| |
.
.
It’s amazing how pain—that deep, searing, emotionally based heartache—can eventually lead to feeling completely numb. The line between the two is way thinner and flimsier than the one floating between love and hate. The jacked-up part was, Nylah “Love” Lovely knew about each line very well and in that moment she drifted across both.
Bzzz...Bzzz...Bzzz...
Her body was stiff with shock, afraid to move, afraid to do anything to intensify the pain that felt as if she had been shot by a bullet and not shocked by the truth. And so nothing but her pain-filled eyes shifted from the computer to take in the vibrating cell phone on the edge of her desk.
“Do you want me to get it?”
Her eyes shifted to the concerned face of her best friend, Tashi Oyoni. “No. It’s either Byron with more lies or the press with more questions and speculations,” she said softly, barely above a whisper, before she sighed as she forced herself her body to lean back against the leather sofa in her office. “I don’t have it in me for either.”
Falling in love and getting married was risky no matter the circumstances. Everyone took a chance on placing their heart into someone else hands and could only hope not to have it crushed within their grasp. Love under the spotlight was even more tenuous. It felt like groupies, bloggers, and the entertainment news media was drooling, waiting to hear about one of the mighty falling. Like her husband, multiplatinum R & B star Byron Bilton.
Their entire relationship had been chronicled, from the first spotting of them trying to have a low-key dinner at a tucked-away restaurant, to their two-year relationship and subsequent fairytale marriage at a castle—and everything in between. They knew her name, they took her pictures, but truly they forgot about the person out of the limelight—the non-celebrity—just trying to be happy in her relationship, just trying to make it work, just trying to enjoy being in love. That person became a casualty of something they simply considered news.
They cared nothing about her shame, her pain, her heartbreak. Her embarrassment. And yes, yes, she was woman enough to admit that having his infidelity exposed to the world before she even knew and could process it made the pain all the more hurtful. All the more haunting. All the more difficult to forgive...or forget.
What woman—what person at all—would want to discover that her husband had cheated via some blog post showing the crappy cell phone video of him, his privates, and some faceless woman?
Bzzz...Bzzz...Bzzz...
Tashi looked down at the cell phone. “It’s Byron again. Do you want me to answer it?”
Love said nothing. She had nothing to say.
She had nothing to say to him. She had so much to say to him.
Another line to swing back and forth over.
“Byron, hold on, Love’s right here.”
Her eyes widened as she looked up at Tashi sitting the cell phone on the table in front of her.
“Nylah,” he said, his deep voice echoing.
“You put him on speaker?” Love mouthed, her face incredulous.
Tashi immediately looked apologetic. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed back, before biting her bottom lip.
“Nylah, I know you don’t believe that bullshit.”
Love’s eyes shifted again to take in the photo. “I know that I am looking at a picture of your privates snuggled deeply in a woman’s mouth...in our condo...on our couch...during the weekend I went home to Holtsville,” she said, her voice hollow.
“Nylah—”
“I know that we were supposed to celebrate our anniversary in another week. Celebrate our love. Our devotion.” She laughed bitterly. “But you never were ready for this. You are not the one for me. You are not going to be my husband. Or my lover. Or in my life anymore. That I know.”
“Nylah—”
“And I know that you need to give me fifty feet, because I didn’t need to find out in a fucking blog that the man I love ain’t shit,” she finished in a harsh whisper, tears filling her eyes before she closed them as a sharp and piercing pain radiated across her chest.
One solitary tear filled with the weight of her pain raced down her cheek.
“I love you—”
Love laughed out bitterly before she picked up her cell phone and threw it away from her. It hit the mirror over the brick fireplace, shattering the glass.
“Oh, Love,” Tashi sighed, coming around the table to wrap her arms around her shoulders and hug her up in some sistah-friend love that she needed.
The act of friendship and support shook her to her core and the dam broke from the act of compassion. The tears raced down her cheeks like an endless relay race to soak Tashi’s cinnamon brown shoulder.
“Girl, what are you going to do?” her friend asked as she patted her back like a mother belching a newborn.
The question made Love weary deep in her soul. Everything about her life and the path was on—with love and marriage and family—was just shattered into a billion pieces and blown away by imaginary winds never to be reclaimed. Her life with Byron was over. It was way more than she wanted to tackle at the moment.
