I smiled, thinking of seeing Tre tonight as I finished preparing a vanilla latte at the bookstore. He was due back from Shreveport, and I’d missed him though we talked every night by phone. I’d finally decided to tell him everything the minute I saw him—from the crush I had on him, to our first kiss, and what happened to my father.
Al called out to me. “Raini, I need you to get some more tall cups.”
“Okay.”
I was so caught up in dreaming of Tre, I didn’t think to refuse to go into the storage room until the door slammed shut behind me. I instantly panicked, dreadful memories I tried to block rushing back to me. My feet wouldn’t move, immobilized by a crippling fear. I closed my ears from the yells I could still hear, wanted to stop inhaling to avoid the olfactory remembrance of his pungent odor. No! Not today, not ever. The damp, barely lit room seemed even darker, sinister, and I fumbled trying to find the knob. Trying desperately to quell the scream that threatened to emit from my closing throat and unwilling lips, I closed my eyes, clawing for a quick escape. Finally, my trembling fingers felt ice cold metal and I hurriedly opened the door and crashed into Al.
He grabbed me by the shoulders. “Hey, you okay? You don’t look so good.”
“I keep telling you I can’t go in there,” I snapped to hide the quivering in my voice and snatched my apron off.
Al let go of me and stepped back. “I’m sorry, I thought you were just being scary.”
“I need to take a break.” Barely waiting for his response, I sprinted away before I lost all control.
“Yeah, sure. I can handle the café.” A lone customer waited for her order and looked at me curiously as I rushed past her, headed to the breakroom, hoping no one else was in there. When I walked inside, the eclectic room with two comfy chairs and one sole gray sofa was empty. I dropped down on the sofa and leaned over, my head between my knees, wishing the painful memories and fear away.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket. I retrieved it and hit the button, grateful that Tre had chosen that moment to call me.
“Meet me at my place now,” he growled.
Confused by his anger, I responded lamely, “I’m still at work.”
“Make whatever excuses you need, but get your ass to my house now.”
Before I could protest at his unreasonably demanding tone, I heard a click. I stared at my phone and wondered what in the hell had made Tre so angry that he would speak to me in this manner. As I stared at my cell in the middle of the employee lounge, Royalty called, and I answered.
“Hey, girl,” she said in an unusually somber voice.
“Hey. I’m sitting here freaking out about going in the storage room and the memories closed in spaces give me, and then Tre called tripping, and I have no idea why.”
“Did you see the news yet? Are you okay? Is Tre?”
I immediately picked up on the anxiety in her voice. “What? Why?”
“Would you please watch the local news at least once a day or get news sent to your phone or something when Tre is away? At what point are you going to understand that Tre is the most important man in this city?”
“I don’t have time for a lecture. Can you tell me what the fuck is going on? First Tre ordered me to go to his place now and now you’re being a bitch to me. What is it?”
“He knows about your father.”
My heartbeat thumped so fast. “What did you say?” I squeaked.
“When he arrived at the airport earlier today, a reporter asked him how he planned to explain to the city that his girlfriend’s father used to be one of the head drug dealers of one of the most vicious gangs in New Orleans. How he died after a fight in which he attacked a well-known white business owner in Baton Rouge. He responded, ‘no comment’ and kept walking.” Royalty took a breath before speaking. “Please say you had a chance to tell him the truth.”
“I got to go.” I clicked off and left the employee lounge, bent on getting to Tre. I could only imagine how he was feeling. He would think I used him, that I played him like Chloe did, that I didn’t really love him. What must he think of my father? I hurried out of the store without a word to Al or anyone else, uncaring if I lost my job. Tre was all that mattered.
I was at his home within fifteen minutes and paced the kitchen floor, knowing he usually entered his home through the kitchen door. Shortly after I arrived, Tre walked in his back door, expression grave.
He tossed his keys and leather bag on the table. “Why didn’t you tell me about your father? You didn’t think anyone would dig into the background of the the woman I’m dating?”
I tried to touch his chest but he pushed away my hand.
Tre demanded, “No more bullshit. Tell me who you are.”
I didn’t recognize him like this, with his face twisted into angrier lines than I’d ever seen before. I clasped my hands together in front of me, fighting back tears that he wouldn’t appreciate.
“I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you time and time again, and I’d planned to tell you tonight once you got home. I’d been afraid to say anything. My past was why I didn’t want to go public with you.”
“Afraid of what? That I wouldn’t be with you. Whatever your father did wouldn’t have stopped my love for you, but keeping secrets from me is another thing. After all this time, you haven’t figured that about me?” Tre turned his back to me and stared at his beautifully landscaped backyard and inviting infinity pool.
I scooped my arms under his and rested my head on his back. “Initially I wasn’t sure if you would use my father’s past as a reason to not date me, but now I’m confident in your love, which is why I was finally ready to share with you.”
“Damn, Raini. Do you know how it felt to be blindsided about your father? My first reaction was to defend and protect you, but instinct prevailed, and I kept my mouth shut. I’m fucking glad I did because I would have looked like a fool. I drove around aimlessly while gathering all the information I could from my team, trying to understand why the woman I love still doesn’t trust me or my love for her.”
I squeezed his waist. “Tre, I do trust you.”
“You must have a different definition of trust. I’m an open book, and I’ve done everything I know to get you to be real with me.”
“I am real.”
His back tensed, and when I thought he would shrug me off, he put his hands in his pockets, still staring out at the darkening sky. “We’ve spent almost every day together for the past four months, I’ve shared my daughter, my family, my life with you, and I barely know the damn name of your best friend or godson. You think I give a fuck about your past, when all I care about is the woman standing behind me right now.”
“Tre, please…I swear to you, I’d planned for you to meet Royalty and eventually my family in Baton Rouge. I barely speak to them, but I was going to reach out to them for you. I don’t have the strong family you have. You have so much and mean the world to so many people, and I…” I stopped talking because I realized the shoe had finally dropped, and my happiness would end soon.
“I need you to tell me everything. You can’t keep any more secrets from me. I have to know how to defend you.”
“You still want to be with me?” I couldn’t believe I’d heard him correctly. Maybe I’d misunderstood what he meant.
He removed my hands from around his waist and turned around. His eyes were hooded, guarded. “I don’t know. But regardless of what happens to us, I need to be able to defend you.”
I nodded and hugged myself, trying to hold on to my sanity at the thought of losing Tre. “Can we sit in your sunroom? I can see the stars. My father used to love astronomy, and we would sit outside on a blanket on a clear night and dream.”
Tre strode in that direction without another word. We settled on his plush bench against the window across from each other. I shivered involuntarily at the coldness emanating from him. He sighed and retrieved the cashmere throw on his side and placed it around my shoulders. Then settled behind me, cocooning me within his arms and huskily asked, “Comfy?”
I nodded and snuggled against him, needing his warm and strength. “My father used to run the streets with the crew when Blue St. John ran it. He’d been a young soldier, moving through the ranks quickly with his ability to sell product, think fast, and charm others. My mother loved the streets and the men associated with it and fell in love with my father. When she got pregnant with me, she’d turned eighteen and he was only twenty. My grandmother told me that once he learned about me, he wanted to leave that life behind and used what he earned to create a respectable life for his family. He’d grown up without a father, who’d been murdered on the streets of New Orleans when he was a young boy. He didn’t want to continue the cycle. Blue owed him a favor and he let him out the crew just like that, with no threats or consequences.
“My mother had been too immature to handle motherhood and didn’t want the straight life, so she left me with my father. She moved to Atlanta with a boyfriend while I was still very young. She called from time to time to check on me, but we were never close, and because I adored my father, I never cared that she left us. The father I knew was a hard-working mechanic who owned his shop and provided a good life for me. When he mentored teens who would hang out for hours at the garage, I would hear some of his stories about his days as a thug. I didn’t know the full extent of his past life until he was killed by the man who attempted to rape me.”
I heard his sharp intake of breath. “There was nothing in the research about a rape. Your father and William Beauchamp got into a physical altercation about some part for a car, your father broke the storefront window, and Beauchamp—fearing for his life—managed to hit your father in the head and he later died at the hospital. I’m guessing because of your father’s criminal past, Beauchamp wasn’t even arrested. If people knew the truth, that he was a father protecting his daughter, Beauchamp may have rightfully ended up in jail. From the reports, your father was conscious when he went to the hospital. Why didn’t you or he say anything?”
“He didn’t know he would die when he asked me not to say anything about what really happened. My father didn’t want me to have to relive what happened in court and risk the chance of not being believed because Beauchamp’s family is a well-known white family in Baton Rouge. My father told me that night before he died that jail is nothing, and he wouldn’t be away long if for some reason he got charged for assault or destruction of property. And he would fight again in a heartbeat to protect me and to protect other women that may have been victimized by Beauchamp.”
“What happened that day?”
“That day. I still have nightmares about that day…hate dark, closed in spaces like the storage room at work because of that day. Didn’t feel comfortable about sex until you because of that horrible day.” I tightly held on to Tre’s forearm that crossed my chest, steeling myself for the inevitable emotions that would overcome me whenever I thought about the day my father died. “We were in Baton Rouge and my father needed to stop by this mechanic shop to get a few parts. Beauchamp had been an acquaintance of his, and my father planned to go to his shop before spending the rest of the weekend with my grandmother. I’d been feeling sad and my father had been trying to cheer me up. When we arrived at the shop, a couple was waiting for their car. Beauchamp told my father that he couldn’t get the parts delivered to the store but knew of another store that had them in stock, and he would call ahead so my dad could get it. My head was caught up in a book, and I was listening to some random sad CD, so my father told me he would be right back. I didn’t care, I just wanted to go to my grandmother’s and hide out to drown out my sorrow about something that had happened earlier that week.
“Well, my father took longer than I thought to return and the couple had already left when Beauchamp sat down next to me, and I could smell his stench. He smelled like old oil and gas, but different than my father and the guys who worked for him. Beauchamp squeezed my thigh and kept his hand there. I looked around, realizing that he’d turned off the lights, that we were alone, and I began praying that my father would walk through that door any minute.
“He told me that I looked like I knew how to give head. When I tried to stand, he pulled me back down harshly, saying that since I was being mean, he would go ahead and have sex with me. Beauchamp threatened that if I told my father, he would call the police and tell them my father stole from him. He must have known my father had done time and figured he probably could scare me with that. Angry that he tried to use my father’s past. I punched him in his face and ran to the door, believing I could get away, but it was locked. I screamed that my father would be back any minute and would kill him. He laughed and said that my father had called him to say he had to go to another shop. That’s when I really began to panic. I was alone with this man who was much bigger and stronger than me, and my father wouldn’t be back anytime soon to save me.
“Beauchamp grabbed me, and I bit his hand with all my might, and right when I cowered to prevent the pain of the pending slap to my face, my father rattled the door viciously and Beauchamp’s eyes grew huge in fear because my father was a large man—bigger than him. I yelled for help, and my father quickly took off his jacket, wrapped his fist, and broke the glass to the door with his bare hands. Uncaring that the glass shattered everywhere, he furiously charged into the shop. By then Beauchamp had run to the back of the store. One look at my father and I knew he would kill him. I tried to stop my father, but he’d become a bull intent on hitting its target. My father charged past me and Beauchamp grabbed a wrench. My father got in one solid punch to Beauchamp’s gut before he hit my father on his temple. When he staggered, Beauchamp hit him again in the head. He collapsed to his knees while Beauchamp ran out of the shop. I rushed to my father and he was still conscious. I comforted him while I used my cell to call 911.”
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I knelt over my father on the cold tile floor. He opened his eyes enough to search my face. “Did he…?”
I shook my head vehemently. “No, I knew you would come back before he ever did anything. Shh, it’s going to be alright. He’s gone and we can press charges.”
“No. I don’t want you to tell what happened.”
“But he tried to…tried to…” I couldn’t even label what he tried to do.
He nodded warily. “You can’t even say it. That’s why I don’t want you to say a word about what happened. They’ll change everything around and make it seem like you wanted it to happen. He’s a well-known white man around here, and you’re a black girl with no powerful connections in New Orleans.”
I caressed his cheek, worried. “What if they arrest you?”
“They won’t, and even if they do, it’s okay,” he said with a wry smile. “I always said I would have to pay for some of the things I did in the past. So, if I do go to jail, it’s okay. I’ll be out in no time. As long as you’re safe. Just glad I got there when I did.”
“Daddy, stop talking like that. You’ve been nothing but a good man all these years. You’re not going to jail for protecting me, for attacking a man trying to harm your child.”
“I wasn’t always good. But for you, I changed. I did it all for you. Promise me no matter what, you’ll say Beauchamp and I had words and we fought.”
I rocked him in my arms and the ambulance came. Police were called, and paramedics saw the broken glass door, though they assured me they would help my father before he or I would be questioned. I jumped in the back of the ambulance, and we rushed to the hospital. My dad laughed and joked the whole time, trying to reassure me he would be fine because he could see my fear. He'd been hit hard in the head twice. His eyes were bloodshot, and there was a nasty cut on his head.
Once the nurse had him triaged and in an ER room, I laid my head on my father’s chest, listening to his even breathing.
“Raini, I stopped to get you that unicorn you wanted. I wanted to make you happy again. It was the only reason I left you with that bastard because I wanted to surprise you. Don’t forget to have your Ma Ma get it out the car for you in case I need to be here overnight or have to be taken down to the police station.”
“Daddy, don’t worry about all that. I don’t care about anything except you getting up and coming home with me.”
Two police officers interrupted our conversation, and I sat with him as the police took his story. I corroborated what my father said, that he and Mr. Beauchamp had words that turned physical about an auto part. The police left shortly after, letting my father know they would be in touch. Relieved that they hadn’t arrested him, I kissed my father’s chubby cheek and stepped out of his room to contact my grandmother and tell her what happened. She’d been calling both our phones for the last couple of hours.
Suddenly I heard a code blue announced and ER personnel ran from every direction, headed straight to my father’s room. I rushed back down the hall, and before the staff could prevent me from going back into his room, I saw that though he looked like he was asleep with a slight smile, my father was already gone. I screamed so loud that a nurse grabbed me to her, holding me tight. I had to be sedated and they kept me overnight. The next day my grandmother came to get me.
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“I lived with my grandmother until I moved back to New Orleans on my twenty-third birthday.”
“What made you so sad?” Tre spoke so softly I almost didn’t hear, breaking my almost hypnotic flashback into my worst night.
“My father had just died, Tre.”
“No, you said you were sad even before, and he brought you a stuffed animal to cheer you up. Why were you already sad?”
I looked up to meet his tear-stained face that mirrored mine. “You.”
He said, “Lorraine Blue Thibodeaux is your real name.”
I met his eyes. “Yes.”
“Why did you wait so long to tell me?”
“You hurt me back then, and I didn’t want to feel more pain or embarrassment if you didn’t remember me. I thought maybe you did when we first met, but as time went on you never said anything.”
He said quietly, “I remembered you the moment I saw you in the coffeehouse. You were my Cinderella.”
I stared at him in disbelief that he recognized me right away.
“I didn’t pay any attention to you until I looked up from my phone and noticed your aggravation. My heart stopped at seeing the face I had dreamed about, that I’d spent the rest of the school year hoping I would see again. But I couldn’t tell if you remembered me, and when you were so standoffish, I thought maybe you did and were still pissed by my behavior all those years ago. I kept hoping that one day you would let down your guard and be honest with me. When you told me you were from Baton Rouge, I realized that for some reason you wanted to keep who you really were from me. And I didn’t want to press you.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to me? You ignored me after I practically gave myself to you back then. I was humiliated, so why would I want to feel that way again if by chance you didn’t remember me when I lived and breathed you ever since I was a freshman in high school?”
He averted his gaze for a second. “I have my reasons for not speaking up sooner. First, I had to prove to you that I was deserving of you and that arrogant, stupid boy had matured over the years.”
“Why did you treat me like I didn’t matter when we got back to school?”
With a grimace, Tre closed his eyes. “The night of the winter formal, I saw you talking to your father. And honestly, he intimidated me. He was a big man, and he had visible tattoos on his neck. Where I’m from, men don’t look like him. I could only imagine what my parents would say, especially my mother, about dating the wrong type of girl.” Tre quickly opened his eyes, anticipating my objection. “You’ve met my parents. Imagine how they were when their baby son was about to graduate high school and go into the world. They loved Deena, but I never did. And I never saw you as the wrong girl, I’m saying that it wouldn’t have been easy for me to date you. For a week I was a coward. But after a weekend when all I longed to do was see you, I didn’t give a fuck what anyone would say, including asking your father to date you. Except I never saw you again until that morning at the bookstore.”
I looked at him incredulously. “You saw my father? And you still wanted to be with me?”
Suddenly the kitchen door slammed and a woman’s voice yelled for Tre. “Where are you? We’ve been calling you. Did you see the news? I told you that woman was bad news. How can you possibly expect to be re-elected with her by your side?”
Tre sighed. “I’m so sorry.” He then yelled, “Mere, please stop, Raini is here with me in the sunroom.”
I reluctantly moved from the safety of his arms and awaited the wrath of his mother.