“Kerem,” I knocked on the door. “Come out.”
Samuel returned to the room, drying his hands on a paper towel.
“Are you here by yourself?” Kerem asked from behind the door.
“I’m out here,” Samuel said.
Kerem slowly opened the door to the bathroom. As soon as his face appeared, Keeva was off the bed, headed in his direction. I caught her before she could get to him.
“Key,” I yelled out, “Stop!”
“Tell her what you did,” she yelled while fighting to get out of my grip.
“Baby, I…I will. Please calm down,” Kerem yelled. “I want to explain!”
“Explain? Fuck you Kerem. Go die!”
I was losing my battle with Keeva. We used to wrestle a lot as kids, and I always got the best of her, but she’d grown stronger. Probably from lifting and moving those kids around all day.
“Samuel, please take him out of here,” I strained.
“Come on, man,” Samuel said while walking out of the room with Kerem.
“He cheated on me, Vee! I told you. I could feel something was wrong for a while. He fucked some dirty, disgusting bitch and didn’t have the decency to hide the shit from me.”
“Maybe he was just texting her.”
“No, he fucked her. I saw it in the text messages. She said something about wanting to feel him again. She said how much she enjoyed it.”
“Do you think it’s just someone trying to cause a problem?”
“He admitted it! He said it happened once and it was a mistake. I don’t care if it was a mistake or not. Do you know how many dicks I’ve seen, outside of porn, like in real life? One! His! That’s it. I’ve never even considered sleeping with someone else. How could he do this to me? To us?”
She broke down and started crying. I pulled her close to me and let her cry until she stopped. I didn’t know what to say. I never thought my brother would cheat on my sister. I didn’t think he had it in him. I thought he was so in love.
Samuel
“I’m so glad I changed the lock on the gun cabinet,” Kerem said while pacing the floor. “I mean it’s something I do at least once a year for safety reasons, and I always tell Key when I do, but this time I hadn’t gotten around to telling her yet.”
He stopped pacing to look down the hall toward their bedroom, then started pacing again. “I have no doubt she would have murdered me as soon as she read my phone.”
“Read your phone? What did your phone say?”
“Man, it was some text messages from a chick I made a mistake with.”
“What does mean?”
I can’t stand it when people speak in riddles.
“I slept with someone else.”
“Slept with?”
I knew what he meant, but I wanted him to admit it.
“I had sex with another woman.”
“Is that something you do often?”