Snapped (Urban Renaissance) (13 page)
Read Snapped (Urban Renaissance) Online
Authors: Tina Brooks McKinney
Merlin said, “All right, man, I’m not about to press the issue. Let me just get you a few things so you can be on your way.”
Gavin frowned; his nostrils flared. “Well, I missed your ass too.”
My head swung between the brothers. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed that two men could look so much alike. Even their mannerisms were the same. It was as if the egg was split in half. I tore my eyes away from Gavin, who was trying to stare a hole in me.
Not wanting to get into another conversation with Gavin, I followed Merlin into the bedroom as he went through his clothes that I hadn’t managed to snatch from their hangers and fling to the floor.
Merlin looked up when I walked into the room. “I guess I deserve this, too,” he said as his eyes surveyed the mess.
For a moment I felt ashamed of my childish actions. Throwing his clothes on the floor or even setting them on fire, which was my first instinct, would not make the situation any better. “Merlin, I’ve been thinking. Yes, this is a fucked-up situation, but you are not entirely at fault. I have to share in some of the blame.” I could see the hope dancing in Merlin’s eyes.
“I fault myself for not knowing the difference, but you have to promise me you will never ever put your hands on me again.”
“Baby, I swear to you on everything I hold near and dear to my heart that I will never do anything to hurt you ever again.” He took a step toward me, but I instinctively backed away.
“Not so fast. I’m not finished.”
He stepped back.
“We are going to have to get some counseling before this thing festers and gets even more ugly than it already is.”
“I’m cool with that, but I’m only here for two weeks, minus a day now. But I will do whatever you say.”
I walked toward my husband with my arms outstretched. Even though I was afraid of the decision I’d made, I knew that I was not ready to give up on my man and what we’d built together.
Merlin wrapped his arms around me and we cried together. We were so in tune with each other that we forgot about Gavin in the other room. I was startled when I heard the refrigerator door shut, and I pushed away from Merlin’s embrace.
“Your brother doesn’t have any manners.”
“Don’t remind me. When he leaves, I’ll tell you all about my brother.”
“I’m going to hold you to that because I find it strange that we’ve been together all this time and you or no one else ain’t never mentioned you had an identical twin. Is there anything else I should know about?”
“Naw, that’s it. Let me get this fool some clothes so he can get up out of here.”
I left Merlin in the closet while I went into the bathroom to wash my face. It was bad enough I had to see myself looking like a boxer; I didn’t need anyone else looking at me.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
GAVIN MILLS
Being in the house with Merlin and his wife was starting to get on my nerves, and it was not what I had planned when I slipped over to their house unannounced. In fact, I was banking on Merlin sleeping somewhere else and ol’ girl being ripe for the picking. As much as I had tried to get the image of her naked body out of my mind, she’d kept swirling around my dreams all night long.
For a moment, I wondered how long they had been together and just how tight their relationship was. If their relationship was on the rocks, I wasn’t adverse to stepping in and helping Merlin if he was having problems getting the job done in the bedroom.
“Damn, did y’all forget I was here?” I yelled into the bedroom from the kitchen. I went in there to see if Cojo had any leftover bacon. The smell was lingering in the air. I didn’t care that it was burnt. My ass was hungry, and I’d rather eat up their food than spend the money that my brother had given me.
“Hold your damn horses,” my brother yelled back.
I was going to have to check his ass sooner or later. He must have forgotten how badly I used to tear that ass up when we were growing up. So what if he went to the Army and came home a little swollen? I could still take his ass because I could outthink him. Merlin was a sensitive guy, and he thought more with his heart rather than his mind. I, however, was a fighter through and through; I had no problem getting mine by any means necessary.
Cojo had already thrown the bacon into the trash, so I couldn’t munch on it. I pulled open the meat drawer and saw that she still had a half a pack of bacon in there, so I proceeded to fix me some. After all, we were family.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Cojo asked. She had crept up behind me without my hearing her. She scared me so badly, I almost dropped the bacon I was holding.
“Damn, girl, why you wanna creep up on a brother like that?”
“You have no business in my damn kitchen.”
“Hell, I didn’t think you would mind. I told you earlier I was hungry. Why don’t you bring your fine ass in here and cook me up something so I don’t get your kitchen all messed up.” I winked at her.
“Merlin, you’d better come and get your brother before I have to hurt him.” She snatched the bacon from my hand and threw it into the trash.
I wanted to hit her ass so badly, I was shaking. “Girl, you’d better stop playing with me. Shit, I ain’t your husband.”
“You damn right you’re not.”
“You’re kind of feisty. I like it, but don’t get ahead of yourself or you might not like the consequences.”
“So what, is that a threat? Am I supposed to be scared of you or something?”
“Naw, I don’t have to threaten you. I work on promises.”
Before I could say anything further, Merlin came into the room carrying a small duffel bag, which he thrust toward me. “This should hold you for a few days.” He tossed me a set of car keys. “That’s my old Malibu in the lot. Take it. We’ll get the registration taken care of later. Now, I’ve done all that I’m going to do for you. I ain’t fucking with you, Gavin.”
“Thanks, bro, good looking out.”
We stood around the kitchen staring at one another until I decided it was time to make my exit. I was definitely going to have to come back so I could whisper in Cojo’s ear. Right now she was playing all hard to get and shit, but I was willing to bet I could get her to change her mind about spending some time with me.
I said, “Well, I hate to break up this party. I’m gonna bounce.”
“All right,” Cojo replied.
I waited for a few beats to see if Merlin wanted to get together later, but the invitation didn’t come. I turned and left the kitchen, working my way to the door with both of them hot on my heels. It was a very uncomfortable moment for all of us.
Cojo stepped up from behind Merlin and opened the door. She was playing the victim role very well as I stepped through the doorway. Once I had cleared the path, the door slammed behind me. All I could hear from the apartment was the sound of the locks being engaged.
“Damn, that was cold,” I muttered to myself. I stood there for a few seconds, pondering what I was going to do next. I didn’t want to go back to my mother’s, but I had very few options outside of that. It had been a long time since I’d been home, and even when I did live in Atlanta, I didn’t have many friends.
I tossed the bag over my shoulder and made my way to my new car. As I pulled out of the apartment complex, I looked back just in time to see the window flicker shut. I felt a tinge of guilt about the whole situation, but I quickly forgot it as I made my way to McDonald’s to get something to eat. My plan was to fill up on a few of their Dollar Menu items and go back to my mother’s to crash.
CHAPTER TWENTY
MERLIN MILLS
Once Cojo and I were alone, I began to feel nervous. It was like a large elephant had stepped into the room and neither one of us wanted to acknowledge its presence. I paced around the living room trying to work up the nerve to speak to my wife. She had moved away from the window and was standing behind the sofa. She appeared as nervous as I was.
I took a seat on the sofa and asked her to join me. I waited until she looked comfortable before I began. “I really don’t know where to begin.” It was a lame statement and I knew it, but I was afraid.
Cojo just stared at me for a few seconds. “You can start with why you felt it was necessary to keep your brother a secret.”
“Honey, it wasn’t that I was trying to keep a secret; it’s been so long since I thought about my brother that I just forgot him. He dropped out of school so long ago, no one remembers him.”
“How does one go about forgetting such an important part of his life?”
“You would try to forget too if you had someone in your life who caused you so much pain.”
She cocked her head to the side as if she was trying to figure out if I was telling the truth.
“Gavin was a major pain in my ass when we were growing up.”
“Most siblings are.”
“No, you don’t understand. It was more than just being a pain in the ass. He did things, terrible things, and used to blame them on me.”
“What kind of things?”
I was trying to gauge Cojo’s tone to see how she was feeling, but her tone was noncommittal. “Damn, now that I’m talking about it again, it sounds stupid even to me. But back then, it was drama city.”
“Well, you are going to have to make me understand because it feels like you lied to me, and I don’t like the feeling.”
“I’m telling you, baby, it was an error of omission. I just needed to close the part of my life that involved Gavin.” I got up and started pacing the room again. I knew that I had to make her understand if we were going to have any chance to stay together. “When I was in high school, before I met you, Gavin talked this girl who had a crush on me into going out with him.” Just thinking about it left a sour taste in my mouth. I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts.
“And?” Cojo still had a hint of attitude in her voice, but I tried not to let it bother me as I continued the story.
“Well, I guess I didn’t phrase that right. He tricked her into going out ’cause she thought she was going out with me.”
“Oh, so you got mad? That’s not enough to deny your brother even existed.”
I ignored my wife’s comments as I got lost in that painful night. “He had been pursuing her for weeks, I later found out. He would get on my computer after I went to work and would speak to her for hours using my login. Hell, I didn’t even know she liked me until after the fact.”
“Did y’all go to school together?”
“No, she went to another school. She was a cheerleader for an opposing team who always flirted with me, so I guess that’s why he was able to trick her.”
“That’s messed up, but why wouldn’t he just talk to her on his own since you didn’t even know her?”
“To be honest, I have no idea why he sucked me into the whole mess, but it was ugly, especially when the police got there.”
“Wait, this isn’t making any sense. What did the police have to do with it?”
“I don’t even know if it was part of his plans, but he took my car and went to pick her up. He wound up running out of gas and they had to walk. Apparently she got pissed, and somehow or another she wound up getting hit by a car. The police thought I had something to do with it because my computer records showed we were corresponding and, according to her mother, she left with a boy named Merlin.” I paused. “And Gavin told the police I caused her to get hit, like he always blamed me for stuff he did.”
“Oh my God. How terrible, was she okay?”
I got up and started walking around the room. I didn’t want to admit to her that I saw Gavin push the young lady into the street. “She died, and the only reason Gavin went to prison and not me is because Braxton and Gina stepped up and told the truth. Gina told the police that Gavin had taken off with my car.”
She nodded. “Yeah, that’s kind of jacked up, but it still isn’t a reason to disown him.” She didn’t appear to be moved by my explanation, and I felt compelled to further explain my thinking at the time.
“Cojo, that was just the tip of the iceberg. Our relationship was always troubled. He always wanted what I had. If he couldn’t steal it, he would fuck it up so it was taken from me. He competed with me for everything. Most of the time I didn’t even know the competition was going on until I lost whatever it was I wanted. ”
“That’s not unusual, is it?”
“How the hell would I know? But things changed when he killed that girl. When he blamed me, I had to accept that my own blood hated me.”
“Hate? That’s a pretty strong word, and you know words have power.”
“Cojo, he caused me to get arrested for something I didn’t do. They came down to my job in the middle of the day and handcuffed me. They took me off the clock and kept me there overnight for something I had nothing to do with. I wound up losing the very first job I ever had as a result of his fuck up. And let’s not forget that the girl’s brothers kicked the shit out of me because I couldn’t convince them that I didn’t have anything to do with her death.”
“That’s unfortunate, but it’s not enough to forget or ignore your family.”
“Are these the words of someone who just found out she had a family after all these years?” I regretted the words the moment they left my lips. I knew that Cojo was sensitive about her family situation, and I vowed to never use her words against her. I felt like punching myself in the face. “Wait, please don’t respond to that.” I slipped off the sofa and got on my knees. “Baby, I was way out of line with that one. I am sensitive to my family dynamics, but it does not give me a pass to hurt you about yours. I am so sorry.”
I could tell she was hurt because she wouldn’t even look me in the eye, but that was what my brother did to me. He changed me when he was around. I would do things just to spite him that were normally not in my character. I thought I was done with that when he was finally out of my life. I waited for her to respond to my apology, but she continued to avoid my gaze. A single tear dropped from her eye, and I quickly reached up and wiped it away.
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Twice in twenty-four hours.”
Damn, that couldn’t have hurt worse if she’d stuck it to me with the tip of a sword.
“Ouch.” I had to fix this, but I had no idea how I was going to do it. I got up off my knees and sat next to her on the couch. I held my arms open, not at all sure she would fall into them, but it had always worked before.
She used to find comfort in my arms, and despite all that had happened, I still loved and worshiped her. She stared at me for a few seconds before she allowed herself to slip into my arms. Her shoulders shook as she wrapped her arms around my waist. I allowed my head to rest on hers. The fact that she was willing to let me hold her told me she still loved me, in spite of our problems.
She said, “I get it that siblings fight. I get it. I get it that they sometimes feel jealous. I truly do, but because I haven’t lived through that, I can’t help but feel envious.”
“Baby, I’m sorry. What I said was insensitive. I know you are just getting to meet your brothers and sisters, but to be honest, I don’t think anyone in your family is like my brother was to me. He was and is a rare breed. To this day, I don’t know if he ever found love in his heart for me. I had to divorce him from my life in order for me to go on.”
“Why?
“Because I loved him too much to allow him to continue to hurt me, and it was clear to me that he didn’t give a damn about me.”
Cojo pulled against my embrace. As much as I wanted to yank her back to my chest, I allowed it.
“Why do you say that?” She cocked her head to the side, and for a split second I began to believe that he had gotten to her enough to turn her heart against me.
“It wasn’t one action, it was the summation of all his attacks that made me close my heart to him. He didn’t leave me much choice.” I wanted her to sink back into my arms; instead, she lay back on the sofa, deep in thought. On one hand, I should have been thanking my lucky stars that she hadn’t sent me packing, but on the other hand, I missed my wife. I’d yet to show her all the pent-up love and frustration I had in my body after our forced separation.
A red-winged devil flew onto my shoulder and started talking in my ear.
She don’
t need you like you need her because her needs were met by your brother.
She don’
t need you like you need her because her needs were met by your brother.
I gritted my teeth against the visual that played out in my mind.
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