Don't Tell Daddy (10 page)

“Better have.” She leaned across the table and kissed him.

After their dinner, he took Pamela to see a movie, and they ended the night back in her apartment where she finally decided to check her phone. She had a call from her mother, a call from Bryan, and calls from a few friends. She checked the voicemail Carmella left, asking her if she was interested in doing a runway show for her. She never understood why her mother asked this as if she was ever going to decline the opportunity to make a few hundred.

The second message was from Bryan telling her that he was going back to the lake the next morning and would be by that night to pick her up. Just as the message ended, she heard him entering the apartment and hurriedly got up, not wanting Elijah to question why her godfather had a key to her place.

“Papi,” she said, opening the door for him.

Bryan frowned at her and she cleared her throat. “You should’ve given me a chance to call you back. I’m staying. Elijah’s mom wants me to come over.” She lowered her voice. “And he’s here. I told you I was having company. You should have knocked. He might have heard you unlocking the door.”

“Then say I got a key from your mother,” he growled.

“Don’t you get an attitude with me. I don’t get mad when you—”

Elijah entered the front room and smiled when he saw Bryan, greeting him warmly. Pamela straightened up, but her attitude was still there as she looked at Bryan as he spoke briefly with Elijah, whom, days prior, he’d forgotten completely about.

“Pamela, I told your parents the both of us would be there.”

“Papi, I told Elijah that I would stay so that I could see his mom. I have to call Madre anyway. I’ll let her know why I stayed and she will get over the disappointment,” she told him through gritted teeth.

“It’s okay, Mela, I’ll tell her another time,” Elijah said, trying to diffuse the situation.

“You don’t have to because I’m going to see her this week and call mi mamá and let her know.”

Bryan shook his head, glaring at Pamela and she glared right back. She wasn’t going to allow him to intimidate her. Because his wife was going to be there, it wasn’t like she could do anything with him anyway. She was going to stay home and spend the night with Elijah.

“I’ll see you in a few days then,” he told her. “It was good to see you, Elijah.”

“You too, Mr. Valdez.”

Bryan left and Pamela locked the door, taking Elijah’s hand. “He seems really upset that you don’t want to go, Mela. Maybe you should go,” Elijah suggested.

“No. I didn’t tell my parents I was coming. He did. I told you that I would stay and I’m staying. Did you bring condoms?” she wondered.

“I thought you might have some,” he told her with a frown.

Pamela usually held onto their condoms so that his roommates wouldn’t be able to steal them. “I think I threw the last pack out when I moved. Let’s just pick some up.”

The couple headed to the store and picked up a few different varieties before they went back to Pamela’s house.

“Can I try the top?” she wondered, pulling his shirt up.

Elijah looked down at her and his face contorted. “What brought that along?” he wondered, unsnapping her jeans.

“I just wanna try it, baby.”

“Where did you get that from?”

Pamela paused a moment and as blind as Elijah was, he knew she was coming up with some false shit now.

“Lila said she likes it.”

“You got it from Lila?” he wondered, undoing her bra. At least she’d picked a good friend to lie on.

“Yeah. We were at the gym and she was telling me about her visit to Tampa with her cousins. You know how wild my girl can get.”

“I think I’ll stay on top.”

If Pamela got on top and did a good job, Elijah was afraid his now rising suspicion was going to be confirmed. He knew damn well that she hadn’t gotten the idea from Lila. She had gotten that idea from a man. What man, he didn’t know.

                                         
Girlfriend

Pamela awakened beside Elijah to find him watching her in her sleep. They had never gotten to spend the night together and she had never imagined how nice it would be to get to sleep beside Elijah for a full night.

“Good morning, beautiful,” he greeted, leaning over to kiss her.

“Good morning.” She smiled, snuggling her body closer to his.

Elijah ran his hand down her back, moving to her hip before he lifted her thigh on his waist. He buried his face in her neck, kissing the soft flesh and inhaling her scent.

“We need to be getting up soon,” he told her, caressing her leg.

Pamela groaned, wrapping her arms around Elijah’s neck, resting her head on his shoulder. She didn’t want to get up. She wanted to lie in his arms and let the world fade away. “Can’t we just go later?” she asked, lifting herself up and sitting on his stomach.

“I told her that we would come have breakfast,” he told her, threading their fingers. She pouted, lying forward on his chest and burying her face in his neck. His hands rested on the small of her back, gently rubbing small circles.

Her phone started ringing on the nightstand. “Can you get that?” Pamela asked Elijah.

He picked the phone up and saw the name
Papi
across the screen. He gave the phone to Pamela and she sat up to answer, frowning as she wrapped the cover around her body. “Hello?”

“I need you this afternoon.”

“What for?”

“I had an emergency meeting called for three this afternoon. That should give you enough time to do whatever you’re doing with that little boy.”

Pamela frowned, looking down at Elijah before she glanced up at the ceiling. She didn’t know why he had an attitude. Elijah was never a secret and she didn’t get pissy about him spending time with his wife.

“Where do I need to meet you?”

“I’ll pick you up.”

Pamela blew out a breath and rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. I have to go.”

Not waiting for Bryan’s response, Pamela hung up the phone and tossed it to the other side of the bed. Elijah looked up at her frustrated face and held her waist.

“If working for your godfather is making you get annoyed with him, maybe you should find something else,” he suggested.

“I’ve been looking for jobs since last summer and calling and checking on applications and filling out and filling out and trying and trying.”

“Mela, you don’t need to work as badly as you act like you do.”

“Who’s going to pay for this condo? I like having my own space. I like being able to spend the night with you,” she whispered, pressing their hands to the headboard. “You have three nosy roommates and you know my parents aren’t having that me allowing you to stay the night with me.”

“I understand that, Mela,” he promised, bringing her right hand to his mouth to kiss her knuckles. “But your circumstances are not as dire as you’re making them out to be. Us spending the night is nice. Just not at the expense of you being mad all the time at someone who’s not going anywhere.”

“I’ll get over it. He’s just kind of demanding sometimes.”

“Well, baby, you know what it means to be a personal assistant, yes?”

“Yes.”

“You knew when you accepted the position that you would be having to work closely with him. I don’t think it’s so much that he’s demanding as that he needs you to be somewhere with him when you maybe want to do something else. Since you don’t seem to want to quit, I’m assuming it’s nice to have a job where you get to travel on someone else’s dime?” he wondered.

“Well, when you put it so eloquently.” A wide smile spread across her face and she leaned down to kiss him.

“We do have to get up, though, baby.”

She groaned, rolling off him. He shook his head, getting from under the covers and started towards her bathroom. She watched him in all his naked glory and she lied there, staring up at the ceiling. She blew out a breath before she finally made herself get out of the bed and follow her boyfriend into the shower.

She reached past him for her body wash and grabbed her sponge, watching him examine the male body wash. Her stomach sank. For all her thoroughness the night before, she’d forgotten to do something about the body wash.

Elijah didn’t say anything to her about it, just opening it and using it. Pamela certainly wasn’t going to say anything because she would only find herself in a string of lies she was going to have to remember.

Elijah got out of the shower before Pamela and went to get dressed. Pamela could only hope that he wasn’t going looking because he would certainly find.

Trying to ease the tension in her stomach, Pamela stayed in the shower, taking deep breaths. In her heart and logically, she knew she needed to end her affair with Bryan. Lust was sure powerful though because even as she made plans to break things off, she fantasized about the things he had done to her body. Not falling in love with Bryan was not much more successful. The thought of not getting to lie in his arms tore her up inside.

When Pamela got out of the shower, Elijah was sitting on her perfectly made bed on the phone with his mother. “She just got out the shower. We’ll be there in about an hour.”

Pamela started getting dressed while Elijah finished up his conversation with his mother. Pulling on a plain tee and jeans, she watched him in the mirror as she combed her hair out. She wished she could get into his mind to see what he was thinking. She felt so guilty for what she was doing, just not guilty enough to stop.

Pamela’s phone began ringing again and she glanced at it on the bed. “Can you answer that?” she asked.

Elijah picked up the phone and saw Lila’s name flashing across the phone before he answered. “Hello?”

“Elijah, where is Pamela?”

Just to fool around a little bit and to see Lila’s reaction, Elijah, with his eyes on Pamela in her mirror, cracked a smile. “This ain’t Elijah. Who the fuck is Elijah?”

Pamela glanced at him in her mirror and went back to her hair. If he thought he was going to get something out of her girl, he was sadly mistaken.

“Elijah, stop playing. Where is Pamela?” Lila asked, sounding like she was rolling her eyes. That relieved him a bit that at least no other man had been around to the point where her girl would have plausible reason to believe that the man answering the phone wouldn’t be Elijah.

“She’s doing her hair.”

“Ask her do she wanna go to the movies this weekend.”

“Mela, Lila wanna know if you wanna go to the movies this weekend.”

“Tell her yes.”

“She said yeah.”

“Alright good. I’ll text her later. Hopefully you won’t be in her face so she actually text me back.”

“Bye, Lila.”

Elijah hung up the phone. Pamela was just a personal person. There had been times when Elijah had called or text her and had to wait hours for her to hit him back because she was with her friends or family. He appreciated that about her, though, that when she was with him, her attention was all his. Because of that, he had made it a point not to use his phone too often when he was with her to reciprocate

“Are you ready?” he asked, watching Pamela spraying herself with body mist.

“Just let me get on some shoes and then we can go.”

Pamela went into the closet and Elijah scrolled through Pamela’s contacts and text messages, not bothering to open any threads with names he recognized. The thought that she might be having an affair with
Papi
never crossed his mind and he left the thread alone.

Elijah put the phone to sleep. Something was wrong and he knew it, but he couldn’t find what it was.

Pamela came out of the closet in a pair of peep toes, reaching for his hand with a smile. “I’m ready.”

Elijah took her hand and led her out to his mother’s car, opening the door for her. The car ride was silent, Elijah occasionally glancing over at Pamela. He could tell she was checking herself out in the side mirror which wasn’t unusual
.
What was unusual was the sinking feeling in his chest.

When they arrived at his parents’ house, they walked in and Elijah’s mother greeted her with a tight hug, always so happy to see Pamela. “How have you been, honey?” she asked, kissing her cheek.

“I’ve been good.”

“Elijah told me you’re working with your godfather now. How’s that going?”

“Oh, it’s great. He’s annoying, but other than that, I like it.”

Elijah’s mother laughed, moving to hug and kiss her son. “Breakfast is ready.”

The couple sat to breakfast with Elijah’s parents, his mother cooing over Pamela the entire time, asking about the next time she would be modeling for Carmella. “I don’t know. Usually, I’m not on the roster as an original, I tend to replace,” Pamela explained. “I do it mostly as a favor to my mother. I don’t think it’s something I want to do forever.”