swear, Mimi.”
I didn’t know what to believe anymore.
“That night and the fight with Jeremy,” I said. “I blacked out and don’t remember anything after that. What happened?”
“I knew you’d eventually ask.”
“Of course I would, DeShaun. I need to know.”
“I told both you and the cops what happened.”
“I know what you said, but it doesn’t add up. I blacked out.” I searched his eyes for the answer, anything, but he wouldn’t look at me. “Before I passed out, the last thing I remembered was Jeremy’s body on the floor, lying in a pool of blood. Did you take the bloody shard out of my hands? Tell me. Did I do it? Was I the one that stabbed Jeremy? Please, DeShaun, tell me the truth.”
He looked up at me. I searched deep within his eyes..
“No,” he said. “It’s the same as I told the police. He attacked me, I pulled the broken vase from his hands and then I stabbed him with it. That’s all. Now go and take care of Mia.”
I nodded. “I love you, DeShaun, more than you’ll ever know.”
“What’s done is done,” he said. “Just know that I love you, too, and would do anything for you.”
A single tear ran down my cheek. “Even go to prison?”
“Naomi, if you love me like you say you do, you’ll take Mia and move far away from here. Take care of her and your mother. Most importantly, take care of yourself.”
“DeShaun—”
“Go.” He stood up. “Don’t worry, we’ll see each other again when I get out of here. I promise.” The guard came up and escorted him out of the room, leaving me sitting in my tiny cube, watching after him. The guard led him through the doors and he was gone.
I walked outside the rusted prison gates just as tiny droplets of rain splattered onto the sidewalk. I reached into my purse and pulled out my compact umbrella to shield me from the rain. I hopped into my car and set off down the long, winding road leading away from the prison and to the freedom of the outside world, where a new life awaited me.
If you enjoyed “Champagne Life,” be sure to check out the e-book prequel
by Nicole Bradshaw
Available from Strebor Books
Naomi
I took a step off the plane. As soon as I hit the airstairs, the sun’s rays burst through my dark shades, exposing its radiance. I shielded my face with my hand. The warmth felt good against my skin, in contrast to the forty-five-degree weather I left behind in Philly.
“Why does it have to be so sunny?” Laeticia, my best friend since fourth grade, reached inside her way-too-much money, oversized designer bag and pulled out her sunglasses.
“That’s because we’re in the Bahamas,” I told her.
She lifted her head to the sun, and in movie star mode, carefully placed the sunglasses on her face. She reached up, tucked a small section of her weave behind her left ear and said, “You ready, Naomi, girl, ’cause I sure enough am.”
I laughed. “Look out, Bahamas. Here comes Laeticia The Superstar. Shall I call the paparazzi and let them know we’ve landed?”
“That’s right,” she said with a smirk. She reached into her bag and pulled out a floppy sun hat. She jammed the hat so far down on her head, she covered up the entire top half of her face. The hat combined with the glasses really made her look like a star now. “I do not play when it comes to getting sunburned,” she said, slathering on greasy sunblock all over her exposed arms. “That’s how Bob Marley died, you know?” She worked the white creamy glop into her hands, in between each finger. “My auntie Gertrude got skin cancer, too. Black may not crack, but it does burn, especially us light-skinded folks.” She looked me up and down and thrust the sunscreen tube in my face. “That’s why you may need this. Sure you don’t want none?”
“I put mine on already. And would you stop talking like that?”
“Like what?”
“Light skin-ded,” I said. “All the way over here, you kept talking about what you seent and what you be like. Why are you talking like that? You’re a grown woman speaking Ebonics. I hate that!”
Laeticia was twenty-eight, a year older than me, but from the way she acted, you wouldn’t know it. She graduated from Texas A & M with a degree in Marketing and was one of the smartest women I knew. She worked for one of the largest medical insurance companies on the east coast and was going to law school in the fall. This was precisely why I couldn’t figure out why she insisted on speaking like she was a day out of the hood.
“Girl, please. I done heard you talk like this all the way down here, so shut up.”
“Oh, no you didn’t.” I grinned. “You done never heard that mess comin’ from me.”
She laughed and smacked my shoulder.
I was finishing my degree in Finance (one semester left) at Temple University. I planned to apply to Wells Fargo for a Business Analyst position in the fall. I couldn’t wait to finally kiss my crappy customer service job goodbye.
“You got any more of those cookies you baked?” Ticia asked. “I’m hungry as hell but I wasn’t about to pay extra for that nasty plane food. Did you smell that fried chicken that chick brought on the plane?”
“I think the whole plane smelled it.” I reached into my purse and pulled out a brown paper bag. I went to open up the bag, but before I could, she snatched it from my hand.
“I love these things,” she said, taking a huge bite of a chocolate chip cookie. “You can bake your butt off. You should be selling these things. You could make a billion dollars off the chocolate chip alone.”
She shoved the rest of the cookie into her mouth, dug her hand inside the bag and grabbed another one.
“If you were that hungry,” I told her. “You should have gotten something on the plane.”
“So I could have the entire plane smelling like chicken, too? No thanks.” She popped the last bit of cookie into her mouth.
“Oh, please, Ticia, you know you wanted that.”
“Don’t misunderstand, Mimi. I didn’t say I didn’t want it, but there’s no way you’re gonna ever catch me slobbin’ down some chicken on no plane. Oh, hells no.”
I laughed. “You are so stupid.”
“Last chance,” she said, waving the sunscreen tube back and forth. “Sure you don’t want some?”
I shook my head. “I’m good, thanks.”
“Okay then, let’s go!”
I glanced down at Ticia’s floral, strapless peach and yellow sundress. “If you’re so worried about sunburn, why didn’t you wear sleeves?”
“Sleeves in the Bahamas? C’mon, now, that look is not cute.”
“And neither is shellacking grease all over your arms and legs. Couldn’t you have done that on the airplane?”
“I could’ve, but didn’t.” She carefully navigated her way down the last step off the plane in her Jimmy Choos. “Now stop your complainin’ and let’s go!” Ticia grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the airport entrance. “Finally, we’re in the Bahamas, baby! Feel that beautiful sun.” She lowered her sunglasses an inch and peered over the top, “And check out all those yummy Bohemian men!”
My eyes followed her gaze. Two dark chocolate men in pristine uniforms, medals included, stood at the gate leading into the airport. One guy was well over six feet with broad, stiff sho
ulders. The other guy, a little shorter, looked just as physically fit. Even through his starched white shirt I could see his chiseled chest.
“It’s Bahamian,” I said, still checking out the guys. The shorter guy whispered something to the taller one. They both looked over at us.
“Huh?”
“It’s Bahamian, not Bohemian. The men here are not some hippy, retro seventies throwbacks.”
“You are a straight buzz kill,” she said with a toss of her weave. “You’re here for the same thing I am…to find a guy.”
“I have a guy,” I reminded. “Did you forget about Kevin?”
I actually missed Kevin a little bit. He and I had been dating for seven months. In fact, he dropped me off at the airport to catch the flight for our Girl’s Weekend in the Bahamas. However, if someone were to ask how our relationship was going, I couldn’t tell ya. Even though we had been exclusively dating for several months, our relationship seemed to be regressing instead of progressing. He lived in Philly and I lived further out in the suburbs so we decided to see each other only on weekends. I would go down to his spot on Saturday mornings and hang out until Sunday evening. Fridays were another story. Fridays were not happening with Kevin. At first, I believed he only wanted to hang out with his buddies on those nights, but when I told Ticia, her immediate reaction was, “Girl, are you stupid? He’s seeing other chicks!” After the fifth month, we—mostly he—decided to only hang out on Sundays, like when we first started seeing each other. When I told Ticia that, she said, “Girl, are you stupid?” That was her mantra. She needed to write a book with that title. I was certain she’d make a million bucks off the title alone.
She so eloquently informed me that Kevin wasn’t interested in “only my black ass.” In Ticia’s words, he’s pretty much banging the entire northeast.
Ahhhh yes, tact was so overrated.
“Girl, are you stupid?” she asked with another toss of her hair. She was trying a new style and decided on curly instead of straight this time. “So what he drove you to the airport? He probably couldn’t wait to get you out of town so he could get his dirt in.”
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