by Tina Martin
Right as I was drifting off to sleep, Mom peeped around the door. “Pss, pss. Tiffany,” she whispered. “Derrick is here. He wants to see you.”
“What?” I was shocked to know that the man I just broke up with was one of my visitors. How did he know I was in the hospital in the first place?
“Derrick is here,” Mom repeated so loudly, she might as well spoke normally. “Can he come in?”
I didn’t know what to do, but I felt so guilty, I couldn’t turn him away.
“Yeah, Ma. Tell him to come in.”
When Derrick walked in, I was happy to see him but at the same time, I felt ashamed. After all, I did just end our relationship.
“How do you feel?” He rubbed his fingertips across my forehead like he was checking my temperature.
“I’m okay…I guess.” I took a deep breath. “Derrick, how did you know I was here?”
“Your Mom called and told me.”
“I’m sorry. She didn’t know we weren’t together anymore. You didn’t have to come here.”
“I know I didn’t have to come. I wanted to.” Derrick was being overly nice to me. I couldn’t believe how calm he was. “So tell me what happened?”
“I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m sorry if I put too much pressure on you with this relationship,” Derrick said, sitting on the bed with me. He took my hand, into his large, strong ones then said, “I mean, if that’s the reason why you’re here, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Derrick.”
“Then why do I feel so guilty? Why do I feel like I did this to you?”
“Don’t feel guilty. I’ll be okay.”
“All right,” Derrick said, sad-faced. “If you need anything, I want you to call me. Day or night. It doesn’t matter. Even if I’m at work, call me. I know you wouldn’t agree with this, but my job isn’t the most important thing to me, so call me, okay?”
“Okay, Derrick. Thank you.”
He kissed the backside of my hand and left me there alone to beat myself up. What had I done? I should have been embarrassed for the way I dissed Derrick in the restaurant. I walked out on him and he still had enough love for me to come and see me in the hospital. Derrick had a lot of character and dignity and I was beginning to question myself as to why I broke up with him in the first place.
Which man was I supposed to be with after all?
Chapter 15
The doctor released me the next morning with a prescription for anti-anxiety medication. Pitiful, right? Here I am twenty-three years old, taking medicine for anxiety.
“How you feel, Tiffany?” Mom asked as she was driving me home.
“I’m okay, I guess.”
“You know, I talked to Reggie last night.”
She forced me to sigh while I stared out the window watching cars fly by. I really didn’t want to hear anything about Reggie right now. I needed to get myself straight.
“Tiffany, did you hear me? I said I talked to Reggie last night.”
“Ma, I don’t want to talk about Reggie, okay?”
“Tiffany, he just…”
“Mom, stop it!” I yelled at her.
“He told me to tell you that he loves you and he’s sorry,” she said as quickly as she could before I could shut her up again.
“Yeah. Whatever.”
“You know, Tiffany, I didn’t even know you were in the hospital until Reggie called me.”
I frowned. “And how did he know I was in the hospital?”
“He said he rode with you in the ambulance. You don’t remember?”
“I was out. I didn’t even know I was taken to the hospital by ambulance. And how could Reggie have rode with me? He wasn’t with me last night.”
“I don’t know. What I do know is, Reggie called me panicking…said something had happened to you and that he was at the hospital with you.”
Mom parked in the parking space in front of my apartment. Patricia was standing at my front door while Reggie waited in his car.
“What is he doing here? The doctor said no stress.”
Mom ignored me and put the car in park. “Come on, honey.”
I unlocked the door and Mom and Patricia walked in behind me. Then out of the blue Patricia said, “Tiffany, I don’t know what happened with you and Reggie but I want you to know that I love you like a daughter and I don’t want this to ruin our little family we’ve created. Growing up, it was just the four of us – me, your Mom, you, and Reggie. Don’t throw that away, honey. We all we got, and I know Reggie has strange ways sometimes but he loves dearly and any problems y’all are going through can be worked out.”
I wiped her eyes and she wiped mine. Then Patricia and my Mom started cleaning up my apartment like I was incapable of doing it myself. Mom washed the few dishes that were left in the kitchen sink while Patricia fixed up my bedroom and vacuumed the carpeted floors. I sat on the couch in the living room and ran my fingers through my hair and closed my eyes. It had been some rough weeks and like old folks say, when it rains, it pours. I was drenched in regret and pity. If I had accepted Reggie’s feelings for me that night, I wouldn’t be in this predicament. But at the same time, he didn’t have to leave me the way he did.
My thoughts were interrupted by three taps on the front door. It was only a matter of time before Reggie worked up the nerve to get out of the car and face me. I didn’t move from the couch to go and answer the door. Reggie still had a key to my place. If he wanted to come in to see me bad enough, he would use it.
That’s what he did.
“Hi,” he said as soon as he saw me sitting on the couch. “How do you feel?” He kept his distance from me as if I was going to attack him.
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted…I needed to see you…to see if you are okay.” He stood there, confident with his hands in his pocket, dressed in a black suit with a silver shirt and a black tie.
“Why do you want to see me now?”
“It’s not like I didn’t want to see you before but—”
“Reggie, just stop it, okay.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop lying to me!” I screamed as loudly as I could and held my chest. “You didn’t want to see me. I don’t even know where you live. I don’t know your telephone number or nothing. You didn’t tell me because you didn’t want to see me anymore so don’t come in here pretending you did. You don’t care about me.”
“I do care! Why am I here if I don’t care about you?” His face displayed anger, though in his eyes, I could see his love for me. He stood his ground, determined to get his point across.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s guilt.”
“Or maybe it’s love, Tiffany.”
He hit a nerve with that one. “Love? If you loved me, you would not have left me. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work?”
Mom and Patricia must have been getting earfuls listening to us go at it.
“Well you know what? Blame it on me. Everything is Reggie’s fault, right?” he said flailing his arms about.
I didn’t respond to his question. I just watched him walk closer to me.
He continued, “Whose fault is it that I fell in love with you? Whose fault is it that I have feelings for my best friend, or was that not supposed to happen between us because that’s not what Tiffany wants?”
I remained silent and he continued. “You only want us to be friends, then let’s be friends. I’d rather have some of you than none of you.”
He took a pen from his shirt pocket and scribbled on the back of his business card before handing it to me.
“Here is my address and my phone number.” I didn’t even reach to take it from him, so he dropped it on the table. He started walking away and then he turned around. “And here is the key to my house.” He walked back, slammed the key on the table and walked out the door.
When Mom and Patricia heard the front door close, they came walking out.
“W
ell, I’m gonna get going,” Patricia said, “But if you need anything, I’m a phone call away.”
“Okay. Thanks, Pat.”
She smiled at me and then left.
Mom sat on the couch next to me and said, “I wasn’t eavesdropping but I couldn’t help but hear your conversation. What did Reggie mean when he said you just wanted to be friends? I thought you had a crush on Reggie?”
“I do…I mean, I did. I don’t know.”
“So why did he stop talking to you?”
“Because he wanted to be with me and I was with Derrick. But even if that was the case, Reggie had plenty of time to be with me when there was no Derrick. So why was it clear to him that he wanted to be with me when Derrick was in the picture?”
“Like I told you before, sometimes that’s what it takes, honey.”
“Well I don’t know if—”
“Tiffany, the man is in love with you. Name someone better to fall in love with than your best friend. Can you imagine what it would be like to marry him and have kids with him?”
Of course I could. I’d been picturing that moment since my freshman year in high school. Our life would be a fairytale if that happened. Two friends who grew up together now married with children – it would be everything I ever dreamed of.
“And I can’t believe he doesn’t know you’re in love with him.”
“I used to be in love with him, until he did this to me.”
“Tiffany, life is too short, honey. You have to get over that.”
“It’s not that easy, Ma.”
“I know it ain’t. I’m just giving you some food for thought. Anyway, I gotta go. Are you going to be all right?”
“Yeah. I’ll be fine.”
Mom gave me a kiss on my cheek. “Okay. Take care. Call me if you need anything and I’m not pressuring you but call Reggie…only if your heart tells you to.”
“Okay, Ma.”
“All right. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I sat there looking at Reggie’s business card and the address of his new house. He was only about fifteen minutes away from me. I placed the card back on the table and went into my bedroom. Patricia did such a good job making my bed, I didn’t want to mess it up. But I had too. I was tired and all I wanted to do was sleep comfortably in my own bed.
Chapter 16
The emergency room doctor ordered me to take two weeks off from work. He said my mind needed to catch up with my body, whatever that meant. I woke up thinking about the things Reggie had said to me the night before. As much as I tried to fake it, I did miss him. Reggie was my life. Without him, I might as well be a tropical plant that was uprooted and thrown in the Sahara Desert. Dried up. Withered. Without purpose. Dead.
I got out of bed, took a long shower and drank a glass of orange juice. Then I logged on to my computer to check my emails from work – even though I wasn’t technically working. For one, I was bored out of my mind, and two, I didn’t want to have a million unread emails in my inbox waiting for me when I did go back to work. I was relieved to see that I only had eighty-five so far. It was nothing for me to see close to two-hundred unread emails in my inbox. Most of them I could delete, like the forwards, jokes and words of wisdom emails from Mom, Patricia, and Brenda. Emails from them must have taken up twenty-five percent of my inbox. I was on an email deleting spree when I saw an instant message screen pop up.
Reggie4398 (9:05): hi
That’s all it said. I rolled my eyes and sat there for a few minutes trying to decide if I wanted to respond to him. Should I or shouldn’t I? My first thought was to ignore him and hope he would go away but I decided to answer.
TiffW49 (9:09): hi
Reggie4398 (9:10): I didn’t think u would respond. How r u feeling?
If he had called me on the phone, I probably would not be talking to him right now. There was just something about instant messenger that made me want to respond. Even my login name had a link to him. The number forty-nine was his football jersey number in high school.
TiffW49 (9:10): I’m ok
Reggie4398 (9:11): good…
I flipped back over to my emails, deleted a few and was in the middle of reading one when I saw the messenger window flashing in blue on the toolbar. Reggie had sent another message, but before I checked it, I went into the kitchen to get some water. When I sat down in front of the computer again, there were two messages from him.
Reggie4398 (9:11): Tiff…I owe u an apology.
Reggie4398 (9:14): hello, r u there?
TiffW49 (9:17): yeah…had to step away 4 a min
Reggie4398 (9:17): I just wanna say i’m sorry
TiffW49 (9:18): sorry 4 what?
Reggie4398 (9:18): i’m sorry I hurt you
I didn’t reply back. I sat there staring at the screen like it was his face, thinking about how impersonal it was for him, or any person, to apologize to me over instant messenger.
Reggie4398 (9:21): Tiffany?
TiffW49 (9:21): yeah?
Reggie4398 (9:21): I never meant to hurt you.
TiffW49 (9:22): yeah u did
Reggie4398 (9:23): no I didn’t. I never wanted to hurt you. That’s the truth.
TiffW49 (9:24): what did you think was gonna happen when you decided to walk out of my life? U think I was gonna be happy that my best friend decided that he could do without me?
TiffW49 is Offline.
I signed out after that. There was no sense in getting into an argument on messenger. I wanted to argue with him face-to-face. He wasn’t going to have the luxury of hiding behind a computer. I popped a pill and let my body fall down on the couch. Then I heard my phone beep three times. I took it from the floor and flipped it open. Reggie had sent me a text: y u sign out?
I replied: can’t talk 2 u right now.
I flipped my phone shut, dropped it on the floor again and sat on the couch watching old episodes of Divorce Court. Then my cell phone rang. Thinking it was Reggie, I flicked it open and said, “What is it?”
“Dang, somebody woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”
It was Brenda and she was laughing at me. I grinned a little too.
“Oh, I’m sorry Brenda. I thought it was Reggie.”
“Y’all still going at it, huh?”
“Girl, he gettin’ on my nerves.”
“When is he not getting on your nerves?” she said, then giggled. “Anywho, the reason I was calling is because Bentley told me you were going to be out for a couple of weeks. What’s going on?”
Bentley. He was the VP of Operations at our firm. His real name is David Parker. Brenda and I call him “Bentley” because he acted like one of those high-minded, high-class brothers with connections. Plus, he owned a black, 2005 Bentley Arnage that all the ladies seemed to drool over. He had women waiting in line for either a chance with him or a chance to ride in his car. He tried to holla at me a few times but I wasn’t feelin’ him. Besides, there was no way I would ever date anyone I worked with.
“No, I’m not coming in,” I told Brenda. “I had an anxiety attack or something.”
“What!”
“Yeah, girl. I guess they ain’t lying when they say stress can kill you.”
“I guess not. You better take it easy around there.”
“I will. I’ll be fine.”
“And tell Reggie to leave you alone.”
“You know that’s not going to happen. He’s just…I ah…” I stopped to take a breath and collect my thoughts. “My feelings for him are so screwed up right now. It’s like, I want him to leave me alone but I really don’t. I love him so much, but yet I’m mad at him. The more I think about it the angrier I get. It’s like I have equal amounts of love and anger in my heart right now for this man. How can that be? I mean, how can you love someone but yet hate them at the same time?”
“Girl, you need to be asking Dr. Phil all these questions,” Brenda said in a cloud of laughter. “You got my head hurting.”
“Brenda, I’m serious.”
“I don’t know, Tiffany. It’s obvious that you love the man. Otherwise, you wouldn’t give him the power to enter your heart with such strong feelings, whether they’re good or bad. So if you have love for him, then let love defeat the hate. Don’t let this ruin what could be a great relationship.”
“Wow. How insightful. Thanks for the advice, Brenda.”
“You’re welcome. And if that doesn’t work, just tell Reggie to chill and leave you alone for a minute.”
“But I don’t want him to leave me alone.”
“Girl, you are going to drive yourself crazy.”
“I’m for real though…have you ever been so…so taken by someone, you didn’t care what they did to you or how they treated you?”
“Yeah. I used to feel that way about my ex, until I caught him having dinner with another woman. That’s why he’s my ex.”
“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about true love.”
“So you think Reggie is your true love?”
“I think so…yes.”
“Then why you so scared to make a move?”
“That’s the part I’m not sure about.” Every time I think about being in a relationship with Reggie, I get sick to my stomach. It has always been that way. I mean, what if I wasn’t good enough for him? And even though he expressed that he was in love with me and wanted to be with me, I dismissed it. To me, it felt like he was settling for me because he knew me. I would be safe for him. I didn’t want to be the girl that got snatched up by him because I was there. “My head is starting to hurt now. I need to lie down, Brenda.”
“Okay. I’ll let you go then.”
“Call me later on in the week. I’ll be here.”
“All right. Take care.”
I went to sleep after that. When I woke up, it was four-sixteen in the afternoon. I don’t know if it was the medication or what, but when I got up I was dizzy. I had to hold on to the bedpost to stay grounded. I hadn’t had anything to eat all day. Maybe that’s why I was light-headed. I walked to the kitchen, got a full glass of orange juice and took small sips as I walked to the living room and sat at my computer desk. I logged in to check my emails. Unbelievable. I had one hundred and thirteen unread emails and that’s after I deleted thirty emails this morning.