Edward: BBW (Members From Money Book 17)

by Katie Dowe

  The bus stopped at red lights. Heat pervaded through the window, causing beads of sweat to curl down Aleshia’s forehead, despite all the top windows being open, and the bus air conditioner cranked at full blast. Some cars chose to ignore the red lights, zipping across the junction. Car horns beeped. People on the streets yelled, some in Spanish. She saw trash collectors taking anything that threatened to mess up the pavements, and two small children depositing their empty cola bottles into a public trash can. She saw a hint of clouds in the distance, floating in from the Everglades, and their bus trundled along a palm lined road, wide and spacious. They also passed less glamorous areas which looked like boarded up crack houses and rugged streets exclusively reserved for drug dealers, and the homeless.

  Aleshia at first had come here to escape, to seek comfort in her sister. She had moved nearby to Miami Beach. Traveling to visit Vaneese meant taking the bridge over from the bustling metropolis –as it constituted as a separate area.

  Miami, however, offered something more than just a place to run to. She regretted not asking her sister enough questions about where she lived. The sheer diversity of the place, from the rich, shining buildings and beaches the metropolis held to the poor, run down, poverty stricken sections of the city fascinated her. It was all fuel for her writing.

  Thirty minutes later, at her sister’s house, Aleshia walked into a massive hug by the taller, bustier woman, who also trumped her in age by eight years. “Little sista! You’re earlier than I expected. Come, come. Amy’s been asking for you.”

  Inside Vaneese’s beautiful, large apartment, Aleshia kicked off her flip flops. Her sister lived in the Miami Beach region, and the conditions seemed far more ideal than her place. She also suspected she had less chance of being run over by a crazy driver.

  “You’ve started learning Spanish yet?” Vaneese asked, as Amy spotted her aunt, squealed in delight, and dashed to embrace her in a hug.

  “Not yet,” Aleshia said.

  “You might have some difficulties staying in this place if you want to make it permanent. We have a high Latin American population.”

  “I work online,” Aleshia countered. “I don’t have to worry about getting a job in the city. I work good.”

  “You earn that much online?” Vaneese frowned at her sister, even as Amy began dragging her aunt over to look at the colorful pictures of beaches she had drawn.

  “Yeah. I’m a copy writer and I do marketing. Work can fluctuate, but I’ve saved a lot in my account.”

  “Can you afford a place from $1500 or more a month, plus expenses?”

  “Easy.”

  Vaneese squinted at her. “Move to Miami Beach, then. Rent a condo. You’ll be much better off.”

  “Just so you can keep an eye on me better?” Aleshia smiled at her sister.

  “Among other things. You’re at this moment a single mother, and,” she held one finger up at Aleshia’s darkening expression, “You need to accept that reality instead of moping about it. We also need to spend more time working out the kinks. But for now – I want you over here as often as possible. And, if you’re interested, we can work on getting you into Miami Beach.”

  Scowling at her sister, Aleshia conceded the point. Vaneese had always been a forceful personality. She had also been one of the people who knew what she wanted out of life from the start. Aleshia still remembered her sister’s warning when she first got together with Peter.

  “Did you know, Peter’s been messaging me as well?”

  Aleshia hugged Amy, stroking her glossy black hair. “He what?”

  “Yeah.” Vaneese placed hands on her hips, looking disgruntled as she began chopping vegetables. “Doesn’t leave you alone, so starts on me instead. I blocked that creep. I ain’t hearing it anymore.”

  Although it remained a sore point for Aleshia, again she felt relieved at her sister’s no nonsense tactic of airing out grievances. At home, Aleshia would drown her sorrows, sometimes look through old photos, or stare at her belly, which now began to show the hint of a bulge. First trimester over. Two more to go. Over bowls of home-made salad, they once again dissected the way their lives had diverged and converged, with the focus of conversation being on Vaneese’s attempts to gently remind Aleshia that she should consider blocking Peter once and for all.

  A family friend came to pick up Amy and take her to their house, so their children could play together, and it left Aleshia alone with her sister, both sat at either end of a plush leather sofa, talking in low voices.

  “We lost you for months, Ally. You stopped calling so much. It was sporadic contact. Mom was going crazy, wondering what was happening to you. I told them you were just holing up in your den with your writing, but there was something more going on. I knew it.”

  Vaneese reached out to touch Aleshia’s knee. Again, Aleshia detected a stab of jealously inside, looking at her perfect sister. Full lips, high cheekbones, a curvy body, a stunning smile and a successful family reminded Aleshia of what she didn’t have. She wanted the husband, the kid, and a nice place as well. Instead she had landed with Peter, and a growing lifeform which she still didn’t know if she was prepared to raise, especially alone.

  The one thing she refused to do, however, was abort it. The tiny nugget inside deserved more than a denial to live, just because one half of what formed it refused to be a parent.

  “Didn’t you see any warning signs at all, Ally? Didn’t he hit you? Yell at you?”

  “He only hit me once.” Aleshia set her jaw. “In the year we were together.”

  The confession made Vaneese pat her forehead in dramatic relief. “If you ask me, you got out of that one just in time.”

  “Not just in time,” Aleshia said, patting her belly for emphasis.

  “Still might be a blessing in disguise.”

  “Yeah, well. We’ll see. I can’t believe Peter’s been messaging you over this. Do you think I’ll need a restraining order?”

  Vaneese laughed into her glass of water. “Someone like that isn’t prepared to move out of their hometown, let alone out of state. Really, Aleshia. I don’t understand what you saw in him.”

  Neither did Aleshia, the more she thought about it. The memories of the charming, soft spoken white man who had once held a place in her heart felt tarnished by more recent, darker recollections. She needed to actively sift through a deluge of twisted, emotionally charged and bitter thoughts in order to once again find the ones that once regarded him as her other half.

  “He was charming, Vaneese. Real charming. Swept me off my feet. Handsome, too, in a rugged way. Good job. Nice family. His parents were nice. Perfect gentleman in every way.”

  Her sister nodded in time to Aleshia’s meandering thoughts.

  “Fucking bastard,” Aleshia said.

  Vaneese slapped her sister’s knee, generating a pained wince. “No! You don’t dip and switch subject like that. I’ll have none of your whining here. Continue. Leave the ‘fucking bastards’ out of it.”

  “Ow,” Aleshia said, rubbing the place on her leg, where a bruise would likely form. “Fine. Before he became a fucking bastard, I saw nothing wrong with him. If there were signs, or whatever, I didn’t spot them. Rose tinted glasses, I guess. I stopped talking to you and Mom because… I wanted to pursue this new interest. I thought now that I finally had a boyfriend, one who seemed genuine and kind after all these years, I could settle. Start a family. I wanted it.” She laughed, expression rueful. “Was a little jealous of you, to be honest. You have it all. Nice husband with a good job. Wonderful kid, and a location to die for. I spent all my time in front of that laptop writing stories, or hanging out at local bars. Not the best place to pick a good man from. But, living with Mom did mean I could kick start my career.” Aleshia glared at her sister, when she went to grab a beer from the fridge, teasing off the bottle lid. Vaneese saw the reproach in her sister’s eyes.

  “Just because you shouldn’t be drinking any, doesn’t mean I can’t,” Vaneese pointed out. “
I’m not the one pregnant, you know.”

  “That’s unfair.”

  “Life’s unfair. Suck it up. Now. Continue. You were jealous of me because I have an awesome life. What else?” Vaneese gleefully chugged down the beer.

  Aleshia blinked, annoyed and impressed at the same time. “Jesus Christ, it’s like watching a pelican swallow a fish whole.”

  “Shut up.” Vaneese placed the bottle to the side, grinning. “So?”

  “So. I didn’t contact so much. Then he was asking who I was seeing. Nothing bad, you know. Then he asked if I didn’t mind canceling some plans to do things with him. Then he started getting upset if I did things without him. Accused me of cheating on him at one point. So… when I fell pregnant. I thought maybe… I could use the pregnancy as a way of proving to him I was committed.”

  Vaneese’s jaw dropped. “What? No! That’s so bad!”

  “I know,” Aleshia agreed, grimacing. She had not been thinking too clearly at the time, past the desperate need to please her partner, to realize her dreams of keeping a solid family unit and the successful life she had always wanted, like her mom and her sister.

  “You said it was after you announced the pregnancy that it all collapsed.”

  “Yes.” Aleshia sucked in her breath. No. She wouldn’t allow herself to get mad again. However, the madness beckoned in a tempting manner. How sweet would it be, just to give into that storm of emotion, to howl and beat at the walls with how unfair everything was. A darker voice reminded her of how much she had fucked up by refusing to see Peter for what he really was. The handsome, charismatic Peter, who hid within him a domineering monster, that guilt tripped her, forced her to feel miserable and unhappy and convinced that nothing she ever did could be good enough for him.

  She had truly believed that everything was her fault. Even now, his insidious voice scratched at her conscience. Vaneese spotted the signs.

  “Aleshia. Aleshia. Look at me.”

  Both sisters kept eye contact. “Remember. None of it was your fault.”

  With a slow, quiet exhalation, Aleshia let go of the boiling anger. “I know. It’s just hard sometimes to remember that.” She tapped her fingers on the armrest. “Well, after he tried to say it wasn’t his child, and I proved him wrong by having to go to the fucking doctor about it, he insisted I needed to stay at home to minimize risk of injury to the child. Really, it was his excuse to keep me under lock and key. I only found out in one drunken burst of confession that he didn’t give a shit about the child. He just wanted me to be in his life forever, he would do anything to have that happen. Even if it meant locking me in the basement. He tried to shrug that off as a joke, afterward… but holy fuck were there alarm bells ringing in my head.”

  “That’s not including the bells when he slapped you around for going to the shop by yourself because there was no milk in the fridge, right?”

  Aleshia’s laugh became scornful. “That goes without saying. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Mom handled the aftermath. You probably caught that part.”

  “I did.” Vaneese placed fingers over her eyes. “She wanted you to come to me before you did something stupid, like kill yourself.” She chugged down more beer. “She wanted you to stay with her. But she didn’t want you to stay in Minnesota. So, kinda a conflict, there.”

  “I asked him if he wanted anything to do with his kid, the other day.” Aleshia said. “You know what he answered?”

  “The other day? Come on…”

  “That doesn’t matter. Do you want to know what he said or not?”

  “Hit me.”

  “He said he would be happy to raise the kid. As long as I got back together with him. Otherwise I could screw off.”

  “Motherfucker!” Vaneese spat. She slammed her beer aggressively on the table. “I swear, if you don’t block him right now, I’ll take your phone myself and do it. Hack into your accounts, block everything. Hire some hacker to do it.”

  Aleshia felt both flattered and alarmed at her sister’s reaction. She needed to keep Peter in her life. Not because she wanted him back. She was past that. But because she didn’t think her child deserved to never know her father. “I was disgusted when he said that. But, do I have a right to stop my baby from knowing him?”

  “You should tell the baby his or her father is dead. I’m serious. That is not someone you want in your life.”

  Aleshia sighed. It looked like it would be a while before she could convince her sister otherwise. Or even herself. She patted her stomach as they talked. By the end of the evening, they still hadn’t reached an agreement on things, other than the promise for regular visits, and a consideration to move closer.

  Aleshia needed time to think.

  Chapter 2

  His voice slurred down the voice. “Come on, babe. Darling. I miss you. I’m sorry you thought I was being overprotective of you, but you have to realize, it’s only because I care about you.”

  In the background, Vaneese’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. The mobile phone lay on the table with speakerphone, whilst Dijon and Vaneese sat next to each other on the sofa, part of the spectacle. One other person had joined the fiasco as well, Vaneese’s friend Kiara. Kiara had pale skin, short blonde hair, with sharp features that complimented it. She also wore an unbuttoned, palm tree patterned shirt over a plain white string vest, and jeans. Compared to Vaneese’s sleek, polished look, and Dijon’s comfortable pinstripe shirt and khaki shorts, Kiara resembled a tomboy, or, as admitted by both Vaneese and Kiara herself, a lesbian. Dijon stroked his wiry handlebar mustache, which had been subject to a torrent of jokes by all three women earlier.

  “I sometimes pretend she’s my girlfriend if I’m out and getting unwanted attention,” Vaneese had confessed, the first time Aleshia found herself introduced to the pixie-faced individual. “You two should get on.”

  “With a lesbian look-alike?” Aleshia knew Vaneese would be fishing for friends for her, but wasn’t sure if she liked the idea of the first choice in Miami’s vast selection of people to be someone who looked like they belonged in a gay bar.

  Two hours into small talk, Aleshia had gotten the call from her ex. After one hurried conference in whether she should answer the call or not, with Aleshia vehemently saying, “No, I don’t want him to ruin my evening,” and Vaneese saying, “Let me talk to that fucker, I’ll rip him one,” Dijon and Kiara suggested it might be a good idea to answer since it was clearly bothering her. Dijon was the one who suggested speakerphone. Kiara suggested they all be quiet during the conversation.

  All three quickly capitalized on their new plan developments. Aleshia, reluctantly goaded into it, agreed – if only so she wasn’t forced to talk to Peter alone, without any support nearby.

  “If you cared about me at all, Peter,” Aleshia said, inhaling long through her nose in a futile attempt to calm herself down, “You would stop doing this. You’re trying to make me feel bad so I will go back to you.”

  “I don’t understand,” the wheedling voice came back, suffused with hurt dignity. “Can’t you see how hard I’m trying? You’re the one pushing me away, you’re the one rejecting me, and all I’m doing is coming on my knees to beg you to take me back.”

  Quietly, Vaneese hissed in tandem with Kiara. Dijon, who was taking a hearty drink of Glenfiddich whiskey, clamped a hand over his mouth as he resisted the urge to cough. His face went red with the effort, resembling a walrus.

  Seeing the others react with amusement and righteous fury on her behalf made Aleshia bolder, more able to drag up walls between herself and Peter. “Is that so? Well, when I was with you, it was like being kept in a cage. You didn’t let me do anything in the end. You always got jealous and somehow always made it my fault. You even told me to not look pretty in case other men stared at me.”

  Dijon shook his head, clearly disapproving of the other man’s actions. “Dodged a bullet,” he whispered to his wife. “Guy sounds like a psycho nut-job. Probably tortured little animals when he
was younger.”

  “What’s that?” Peter’s voice came back sharp. “Are you alone?”

  The lie slid easily from Aleshia’s lips. “I’m in a park, Peter. People pass. And don’t change the subject. Did you or did you not act like a paranoid, jealous person?”

  “I didn’t,” Peter shot back. “Everything I did was because I cared about you. So what if I didn’t want men looking at you. That’s my right as your boyfriend. I can get jealous of other people, because I know I have someone special and I don’t want to lose them.”

  Kiara mimed a twisting motion with her finger, before pretending to have her throat slit. Vaneese choked on a silent giggle.

  The words were familiar to Aleshia. She felt the stirring of negativity in her gut, like her intestines were slowly being sucked into a black hole. It left a lump in her throat. “You don’t care about me. You only care that I’ve gotten away from you.”

  “Now, now, Aleshia. Listen to yourself. You know that’s not true. I wouldn’t have put up with what I did over the year if I never cared about you. Most other men would have run off. Yet, you tricked me with the pregnancy. Did you ever consider I might not have been ready for that?”

  There was a truth there, Aleshia thought. A small, insignificant truth buried under all the murky times they had spent together.

  “It’s not my fault you chose to not use condoms. I told you I had severe side effects to the pill. You thought as long as I was fresh off my periods, it would be fine. That’s not how things work, Peter.”