by Untamed
“Wait. Whoa. Baby, what is this? What are you doing?” Panic welled up in me.
“Leaving, Aldris.” She attempted to walk past me, but I blocked her.
“Leaving? What? To go where? I thought you’d forgiven me and that we could work on getting our relationship back on target.”
“Leaving you, Aldris. I can’t fight like this anymore. I’m too tired. I thanked you because I needed to hear the truth so that I could have the strength to walk away. You’re not ready for this relationship, and you’re not ready for Nadia and me. Aldris, I love you. I swear to God I really do, but I can’t take this. I can’t be in a relationship with you, and I can’t marry you. We’re over. I’m leaving you.”
My head was spinning, and this time, I knew I wasn’t drunk. If ever some shit could sober a nigga up real quick, this was that shit. Did she walk out of the room with already packed bags and tell me she was leaving me? No, this wasn’t happening.
I continued to block her path. “No, Lu. You can’t give up on us. You can’t give up on me. I need you. I know that sounds selfish, and that’s because it is. I messed up, but that doesn’t mean I’m not ready. Just give me a chance to prove it to you.”
“Don’t make this harder than what it has to be. I’m trying really hard to be an adult about this. I just want to cut my losses and be done. Please let me go,” she begged.
I was shocked. I couldn’t believe this. “Are you serious, Lucinda? You can’t be serious. We’re getting married. We share this house. It’s both of ours.”
“I am very serious, Aldris. This house is yours now. Your name is on the loan, and you can have mine removed from the deed. I don’t want it. I just want to leave.”
“No.”
She moved to the left, but I blocked her, so she moved to the right, and I blocked her again. She sat her luggage down and threw up her hands. “So you’re just going to block me in the hallway? Really?”
“Yes! Until you change your fucking mind.”
“So, no piss breaks, shit breaks, and just forget that fact that I have to get Nadia, and we both have jobs,” she said sarcastically.
“I’m hoping it won’t last that long.”
“Do you need a chair? It’s gonna be a wait,” she said haughtily.
I shrugged. “Fine.”
With a hard eye roll, she shoved me. “Move.”
“No. I’m not going any fucking where until you change your mind. And neither are you,” I said defiantly.
Flames flickered in her eyes, indicating that the calm that she’d amazingly maintained was on the brink of collapsing. With that move, I knew I’d unleashed the winds of the cat 5 hurricane. But fuck it. I was going to have to risk that shit today.
Looking as though she was about to come unhinged, she lit up on me. “Why should I? You didn’t change yours. Last night you had a choice. You chose to sleep with Jennifer. You made your decision. You could’ve brought your ass home last night, but you didn’t. That’s fine. You did what you had to do for you, and now I’m doing the same. Now move!” The shove that followed felt as if it’d caved my chest in, but still I held firm.
However, since that approach obviously hadn’t worked, it was time for Plan B. I’d pretend to concede. “Okay, Lu. You’re right. I have no right to hold you here. The last thing I want to do is hinder you. If walking out on us is what you think is best, then I won’t stop you. That’s your decision.” I moved out of the way.
She exhaled and picked up her suitcases. “I’ll be back tomorrow for some of Nadia’s things. Hopefully, I can get everything cleared out soon.” She threw the last part over her shoulder as she headed toward the door.
Time to abort Plan B, because she was really leaving. Hell no. Plan C. I ran after her. “Wait, Lu. Please. You begged me. Now I’m begging you. Please don’t leave me, baby. Please.”
She stood at the door and took her spare key to my car off her key ring, and then she placed the key and the garage-door opener on the table. She opened the door to leave. “Goodbye, Aldris,” she whispered without even turning to look at me. I could hear the tears in her voice. Hurt radiated off her.
Plan D. Desperation. Doomsday. “Damn it all to hell” day. Whatever you wanted to call it, I was there. I could not lose the woman that I loved. I couldn’t lose my wifey. I just couldn’t. I ran up to her and shut the front door.
With one hand on the door, I used my other to hold her in place by her arm. Nuzzling my nose in the hair on the top of her head, I pleaded with all my might. “No, baby, no! Please! Okay, I’ll do whatever you want. Whatever you ask of me. Just don’t go.” After dropping to my knees, I held her by the waist as I begged, desperation in my voice. She still wouldn’t turn around. “Please, Lucinda. What can I do? Just tell me. Consider it done.”
By now I was drenched in sweat, and it appeared as if I was about to have real heart attack. My chest felt like it was about to explode, and my eyes danced with pain. The more I tried not to cry, the harder it became. Tears streamed down my face as every good moment we’d ever had flashed before my eyes. I remembered the first time we made love, our first date, the first time I met Nadia and her mom, and our first kiss. I thought of the times we used to chill out together on Sundays, eating her latest baked confection in bed, and having game nights as a family. I remembered the day I proposed to her. I remembered everything. And it hurt . . . like . . . hell.
Finally, she turned to face me. She looked down at me with the most sincere but most serious expression I’d ever seen on her face. “What can you do for me, Aldris? Absolutely nothing. It’s over, Aldris. I’m done. Me and you . . . we are over.”
With that, she spun on her heels and walked out of the house and my life. The panic that was in the pit of my stomach swelled up in my chest, and my emotions exploded. She had already put the bags in her car and she was about to get in when I made a mad dash toward her.
“Lucinda! Lucinda! No. You can’t leave me. Please, I love you. Please.”
“Go back in the house, Aldris,” Lucinda demanded as she went to open her car door.
“No, come back.” I blocked her from getting inside the car.
Just then Mrs. Williams, our neighbor, stepped out of her house. “Is everything all right, Aldris and Lu?” she asked.
“Yes, Mrs. Williams. Go back inside,” I said to her.
“No, Mrs. Williams. Go inside, Aldris,” Lucinda said loudly.
Mrs. Williams walked over with her hands on her hips. “Aldris, I think you better let her get in the car,” she said as Lucinda and I stared each other down.
“I can’t. Go home, Mrs. Williams,” I yelled, never taking my eyes off Lucinda.
“I don’t want to call the police, Aldris.” Mrs. Williams walked in front of me and placed a hand on me as she pleaded sorrowfully, “Son, let her go.”
I dropped my head, and a flood of tears rushed out. “Lucinda, please. I love you so much. You know you love me. We can work through this. I know we can if you just let me make it right. Please, baby. Let me make it right. I can fix this. I can. I’m begging you, please.” I got down on my knees. “I’m not perfect. I wish I were. But I am perfect for you. We’re perfect together. Don’t do this. Don’t give up on us. I’m sorry, Lu.”
Lucinda looked down at me. Even with her tears, her face was set, and that told it all. “I can get over many things, Aldris, but not this. Not this. You can’t undo what’s been done. You can’t make it right. You can’t fix it. What you can do is let me leave with my dignity and pride—the little that I have left, which I’m fighting so hard to hold on to. We’re done.”
This time I didn’t even have the strength to stop her. She got in her car, and while still down on my knees, I somehow mustered the strength one last time to try to change her mind. “Please, Lu.”
The door shut; then she cranked up her car. I stood up, defeat dripping off me. She rolled down the car window and stuck her hand out, never once looking in my direction.
“Here,”
she said, holding out her engagement ring.
I pushed her hand away, refusing the ring. “No.”
“Here,” she bellowed, anguish rising from the pit of her soul.
Although I knew I should take the ring to end this fiasco, I couldn’t. Hell, I couldn’t even move. Taking that ring out of her hand would make our breakup final and official. Taking the ring—that would make it real.
Mrs. Williams walked over and took the ring out of Lucinda’s hand. “I’m so sorry, Lucinda,” she said, in tears from witnessing our breakup.
“Me too, Mrs. Williams,” Lucinda said, wiping her tears. And then she left.
Mrs. Williams turned and opened my hand, placed the ring in my palm, and then closed my fingers around it. Her sad eyes met mine as she patted my hand before walking away. I stood there for God only knows how long, just staring at the ring. I knew it was long after Lucinda drove down the street and out of my pathetic life. When I finally came to the realization that she was truly gone, I walked back in the house with my head hung low, a single man again.
Ever since then, I’d been a mess. I hadn’t talked to anyone. I hadn’t seen Lucinda, Nadia, Jennifer, or Jessica. I had refused to answer anyone’s call, text, or email. I had gone to work and come home. Taking a shower and brushing my teeth had been big enough feats to accomplish. I hadn’t eaten anything other than chips and cookies. I’d drunk water to sustain myself. I hadn’t slept in days.
My mind kept running over how I had messed everything up. I couldn’t even sleep in the bed, because her scent was still in the sheets. I couldn’t stand to look at her empty closet. Even the sign I’d made for Nadia that said NADIA’S ROOM was gone. I was depressed, angry at myself, and tired as hell. My job was the only thing that had been holding me up. Now I didn’t even have that.
I woke up on the sofa and felt like I was in a crazed daze. Shit. I’d managed to cry myself to sleep. I looked at the clock. Six thirty in the evening. Why couldn’t I have slept until morning? I thought as I sat up on the sofa. I looked at my cell phone and found that I had twenty-five missed calls, sixteen text messages, and twenty voicemails, all from either my mom, Mike, Rod, Jennifer, my supervisor, or my brothers. None from Lucinda. Not a call, not a text. Nothing. I decided to start with my mom.
“Aldris,” she yelled into the phone when she picked up. “I have been worried sick about you. I talked to Lucinda. How could you do this to her? Oh my God. Where have you been? I could kill you.”
“Then you’d be doing me a favor,” I mumbled. “I’m too much of a coward even to kill myself.”
“Don’t talk like that. It’s not the end of the world. You just have to find a way to get your life back on track and to get Lucinda back.”
I huffed. “I can’t, Mom. She hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you. She’s hurt.”
“I don’t see why she doesn’t. I hate myself.”
“Come over here, so I can see you. Your brother came up from Savannah tonight. We were going to go to the police and report you missing just to get into your house.”
“Tell him I said hello and I’m good. I just wanna be left alone.”
“And do what? Fall further into a depression?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Aldris, where is your faith?”
I huffed. “It left when Lucinda backed out of my driveway.”
“Have you lost your mind? You’re walking away from God, not Him from you. You messed up, Aldris, not Him. He’ll guide you so you can make it right. Don’t give up on God because of your mistakes. Ask Him to sustain you so you can learn to live and learn again. Maybe you’ll get Lucinda back, and perhaps you won’t, but you live on to show others what not to do.”
I knew she was right, but at that moment, I didn’t want to hear that shit, especially when she said I might not get Lu back. “I gotta go. I love you.” I hung up.
I stood up and walked over to pick up the books that were still on the floor from when Lucinda had hurled them at me during our first confrontation about Jennifer. Neither one of us had bothered to straighten up the mess, so I decided to busy myself with the task now. I picked up a small plaque Lucinda had purchased from an art gallery. It read WHEN YOU REALIZE THAT GOD IS ALL YOU’VE GOT, YOU’LL UNDERSTAND THAT GOD IS ALL YOU NEED .
The words touched my soul. God was indeed all I had, because without Lucinda and Nadia, I had nothing.
“God, please. Help me.”
Chapter 8
Lucinda
Leaving Aldris was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. I’d already known the truth when he came into the house. I just needed him to say the words to me so that I could truly believe them. When I hadn’t been able to reach him, I’d gone to his mom’s house, Mike’s, and even Rod’s. He hadn’t been there. It had taken me until three o’clock in the morning to muster up the nerve to ride over to Jennifer’s house to see if he was there. Lo and behold, whose car had been sitting in her driveway? Aldris’s. I couldn’t believe it. I had actually got out and peered into the car, hoping he was sitting inside it, but he hadn’t been. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where he was and what he was probably doing.
The old Lucinda would’ve knocked on that door and laid hands on that ass. But the new me? No. I had wanted the truth. I hadn’t wanted to be blamed for anything or for it to be turned around on me. This Lucinda had wanted only to hear what she had been thinking for quite some time now and to move on with her life. And I had.
The part of me that truly loved him wanted to forgive him and move past it. Real love fucked you up like that. With everything inside of me, I wanted to say to him, “Baby, it’s okay. I forgive you, I love you, and we can make this work.” However, that would be a lie, because every time I thought of Aldris touching me, I could see him touching Jennifer the same way, and that thought was enough to rouse so much hatred in me toward Aldris that it scared me.
How could he do this to us? How could he do this to me? What did I ever do to deserve this treatment? Was there not one man on this earth who thought with the head on his shoulders instead of the one between his thighs? Was one night of throwback pussy worth tearing down everything we’d built together? Obviously so.
Now I was happy that I had made the decision to leave, because the bitterness had set in. I’d begun to loathe Aldris, and not just for what he did, but also because of my feelings for him. I hated loving him, and even more so, I hated that I hadn’t stopped loving him. The only good things about this entire situation was that neither one of us had reached out to communicate with the other. Nor was I living with him, so I didn’t have to see him.
Which brings me to my current living arrangement: I’d been living with my mom, and I’d become fed up with that after only one day. Nadia loved it, of course, because she was playing with her aunties and uncles, but I didn’t. I had to witness my mom and Emilio Rojas in love again. With all the things going wrong in my life, my dad had managed to weasel his way right back into my mom’s life. It was plain damn sickening.
For instance, one of them would say to the other, “I love you, baby.”
And the other would reply, “No, I love you more.”
If I’d had another place to go, I would’ve left on sight. I didn’t want to stay with LaMeka, because she already had a full lot, and I didn’t trust anybody else enough to live with them. But I declared that I couldn’t stand seeing Emilio every day. I was convinced I was in the Ninth Circle of Pure Hell. It was time to get on the hunt for an apartment. I needed my own space for my own sanity. If this situation with Aldris wasn’t enough to drive me crazy, this living arrangement with my mom and Emilio damn sure would.
“Good morning, sunshine,” my mom sang, just as perky as she could be, as I walked into the kitchen.
I waved. I didn’t see shit perky about it. It was only a Saturday just like any other Saturday.
“Wow, Lucinda. I gave you all of that, and all I get is a half wave,” my mom said
sarcastically. “Today is a brand-new day to thank God for.”
“Yeah, well, today is just another day to me,” I said, flipping my hair back and reaching to get a coffee cup.
She passed me the coffeepot and glared at me. “Just because you’re going through trials with Aldris doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be thankful for seeing another day. You’re hurting right now, Lucinda, but you’ll heal, and maybe you and Aldris can work things out. Sometimes we have to go through the rain to see the sunshine.”
Sometimes we have to go through the rain . . . yada yada yada, I mimicked in my head. What the fuck ever. Now I was getting in a pissy mood.
“So I guess that’s what you and Emilio did, huh? Go through the rain. And now everything is just gumdrops and lollipops between y’all, huh?”
“What the hell is your problem, Lucinda?”
“And what the hell is yours, Mama?” My words matched her same level of intensity. “I can’t believe you accepted Emilio back into your life.”
She drummed her fingers on the counter. “First off, stop disrespecting your father by calling him Emilio. I didn’t raise you that way. Secondly, your father and I found each other again. What is the problem with that? I’m happy. We’re happy with each other, Lucinda. Can you not just be happy for me?”
I damn near spilled the entire pot of coffee at that declaration. “Do you hear yourself right now? Stop disrespecting Emilio? Well, he stopped being my father the day he walked out on you and started taking care of Maria’s kids instead of us. And you’re right. You raised me. Not him. You. Now I have to respect him as my father? Between him and Aldris, I’ve had it up to my ears with the disrespect, and I refuse to deal with his crap or Aldris’s anymore.”
“You are going through your own battles, so do not take them out on me and your father. I won’t be brought down by your personal problems,” my mom spewed.
Was I getting punked? I had to be. Either that or I had woken up in the twilight zone. The twisted turn of events left me truly mind fucked. “Everyone I know is losing their mind. Have you forgotten that not only did this man leave you, but he also left you to fend for yourself and eight children? It’s one thing to get a divorce because you no longer love that person, but you’re going to honestly forgive him for walking out on his responsibilities? We had nothing to do with the demise of your marriage. Now I’m supposed to respect him and this newfound relationship between you two? You may have fallen for the okey doke, but I’ll be damned if I do.”