I deleted the call right? I think really hard, I remember deleting the history but seeing Tommy come back into the room has me psyching myself out. Everything happened so fast.
I hope he makes it out okay. He has money stacked up so he’ll be fine financially, I just worry. He told me not to, but I do.
My intentions were never to hurt him. And I knew his family was already fucked up. But I didn’t help it get any better. Two little girls are about to lose their dad because of me.
And though he claims he had no more love for his wife, I know for sure he loved his girls. He just didn’t feel worthy of them. I could tell just by the way he’s been so laxed about this whole ordeal and seemed to be willing to let them go.
He really has no other choice, but at one point he did try to find a way for this to not collapse in the most tragic way.
“So, Maria and I are going to go to counseling.” He tells me as our hands dance together interlocked.
I bring my knees in closer to my chest and break my hand away to pick at the tassel of the throw pillow.
“So what? You guys are trying to fix the marriage? Where does that leave us?”
He laughs and shakes his head no.
“I just, I think it may be time for us to just do our own things you know. If we get a divorce, an amicable one, we can do our thing in secret for a while. You’ll have the baby here and if at any point you want to go home, you can and we’ll just keep the fact that it’s my child a secret. You’ll be an adult then and with me being single, we can do whatever we want. Play as if we just found each other good company until something else happens. Eventually it’ll come out but by then, I feel like it won’t be as bad as it would be if it came out now. And that way Maria can fuck off and do whatever she wants to do without tripping about what I’ve got going on. Which she’s already doing.” He reveals.
She’s having an affair of her own? Oddly, it makes me feel better knowing this.
“She thinks I don’t know, but whenever I’m there, she always has some shit to do. Always. She is going to look at other showrooms for “inspiration”, or to pick out new patterns for a collection she’s planning. Or she’ll say she’s going to look at stuff for the garden we have in the back and be gone for hours. If you got another man just say that. Ain’t no need to lie about it. She stopped wanting me before I even started cheating. Before we got married my dad told me the distance would cause problems and to make sure she wasn’t a weak woman. I didn’t care about none of that shit though. I loved her, and I wanted to try. And things were good at first.”
I can tell he’s been thinking about this heavily. And I want to know more. I want to know how she fucked up so I don’t make the same mistakes. I have him. There are no doubts about that, but I want to keep him.
Breaking up a happy home was never my intention. I hate the idea of his kids suffering, but this would’ve happened with or without me being the other woman in his bed. I have no desire to erase them from his life.
“Kids were the next thing to do, so we did that. I still don’t completely understand it if I’m being honest. I love my girls. That Sasha is a sassy little thing if I’ve ever seen it. Shakira is my sweetheart. Such a princess. I don’t regret having them. I’d never regret bringing a life into the world. It’s no point in that. I can’t take it back so that’s wasted energy. I just, wish we had given ourselves a chance to really get right before we had them.”
“What do you mean she stopped wanting you?”
He shrugs and shakes his head. He stares in my direction but just past my shoulder as he thinks of the right way to answer the question. When his cat-like eyes get lost like this, it’s a little scary I can’t lie.
“There was this two or three week period right around the time Sasha turned two where I was pretty much carrying the team on my back. Or trying to, I was playing damn near 37 minutes every game. I was fucking tired Amanda.” He refocuses on me and rests his hand on my thigh making tiny scratching motions.
I lean closer into him.
“We were on the road for like, 4 games straight and I just remember wanting to crash after each one. Sometimes, I would just eat a piece of fruit or grab a smoothie to put something in my stomach after my shower. I’d call, but keep it short or just send a text that I’d call in the morning. I’d always want her to know I was thinking of her but she took that as me doing some shit I wasn’t supposed to be doing. I never even looked in another woman’s direction, God as my witness. But being accused of something over and over no matter what explanation you can give to defend yourself, it gets tiring after a while. She would act funny when I’d want to touch on her and I’m a man at the end of the day. The first time it happened, I was so sick with myself. I could barely eat or sleep knowing I betrayed the person I love like that. But then after that, it was just easy. Couldn’t take the stain off my soul so I said fuck it.” He shrugs.
“I get it.” I nod showing I understand.
“And it wasn’t all bad after that though. We talked, tried to fix it, had a blast for a time, that’s how Shakira came about. But I was still cheating, I just couldn’t stop. I’d try my hardest to move forward doing right, but the temptation always broke me.”
“Do you still do it? When you’re not here with me? When you’re on the road and at home with her? And I’m not expecting any sort of answer, I’d just want to know. I wouldn’t exactly be mad if you did, I know what I got myself into.” I can’t look him in the eyes as I wait for his answer. It will hurt my feelings no doubt, but it is what it is right?
I can’t exactly go anywhere or do anything to stop it. I can’t even try to get back at him. Like he said, wasted energy.
“You probably won’t believe me but nah, I actually haven’t been touching any one other than you. I don’t even sleep in the same bed with Maria anymore. I went through my little “hoe phase” as ya’ll call it. I’m over that. Plus it’s too much of a risk these days with the phones, cameras, and social media. Everyone is looking for their moment, they won’t get it with me.”
I believe him.
Smiling hopefully, I take his hand again.
“I appreciate it… how about a few rounds partner?” I get up wanting to change the subject.
I grab the empty mug off the coffee table eager to find some sort of distraction in this surprisingly fun game we made just for us.
One day he came home and grabbed all of the mugs out of the cabinet to set them up around the condo in various places. He grabbed a club and handed me one too, we just made the rules as we got further into the game.
Sometimes, the first person to make it in the “hole” gets to choose what we’re going to eat.
Others, it’s a little more spicy than that. In one of the games, for every two times you made it in the mug, you got to take a piece of clothing off the other person. It’s just stupid fun.
“Nah, come here. I want to talk to you now. You asked me before, why I took such a risk with you? I’m ready to give you the honest answer.”
Did I not get the truth before?
He reaches for me and pulls me to sit down next to him again. He wraps an arm around me, kissing my cheek twice.
“You smell so good.” He chuckles burying his face in my neck. “You make me feel good. Even when you start acting a little funky, I still have a good time with you. I can’t stop thinking about you baby.” He studies my face.
“Why?” I grow a bit nervous, unsure of how to take any of his compliments. I honestly try so hard to keep myself from guessing what he’s thinking about me.
He adjusts himself a bit and then moves his hand toward mine to start playing with my fingers.
“I never looked at you. You were just Tommy’s little sister. Never came across my mind. And then you hit 16, and started running around with who he always called the “wrong people”. He’d never give us, Me and Dre, the specifics. But he’d ask us for advice on things. How to talk to you, what he could tell your parents to help them have an easier time, all that shit. We’re fathers, so I guess he’d figure we’d know or could give him ideas on how to keep you from messing up your life on account of someone else. Your parents might have birthed you, but I can tell that you’re his child. We could go somewhere and he’d just be like, “Man Man would like this,” or “my sister would love these”. He’s always thinking about you. And then he started bringing you around more, and all of a sudden you were this wild young thing strutting around.”
I laugh, already envisioning what could be in his head with regard to that.
“It would stress him out to see the way you’d flirt with the rookies. P3 likes you. I’m not sure if you know it or not. So did Frazier when he was here last season. I’ve witnessed him chew both of them out about you. But his words can only go so far with you doing what the fuck you do.”
“Well…” I bat my eyelashes playfully.
“He did not like that Jaheim kid at all. Thought the kid was just waiting you out and trying to use you for whatever he could think of. The relationship just didn’t make sense to him. One day I saw ya’ll together at the game, probably about 3 months after he first dropped the kid’s name and I think we all were like “what the hell?” when we saw you. You just didn’t look like Tommy’s kid sister anymore. There was this attitude and confidence you had about yourself. I knew you were going through it with your parents, but it didn’t seem like you were fighting for attention or anything. I thought “that’s just who the hell she is”. We would always tell Tommy that you were not a kid and that he needed to stop seeking kid solutions for your young adult problems. I told him you might’ve been intimate with the boy and that he should just get used to the sight of him if that was the case. He swore against it and he turned out to be right.”
I had no idea he knew this much about me. Or that my brother really felt like my outcome was his responsibility. I thought this was just something thrown on him in the recent with me moving out of our parents’ house.
“But that conversation just took my mind somewhere else I’m not gonna lie. I started looking when you’d come around… just curious and the crazy thing is, you’d flirt.”
I laugh.
“You’re not wrong. I may have had a little crush on you. Them eyes just do something to me.” I playfully tap his face.
“Mhmm. I get that a lot.” He smiles as if ashamed. “But I still had some self control and never took my intrigue seriously. But at that party, seeing you in that dress, and then just the way you were moving. You just looked so sure of yourself. Even when we got to interact in the back, I could tell you were on some get-back kind of shit. That you were just being young and irrational. But you just seemed so sure and I was just too drunk, and too curious. I felt like I did my best when it came to making my intentions clear to you, and you still wanted to. So we did. And then everything after was me trying to right the wrong I made. I knew I crossed a line, I knew I fucked up. But I didn’t want you to feel like you did.”
“And I didn’t. I still don’t.”
The air gets a bit crisp amidst his silence. I can sense a bit of disappointment and discomfort in his expression.
“I’m not lying to you Des.”
“I know that now. But I wasn’t convinced at first. That second time we got together, just the way you talked to me, and made me feel. I liked that you liked me enough to give me the time of day, but that you didn’t enough to just be agreeable when it came to every little thing. Like some women are just so hell bent on capturing and keeping my attention that they just say “yes” to everything with no hesitation. You talk a lot of shit. You say what’s on your mind too much for me to not believe that what you say is how you feel. When you tell me you love me, I believe it. I feel it, and I know you’ll mean it forever. It’s hard to not fall into that. Especially when it’s a situation like this.” He points around referring to the hide-away scenario we are currently living in.
“Do you regret what happened?” I’m curious. His life would be so much easier if we never did what we did. “And the fact that you could lose everything you’ve worked so hard for behind this?”
He shakes his head no.
“Wasted energy.”
Engagement