Chapter 19
Terrence
“So where are all the drinks?” Terrence gazed at the buffet table in front of him, grabbed one of the bright pink petit fours from a ceramic platter, popped it into his mouth and chewed. “Is that all you got . . . lemonade and iced tea? Is the lemonade at least spiked?”
His little sister, Paulette, sighed loudly as she shifted one of the tiered sterling silver trays on the table that featured mini cupcakes decorated with pearls and little plastic rattles. “It’s a baby shower, Terry! Why the hell would the lemonade be spiked?”
“But you invited dudes to this thing,” he grumbled, reaching for one the mini cupcakes, only to have Paulette slap his hand away. “We’re all adults! You’re telling me a man can’t get a goddamn Corona?”
“Yes!” she said before rearranging an assortment of folded linen napkins that one of Evan’s maids had set on the table. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you!”
He closed his eyes and sighed. “Then why the fuck am I here?”
“You’re here,” she said while turning to face him, “to celebrate our brother and Lee having a baby together . . . his first baby, mind you. So please, Terry,”—he watched as Paulette reached up, adjusted the collar of his shirt, and pursed her lips—“please try to act like you’re in a good mood.”
Terrence frowned. His brow clouded over. “What do you mean ‘try to act like you’re in a good mood’? Who said I wasn’t?”
“She means don’t sulk around like you have been for the past month or so,” Evan called out as he strolled into the room, carrying a large box with a silver bow on top. He set it on the table with a pile of several other gifts. “This day is for Lee, me, and the baby. Don’t bring down the room.”
Terrence’s eyes widened comically. “Well, excuse the hell out of me! I didn’t know my mere presence brought the room down. I just can take my gift and get the hell up out of here, you know!”
Paulette closed her eyes and shook her head, sending her curls flying around her shoulders. “I’m not doing this. I am not doing this! Not today!” She sighed and threw up her hands. “I’m supposed to be hosting this thing. I have to check on Lee and see if the rest of the party guests need anything. You guys can take care of this yourselves.”
“Take care of what?” Terrence asked as he watched his sister’s receding back. She sauntered out of the salon in a huff, in a cloud of emerald green silk. She didn’t answer him. He turned back to his brother. “Take care of what? What the hell is she talking about?”
“Look,” Evan began, placing a conciliatory hand on Terrence’s shoulder, “we all know you’re still torn up about your break up with C. J.”
At the mention of C. J.’s name, Terrence’s pulse quickened. It had been eighteen days, fourteen hours, and twenty-two minutes, and his mind still leapt back to the moment he pushed open her bedroom door and found Shaun Clancy standing in his boxers next to her bed. He still remembered the heartache and sense of betrayal that had overwhelmed him that day, the rage that left him with an almost irresistible desire to beat Clancy senseless. And he would have beaten Clancy senseless—if C. J. hadn’t stopped him.
“We know how much you miss her,” Evan continued.
Terrence shoved Evan’s hand off his shoulder. “I don’t fucking miss her! Why the hell would I miss her? Fuck that bitch!”
“Terry,” Evan said, taking a deep breath and looking very tired, “please stop saying that! You know you don’t mean it.”
“Yes, I do mean it! She cheated on me. I don’t give a shit about her!”
“You do give a shit about her. You love her. That’s why you’re still so pissed.”
Even though he knew his brother was right, Terrence opened his mouth to deny it, but Evan waved his hand dismissively.
“And from what you told me, you kicked her out of your apartment, and then she hooked up with that other guy a few days later. I don’t know if I would necessarily call that cheating.”
Terrence sucked his teeth. “Man, I don’t need you to replay what I—”
Evan held up his hands again. “I’m just saying that I get how you feel. I understand! I’ve been there. Believe me! But you can’t let it take over like this, Terry. She’s obviously moved on, right? You’ve got to move on, too.”
“Like you’re one to give love advice! You’re still married to one chick while you’re living with another,” Terrence snapped, then immediately regretted the words after they flew out of his mouth.
“Actually, Charisse mailed the signed divorce papers back last week,” Evan answered proudly. “Once a judge signs off on them, we’re officially divorced. I’ll only have one woman in my life from now on.”
Terrence narrowed his eyes at his older brother. “And how the hell did you manage to pull that off?”
Evan shrugged. “I just talked to her.”
“Talked to her? Riiiiiight.” Terrence gave a mirthless laugh. He knew his brother well. Evan was lying through his teeth. “Some shit went down. Probably some shit I don’t wanna know about.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Evan replied, his voice going robotic again like it always did when he lied.
Terrence shook his head in exasperation. “Of course you don’t! You never do, do you, Ev?” He then shoved past his brother and walked back into the great room with the rest of the baby shower guests.
* * *
Two hours later, Terrence was slumped in a wingback chair in a corner of the great room while Leila and Evan sat in front of the limestone fireplace, opening baby shower gifts and pretending to be delighted by some ugly onesie and matching yellow blanket that would probably be tossed in the trash as soon as all the guests left. Several people sat on the chairs and on the sofa throughout the room, gushing over every item that Leila held aloft.
Everyone seemed so happy, so content. It was downright sickening!
“Evan’s right,” a voice in his head said as he gulped from his third glass of lemonade, which was spiked with vodka thanks to Terrence secretly raiding Evan’s liquor stash. “You are stuck in a bad mood.”
I’m not in a bad mood, Terrence argued as Leila opened yet another package and held up yet another onesie that made everyone in the room “ooh” and “aww.”
I’m just realistic.
He didn’t care that Charisse had signed the divorce papers and that Evan and Leila could finally get married. He knew their relationship was doomed to failure, just like Terrence and C. J.’s relationship, and like Paulette and Antonio’s. The Marvelous Murdochs, or M&Ms, had some genetic disease that made them incapable of maintaining relationships for the long haul. Evan and Paulette could live in la-la land and not acknowledge that truth, but Terrence refused to drink the Kool-Aid and do the same. He’d rather drink the lemonade instead, which is what he did, finishing what was left in his glass.
But part of him, the part that was more self-aware, told him that all of this was a lie. His breakup with C. J. had left him teetering on the brink of a bad mood that threatened to go full dark. He was on the cusp of real depression again, the same depression that had swept over him soon after his car accident. He could see the signs that his former therapist had told him to keep an eye out for: the irritability, the social anxiety, the drinking, the self-loathing, and the desire to just sit in a room alone all day with the only light coming from the television screen. He did that for hours at a time nowadays. Yesterday, he’d barely made it out of bed.
I should just leave, he thought, gazing down into his empty glass, feeling equally empty. I’m not doing anybody any good staying here. I should just take my ass back home.
“Hey, Terry, what’s up? What are you doing hiding over here?” someone asked, making Terrence look up.
He found Antonio smiling down at him, holding a plate covered with crustless sandwiches.
“I’m not hiding,” Terrence lied, staring at Antonio cagily, feeling the vodka kicking in. “I’m just chillin’.”
Antonio’s smile disappeared. He squinted. “Are you okay, man?”
“I’m fine! Are you okay?”
“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” Antonio asked, now frowning.
On the other side of the room, Leila continued to open presents, but Evan was no longer paying attention to the floral box she was currently unwrapping. His gaze was drawn to the other side of the room where Terrence sat and Antonio stood.
“I don’t know!” Terrence exclaimed with an exaggerated shrug and a drunken snicker. “Who knows what could set off a dude like you! Just let me know ahead of time, though, just in case I need to break out a bulletproof vest.”
Antonio’s frown deepened. He set down the plate he was holding on a nearby end table and took a step toward Terrence. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” Evan said, speaking for his brother, suddenly striding toward them and making several of the party guests look up at him in surprise. “He didn’t mean anything by it, Tony. He’s obviously drunk. Don’t listen to him.”
Terrence laughed. “Oh, I meant every damn word! I meant don’t put me in a body bag just because you—”
He was stopped mid-sentence by Evan, who grabbed him by the upper arm and yanked him up from the chair. “Shut . . . your . . . mouth,” Evan ordered with a firm iciness into Terrence’s ear as he dragged him from the room.
“Get your goddamn hands off me!” Terrence yelled, trying to yank his arm out of Evan’s grasp, but his brother’s grip only tightened.
Now the entire room of thirty or so people was watching them, including Leila and Paulette, who had been reading aloud the card that had been attached to the gift Leila had been opening.
Evan tugged Terrence into the corridor and then into one of the empty sitting rooms before finally releasing him with a shove.
“Are you out of your goddamn mind?” Evan asked his brother, shutting the door behind him, looking like he was struggling not to yell or punch him in the face. “Why the fuck would you bring that shit up with Antonio? Why would you do it here, Terry—of all places? Why would you do it with his wife standing on the other side of the room, with two dozen people hanging around?”
“Sorry if I thought our sister’s welfare was more important than your fucking baby shower, Ev!” Terrence slurred, holding out his arms. “My bad!”
“This has nothing to do with Paulette, and you know it! This has nothing to do with her welfare. This is all about your girlfriend and your breakup and you feeling sorry for yourself! You’re acting like a little boy left to play alone in the sandbox!”
“Fuck you! I don’t have to listen to this shit!”
“You’re ruining my day and Leila’s day with your bullshit, Terry,” Evan continued, undaunted, “and you’re coming dangerously close to ruining Paulette’s marriage!”
“Like I have to try to ruin her marriage! Their marriage has been fucked up for a while now. That doesn’t have shit do with me!”
“No, it’s not fucked up. Unlike you, they’re acting like adults . . . grownups, and they’re making it work! They’re trying to piece their lives back together. They’re happy, Terry! Paulette doesn’t need you to—”
“They’re happy?” Terrence barked out a laugh. “Well, good for them! And all it took was for Antonio to kill her ex-boyfriend and get away with murder! We should all be so—”
“What?” Paulette asked.
The two men whipped around and found their little sister standing in the now open doorway. The pink card with the teddy bear on front of it that she had been holding fell from her hand to the floor. Her mouth hung open. She was blinking furiously like she couldn’t quite see what was in front of her.
Watching his sister there and witnessing the look of shock on her face, Terrence immediately sobered. His stomach plummeted.
“Wh-what did you just say?” Paulette repeated, taking a hesitant step into the room. “Did you say Antonio killed someone? That he . . . he . . .” Her words drifted off. She looked utterly devastated.
“Sweet Pea,” Evan whispered, walking toward her.
She furiously shook her head and raised her trembling hand to her mouth. “He said . . . he said he didn’t do it! Tony said that he didn’t . . .” Her eyes flooded with tears. She turned away from her brothers and rushed from the room.
“Paulette!” Evan shouted as he ran toward the doorway. “Paulette, wait!”
He paused as he stood in threshold and turned his ominous stare to Terrence. “Are you happy now? I hope you’re proud of yourself!” he spat before rushing down the hall after their sister.
Terrence sighed and lowered his head. “Shit,” he muttered.