Chapter Sixteen

 

 

When Gold-Plated Is Really Trash In Disguise

How long did it take to meld two halves of your life together? Weeks had passed since Jereth’s and my heart-to-heart, yet I hadn’t seen any changes from him. He still left town every few days for work and returned with an insatiable hunger that I loved. He still attended our family dinners and Wisdom’s games. He still took me on dates to nice dinners and basketball games when the Clutch was in town. But…that was it. Nothing had changed.

From the way he described his mother, I expected her to arrive in town immediately after finding out about me and…well, I don’t know what I expected her to do once she arrived, but the arrival was the point. I didn’t receive so much as a phone call, and I was pissed about it. Had he even told her yet? Did any of his family know about me besides Jeremiah?

Oh, and speaking of Jeremiah, I hadn’t heard from him since the surprise party and had only heard his name a few times since then. Come to think of it, I hadn’t even heard Jereth talking on the phone to any of his family members in the entire time we’d been together. Granted, he rarely used the phone at all, but if you were going to introduce your wife to your family that lived out of state, wouldn’t you use a phone call as the first means of introduction?

I blinked rapidly as the sound of my son’s laughter broke me out of my reverie.

“Mama, you’re losing.”

Glancing down, I noticed that he’d sunk the eight ball into the side pocket, winning the game of pool that we’d been playing.

“Way to go, baby.”

He rolled his eyes, leaning on the pool cue. “You weren’t even paying attention.”

“The win doesn’t count if you didn’t put up a fight.”

“Exactly!” He turned to high-five Tasha, who’d given her unsolicited two cents.

Sighing, I laid my cue on the felt. “I’m sorry, baby. I guess I am just too far gone in my thoughts right now.”

“Aww man.” His shoulders slumped and I felt even worse. I’d promised myself that I would never put a man before my son, and here I was letting him down because I had a dishonest man on my mind. I was a damn fool.

I shot my sister a desperate look, which she deciphered quickly because she jumped up from the couch and grabbed my abandoned pool cue.

“I hope you enjoyed that warm-up because that game you just played with your mama was child’s play compared to the whooping I’m about to lay on you.” She winked at me before none too gently nudging me out of the way with a bump of her hips.

“Y’all have fun,” I called as I started in the direction of the stairs, but Wisdom had already begun racking the balls and didn’t even hear me.

Deciding to get a head start on dinner, I was almost into the kitchen when the sound of the deadbolt disengaging diverted my attention to the front door. The door swung inward, and there stood Jereth, holding a pair of boots in one hand and the handles of his duffel in the other.

That fucking duffel bag.

I remember when Wisdom had asked me if Jereth was going to move in with us when I confirmed that I had gotten married. At the time, I had told him that I didn’t know, but in my heart, I had been hoping that the answer would become a yes. We’d jumped into this thing in an unconventional way, but that didn’t have to mean that our entire marriage had to be unconventional. I wanted to live with my husband, as man and wife, and at the same time, I didn’t want to move out of my house. It was perfect for my family, and I would never put my sisters in a bad position by snatching what had also become their home from up under them.

I guess you could say that I had the audacity to hope that things would happen the way I wanted. After four months passed and it didn’t seem like Jereth was going to propose moving in, I discussed the situation with both of my sisters, getting their approval before I made my move. As soon as Tasha gave me the go-ahead and Toya begrudgingly said, “Fine, let that nigga move in”, I cleaned out half of my closet and had a key made for him. He’d filled in the empty space with clothes, but it still didn’t feel right. Things were off, like being at an extended stay hotel. Yeah, your things were in the drawers, your toothbrush on the counter, but you knew there was a check-out date.

It felt like he was waiting to check out on me, and the sight of that fucking duffel bag incensed me.

Placing his shoes on the rack and dropping the duffel on the floor, he crossed the room and pulled me into his arms for a hug, sliding his palm up to cradle my nape as he tilted my head back and kissed me as if he’d missed me. It was a feat, not melting into his embrace. When he broke our connection, warm chestnut browns smiled down at me as he touched his forehead to mine. It was a tender moment, but I couldn’t enjoy it.

“Where do you keep your stuff?” I blurted. “All I ever see you carry is that little duffel bag.”

A light chuckle fell from his lips. “I don’t really keep a lot of ‘stuff’. Too many material things make it difficult to be a nomad.”

I stiffened in his arms. Something about his word choice stuck to my brain like a wad of chewed-up gum on the bottom of my bare foot. “A nomad?”

“Yeah…”

“Like,” I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat, “someone who travels constantly?”

“Uh, well…”

“Like…a rolling stone?”

He leaned back, eyes bouncing back and forth between my own as if he was searching for something. “No. Not like that at all.”

“Or exactly like that.” That burning sensation that indicated an onslaught of tears pricked at my eyes, and I tried to pull out of his arms before anything could fall.

“Baby, look at me.” He threaded his fingers through mine and used them to tug me back against his chest. “That’s not me. My hat is only laid here with you. My home is here with you. You are my home.”

I heard him speak, saw his lips form the words as they came out of his mouth, but they weren’t tangible; I couldn’t grasp them and hold them up to the light to check for authenticity.

“Where's your car when you leave for a business trip? You never leave it here, and you never ask me to drop you off at the airport.

“Baby.”

That time, I was successful in unlinking our fingers and pulling out of his arms. I walked out of the doorway of the kitchen and into our—no, that’s not right—my bedroom, Jereth quick on my heels. I breezed into the closet aimlessly, not having a purpose to be in there, just trying to get away from that “baby” that fell from his too luscious lips.

“When I’m in a rush, I just park at the airport and pay the fee.”

His words—his excuse—assaulted my ears, and I swung around to reenter the bedroom, almost colliding into him as he placed the contents of his vest onto his nightstand.

“When you’re in a rush? What about when you have all the time in the world? When you’re not rushing? Where is your car when you have hours to spare before you have to board the plane?”

He sighed. “Sometimes, it's at my brother's house. Parked in his garage.”

My eyes widened in incredulity. “Your brother's house? So, you drive the eight hours to Pine Bluff, Arkansas before flying out every time? Are you using a private plane or something?”

He grabbed my hands in his. “Baby, where is this coming from?”

It didn’t go unnoticed that he had avoided answering me. “I am asking the questions, Jereth, and here's another question. Why are you avoiding answering me?”

“It's not that I'm avoiding anything, baby; it's just that I'm getting a very unpleasant vibe coming off of you and right now, the most important task laid out ahead of me is to make sure that we are okay. I want to make sure that we’re both level-headed and our spirits are free and clear of anger so when we do have a discussion, we don't end up saying things that we don't mean.”

My top lip curled. Was he really trying to lay the good vibrations line on me? “That sounds like a load of bullshit.”

He flinched as if I had spit on him. “Wow. There we go; it's already begun.”

I yanked away from him and crossed the room, putting some much needed distance between us. “Don't try to turn this around on me! I'm asking you simple questions, the kind of questions that I probably should have asked you before we even got to this place that we’re in now, with you checking in and out of my house like this is the Moonlight Motel where you can stay for twenty dollars an hour!”

Spreading his arms wide, he looked at me in confusion. “I thought we were working on—”

With my door closed, I was free to yell without worrying about my son or sister hearing me upstairs and yell I did. “No, you are supposed to be working on it! I have done my part. I've opened up my home to you; I've opened up my life to you. You've met my parents, my sisters, my son, my uncles, aunts, cousins, my grandparents. Hell, you've even met my damn gynecologist! But I can't say anything of the sort when it comes to you. I don't know anything about you, Jereth, and despite me begging you for information, you refuse to even give me crumbs. I haven’t asked you for money; I haven’t asked about your sexual history; I haven’t asked for your arrest record. All I asked is for you to be real with me, and I can't even get that.”

Those chestnut browns bored into me, pleading and full of misery. “Baby, please. Tonya. Listen to me.” He took a few steps in my direction, but I moved backward until my back hit the bathroom door. The look on his face would have gutted me if I hadn’t steeled myself for this conversation. Sad about me not wanting to be touched? He would deal. “I'm being as real with you as I know how to be. This is me; I promise it is. The other stuff that you're talking about, it's not me. That's accoutrement; it's on the fringes. But it has nothing to do with us. You didn't marry my family; you didn't marry material things, you married me, and I give you me without hesitation. Every day I give you me.”

Shaking my head, I wiped at my wet cheeks. “That's the thing; you can't give me all of you when you're holding a large part of you to your chest. And isn't that what you're doing? You still have never even shown your whole hand, and here we are, married more than a year and there is still so much I don't know about you. How do you think that makes me feel, Jereth?” I choked on my last words, tears clogging my throat.

“I don't know, baby. I don't know; I don't know. I know what I want you to feel. I want you to feel like I feel but I don't—I don't know.” He sounded as miserable as I felt and there was a part of me that wanted to say fuck it all and forget this whole obsession with wanting to know anything other than what he was willing to offer if it meant neither of us would hurt like this again. But a bigger part of me, the part that was tired of wondering, tired of guessing, just all-out tired wasn’t going. That part felt like the pain was worth it.

“Well, here is something that you can know: either you can give me what I deserve, treat me the way I deserve, or you can leave. It's as simple as that.”

His brows creased and I tried to ignore the shiny tracks on his cheeks. “Leave?”

“You—” I swallowed against another lump. “You heard what I said. Open up or get to steppin’.” I pointed at the door and stared at him, waiting to see what he would do next and damn near choked on my tongue when he seemingly made his decision.

Wait. Wait.

If I had said that my stomach did not drop into my feet when he walked over to the nightstand on his side of the bed and picked up his phone and keys, I would have been lying. What I absolutely did not expect was for him to take his things, place a dry-ass, chaste-ass kiss on my forehead, and walk out of my bedroom, gently pulling the door closed behind him. I was overcome with shock, but it wasn't the kind of shock you experienced when you are shot by a bullet or when a four-by-four lands on your foot. This shock was the overwhelming surprise and disbelief at what I had just witnessed.

Jereth had walked out on me. When faced with the option to let me into his life, he chose to leave instead.

Locking my bedroom door, I stripped out of my clothes before climbing into my bed and burrowing under the covers, so overcome with emotion that my head began to throb painfully. It didn’t make any sense. None at all.

Thankfully, I was off from work the next day and for the time being, Wisdom was occupied with Tasha and whatever round of pool they were on by now. With virtually nothing to do, I was free to lie in the bed and wallow in my misery. Calling on either of my sisters to vent was out of the question, and I damn sure wasn’t about to ring Danielle's line and hear her say I told you so. Yes, she was right. I should have run a damn background check on Jereth as soon as I got back home, but I was being too trusting. I believed that my gut wouldn't lead me astray and yet…here I was. Abandoned again.

What would it take? What was it about me that had a man begging to be mine, only to turn around and walk away when they had me? Why was the thrill of chasing me more satisfying than the contentment of having me? Why was I not enough? Why could I not keep a man?

On that thought, I pulled myself up short, mentally slapping myself.

No. That ain't it.

The voice in the back of my head that sounded suspiciously like Toya copped a whole attitude and told me to get my ass up out of the bed. No matter the circumstances, no man’s shortcomings meant that I was the problem.

“You know what,” I said aloud to myself. I’d be damned.

Throwing the covers back, I jumped out of bed and pulled my clothes back on. There was no way I hell I was about to be lying there in a ball of depression because Jereth would rather biggity bounce than spill the details of his life. Hell no. I walked into the kitchen and rifled through the pantry until I found a few simple ingredients that I could bring together for a quick meal. I was going to cook something even if my stomach was too tied up in knots to eat. Cooking helped me feel better; it was therapeutic. The knowledge that whatever I prepared wouldn’t go to waste didn’t hurt. Between my son and my sisters, the food was as good as eaten.

As I opened cans of beans and tomatoes and chopped up a few links of sausage, I thought back over the conversation with Jereth just in case I had been out of line, but I couldn't find one instance where my questions or line of thinking hadn't been valid. After dumping everything in the pot and covering it with some vegetable broth, my eyes kept drifting over in the direction of my bedroom, and I thought of my cell phone that sat on the bed. I wanted so badly to call him and tell him to come back, but that voice that had whispered in the back of my brain and told me to get out of bed spoke up loudly and told me that I wasn't the one who needed to be making phone calls. I hadn't been the one acting shady, so I wasn’t the one who needed to call and ask for forgiveness and to come clean. I had been an open book whereas Jereth was the one who decided to act like he belonged in the restricted section in the Hogwarts library.

Well, he could stay right-the-fuck-there because I was done trying to sneak around under an invisibility cloak, just to figure his ass out.

♥♥♥♥

When You Put Up When You Should Have Shut Up

I may or may not have cried myself to sleep, but when I woke up I was cocooned in a blanket of heat that only wrapped around me tighter when I tried to move.

“Jereth?”

“Who else would it be?” came a gruff voice. Still refusing to loosen his grip, he pulled me flush against his chest and buried his face into the back of my head.

My heart began to race and my mind was already at a steady gallop. I didn’t know how to feel about the fact that he was in bed with me.

“What are you doing here?”

“Sleeping.”

“You left.”

“I did.”

“Where did you go?”

“To the bar down the street from Black Coffee.”

Eyes on the wall across the room, I held my breath and asked, “Why didn’t you go to your apartment?”

He sighed. “I don’t have an apartment.”

There was something about the way the words hit the back of my neck that made me realize he wasn’t being entirely honest. I hesitated to ask the next question but after a moment of silence between us I both, I let it fly. “Do you…have a house?”

“Yes.”

A simple “yes”. As if the answer was innocuous and wouldn’t hurt a fly when it came out. But it wasn’t harmless. It hurt me—simple as it was—and tears clawed their way up my throat, choking me as I continued speaking.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t feel like it was pertinent information.”

I scoffed. “An asset isn’t pertinent when we’re discussing finances? Really?”

He didn’t say anything, so I writhed until he freed me from his grasp and scooted over, putting a small distance between us before sitting up to glare down at him. Rolling over onto his back, he reached toward the head of the bed as he stretched his body. After dragging both hands down his face, he reached for me, but I quickly scooted out of his reach and watched as his hands fell to the mattress. When he sat up, the quilt fell to his lap, exposing his gloriously bare chest.

His expression was inscrutable as he stared at me.

“What else? Whatever it is, whatever you want to know, ask me and I’ll tell you.”

The declaration should have sounded like music to my ears but instead, it was like watching a bootleg movie where the audio was a few seconds behind the video. Everything was off, and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with it anymore.

I shook my head. “At this point, Jereth. I’m good.”

He frowned. “What does that mean? What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I’ve been begging you to open up to me for too long and now that you’re offering transparency, it feels forced. You’re only doing this because I’m forcing your hand, and I don’t want it like this.”

Rubbing his eyes, he chuckled humorlessly. “Wait, so you put me out because I’m not open—as you say—but now that I’m ‘opening’ it’s not good enough? You gotta make this make sense to me, baby, because right now, I’m confused.”

His tone incensed me. It was like he was trying to make me be the one with the problem when all along, he was the one hiding cards under the table. Sliding out of the bed, I pulled on my robe and stomped into the bathroom, slapping on the faucet as I prepared to brush my teeth.

“I don’t know what you want from me.”

Looking up in the mirror, my eyes locked with Jereth’s. He stood in the open doorway of the bathroom, arms in the air as he held onto the door frame. My nipples beaded as I trailed down his frame. Completely naked, he stood there, unashamed and uninhibited. I struggled with my self-control, but I managed to drop my gaze back to the sink bowl as I brushed my teeth, ignoring him until I was done. Dropping my toothbrush into the cup behind the sink, I gripped the counter with both hands and hung my head.

“I don’t want anything from you, Jereth. Not anymore. Not when you obviously don’t want to give it to me.”

“What are you talking about? Everything I have is yours. It has been since the day we got married.”

At that, I spun around until I was facing him. He stood with his arms crossed and his semi-hard dick hanging between his thighs, but I kept my eyes on his face as I mimicked his crossed arms.

“How is that? I don’t even know what yours is!”

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t belong to you. There are things in this world greater than either of us, things our ancestors set in motion for us to inherit in their absence, but just because we are ignorant of their existence does not mean that we forfeit our inheritance.” He stepped into the bathroom and walked toward me. “Baby,” he murmured, pulling my arms free from their barrier on my chest. Placing one of my hands on his chest over his heart, he brought the other to his mouth and peppered feather-light kisses on my palm and fingertips. “Baby.”

There was something about being called baby by a naked man with a steadily hardening dick that stripped you of your good sense. When his lips found my neck, my hand found his dick, and I don’t know if he put it there or if I did, but I squeezed and slid my hand along the silken length in a tight grip as if it were second nature. In one, two, three pumps with my fist, I was suddenly lifted into his arms and seated on the edge of the counter. My robe fell open as my thighs were caught in the crooks of his elbows. His eyes met mine and I became incensed for an entirely different reason, in an entirely different way.

“Put me in.”

That firm directive did something wicked to me, and whatever I was indignant about two minutes earlier fell away, leaving an unquenchable thirst for this man. With a steady hand, I gripped him, loving the feel of his hardness in my hands, feeling powerful at the thought that I did this to him—that I got him to this state. Biting my lip, I rubbed his tip in my wetness before pulling him into me. Once we were connected, he pushed forward until his hips met my ass. I dropped my head back against the mirror, the overfull feeling muddling my head.

He leaned forward, pressing desperate kisses to my neck and chest and maybe my senses were heightened or maybe, despite my arousal, I was still pissed because something about it felt sloppy. Sloppy wasn’t a word I’d ever associated with Jereth, but as he dragged his mouth from one side of my neck to the other, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. This entire interaction was sloppy. Trying to distract me with sex was sloppy. Lying by omission was sloppy.

The barrage of thoughts made my head hurt, and I squeezed my eyes shut to avoid looking at the man who was fucking me over in more ways than one. How could he make me feel so good yet make me crazy at the same time? How was he bringing me to an unavoidable orgasm and pushing me over the edge of insanity at the same time? How?

“Stop pushing me away,” he whispered as he thrust inside of me slowly, the base of his dick doing things to my clit that made my eyes attempt to roll to the back of my head, and my lids flew up to see his intense stare pinning me in place. “I’m not gon’ stay where I’m not wanted.”

Leave me alone or I will leave.

The threat banged around in my head as if it was yelled instead of implied, and true to my dilemma of being pulled in two different directions, the urge to rage rose just as my orgasm consumed me. Choking on a gasp, I fell apart in his arms, tears trailing down my cheeks and pussy contracting around him. Crying out against his own climax, he lurched forward, lips pursed, but I turned my head, allowing them to fall onto my jaw. We stayed that way for a few minutes, breathing heavy, chests heaving, neither of us saying a word.

Finally, he pulled out of me, stepping over to the shower and reaching inside to start the water. When he returned to me, he pushed the robe from my shoulders and lifted me from the counter, not putting me down until we were both standing inside the glass stall. I was quiet as he washed my body with a gentle hand, running the lathered loofah across my skin tenderly. I held my tongue as he dried us both off and grabbed my hand to lead me back into the bedroom. Tears once again pricked my eyes as he disappeared into the bathroom and returned with my favorite bottle of lotion and began to slather the cream onto my body.

It’s not enough.

Those three words kept playing over and over in my mind as he went to work with a silent focus, making sure every inch of my body as fully moisturized. He was massaging my feet when I finally found my voice.

“Leave the key this time.”

His brows furrowed but he didn’t look up at me or stop his task.

“Jereth.”

“Hmm?”

“Did you hear me?”

I watched as his chest rose slowly and for some reason, the knowledge that he felt the need to take a deep breath before engaging in conversation with me brought a haze of red to my vision.

“I’ll repeat myself since you apparently missed it. Leave. The. Key. Do you understand what that means?”

His jaw ticked and he raised his gaze from my feet to my face.

“When I tell you to leave, I want you to leave the key. Take your things—few that they are—and be on your merry way.”

“Why—”

I pulled my foot from his grasp. “You said you won’t stay where you’re not wanted, and I don’t want you here if you’re going to make me feel like expecting my efforts to be reciprocated is asking too much. The only logical thing for us to do is to—”

He stood up so quickly it shocked me. “So, if things aren’t done the exact way you want them to be you just end them? You end us?”

“It’s not about getting what I want, Jereth. This is about right and wrong.”

His arms flailed through the air. “Who decides what’s right and what’s wrong? Is it somebody outside of our relationship or is it just you?”

I shook my head. “You know what? I’m not going to go back and forth with you. I’m tired and—”

“You’re tired?”

“Yes, I’m tired.”

“You’re tired of me?” he asked incredulously.

Licking my lips, I contemplated his question. “I’m tired of this situation. I need a mental break.”

He nodded. “A mental break. Okay. That’s fine. That we can do.”

I eyed him suspiciously. “What are you talking about?”

“You said you need a mental break, and I’mma give you that. Give you some breathing room so you can think. What I’m not gonna do is let you end us. I didn’t get married just to be divorced a year later. When I said ‘til death do us part, I meant that shit.”

He walked off, leaving me on the bed gaping after him as he went into the closet and reemerged moments later, fully dressed. Moving over to his nightstand, he picked up his keyring and fiddled with the keys before palming them and rounding the bed until he stood in front of me. Grabbing the back of my neck, he pressed a firm kiss to my lips.

“This is a break. I’m coming back.” When he left the room, I stared at the closed door in confusion, not knowing which way was up. It was a steady cry from the night before, but this time, I wasn’t sure how to feel.