Something She Can Feel (25 page)

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Authors: Grace Octavia

BOOK: Something She Can Feel
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Chapter Twenty
“W
hen are you going to kiss me?” Dame asked softly. He was lying beside me underneath a cover on the floor of the black limousine he'd been coming to see me in since Monday. When Mr. Green opened the door to let me in, he'd whispered, “He's still asleep,” and handed me a blanket from the trunk. I crawled up beside Dame and covered him with the blanket. While he usually woke up, he didn't say a word. Half asleep and awake, he just opened his arms for me to lie with him.
“Kiss?” I repeated. I didn't know Dame had woken up. I was still laying in his arms, my face up toward the glass roof where the moon was still holding on to Tuesday night.
“Yeah.”
“Dame,” I started, turning to him, “we both know I can't do that. I'm married.... I mean, I know I'm doing this ... thing ... with you. But I'm not trying to have an affair.”
“And this isn't an affair?”
“You know what I mean. I'm already starting to feel guilty about meeting you here. I'm terrified that someone will find out about this. That someone saw me in Atlanta or is watching us right now. And that I'll get caught. And then what?” I said frantically. “I can't go any farther—add anything else—because that'll only make things more complicated in my mind.”
This was exactly what I'd grown terrified of over the weekend while Dame was away in New York meeting with studio executives. He'd called and called, mostly just leaving long messages where he wanted to talk about everything that was happening, but I couldn't ever sneak away to answer. Evan didn't have any meetings and slipping off to chat on the phone for even ten minutes would look suspicious. So I was forced to face Evan and get back to the custom of my marriage. We'd been arm in arm to two dinner parties, smiled and traded kisses as we watched a movie with his mother and when we went to church, sitting next to May and Jr, behind my mother and father, we just seemed like the same old us. Not sad or angry. Just us. I looked at May and knowing how angry she must've been at Jr, yet still she'd decided to stay with him to see it through until they found out if the baby was his, I thought that Kayla had to have been wrong in my office that Friday. It didn't matter what I thought I was feeling, I didn't want to make Evan suffer the way May was suffering. The way my mother had. They all deserved better. I told myself that maybe I should stop meeting with Dame. Maybe I should let it go and just focus on my life and being happy with what I'd had. Happy the way my mother told me to be—not the way Kayla explained. But when the sun went down on Sunday and I was just a few hours away from my 5 a.m. departure for the gym, I knew neither happiness would come easily.
“Look,” I said, “I'm not saying I don't want to kiss you. I'm saying, I can't. We both know what will happen if we kiss. And I'm not that kind of woman.... I mean, I didn't think I was the kind of woman that would be doing what I'm doing right now, but I know I'm not the kind of woman that has sex outside of her marriage. And if you thought I was, then I'm sorry.” I sat up and pushed the cover off me.
“You think I've been sitting in this car every day for six hours going back and forth between the studio in Atlanta and Tuscaloosa to have sex with you?” Dame asked as I turned around to him. He was still laying down and had his arms behind his head. “When I walked out of the studio last night, there were two girls, one who was on the cover of
Vogue
last month, waiting for me.”
“Why are you telling me that? Am I supposed to feel bad that you had to miss that?” I imagined these beautiful, thin, and young women waiting outside the door for Dame, and immediately I felt jealous.
“I don't need sex, Journey. I have good girls—great girls with careers and cars just like mine waiting to have sex with me. But that's not what I need. That's not what I want. I need and I want you.” He sat up.
“When I was in New York, man”—he laughed a bit and looked out the window at the river—“I felt like one of those fish out there that jumped out the river. Like I had to get back to you or I'd die.” Dame inched closer to me and it was like he was reading my mind. Like he had been for weeks and knew exactly how I was feeling for him, how I felt with him, because he'd been feeling the same way, too. “This isn't a sex thing. This is a love thing,” he said, inching a bit closer and leaning his head toward mine. His lips were now just a kiss away. His brown eyes were locked and longing on mine. I felt something in my stomach flutter and then pound so restlessly that my ears began to ring. But I didn't move. I opened my mouth and closed my eyes, feeling Dame's breath enter into mine. And then everything, just in the one second it took for his lips to brush up against mine, became perfect. Like we'd both found a lake and were swimming deep, deep down to the bottom. His tongue stroked mine with so much passion and force that the pounding inside of me went to heat and then exploded. I felt my body pushing toward his, my mouth opening wider, begging him for just one more second in the water, to go one inch deeper. He grabbed my neck and began caressing me lightly. I just didn't want it to stop. But then the sun, or something just as bright, pulled me up from the bottom of the lake to the surface.
On the inside of my eyelids danced spots of orange that burned so bright that I had to squint and then open my eyes to see if maybe the sun had somehow fallen into the back of the limousine.
“What's that?” I asked after Dame had pulled away from me and was looking out of the window. I could hear a car engine rattling.
“Someone's high beams,” he said, shielding his eyes with his hand at the window.
“A car?” I went to the window with him, but because the lights were so bright, we couldn't see the car. Just Mr. Green's back.
“Yes, my wife,” the voice of a man said angrily. “Get out of my way.”
“Evan!” I said, putting my hand over my mouth and looking at Dame. “It's Evan.”
“Oh, shit,” Dame said.
“Shit,” I said, reaching for my purse.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to get out. He knows I'm in here. My car's right outside.”
Dame grabbed my arm and pulled me.
“Let me talk to him,” he said forcefully.
“Look, I don't need that kind of thing. No fighting. Evan isn't like that. Please don't get out of the car and start something. Let me handle this.” The pounding inside of me was fear now. Dame didn't say anything. He went to one door to open it and I went to the other.
Evan was pushing Mr. Green out of his way and walking toward the limousine when I opened the door and got out.
“Journey, what the hell is this? Who is this?” Evan said, coming to me.
“I'm—” I tried so hard, but I couldn't lie. Everything was right there for him to see. Dame came from the other side of the limousine and stood behind me.
“Dame?” Evan looked from me to Dame and then back at me. “What is this?”
“I—”
“She's here with me,” Dame said.
His admission immediately paralyzed me. I was aching. Everything I didn't want to happen was now happening. I closed my eyes and prayed it wasn't real.
“Journey ... Journey, look at me,” Evan said, coming closer and reaching for me.
“Don't fucking touch her,” Dame said. He pushed himself between me and Evan.
“Dame, don't do that,” I said, stepping back. “Evan, I'm sorry. I was just here talking and ...”
“I don't care what you were doing. You shouldn't be here. I told you never to see him again.”
“She's a grown woman. She can see whoever she wants.”
Evan didn't even respond to Dame. His faced turned red with pain, he just looked at me confused, bruised, and angry. I'd never seen him like that. I'd prayed I never would.
“Let's go,” Evan demanded. “Come get in my car and we're going home.”
“She's not leaving,” Dame said, pushing Evan away from me. The two tussled, pushing back and forth before Mr. Green and I broke them up.
“Stop it, both of you,” I cried. My heels were digging into the loose dirt. “Just stop.” I held my arms out between them. Mr. Green managed to get Dame up against the car and I stood in front of Evan.
“Fuck this gay-ass nigga,” Dame hollered. “Journey, tell him. Tell him you're not leaving with him. That you want to be with me.”
“Come on, Mr. Mitchell, don't do this. We don't need to get in trouble down here,” Mr. Green said to calm Dame down and stop him from charging after Evan again.
“What's he talking about?”
“Let's just go,” I whispered as tears filled up the corners of my eyes.
“No, I want to know. How long have you been meeting him here?” Evan's face just broke into desperation.
“Tell him,” Dame said.
“It's nothing,” I said. “I don't want to hurt you. I'm so sorry.” I felt a tear hit my cheek and roll down to my mouth. Dame was still hollering out to me, but Evan wasn't saying anything. He just stood there and looked at me the same way May had looked at Jr that night at the old house. I could see his chest heave and then he turned and walked to his car. I looked back at Dame and wiped away one of my tears.
“Don't do this,” Dame shouted, trying to push Mr. Green off him. “Don't leave. You know you don't want to be with him. Come with me.” I began to step away, and right before Dame stopped fighting with Mr. Green, he called my name again.
“Journey,” he shouted and his voice sounded so broken and rushed, like he was fighting for me to keep my life, that everyone just froze where they were. I turned back to him. “You said I was electric.”
I nodded.
“You got it, too. You got that same spark in you. You just got to being afraid to show it. You said you wanted to know what life would be like if you just tore up the map and went anywhere ... just left all of this behind.” Dame walked toward me and then he was right in front of me. Mr. Green was behind him and Evan was standing behind me. “We can do that together,” Dame said, and even though I saw not one tear in his eyes, there was a sadness, a desperation there. “We can go wherever you want. We can leave everything and start something new. Just you and me. But you have to come with me.”
Face to face with Dame, my heart was steadily breaking. I trembled in the absoluteness of my aching. While I'd just realized it then, the man I'd fallen in love with was in front of me. But still, the man I'd always loved was behind me. It was an impossible moment for me to manage with any clarity.
I smiled at Dame remembering my words, my dreams. He was so right, and I wanted so much to just believe in this idea we'd shared. But I just knew it wasn't right. It couldn't be right like this. With my whole life just out in the road being tortured. There had to be another way.
My eyes brimming with tears I cupped his face with my hands so gently, just to feel him.
“I can't,” I said.
Chapter Twenty-one
W
hen I was a little girl and I got what my brothers and I called “in trouble,” and my parents came like a jury to my bedroom to convict and sentence me, “trouble” almost always came out to be easier than I'd expected ... or could remember. While I was afraid and shaking with dread, the older I got, the less painful and disturbing my parents' whippings and rants seemed. In fact, after a while, “trouble” became an acceptable consequence to something I fully intended to do in spite of the possibility of getting caught. I'd wear my mother's pearl earrings to school, sneak the cordless phone into my bedroom after bedtime to talk to Billie all night about some boy who had a crush on her, or read one of my naughty romance books, thinking every second how I was sure to get “in trouble” and be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
The trouble I was in with Evan after I followed him back to our house from the Throat was so much easier than any trouble I'd ever been in that it was somehow the worst.
Evan headed to the house with ease. He'd been wearing one of his gym suits, the one that was on the chair beside our bed when I woke up, and when he got out of the car, I saw that he'd zipped up the jacket and had his hands in the pockets. He looked cool. As if he was coming home from a jog and heading to the shower. He said not one word. Kept his stride and didn't turn to be sure I was following him.
The moon was gone now and the sun was awake. I looked up at the orange thing that was still fighting with some clouds and searched for some kind of strength. Some kind of energy. But it only sat there. Just stared down at me and threatened to come out soon to burn me. I was in the dark just a few minutes ago, but now the light wasn't pretending to play games. It was time to get up.
In the house, Evan was moving fast. He was packing his bag for work. He had laid out his suit on the bed and then he started to take the sweats off to get in the shower. I just sat on the bed unmoving and in fear like a child. His silence was deafening.
“You need to get ready for work,” he directed me. “You're already late. You can't miss work.”
“Yes,” I said. I looked around the room contemplating how I could get moving like Evan. Get ready. Evan kept zipping past me. In his towel. He got his cufflinks. His watch. His socks. Where could I start? In this room now, my room, I felt like a stranger, a prisoner, an intruder all at once. It was like I didn't belong anymore, but I had to stay. And I had no one else to blame for this feeling. I'd done it. I'd broken this place. I needed Evan to at least recognize this. What I'd done. I started crying, weeping, wailing. But Evan kept preparing.
“Say something to me,” I sobbed.
“Get ready.”
“No,” I said.
He walked toward the bathroom and stood right in the doorframe in front of me. He stopped then and turned around to me.
“What are you crying for?” he asked. “You did this. You fucking did this and now you're crying?” He came closer to me and I held myself in fear. “I'm not going to hurt you. I'm going to keep moving, Journey, because I assume this is what you want. Right? For me to just pretend this isn't happening. Let you do whatever you want to do.”
“No,” I said, choking on my saliva, “this is not what I want. I'm so sorry.... I'm just so sorry.”
“You're not sorr y,” he said. “I told you ... I warned you to stay away from him. I knew this was going to happen.”
“You knew?”
“The way you looked at him that day at the school,” he shouted, grabbing my chin hard with his hand. “It was all over your face. You fucking measured us up against each other. And I didn't know what to think about it. I thought you were stronger than that. That there was no way you'd be so stupid. But when I asked you about him at your parents' house ... I knew ... I knew what was coming.”
He released my chin in disgust and stepped back with his hand over his mouth.
“How could you risk everything we have to be with that boy?” he asked. “Don't you know how this is going to end? He's a kid. He's going to get tired of you and throw you out into the street like some groupie.”
“He's not like that.”
“You don't know a damn thing about him. Does he have any diseases? Does he have a criminal record? Does he have a fucking bank account? Can he count any of that money he has?”
I didn't know the answers to any of these questions.
“He's a fucking high school dropout!” Evan bellowed as I cried. He closed his eyes and winced as if he was trying to control his anger. Carefully, he came and sat next to me on the bed.
“Did you have sex with him?”
“Evan—”
“Don't talk to me. I just want an answer.”
“No,” I said and I actually saw a weight fall from his body.
“Did he touch you? Kiss you?”
I paused and closed my eyes.
“No,” I lied.
Evan sat there and shook his head as if he was weighing this thing.
“I need you to decide what you're going to do,” he said. “I'm your husband and I'll always be your husband and I want you to be with me. But you have to decide if you want to be with me. You have to decide if you want this to work ... and move past this.” I didn't look at Evan, but I could tell by his voice he was crying. “Because I'm willing to let it go. To start back where we were if you want to. To start our family. I can do that.” He slid his hand behind my back and after we sat there for a while, I leaned into him. I rested my head on his shoulder and just stayed there. Neither of us went to work.

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