She shook her head, twirled on her heels, and walked away from me. “We’re good Jeb,” she said, and my eyes dropped to admire the swinging of her plump derriere as it moved from side to side. Each step away from me was erotic enough to make me groan.
Tameka’s heels caused her calf muscles to flex. Her calves were big, and they had to be to hold up her lusciously thick thighs. My mouth formed into an O as I watched her strut away. I wondered if that was the way she walked every day or if she was trying to drive me insane with the sway of her hips. I longed to live out the fantasy that the sight of her lovely thighs and hips brought vividly to my mind.
Chapter 1
Tameka
A Year Later
Excited chatter from upstairs wafted into the room as I stood at the bottom of the staircase waiting for my children to come down. They were going to spend the weekend with their father, and I wasn’t looking forward to the empty house.
“Did you pack plenty of underwear, Kevin?” I called out expecting to hear him scream down, “Yes, Mom!” whether he had packed underwear or not.
“Yes, Mom!” Kevin’s voice traveled down the steps to where I stood in the living room. I shook my head, knowing I would have to check behind him to make sure he had everything he needed while he was away.
Eva, on the other hand, was a big girl. She didn’t like going to her father’s house, but she packed her bags with all of her necessities every time. Kevin would have me driving back and forth to bring him things he left at home all weekend long if he had it his way.
Not this time, buddy, I thought as I started the vacuum and ran it over the living room carpet, being careful not to miss a spot. On Rodney’s weekends, he had the intrusive routine of glancing around my house to criticize me about something trivial such as a tiny track of dirt on the floor that he could see from the foyer.
I worked myself to death cleaning so that he wouldn’t find any reason to call me a bad mother. However, it was to no avail since Rodney was the type of person to complain about the fertilizer in a rose garden.
The rumbling sound of Kevin’s footsteps hurried into the living room as I turned off the vacuum. “Did you bring your bag down so I can check it?” I asked.
My cute as a button six-year-old, whose fluffy, brown cheeks were hard not to kiss, said, “I’m still looking for my baseball glove because Dad said that he’s going to take us to a game, and I want to take my glove.”
“Whoopee! Dad is taking Kevin to another baseball game.” Eva feigned enthusiasm as she stood at the top of the staircase with her arms crossed over her chest. Her sarcastically negative tone said all that needed to be said about how she felt about what her father had planned for their weekend. “Mom, do I have to go? I’m pretty sure he won’t know if I’m not there,” she said.
I knew it was coming. It came every time it was her father’s weekend. The ‘do I have to go’ question. I wished I could tell her no, since going over there bothered her so much, but Rodney was her father, and according to our family court judge, I couldn’t keep her away from him.
“You have to go, darling. But it’s just a weekend, so try to make the best of it,” I said with an encouraging smile.
“That’s what you always say, but it’s not just a weekend. It’s every other weekend. Why do I have to keep going over there when he treats me like I’m invisible?” she pouted, even stomped her foot at the end of her statement to get her point across.
“Eva, we can’t go through this every weekend. You’re going to have to put on your good attitude and wear it for Mama, okay?” I asserted.
We’d had the talk about abuse, of any form, and she’d assured me nothing of the sort was happening at her father’s home. Her disdain for her father’s actions, particularly him upgrading his cheat chick to the position of their fake stepmother, was the thing that ate at her the most.
Eva huffed and went back to her room, stomping and pouting the entire way. I felt like a failure for having to make her go with her father. At ten years old, the last thing she needed to do was to sit around and watch her father fawn over his barely twenty-five-year-old girlfriend, who happened to be his mistress at the time of our divorce.
I’d made a promise to myself that I would not talk to my children about their father in a negative way. Instead, I encouraged them to have a healthy relationship with him and his young girlfriend. But how could a ten-year-old give a grown man a healthy relationship that he doesn’t know how to receive or reciprocate?
It took everything in me for me not to tell them how full of shit Rodney indeed was, or how I thought he would never be a good father based on his past behavior during our marriage. It took mountains upon mountains of prayer to step back and let God handle it, but I wasn’t a saint. I wanted my children to form their own opinions about him, and hopefully, the courts would be on our side the next time I petitioned them for full custody. Knowing Rodney, that petition was coming soon.
After watching my daughter storm into her bedroom and slam the door, I sighed and turned to Kevin who was staring at me.
“Well, do you know where it is, Mom?” he asked, ignoring his sister’s antics. Kevin gave his father a pass for all of his misgivings and loved him immensely for the good times they shared. In his six-year-old mind, his father was a superhero who showed up on weekends with marvelous plans, a game system in Kevin’s room at his house, and lots of talk about how he’s going to do so many things with him and make his life so much better. Mostly lies, but who was I to shatter his hope of what his father could be to him?
“Baby, go look in your closet next to your red tennis shoes,” I said before Kevin bolted up the stairs to his bedroom.
A minute later, he yelled, “Found it!”
I started the vacuum once again. Keeping everyone satisfied was a hard job, but I did my best when it came to my family. Rodney was and had always been a handful; his affairs and poor treatment had made me a single mother. Then, he had the audacity to give me strife every time I saw him as if I were the one that told him lies, played with his feelings, and left him for someone else.
I thought I had done everything right. I waited for the right man to come along to sweep me off my feet, and oh, did Rodney put his best foot forward before we got married. The man wined and dined me up until one year into our marriage, and then the games began, and there were many. I had waited until I was married to have kids because I wanted stability, but I guess nothing is certain in life.
I moved into the foyer and then hallway with the hum of the vacuum cleaner moving along with me. Just as I was putting it away, my cellphone chimed.
“What is it now?” I muttered as I fished my phone from my pocket and saw Rodney’s number on my screen. It was never good news when he called at the time he was supposed to be there to get the kids. Earlier, he’d texted and said he was twenty minutes away from my house, so I picked up the phone unsuspecting of the news he was about to give me. “Hello?”