I had Destiny go over to the penthouse the morning after I’d caught him and that woman together. He tried to insist that I come to get my own things—to face him—but she informed him that the situation was not going down like that. Destiny and Harold had been dating for a while but were not officially shacking. She started dividing her time between his place and her own, so she could keep a watchful eye over me. I assured her that I was fine.
The truly fucked-up thing was my job. Because I was a waitress in a public establishment, Patrick showed up almost every day, begging and pleading for me to listen to him. Instead of my boss being understanding and taking my side, he threatened to fire me if I didn’t get the situation under control. I thought about taking out a temporary restraining order but decided against it. Patrick was a prominent attorney, and having that on his file wouldn’t have been a good look. I realized that Patrick and I could never have any real closure without talking it through. I’d seen enough, but part of me still wanted to hear his explanation. In the end, none of it would ultimately matter, but I wanted to understand why he would do such a thing and who this woman was to him.
“What am I lacking as a woman? Is it because I gained so much weight?” I asked him as we walked along the waterfront in Georgetown as the sun set one evening. Numerous couples were down there, walking lovingly hand in hand, some with their kids in tow, enjoying a family outing. Patrick made a futile attempt to touch my shoulder and I pulled away. “Please, don’t touch me.”
“You aren’t lacking anything, Brooke. I love you,” the dirty liar had the nerve to say to me. “And you know it’s not about your weight. I’m with you because I want to be with you. I’ve asked you to marry me since you gained, so don’t even go there.”
“Define love.” I stopped and stared at him. “Define what it means when you say that you love me.”
“You know what love means.”
“I know what I believe love means, but I want to hear your definition of it. It’s obvious that we don’t have the same one.”
“Love is a feeling that you get when you look at someone, when you hold them in your arms and gaze into their eyes. It’s when your heart starts to race when you think about them throughout the day and you can’t wait to see them again, or hear their voice, or feel their touch. Those are all the things I feel about you,” he said. “You’re always on my mind.”
“Was I on your mind when that woman was sucking and riding your dick?” I blurted out at him. “Was I on your mind when you were driving over there instead of driving home to me? Who is she? Is that your home?”
He sighed. “You remember when I told you about my ex, Mandy?”
My mind rewound itself to our earlier conversations when we first started dating. “The Mandy who dropped you like a hot potato to marry another man? The one who said that you didn’t measure up to her new man because he was already established in his career while you were still in law school? That Mandy?”
“One and the same. She moved back to the D.C. area a few months ago. That is not my house. It’s hers. Her ex-husband owned it before they got married and moved to Atlanta, but it was awarded to her in the divorce anyway.”
“So let me get this straight. She moves back and you start fucking her so much on the regular that she gave you a key?”
“It just happened.”
My right hand had slapped the living daylights out of him before I even realized it was in motion. He held on to his cheek but didn’t strike me back.
“ ‘It just happened’ is the most ridiculous and overused excuse in the world. Men kill me with that. ‘It just happened.’ I saw you, and that didn’t just happen. It was orchestrated. You told me that you couldn’t go to my parents’ with me; that you had to work late.”
“I did work late, but—”
“But you decided to make a booty call on your way home. How many times did you fuck her and then come home and do the same thing to me? How many times did I kiss you while her pussy was still on your tongue? How many times, you disgusting bastard?!”
I could see the wheels moving inside Patrick’s brain as he tried to come up with something—anything—that would afford him a segue into possible forgiveness. That was not to happen.
“You know what?” I said. “This is pointless. I was foolish enough to believe that meeting you here would bring about some type of closure, but all I feel toward you is hatred.”
“Don’t say that, Brooke. You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t tell me what I mean.” I realized that we were being loud and started walking farther away from a half dozen people who were within earshot. Patrick followed me as I added, “I should have known that this could never work. Your parents despise the fact that their precious little boy lowered his standards to be with me. Your friends act like our relationship is some sort of joke. Hell, you don’t even respect what we had together.”
“I haven’t seen Mandy anymore since that night. I told her that all bets were off.” He crossed his hands and then spread them apart like an umpire. “She knows that I love you, and I do … love you. I made a stupid mistake, a really stupid mistake, but if you give me another chance, I promise that I’ll make it up to you.”
“How could you possibly make it up to me?” I leaned against the railing near the water. “I can’t get the image of the two of you together out of my head. That was not something you did with her in the past. That was something you did with her during our present, while we were making plans for our future.”
Patrick fell silent and looked down at the ground.
“Men feel like it’s cool to do whatever and expect us to brush it off and get back in the saddle, but not me … not this time … not in this place. From this moment on, I don’t give a damn whom you fuck, because it won’t be me.”
I walked off, paused, and turned around. He was standing there, staring at me. “Oh, and tell your mother, Miss High-and-Mighty, that I should have listened to her. In her own sick, perverted way, she was the only one who at least tried to warn me. Now she can hook you up with all her friends’ daughters … who are worthy of you.”
Patrick didn’t call me anymore after that day. I was relieved and disappointed at the same time. It had to end, that was without question, but he had seemingly given up and that made me feel dejected. Life had changed for me within the span of such a short time. Little did I know that the worst—and the best—was yet to come.
PART TWO
LUNAR ECLIPSE
Lunar eclipse—the obscuration of the
light of the moon by the interposition of
Earth between it and the sun
Damon
September 1, 2007, Labor Day Weekend
CARLEIGH was having a fit to go to the D.C. Blues Festival, not because she was into that type of music but because she wanted to show me off to her friends and business associates, who all planned to attend. The more I thought about it, the more I understood how women who were simply showpieces to their men felt. I’d heard about rich men who intentionally planned on shifting wives every five years or so in order to keep a “fresh piece” on their arm. As long as I kept in shape, Carleigh was bound to get attention from other women who wanted what she had.
Things had been much improved between us since she’d actually let me enlighten her about what had transpired between her friends and me, in particular Jordan. She confronted them all, then forgave them, after they put their bullshit spins on it. Only one of them tried to blame me for actually coming on to her—Raquel—and Carleigh did stop speaking to her, but only for a little over a week.
Women are funny. There must be some secret code of ethics because if a man finds out that his buddies have been trying to fuck his woman, nine times out of ten, those friendships are dead and buried. That is a critical lack of respect when it comes to manhood. Lions even piss on their territory to let the other male lions know where to draw the line.
Despite all of that, Sharon and Jordan had actually r
idden with us that day like we were some blissful family. They were singing to the latest Mariah Carey CD the entire way there. The mixture of their perfumes made me queasy. When we arrived at the Carter Barron, an amphitheater in Rock Creek Park, parking was at a premium. We ended up having to park on a residential side street and hike it.
Being a history buff, I made it my mission to know the background of most of the architectural sites in the area. Most people have never given a second thought to who Carter Barron really was. They had simply enjoyed coming out to the events. When I was a child, my parents used to take me to see Stevie Wonder, B. B. King, Smokey Robinson, the O’Jays, and the Four Tops at the forty-two-hundred-seat complex named after the vice chairman for the Sesquicentennial Commission, who died from cancer at the young age of forty-five, a mere three months after it opened. In fact, it was originally called the Sesquicentennial Amphitheater when it opened in 1950, but President Truman renamed it the Carter Barron in 1951 as a legacy to Barron’s dedication to being a link between the performing arts and the government. I hoped to one day do something so significant in life that, upon my death, a street or a place would be named after me. I have yet to figure out what that would be.
Carleigh was off the pill and we were trying to conceive. We had a ceremonial flushing of the remaining pills down our toilet— popping them one at a time out of the foil packet before tossing them in. Our sex life had intensified, surely because Carleigh was trying to make up for her betrayal. We had a lot to overcome, but no one ever proclaimed that marriage would be easy. Despite our ups and downs, I was confident that we could make it work.
The 19th Annual D.C. Blues Festival had a great lineup: Zac Harmon & the Mid-South Blues Revue; Delta-blues guitarist and vocalist Lil’ Dave Thompson; the Charles “Big Daddy” Stallings Band; ACME Blues Company; the Country Bunker Funky Blues Band; and more. I was excited to attend the free concert, scheduled to run from twelve-thirty to seven. With everything gratis, everyone and his mama was in the house. It was a great cheap date. Free parking; free music. The only thing that the single brothers trying to get some play had to splurge on was food. You could tell that many men were thinking that, too, because couples were hugged up all over the place as we went inside to track down some decent seats. We managed to find four about twenty rows up and got settled in.
I recognized quite a few people. Some from work, but others that I’d crossed paths with in various places, like the gym. I spotted a young, attractive woman that I’d seen a couple of times when I was working out. She had never come back, to my knowledge. The first time I’d seen her, she had been with a friend who was choking down a Snickers bar. I remember chuckling about it. In fact, she was with the same friend that day at the Carter Barron. They had on matching colors; she had on a red sundress, and her friend had on a red halter top and red shorts.
For some reason, I found myself drawn to her, but not because I wanted to date her. I was married and content, but she had a sadness about her, even though she was gorgeous. I’d sensed her insecurities at the gym. Both times she had had on loose clothing, attempting to mask her body. She was slightly overweight, but not a beach whale by any means. I could appreciate women with a little meat on their bones.
Carleigh noticed that I was distracted and looked in the same direction. With the sea of people there, she couldn’t tell whom I was concentrating on.
“See something that interests you?” she asked sarcastically as she started rubbing my thigh.
I glanced at her, then put my sunglasses on. “It’s ironic that you’d be concerned about me surveying a crowd but be carefree about your piranha friends sitting beside you.” I nodded in the direction of Sharon and Jordan, sitting on the opposite side of her.
“They’ve apologized,” Carleigh said. “Besides, nothing happened.”
“Not because they backed down. The only reason nothing happened is because I am one of the last good men.”
Carleigh smirked at the reference to my website. Registration had slowed down, and it was gradually becoming one of those sites with a bunch of registered members but with the majority of them inactive.
Saved by the music, I thought as the first act took the stage. I didn’t want to chat about any of it. I saw the woman from the gym and her friend sit down on a blanket on the grass and immediately start swatting away insects.
Brooke
It was hot as hell out at the Carter Barron that day. The body heat emanating from all those people didn’t help. Destiny had somehow convinced me to go to the D.C. Blues Festival with her. I didn’t know anything about the blues, other than suffering through my personal blues. Destiny wanted to get my mind off the obvious. I still felt like such a fool for ever believing that Patrick would take me seriously in a relationship. We had been doomed from day one because of our diverse backgrounds.
As the last act was finishing up, I started voicing my thoughts out loud. “I still can’t believe I was such an idiot!”
Destiny brushed her shoulder against mine on the blanket. “You need to let that shit go.”
“But how could I have not seen it coming?”
“Oh, please. No woman could have seen that coming. Sure, you and Patrick had issues, but another woman never crossed your mind and you know it.”
“He made me think he cared.”
“That’s because he does care.”
I glared at her. “You really think so?”
“Brooke, it isn’t like he was making booty calls over at your crib like he was doing with Mandawhore.”
I couldn’t help but giggle at the nickname Destiny had given to Mandy.
“He moved you in,” she continued. “He took you around his friends, his coworkers, his snooty parents.”
“You have a point.” I slammed my palm down on a gnat that was attacking my leg. “It took a lot of nerve for Patrick to present me to his parents.” I paused as a guitarist started ripping up a tune onstage. After a moment of thought, I asked, “So why would he cheat on me?”
Destiny smacked her lips. “Because he’s a man, Brooke. You used to criticize me for accepting Harold’s creeping, but that is what men do. I would rather have a man who steps out every now and again to experience some variety in life than not have a man at all.”
“Are you suggesting that I take Patrick back?”
She shrugged. “I’m simply saying, if not Patrick, then who? Look around. Nothing but a bunch of no-good men who think they’re the salt of the earth because of the male–female ratio in this town. Most men today act like they’re doing you a favor by even paying you attention. That’s why I’m keeping Harold for as long as he’ll have me. Ain’t shit else out here. Either way, odds are, we will all be sharing dick.”
Destiny’s dismal outlook on love and relationships was actually beginning to make sense to me. I thought Patrick loved me down to my dirty drawers, despite the disrespectful things he’d said from time to time. Lord knows that I hated the B-word. But he did look out for me and take care of me. Now I found myself crashing with Destiny, still working in that dump, and the few men who had tried to talk to me, I wouldn’t have fucked for bone marrow.
“Patrick’s giving you a chance to cool off,” Destiny said. “It hasn’t been that long, but trust me when I say that he’ll be calling soon or showing up at your job again; hoping that you have come to your senses. You need to figure out what you plan to do when he does show up.”
“He’s not going to bother me anymore. He knows it’s over.”
“I doubt that, because men never truly believe that we will leave them. In their convoluted minds, they are supposed to walk away from us. Especially men like Patrick—rich, successful, named as a great catch in magazines. Brooke, that man thinks that you’re coming back and …”
“And what?” I waited for her to respond, but she didn’t. “And you think I’m going back, too? Right?”
“I honestly believe that you need to weigh your options. Peep out all these skinny chicks running ar
ound here half-naked. Competition is thick. If you have a man willing to make any kind of commitment to your ass, even if it isn’t a total commitment, you need to consider yourself lucky as shit. Harold may not be a superhero, but he is damn sure my superman. He might dilly and dally with some whores, but he knows who keeps the home fires burning.”
“You sound foolish!” I damn near yelled at her. “Do your parents know you feel like this?” I asked, trying to make her feel even an ounce of shame.
“My parents don’t love me, not with the kind of love a man brings to the party.”
“Let’s drop it,” I said, totally disgusted. Not with Destiny—with myself. Part of me was wondering if I should at least hear Patrick out at some point.
The amphitheater was full of beautiful women … most of them with other women. The young ladies had it rough. They had to dress sexily to compete; they had to lower their standards to get a man; and a lot of times they even had to support a man to have one in their bed. Shit, Patrick was looking better by the second.
Damon
After the concert ended around eight, an hour later than expected, people started flooding out of the seats like there was free money out in the parking lot. Sharon and Jordan had made a mockery out of themselves the entire time, throwing themselves at men who walked past our seats and shaking their asses in the faces of the women seated behind them trying to see the stage. Blues is not booty-shaking music; it is slow-grinding, finger-snapping music, but they were acting like 50 Cent and Kanye West were performing.