And they were fabulous.
But I’d also had a good amount of what else made him.
So she had to be insane.
“I—”
He cut me off.
“Kept talkin’ to him on the phone after. Believe her when she says it didn’t go further than the reunion physically. But she kept contact. Even after I found out and we got into counseling. She ended it with him only while we were in counseling. But I heard her talking to him, tellin’ him to quit calling, and when I confronted her with it, she admitted she kept that up for a while. Needed it somehow. But it was over. He just wouldn’t quit calling.”
“I’m sorry, Moses.”
He nodded his head sharply, only once.
“I am too. I loved her. And I gotta take responsibility for my fuckup, because I perpetrated one. I was a man and acted like a dumb-shit man. We had babies and I helped her make them and then I did my thing. Went to work. Went to the gym. Might go to the grocery store but other than that, pretty much expected her to do everything. Feed ’em. Bathe ’em. Get ’em to bed. Take care of the house. I spent time with my babies, of course, they were my babies. I’d do the odd thing here or there to pitch in. But mostly I took the good times. Not the waking-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night times. The tough stuff, I was gone. Mostly at work. Could say I needed the overtime, I worked hard, and everyone can use more money. But truth was, I loved my job, so it wasn’t that. I was just doin’ whatever I wanted to do. She had a job too. Two of them, one bein’ a momma, one in an office. She was worn out. She was also fed up with it.”
“I, yes . . . I mean, I don’t know, but I think that wouldn’t be much fun,” I murmured.
“The thing was, she didn’t say dick about it. Not until counseling. So I saw the error of my ways after the fact. And I was good to hold up my hand and cop to it. Even could see, just a little, not totally, but enough to maybe forgive her for having a weak moment, getting hammered and thinking, what if? What if it had worked out with that guy back in high school? What would her life be like if she wasn’t raisin’ two girls mostly on her own with her husband MIA at work? I could also see wanting to go back in time when it was simpler. When there wasn’t the house, the husband, the kids, the job. When it was just dressin’ up, goin’ out, booze and fucking and good times.”
I nodded.
I mean, I wasn’t sure I agreed with him. That was a leap to take and said a lot about him that he’d try to find a way to forgive a disloyalty of that magnitude. That he’d try to understand what lay beneath it.
But it wasn’t my experience, my marriage, my spouse, so it wasn’t my call to make.
For my part, Leon cheated on me all the time.
And when he did, I just found it a relief.
Moses kept speaking.
“Talkin’ to him, though, that I didn’t get. She betrayed our love, me, our vows, and I agreed to try to work that shit out, and every phone conversation from the first after she got back from that reunion, to the last when I caught her tellin’ him to stop phonin’ was another betrayal. Why didn’t she tell me he was calling? Why didn’t she just hang up? And every time her phone rang from then on, was I gonna think it was him or some other guy she was asking ‘what if?’”
“I can see that,” I said quietly.
“She told me in counseling that maybe she needed the attention. To feel attractive. To feel wanted. By that time, it was flowers for no reason and me breakin’ my back to prove I was doin’ my part for our family and regular date nights to keep the us in our marriage. So I did not get why she needed another man’s attention when outside of what I was giving my girls, she had all of mine.”
Seemed to me she was a selfish bitch.
I did not share this.
“So I called bullshit,” he declared.
“I can see that too,” I replied.
And I really could.
“Is that enough to end a marriage, break apart a family?” he asked.
“I don’t know, darlin’,” I answered.
“I didn’t either. What I knew was, after I lost my shit when I found out my wife fucked another man, I got myself together. About that. But those phone calls jacked with my head. I could deal with a one-time thing. A wakeup call for us both. We were on the wrong path and that wasn’t the way to yank us back to the right one, but shit happens. But those fuckin’ calls, Shirleen, all I could think was not about those calls or even about her needing attention. Once I knew he was still phoning, anytime I thought about a call, all I could think about was him inside my wife. Blinded by it. Pissed as hell at it. Couldn’t get it out of my head. And the question became, should I sacrifice my peace of mind for my children, and worse, teach them if, God forbid, they find themselves in the same situation, that they should swallow betrayal and live on the edge with distrust clouding every moment, and in the end give up any chance of true happiness?”
“I can’t answer that for you, Moses.”
“Well I could, after she nearly bankrupted me taking me to court repeatedly to teach me a lesson about how she feels when she doesn’t get what she wants, using our daughters as tools to do that. I couldn’t imagine the woman I married had that in her. But she did. So I got my answer. And so did our daughters, watching their mother put their father through that. Don’t think it was the man she met that made her stop. I think it was the fact her daughters were drifting away, angry at her for making shit ugly. That’s what made her stop.”
“I’m glad something did,” I told him.
“Me too.”
When he said no more, I asked carefully, “How are thing now? I mean, you said at the grocery store that you two had it together, but—”
“I can barely stand to look at her.”
Oh boy.
“That,” he went on, “I do for my daughters when school functions mean I have to be in her space. And don’t take that anger at her as me still having feelings for her. I don’t. That anger is not about what she did to me, to us, but what she did to my girls. No one fucks with my girls, and for four years I had no choice but to put up with my wife fucking with our girls.”
Yep.
A selfish bitch.
“Other than school functions,” he continued, “we do not have one of those arrangements where we share Christmas Eve dinner or I come to her family’s big Fourth of July parties. There’s my house, our family, and there’s their mother’s house and the family they got with her.”
To that, I had no choice but to utter an understatement.
“That’s very sad.”
“Do I deserve that for bein’ a man and bein’ clueless and makin’ babies with my wife and not pitchin’ in?”
I shook my head. “I . . . I don’t think so. I mean, she should have said something.”
“Yeah. She should have. We didn’t start our family young. We were both in our thirties. Our friends had kids. Both our families are in town. We’re both tight with them. We weren’t immature and finding our way on our own. And we’d been together a long time. She knew how to communicate with me.”
I nodded that I heard him.
“I still fucked up. That was on me. Sayin’ what I just said, it was me who was old enough to know better than to make babies with my wife and not take care of all of them. And I didn’t.”
“I don’t want to, you know, butt in here and defend you when all you’ve shared is all I know about the situation. I wasn’t around and I’ve never met the woman. But even though that really was not good, Moses, with what happened I think it’s safe to say something would have happened anyway.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Though easy for me to think that because it makes me the good guy in the end no matter how you look at it.”
I just gave him big eyes because that was true.
Still, the woman stepped out on him rather than telling him to step up then she took out her anger at him using their daughters.
She had it in her to fuck their shit up.
And that wa
s going to happen, one way or another.
I’d pretty much said this already, therefore I didn’t repeat it.
“So there it is,” he stated.
“Yes,” I agreed. “There it, um . . . is.”
“Your turn.”
My throat closed and I felt my joints seize.
Moses didn’t miss anything and I knew he didn’t miss any of that.
He still didn’t let up.
“What’d he do to you?”
I didn’t see this coming. Tit for tat. He laid it out, made himself vulnerable, showing me the way, making it safe to follow.
I still didn’t want to take that way.
“I think—” I began.
“Baby, you look good and you dress good and you kiss good and you listen good and you open up good.” He lifted a hand and gestured between us. “I want this. I want more. I want to know more about you and eventually I’ll want to be inside you.”
Oh God.
“This is too fast,” I told him. “Too fast and too soon.”
“Five minutes ago this wasn’t going to work. Now I can go slow. But I cannot have you preparing to bolt every time something tweaks you. Preparing to bolt and ready to end us. I need you to talk to me.”
His ex had not talked to him and his whole life got derailed.
Damn.
I shook my head but said, “I don’t know what happened. He’s just in there.”
“How?”
“In my bones. In my soul. It was all good and then it wasn’t and I was across the room and I don’t even know how I got here. I just know he was back.”
“He’s dead.”
“Not in a way he’ll ever be gone.”
“Dead is dead, sweetheart, it’s you who can control if he stays alive the ways he can.”
“He beat me.”
It was like he’d crossed the room, wrapped his hand around my throat and squeezed so I couldn’t take a breath, the anger burning from him was so strong, the air in the room vanished.
“I did not enjoy having sex with him. He did not care. He took what he wanted whenever he wanted.”
I’d felt the room.
Why did I say more?
Now his arms were bent at his sides, his fingers curled into fists, his chest moving steady but fast, the heaves powerful, rhythmically lifting his entire torso as his eyes stayed glued to me.
“I’m too much for you, or any man, to take on,” I whispered.
“You wet for me?” he growled.
“S-say what?”
“Are. You. Wet. For me?”
Oh Lordy.
Just him asking that question made me wet(ter) for him even if we were having a serious conversation that shouldn’t be sexy at all.
It was jerky but I nodded my head.
“You were there with me, definitely there with me, I was about to take it further, and then you were across the room. What triggered that?”
“I don’t know. It just happened.”
“Something triggered it, baby.”
I shook my head.
“No one since him?” he asked, going for gentle, I could tell. It was still slightly terse because he was still highly pissed after I shared what Leon had done to me.
“I . . . yes, but none that mattered.”
“I matter.”
I closed my eyes so tight I felt the wrinkles in my lids.
Because this was oh so true.
“That’s it. I matter,” he said to me. “And you’re either scared you’re gonna fuck this up or you’re scared you’re not reading it right and you’ll find you’ve picked another asshole.”
I opened my eyes.
“I’m not sure I have it in me to give you what you deserve,” I admitted.
“And what’s that?”
“Goodness. No drama. Just a clean go without history and piles of shit you got to wade through to maybe make it to the other side, but that result is not guaranteed because there’s so much shit, you might find you need to give up for your own sake.”
“You think I’m gonna give up on you?” he asked, a tad bit scarily.
“I don’t know. More, I’m not sure I’m worth the effort.”
The air evacuated the room again because he was pissed as shit again.
I decided maybe it was best if I stopped talking.
“I thought we got past this,” Moses said when I said nothing.
“You don’t see.”
“Make me see.”
Suddenly I threw up both hands at my sides.
“It wasn’t what Leon did to me, Moses!” I snapped. “He was always good for nothin’. And I let him have me. What does that say about me?”
“I don’t know, but obviously you do, so I want to hear you say it.”
“My sister, Dorothea, she was the pretty one. She was the quiet one. She was the sweet one. She got the handsome man. She made the beautiful family.”
“And that wasn’t for you?”
“I was the hell raiser. I was good for nothin’, just like Leon.”
“So you had sass and that means you didn’t deserve a good life with a decent man in it?”
“I was never good enough.”
“Good enough for what, Shirleen? Good enough for who?”
“Good enough for my teachers, who thought I was slow. Good enough for my father, who took off on us. Good enough for my aunts and uncles, who saw a hellion and thought I’d never amount to anything.”
“So you proved them right.”
I lifted my chin. “Damn straight.”
“And then you had time enough without their bullshit, and with your husband dead and not beating you or raping you to realize who you were and you proved them wrong. ’Cause you know, baby, you know a man takes you without you wanting him to, he’s your husband or not, it’s rape.”
My teeth clacked audibly I shut my mouth so fast.
“I don’t know who you were, sweetheart,” he continued. “But every day I see kids who someone doesn’t think will amount to much and even if that shit is not right, they’re convinced of it just because the asshole adults around them feel the need to share. And you know what?”
“What?” I whispered.
“In most cases, it’s got fuck all to do with the kid. It’s about the asshole adult feelin’ less, understanding their limits, and the kid’s got smarts or spirit or a big personality or a sweet disposition, and they gotta do what they gotta do to shut that down because they’re jealous as fuck and they know deep inside they’ll feel even smaller than they already are because that kid is gonna be something. So they not only gotta drag the kid down, they gotta smother the life out of them.”
Suddenly, I was breathing funny.
“Half the problems in Gilliam are kids with parents who don’t give that first fuck, or who are so messed up it’s a miracle they can get themselves out of bed in the morning, and some don’t even try,” he bit off. “The other half are kids with parents or adults in their lives who are determined to do one thing in their miserable lives and that’s finding a way to make damn sure that child doesn’t show them up by making something of themselves when they didn’t have what it took to do the same thing. You know that shit people say where a kid is just misunderstood?”
I nodded.
“Well in a lot of cases, that shit is right. It is very rare when a kid is just a bad seed. For the most part, someone planted that seed and put a lot of effort into forcing it to grow and in a kid, that ground is fertile. It’s so much easier to think bad of ourselves than it is to think good. And that shit blooms fast and out of control.”
“I had a good momma, Moses. A good family. Not a good daddy, but the rest? They didn’t deserve what I did to them.”
“If they made you feel less, Shirleen, then they got what they made. It’s the woman standing across from me right now that you made and that has nothing to do with them.”
“I love that you think that way but—”
“Fuck, baby!”
he exploded, tossing both his arms wide and leaning toward me even as his outburst shocked me so much I leaned back. “Do you not think I see young Shirleens every day of my life? Do you not understand that I know more than maybe anybody how hard it is to pull yourself free of the shit you let yourself get bogged under and find your way clean? Do you not get how huge what you’ve done is?”
“He lives in me,” I said weakly.
“You let him,” he clipped.
“Everything you do, I compare to what he did.”
He leaned back and crossed his arms on his chest. “Well, shit, sweetheart. You’re human. You had a man who did you wrong and you found a man you like that you might want in your life, so you’re comparing the old with the new so you can make sure you don’t fuck up again. I’m not sure I can cope with you bein’ smart and lookin’ out for yourself so you don’t make the same mistake twice. Best get on calling Uber so you can take your sweet ass and your common sense home.”
At that speech, I couldn’t stop myself from cracking a smile.
His eyes narrowed. “You find something funny?”
“Well, uh . . . yeah.”
He uncrossed his arms and planted his hands on his hips before he rumbled warningly, “I’m not bein’ funny, baby.”
I decided to shut up again.
“In time, you will learn I’m not him,” he said low.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Now I told you we’d go slow and you may have forgotten that, so I’ll remind you, Shirleen, this is at your pace. As long as we’re movin’ forward, I’m good. So next time I take shit too far, you don’t bolt out of my arms and hold up your hand to me like I’m causin’ you harm. You say, ‘Moses, honey, I need you to slow down,’ and that will happen. I swear it.”
My God.
I could fall in love with this man.
No.
Damn.
I was falling in love with him.
“Shirleen, you hear me?” he prompted when I said nothing.
“I hear you, honey.”
“And you are not fuckin’ Ubering home.”
I nodded.
“Your boys won’t be watchin’ for you, will they?”
I shook my head.
“Good,” he muttered.
“Are we done making out?” I asked.
“I don’t know, are we?” he asked back.