by Carl Weber
“I won’t. I promise,” I said, lifting my right hand as if taking an oath.
“I’m serious,” Monique emphasized. “She made me swear not to tell anyone. Not even you. So you can’t say anything to anyone else.”
“Monique, I’m a man of the cloth. Keeping people’s secrets is something I’m asked to do on a daily basis, and you know I take that responsibility seriously. Now, tell me what’s going on with Tia.”
Her eyes welled up, and a single tear fell as she leaned against her dresser. “Tia saw one of her rapists.”
“Dear Lord, that poor girl.” Tia had been working as the church secretary for almost four years now, but she wasn’t just an employee. She’d found her way into our hearts. We knew she’d been raped a couple years before joining our congregation, but Tia had an uncommon resolve. Rather than falling apart after such an atrocity, she found a way to battle her demons by helping others with the same problem. She ran a rape crisis and counseling ministry out of the basement of the church that not only helped her heal, but hundreds of others.
“Is she going to be okay?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I hope so.” Monique had a faraway look in her eyes, as if picturing the state she’d found Tia in. “She was still wearing her wedding dress this afternoon when I found her. Whatever those men did to her, it has all come back. She’s an absolute wreck.”
“You do know we need to tell Aaron.” The daggers from her eyes told me I should have kept the suggestion to myself.
“You gave me your word, TK Wilson,” she snapped angrily. “I expect you to honor it. We’re not telling Aaron anything right now.” I’d heard this hard tone in her voice before, but never directed at me.
“I’m not going to tell him,” I said, backing off a little, “but he deserves to know.”
“Not when she’s like this.”
“That man loves her. He can help her,” I insisted.
“You didn’t see her, TK. You bring Aaron within ten feet of that girl and we may never see her again. She can’t feel good about him until she feels good about herself, and right now, she’s not in a very good place.”
“Well, we’ve got to do something. Maybe we should call the police?” I understood my wife’s point, but I still couldn’t imagine sitting back and doing nothing.
“No, it’s too late for that. Besides, Tia doesn’t want to have to deal with them.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I found myself getting irritated. Men and women dealt with things differently, that was for sure. I could not relate to this apparent desire to just drop it. Part of me wanted to step up and take charge, to defend Tia, but I had to remind myself that I was not her father. I was her spiritual adviser, and as such, it was my job to back off and let God handle things, as difficult as that would be in this case.
“She’s got to get through this her own way, in her own time,” Monique said.
“Well, when is she coming back to work? Maybe I can talk to her then.”
Monique’s eyes welled up with tears again. This experience was really causing her a lot of pain. Even though we didn’t have children of our own, we certainly loved Aaron and Tia like family.
“She said she’s not coming back.”
“What do you mean she’s not coming back? That church is more than a job to her. She has to come back at some point.”
“I tried to talk some sense into her, but there was no changing her mind. She said it has to be this way.” Monique shook her head sadly. “I don’t know, TK. I can’t pretend to understand what it feels like to go through what she did. I didn’t feel right pressuring her.”
“But what about Aaron? This doesn’t sound like Tia. She’s always been so responsible. She has to come back and deal with him, because he’s hurting too. Is she going to at least do that?”
“I don’t think so. If it happens, it’s not going to be anytime soon.”
“I communicated with him today. This information would help him.” I stepped across that line again. Sometimes you had to look past what people thought they wanted and do what was right, and I felt at my core that revealing this to Aaron was absolutely the right thing to do. My wife, on the other hand, thought differently, and it was my job to try to convince her to change her mind.
“You promised not to say anything.”
“But I had no idea what I was promising,” I argued.
“TK, that girl is fragile and she needs to be able to trust someone. Right now, that someone is me. I can’t destroy her faith in me without risking losing her forever.”
“But what about Aaron’s faith in me and the church? This isn’t right.”
“Right or wrong, we are not playing God. You made me a promise, and you need to keep your word.”
“And I’m supposed to stand by and watch Aaron suffer? He’s like a son to me.”
“And Tia is like a daughter to me. Unless you want me to start keeping secrets, you will keep your word.” With that, she headed into her walk-in closet.
Honesty had been at the foundation of our relationship. Without it, everything else would fall apart, so I knew what she was threatening and the ramifications it would have on our relationship. Whether I agreed or not, I had to step back and leave this situation up to God.
When Monique came back into the room, I was struck speechless by the sight of her in a white negligee.
“You look amazing,” I said. “Did I buy you that? If so, I have excellent taste—in my woman and in gifts.”
“Yes,” she said with a laugh. “Last Valentine’s Day. And I suggest that we stop worrying about Tia and Aaron and start thinking about ourselves.”
“Well, I can certainly do that.” I couldn’t stop staring at this beautiful woman I was lucky enough to marry.
She sat down on the bed next to me, and I went in for some loving kisses.
“Somebody’s in a frisky mood tonight,” she joked when I finally released her.
“What did you expect to happen with you wearing that?”
“This is exactly what I hoped would happen,” she said.
I couldn’t keep my hands off of her. There was nothing like the feel of a real woman, I mean one that felt like a woman in your arms, soft and warm.
She started to kiss me on my face, neck, and chest, and then she kept moving to my stomach. It was a wonder I didn’t up and die from the kind of happiness this woman gave me.
“Does that feel good?” she whispered as she offered more warm kisses all over my body. I was grateful that she was my wife because it felt so good it was almost sinful. There was a reason I was a bishop and not a priest, I thought. I could never understand signing on for a lifetime of celibacy when I could praise God and still have a healthy, happy marriage.
She started rubbing me in all the right places. All the lethargy I’d been feeling earlier was completely gone now. I lay back down, ready to enjoy the sensations as my wife worked her magic.
“TK?”
“Yeah, baby?” I murmured, anxious for her to continue. This woman knew how to rev my engine from zero to one hundred when she wanted, and from the looks of things, that was her plan.
“You still think that I look like a younger version of Jackée from 227?”
“Yeah, except you’re finer than her,” I said, and I wasn’t kidding. I married her because I fell in love with her, but I also couldn’t stand the idea of any other man going near her. I was a red-blooded, old-fashioned man, and I didn’t care if that dated me. On the contrary, I had no issue with appearing territorial. I was a one-woman man, and this amazing woman was it for me.
“I mean, am I that sexy?”
“Sexier,” I assured her, ready to have more of her.
“You think I could be on television?” she flirted, looking for a compliment that I was more than happy to give. This was looking like the beginning of a great night.
“Oh yeah, you could definitely be on TV,” I answered emphatically.
She rose up on her haunches
. “Then how come you’re against me being an actress?”
Monique might as well have doused water on the flame that had ignited between us, because suddenly the last thing on my mind was making love to my wife. I wanted to shake some sense into her.
“Are you serious? We’re in the midst of making love and you want to talk about being an actress?”
“It’s important to me.” She pulled away from me and crossed her arms over her chest, letting me know that we were in the beginning of a cold war.
“We both know that you’re too busy being first lady to mess around with any showbiz nonsense.”
“So you don’t support me?” She sounded like a child who had just found out that she wasn’t going to get the toy she had been hoping for, instead of a sensible adult having a conversation with her overtaxed husband.
“I support you in anything that I know is good for us,” I reasoned. And anything that involved Jackson Young was definitely not good for us, I thought.
“Well, I never told this to anyone, but I’ve always wanted to be an actress. It wasn’t until I saw Jackée on 227 that I realized a well-endowed woman could be an actress and a sex symbol.”
I reached out and took her hand gently. “This is crazy. You have a life already. It’s not like you’re a young girl anymore.”
“So now you’re calling me old? Or is it that you don’t think I have any talent to act?” she cried, taking my comment completely out of context.
“Of course not. To be quite frank, this acting thing is my second problem. My real issue is with that agent,” I said, refusing to speak his name out loud. “I don’t like him.”
“Is it that you don’t like him, or you don’t like that he finds me beautiful?” she asked.
“That’s right,” I said, realizing there was no point in denying the truth. “And it’s not worth talking about, because you are not doing it.”
As soon as I said the words, she was up and on her feet.
“Monique?” No response. “Monique? Dammit!” The door slammed behind her as she stormed out of the room.
Aaron
7
When I pulled up to a red light on the way to the airport, I grabbed my phone to steal a glance at the picture of Tia that I used as a screen saver. In the passenger seat, my mother sucked her teeth, letting her displeasure be heard loud and clear.
“That heifer don’t deserve you,” she said.
Maybe she was right, but it didn’t change the way I felt. I loved Tia more than any other person in the world—including my mother.
“Dammit, Ma, don’t call her that.” I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, but this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to continue all the way to the airport. Both my mother and aunt had already done their share of Tia bashing.
Unfortunately, Ma didn’t intend on stopping her assault on the woman I loved. “Why?” she said. “I ain’t lying. Any woman crazy enough to leave my baby standing at the altar got a whole lot worse names coming when I see her black ass. Isn’t that right, sister?”
“You sure got that right, Emma,” my aunt Rita cosigned from the backseat. She didn’t have any children of her own so she was like my second mother.
“Auntie, please don’t encourage her,” I pleaded.
“I’m sorry, Aaron, but she ain’t wrong this time,” Aunt Rita stated simply.
“What you need to do is get yourself back out there,” my mother continued with her unsolicited advice. “You know what they say: You fall off one horse, you get back on another.”
“Mm-hmm, I know that’s right,” my aunt agreed. “I pity the rat who only has one hole.”
“Auntie! What is wrong with y’all?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“What? You don’t need to be sitting home all pitiful and pining over some ungrateful woman. She should be kissing your ass for talking to her.”
“What your mother is trying to say,” Aunt Rita said in a tone a little less indignant than Ma’s, “is any woman would be happy to have you.”
“And, matter o’ fact, I just happen to have a few names.” My mother reached in her bag and pulled out a clump of torn papers.
I pulled over to the shoulder, bringing the car to a screeching halt. “Those are not what I think they are!”
As cool as can be, my mother smiled and said, “If you think they’re women’s phone numbers, then yes, they are absolutely what you think they are.”
“No.” I shook my head in shame, wondering if I’d ever be able to set foot in the church again. “You two did not go soliciting women’s phone numbers for me.”
“‘Soliciting’ is a rather strong word, but yes, we talked to several young ladies on your behalf at the reception,” my aunt said.
“Two in particular were very interested in you taking them out,” Ma said, sounding proud of her accomplishment. “What were their names, sister?”
“I don’t remember.”
Ma started riffling through the papers as I pulled back into traffic. I could not get to the airport fast enough to drop these two off before they made me insane.
“Here they are!” she announced, waving a paper in front of my face. “Tiffany and Keisha.”
I brushed her hand away so I could see the road. “Tiffany Johnson and Keisha Holland?” I asked.
“Yeah, you know them? They were more than happy to give me their numbers too.” She shoved the whole stack of papers and business cards in my direction, but I kept both hands on the wheel. “One of them is a doctor’s assistant,” Ma continued, undeterred. “Now, she could be the prescription to help you heal.”
“I know that’s right!” Aunt Rita reached over the seat to give my mother a fist bump.
“Not interested.” It was all I could manage to say as I gratefully pulled up to the terminal.
“I’ma leave these numbers in the cup holder, and when you’re ready, you can use them,” my mother stated confidently as she got out of the car. “Don’t wait too long.”
It was the first time I was glad to be saying good-bye to my mother and aunt, as I helped them with their bags and watched them head into the airport.
Back in my car, the silence and solitude gave me too much time to think about the mess that was my life, and I was hit with a wave of sadness and longing. I pulled over again on the side of the road and took out my phone, sending yet another text to Tia.
I’M GOING OUT OF MY MIND WORRYING ABOUT YOU. PLEASE ANSWER ME. I stared down at the screen, knowing it would continue to be a one-sided conversation. I’d left so many texts and voice messages that all went unanswered.
AARON PLEASE, PLEASE LOSE MY NUMBER. Her response shocked me. I sent back a quick reply.
WHAT DID I DO WRONG?
Her next text hit me right in the solar plexus:
WILL YOU PLEASE JUST LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE! WHAT PART OF NOT FUCKING INTERESTED DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?
I think it was the word “fuck” that sent me over the edge. Such a simple word, but it screamed at me with such blatant disrespect from the woman who was supposed to be my soul mate.
I threw the phone on the passenger seat and started driving again, but I didn’t get far before it started ringing. I grabbed it, thinking maybe Tia had come to her senses and wanted to apologize.
A quick glance at the caller ID revealed that it was not Tia, but Ross. He had been calling me three or four times a day to check on me, but I definitely wasn’t in the mood for one of his pep talks about how I should go back to work to take things off my mind. He just didn’t get it. I needed some time away from everybody. I ignored the call and kept on driving, not knowing where I was going until I pulled up in front of the flashing neon sign: BENNY’S BAR AND GRILL.
Benny’s was located in a questionable neighborhood in Jamaica, Queens. Ross, Pippie, and I had adopted the joint as our own personal watering hole right about the time Pippie moved up from Virginia. Benny’s was a hole-in-the-wall, but the drinks were cheap, they had a pool table that took quarters
, and quiet as it’s kept, their cook made the best cheeseburgers in New York.
I sat down at a booth in the corner. I’d walked in with the intention of having a drink to dull my senses; however, the smell of those greasy burgers from the kitchen reminded me that I hadn’t really eaten since the night of my bachelor party.
Not long after I sat down, Jewel, the barmaid, came over to take my order.
“Your boys have been looking for you.” Jewel smiled, whipping out a notepad.
“Yeah, well, if you see them again, don’t tell them I was here, okay.”
“Your secret is good with me,” she said with a wink. “Now, what can I get you to drink?”
“I’ll take a Jack and Coke. And can you bring me a cheeseburger and fries?”
“Sure thing.” She stepped away to place the order but then turned back. “Um, Aaron, I heard about you and that girl you was supposed to marry. If there’s anything I can do to help—and I mean anything—just holla,” she said.
Well, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what that meant. I’d never really paid much attention to Jewel in the past. Not only was I in a relationship with Tia, but Jewel had a reputation for being pretty loose, and I wasn’t normally into women like that. But with her overly friendly gesture and my need for some comforting, she definitely had my attention now.
I’m not going to lie; the thought of what she was offering was tempting. It had been almost eighteen months since I’d made love, and I can’t emphasize enough how taxing that can be on a man. I truly missed that physical intimacy. Waiting for our wedding day was worth it, I thought, but seeing as how Tia never made it down the aisle, I sort of felt like I’d been played for a fool. Jewel’s offer was appreciated, not necessarily because she was this superhot woman that I couldn’t resist, but because it was comforting to think that someone was interested in me. I’d been pretty down on myself ever since Tia’s rejection.