Pink & Patent Leather (21 page)

“
Okay, I do lie to them. But only when I have to.”

“
Well, this sounds like a good time to have to lie.” She took a breath. “Listen, Sasha, the more I think about it, the more I like this. You could go away to have the baby and you won’t be alone, ‘cause I’ll go with you.”

“
You would do that?”

“
Yeah, why not? I mean, you’re a trust fund baby, so I know we won’t be living on the street.”

For the first time in
I don’t know how long, I laughed.

“
But seriously, it’s not like I have this big important position or this big important life. I’ll go with you and that might even make it sound more legit to your parents.”

I thought for a moment. This could work. “
But even if we do this, and I go away, I would never be able to keep my parents from visiting. I never came home when I went to Spelman, but do you know how often I saw my parents?”

“
Well, they couldn’t come to visit you if you went to Europe.”

“
You want to go to Europe?” I said already shaking my head.

“
No!” she exclaimed. “I was thinking more like Atlanta, Houston or L.A.. But if we’re going to lie, let’s make it big. Let’s make it so that they couldn’t come every weekend.”

I nodded, then shook my head, then no
dded, and shook my head again.

“
Look, no matter what, going away will give you a little bit more time to figure this out. It’ll take away Malik’s threat, and it’ll take away this thing you have about not embarrassing your parents.”

Then, Amber took the bow
l that rested on the tray in front of me, away and she went into the kitchen to clean up. I knew she’d timed it to give me some time alone so that I could think. And the more I thought about it, the more that I thought it might work.

A part of me felt like
I was being run out of town by Malik, and I thought about Xavier. This was exactly what Malik had done to him. Whatever had gone down between the two of them, Xavier had probably felt like he had no choice but to leave. Which was the way I was feeling right now.

But, I
wanted
to get away from here. From everything—my job, my condo, especially Greater Tabernacle. The only reason I wanted to stay—my parents. I could never imagine being away from them for an extended period of time like this. I would miss them terribly, but really, this was best for them, too. If I stayed, I risked embarrassing them with this pregnancy. And if I stayed, it wouldn’t take long for my parents to find out that Malik was the father. That would lead to a war I didn’t want my parents, especially my daddy, to have to fight.

No, for the greater good, it would be best for me to leave. By the time Amber came back to my room, and stood at the door with her hands on her hips, I was already nodding my head. I had the money, and Amber had the
plan.

“
Let’s do this,” I said.

She grinned, skipped to me and then bounced down on the bed. My stomach fluttered and I frowned.

“I’m sorry.” She laughed. “I’m just so excited. I’ve never been out of D.C.,” she said. “So where are we gonna go? Where does our adventure begin?”

I took a deep breath. It may have felt like an adventure to Amber, but it felt like the great escape to me. Either way you looked at it, the results were the same. I had to get out of D. C.. All be
cause of Pastor Malik Stroman.

It was hard to keep
my secret as I packed and prepared for my new life. Amber wanted to leave right away, but there was no need for that. There wasn’t any rush since I wasn’t showing or anything. And, I wanted to spend the holidays with my parents.

“
Okay,” Amber had agreed. “We’ll leave on New Year’s.”

“
The day after New Year’s,” I said.

“
New Year’s Day,” she said, as if this was some kind of negotiation.

I wondered why I had to compromise with her, but I did
because to me, Amber and I were equals now. She didn’t work for me, not really. We were doing this together and she was leaving her whole life to disappear with me.

It took us a couple of days to decide where we were going to settle. We talked about Hous
ton and Los Angeles, but settled on what was safe – Atlanta, since it was a city that I knew. I wasn’t too concerned about running into people I knew down there. It wasn’t like I’d made any friends, except for Xavier. And, I wasn’t going to be living anywhere near Buckhead in case my parents did decide to visit Atlanta on their own.

But while I would be living in Atlanta, my parents thought that I
’d be doing a special assignment in Amsterdam. I’d thought about choosing someplace more glamorous like Paris or Milan. But my mother would have been on a plane with her black American Express the very next week. So, I set the lie in motion over Thanksgiving dinner.

I was the only child with my parents for Thanksgiving every year, my brothers spent that holiday with
their in-laws. So over the six-course meal, I told my parents, “I may be going away.”

“
Really? For the magazine?”

I nodded, then took a sip of water to moisten my dry lips. “
Yes. And this won’t be just any trip. They asked me to go to Amsterdam...for a year.” I sipped again as I took in my parents’ shocked faces.

“
Amsterdam?” they said together.

Then, my mother said, “
Why Amsterdam? Why not someplace like Italy? Venice or Milan would be wonderful. I could move with you.”

As she chuckled, I thanked God that
I knew my parents so well. There was no chance of her offering to move with me to Amsterdam.

But her laugh didn
’t last long. She said, “Really, sweetheart, why Amsterdam? It’s so far away and for so long.”

I had an answer ready, but my father handled my mother for me. “
Well, Sasha doesn’t have a choice,” my father said. “If the magazine wants to send her, then she has to go.” My father nodded. “I think it’s an excellent move for you.”

“
Yes,” I said, so relieved that my father was doing some of the work for me. “When I come back, I’ll be made a full-fledge editor.”

Of course, it was a complete lie. I
’d already told my boss that I would be leaving, though I asked if I could stay on to the end of the year to train someone. He had appreciated the heads up and had taken up my offer for training. I was working with HR now to find the perfect candidate to replace me.

“
So, when will you be leaving?” my mother asked.

“
The first of the year.”

“
Oh my.” She pressed her hand across her chest and tears filled her eyes. “I’m going to miss my baby, my little Pink.”

While my mother looked like she was going to cry, my father was just the opposite. He beamed as he said, “
She’s not our little girl anymore. We have to allow her to spread her wings so that she can be the best that she can be.”

Once the lie was out there, it was full steam ahead. My parents told my brothers who all called me and promised that we would have the best Christmas ever so that I would leave with wonderful
memories.

And the lie helped me to stay away from Grace Tabernacle. Every Sunday, I told my parents about some special meeting or some special call I had to take. And then during the week, I told my mother and father that I was going to Bible Study with Am
ber because her pastor was younger and I related to him more. Of course, Amber didn’t have a pastor since she didn’t go to church. But, my lies were piling up now, so what did another one matter?

Amber and I prepared for our new life. She found a three-bed
room apartment in the Midtown section of Atlanta, and when she started looking for a job, I told her not to rush.

“
I’ll pay you to be my assistant,” I said. “At least until the baby is born and we figure this whole thing out.”

My new life began to take sh
ape and while there was a part of me that was embracing it, I hated to admit that most of my heart was still with Malik. I loved him and even though weeks had passed since my dream had been destroyed, if Malik had called me at any time and said that he wanted us to be together, I would’ve dropped all the lies and all the plans to be with him.

But that call never came. And time passed, taking me closer to the day when I would have to leave, when my entire life would change
—all because I’d been duped by a pastor.

I had pulled it off,
at least for now. And I had pulled it off mostly because of Amber. All through the holidays, up until the day we left, I told Amber that she could change her mind if she wanted to.

“
Are you sure?” I kept asking.

“
Are you kidding?” she kept responding.

“
But this is a lot to ask from you. I don’t want you moving just so I won’t be lonely. This was my poor choice and I don’t want it to affect your life.”

“
Girl, please! This is an adventure. We’re going!”

Amber had even come up with the greatest lie
—what day we would tell my parents that we were leaving. There was no way my mother and father would just drop me off at the airport without going in with me to at least check my luggage. And once they did that, they’d find out that my final destination wasn’t Amsterdam.

So, I told them I was leaving on the eleventh of January instead of the first. I was going to get on that plane on the first, then call them and tell them of the mix up.

Knowing that I was leaving the next day made it so hard for me to leave my parents on New Year’s Eve. It was the last time I’d see them for months, and there was no doubt that the next time we connected in person, they would not be so happy with me. But I played it out, wished them a Happy New Year, kissed them goodbye and told them I would see them in a few days. Then, I drove away with my eyes filled with tears.

The next morning, Amber and I headed to the airport, both of us with only two packed bags. We didn
’t know how long we were going to stay, but I would make sure that we both had all that we needed.

I
’d wanted to sell my condo, or at least rent it out, knowing that I would never return to that place no matter what. But with the lie that I’d told, my parents wanted to keep my condo in place.

“
You’ll be back in a year,” my father said. “And it’s paid off, so no worries. Your mother will go over there and make sure everything is okay once in a while.”

So, on the first day of the new year, Amber and I arrived in Atlanta that ev
ening. When I called my parents and told them of the early morning call I’d received from my boss, telling me that there had been a mix up with the tickets, and that I was leaving on the first, not the eleventh, and I only had two hours to get to the airport, my mother had cried.

“
Oh, my God, so you left without seeing us? Without saying goodbye?”

“
I didn’t have any choice,” I said, crying with my mother because I could hear her pain. “I had to go. They couldn’t redo the ticket and it was too expensive to change it.”

“
I would’ve paid to have it changed,” my father said.

“
Well, it’s too late,” I told them both. “I’m already in Atlanta, about to get on my connecting flight.”

It had been hard to hang up, but I promised that I would call in a couple of days. And
I was going to call them. Just about every day. Right after I studied everything I could about Amsterdam on the Internet. I was going to work hard to make our conversations as authentic as possible.

Once that first call to my parents was over, I threw mys
elf into my new life. Amber and I stayed in a hotel the first night—the Westin, not the Four Seasons, which is where I would’ve stayed under normal circumstances. But, I had to be a lot more responsible now, especially since I didn’t plan to think about employment until after my baby was born.

Two days after we arrived, we settled into our three-bedroom hi-rise apartment and I was so happy that Amber had talked me into getting a furnished place. At first, I had thought that was a ridiculous idea.

“You want me to live with furniture that someone else has lived with?” I’d asked her. I couldn’t even imagine that.

But Amber had ignored me, rented a fully furnished place in the luxury building, and all we had to supply was our own linen. As overwhelming as this w
hole trip was for me, I was so grateful that sheets, towels, and washcloths were all that I had to be concerned about.