Shit! What if Rhonda told her about the baby? I slammed my fist into the steering wheel, causing Jay to jump in his seat.
“Hey, man… shit… calm the fuck down, T!” He exclaimed, snapping his seatbelt into place.
Ignoring my couzan, I fumed, thinking about the possibility that Rhonda would be stupid enough to tell Shayla our business when I told her not to say a word and that I would handle it once I got out. Between my case and the bombshell news Rhonda had dropped on me about the baby, Shayla’s absence had seemed like a blessing in disguise. I was happy that she didn’t come to see me much while I was locked down, like an animal in a cage, with a secret baby waiting for me once I got out. Interrupting my thoughts, Jay continued to be a bearer of bad news.
“Well, shit, T, since you pissed the fuck off already… There is really no good way to say this, man, so I’m just going to give it to you straight, no chaser. The word is that Shayla is taking advice from some Hispanic kid that Tanya goes to school with. They’re not living together or nothing fucked up like that, but I don’t know for sure if they are seeing each other. One thing I know for sure is that he did talk her into getting away from the entire situation once Rhonda sent her that text message about your baby being on the way…”
Thank God we had made it to the next stop light, because his words instinctively caused me to shut my eyes and put my head down on the steering wheel. I gripped that bitch until my knuckles damn near turned white. All of the get down to the business and happy-go-lucky spirit I had when I left the jail house left my body. I couldn’t be losing my wife. I loved that woman to death. I mean, I really loved her to death.
“Man, T, you want me to drive, my nigga?” Jay sounded nervous. He should have been. I was seeing red. I lifted my head and looked up at the sky through my windshield.
“Are you serious, Jay?” I put the car in park, and within seconds I had him by front of his shirt. This time we were on a residential street, and there was no traffic behind or near me to witness my body leaned over into the passenger’s seat, my face inches in front of Jay’s. “I know if you had the balls to step to me with this, you’d make sure that it wasn’t some half-cocked bullshit lie?”
Jay knew the consequences of darkening my first lady’s name without sufficient evidence, because he’d watched me pistol whip a corner boy for simply whistling at her before. The poor cat hadn’t known what hit him when I gripped that nine and busted his lip open to the white meat. Cousin or no cousin, Jay could only imagine what I would do if his accusation about wifey possibly cheating and moving out of our home on the advice of some kid wasn’t legit.
He leaned back outside the window as far as he could and dropped his cigarette to the concrete. I watched his eyes get real wide, exposing the redness in them that was a side effect of smoking too much herb on a regular basis. Spit started to dribble out the side of his mouth as he stuttered in comprehensibly. Jay was searching for the best way to let me know that the man I’d hired to clean my pool was also performing routine psychotherapy on my wife, advising her to leave me just because I had a fuckin’ baby on the way.
“Calm down, man! Shit… come on, cuz! You’re acting like I’m fucking her or something,” he said, aggravated with my frustration. He yanked his shirt from my hands and tried to push me off of him within the confines of the car. “I’m just putting you up on what’s been going on since you’ve been in. Shit, someone’s got to tell you this shit… goddamn!”
I quickly digressed and backed up, sitting back in the driver’s seat. Taking a breath, I rubbed the top of my head and rocked back and forth in the seat. Jay readjusted himself, and I could hear his heavy breathing slow down to a regular pace. He turned again and looked out of the window, avoiding my eyes.
Finally, I said, “Fair enough, kin folk, but you could have came and told me this as soon as it happened. Look here, cuz, I just got out the county. I’m tired, hungry, and ready to see my fuckin’ wifey. On top of that, you stepped to me tap dancing around a very important subject. How did you expect me to respond? Come up in the damn lockup looking shifty and puffin’ them damn cigarettes, not sayin’ shit. You know better than that, Jay. Now, you have ten seconds to spit everything out, or Shayla is not going to be the only one in need of a doctor tonight.” I put my hand on his pistol that was at his side in the seat, and said, “Now, turn your punk ass around, and look at me when you speak. Start from the fuckin’ beginning. You’re making me nervous with all that cigarette puffing and looking crazy.”
Finally, he sang like a canary. “You know that pool cleaning cat, Antonio, or Anthonio, that you hired a few months back to put in some house work for you?”
I searched my mind to remember the young guy whose hustle I’d admired. He seemed like good people, which is why I hired him. I raised an eyebrow and said, “Yeah.”
“Take a look at this security video from Tanya’s house from about three weeks ago.” He pulled a DVD from his back pocket and handed it to me. I took it and started going forward in the car again. I pulled over to the side of the road to get out of any future oncoming traffic. As soon as we were parked, Jay snapped off his seatbelt. “I think that you’ll find all of the evidence that you need on the video to confirm what I’m trying to tell you, cuz. Also, look at the video from your house two weeks ago when she moved out.”
I sneered at him angrily. I wished he would just finish the story, instead of giving me tapes to review, but if the truth was ugly, maybe I should see it for myself. I took the DVD and slowly slid it into the built-in DVD player in my car. I braced myself for whatever was to come as the player prepared to play the damaging video.
Chapter 28
Shayla
Anthonio and I had stayed in constant contact from the first time he visited to work on our pool for my party. It had been completely innocent and platonic communication, that is, until I got the news about Titus’ baby. When I received that text, my whole mind went blank. I felt like the world had stopped spinning on its axis. It was like all of the nightmares that I had been afraid of for so long had decided to come true all at once. I couldn’t think of the first step to take, or even the first thought to think. I sat dumbly down at my kitchen table and stared off into space. In a daze, I picked up my house phone. Once I’d started to breathe again, Anthonio was the first person that I contacted.
He’d given me so much encouragement and advice in the short time that I’d known him that I felt like I had known him for years. I did have to admit that having him show me such genuine care and concern the way that he did at a time when I was at my very lowest caused me to start having feelings for him that I wasn’t ready to have again. However, as it turned out, after being betrayed and violated in such a horrendous way by two of the closest people in my life, having someone new show me some true kindness was exactly what I needed. I allowed him to comfort me and give me everything that I needed.
Regardless of how amazing he was, I had wanted to take things slow, because I didn’t want him to feel like a rebound man. I knew that jumping into a relationship so fast after coming out of another one was like playing Russian roulette. More importantly, I didn’t know how Titus was going to react to the news that I had moved out of our home while he was locked up, and his reaction was at the top of my worry list. I knew the moment Titus touched his feet on free soil that he was going to come looking for answers as to why I was not at home. I knew my husband, and he wasn’t the type to let something like this go. He was a man who was used to getting exactly what he wanted, but in this case, he wasn’t going to get me back – ever. Titus wasn’t going to take any of this lightly, but since it was all a direct result of his own indiscretions, what could he say? This was the final straw. I’d be damned if I was going to play Godmother to my husband and best friend’s child!
Despite all of the things running through my head, I was still very much aware of Antonio standing in my new kitchen cooking dinner and speaking in his Spanish tongue to me.
“Te quiero. Te amo, Shayla. Mi Amor. Quiero pasar el resto de mi vida contigo. Te quiero con toda mi alma,” he said in response to my ambivalence
to open up to him.
Really? My Spanish was sketchy, but I knew the meaning of those words. He wanted me? He loved me? He wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, and he wanted me with all of his soul? It was all so overwhelming. His tender words of adoration were innocent, but they jarred something deep in my spirit. The sweet expressions of love were something that I’d truly been missing over the years from the man that I had wanted to hear them from the most.
Emotions that I was not ready or willing to bring to the surface were making their way to the edge, as words that I had craved to hear from my husband freely poured from this man’s lips into my ear. Was it a little too little, a little too late? Had I lost my ability to love? Had those two conniving heathens ruined me to be able to trust and care for someone openly again? That thought sent me over the edge. I sat back in my chair, folded my arms across my chest, and hot tears rolled down each of my cheeks.
Managing to speak through the tears, I said, “Anthonio, if I give you a chance, promise you will not disrespect me. Just promise to be the same man five years from now that you are today.”
Realizing that his words had affected me, Anthonio quickly turned down the burners and gave the food one last stir. Moving away from the delicious smelling pots on the stove and walking over to stand in front of me, he gently wiped away my tears. His look of sincerity was so pure that I couldn’t second-guess him. “I will do that and so much more,” he said, leaning in to kiss my lips.
“I may not be able to give you what you deserve right now. You deserve a woman who will live out the fairytale love affair that your calm spirit deserves. I cannot give you that, not with all of the drama I’m going through.” My gaze fell to the floor. My heart was in limbo, caught between going back through the same raggedy door that I was used to, or opening a new shiny door to experience new possibilities.
“Shhh… I only deserve you.” He pressed his finger against my lip hushing my negative thoughts. Slowly lifting me out of my seat to stand eye to eye with him, he whispered, “Don’t say those things, Shayla. You just have to let me to love you. That’s all I ask.”