Read Mistress No More Online

Authors: Niobia Bryant

Mistress No More (17 page)

She felt his dick go limp inside her.
Jaime lifted her hands and pulled the roots of her hair in frustration.
“I’m sorry but it was—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, meaning to cut him off, climbing off his lap to slump onto the driver’s seat.
Feeling brash and hella spiteful, Jaime pressed her knees open wide. “Just for the record this is the last time you’ll see this pussy,” she told him, before she raised her seat back.
“I never been freaked before—”
Jaime whirled around to eye him. “Freaked?”
Lucas nodded as he picked up his glasses from the floor and slid them onto his round, boyish face. “Damn right. Freaked,” he stressed. “Shit, a brotha was overexcited by your show in your driveway.”
“I’m not a freak.”
Lucas looked disbelieving. “Whatever.”
Jaime reached up to turn on the interior light of the car. “You wanted this from the moment you came to my door to introduce yourself,” she told him, watching him as he left the condom on his dick and pulled his boxers and pants back up around his round waist.
Lucas stopped working his zipper up to eye her through his glasses. “I wanted to take you out to dinner and get to know you better. I wanted to build on the attraction I had for you. My plan damn sure wasn’t to screw you in a parking lot, but I took what
you
offered.”
Jaime looked away from his anger, turning off the light and speeding away from their parking spot with a squeal of her tires.
He said nothing else to her.
That was fine with Jaime. It was more than fine.
As soon as she pulled into her driveway, he hopped out of the car and stalked away. She lowered her head into her hands.
What the hell am I doing?
She asked herself, ignoring the feel of the moist seat of her panties now stuck to her ankle.
She looked up at the knock on the window. It felt like déjà vu to have Lucas standing there looking down at her. She lowered the window.
“I apologize if you think I took advantage of you,” he said, before turning and quickly walking across his lawn and into his house.
That only made her feel worse.
She reached down and grabbed her panties to shove into her purse before she climbed out of the car. She ignored the stickiness between her thighs as she made her way to her front door. “I gots to get my shit together,” she said.
As soon as she walked inside the door and locked it her cell phone vibrated. Pleasure?
She reached inside her purse and pulled it out, flipping it open without a cursory check of the caller ID. “Yeah,” she said.
“Busy day, Mrs. Hall?”
Jaime froze at the sound of Eric’s voice. She frowned. “What concern is it of yours?” she asked coldly.
“You’re pissed about the car and the money you stole from me?” he asked.
The money you stole from me,
she repeated in her head. It confirmed what she already figured. No one knew about that but Jessa.
I really owe that bitch a major ass whipping.
“Should a married woman be at strip clubs and riding around with their single male neighbors?” he asked.
Jaime frowned, feeling the color drain from her face. She rushed to her front door and opened it wide. “Are you following me?” she asked, looking up and down the street.
“You’re building quite a case for me for this divorce you keep harping on about,” he said in total satisfaction.
Jaime stepped back and closed the door soundly before she put on all the locks. She felt violated.
“Let’s put all this behind us. Come home, Jaime,” he said. “Come home or I’ll make you regret it. I promise you.”
Click.
As he ended the call, Jaime felt chilled to the bone.
Chapter 9
A
ria sat huddled in a chair by the front window of her mother’s three-bedroom apartment in Newark. With dull eyes she watched nothing and everything about the street where she’d grown up too fast. The porches were filled with people trying to enjoy the cover of night and the little coolness it brought from the summer heat. A few kids still played under the streetlights in the street between parked cars. People arrived and left their homes in vehicles and cabs. The perimeter of Westside Park was empty, but Aria knew buff brothers were balling on the hardtops down by Eighteenth Avenue.
Thankfully, unlike the days she was growing up, the sounds of gunfire and the squeal of tires on stolen cars were much fewer. Less crime. Better-looking homes. Cleaner streets. More police presence. Not perfect, but definitely a better reflection of the good people who lived within the perimeters of the city. Kids had more of a chance of just being kids.
Aria was home and whenever the white-picket fence lifestyle of Richmond Hills got to be too much or she just needed a reality check she headed to her mother. Blunt, brash, honest, loving.
Where else could she turn after her husband walked away from their marriage?
Kingston had never shown for the appointment at Dr. Matheson. He never answered her calls. He didn’t go in to his practice.
She didn’t know whether to sit back and wait for him to make an appearance or call the police to report him missing.
Kingston is wrong. What if he’s lying in a hospital hurt? How am I supposed to know?
But she knew nothing kept Kingston from her but his own hurt and pain. That was the sole reason.
“Aria, it’s going on ten,” her mother said, walking into the dimly lit living room to come and stand by her. “When are you getting on that road home?”
Aria just shrugged and shifted in the chair to relieve the prickling pressure across her buttocks from sitting too long. She’d been in that chair since she first got to her mother’s hours ago.
Aria sat, watched, thought, and alternated between calling Kingston and fighting not to call Jessa—something that could get her ass thrown in jail. “Punk bitch,” she muttered.
“What’s going on, Aria?” Heather Goines asked, reaching out to turn on the slender lamp on the table beside her daughter.
“How many times have I offered to move you, Mama?” Aria asked softly, instead of answering her mother’s concerned question.
Heather pulled a chair from the small dining room off the living room. “Way too many times for you not to figure out I ain’t going nowhere.”
“Why not?”
“Newark is home.”
Aria smiled. Her mother never minced words. “Good and bad, huh?”
Heather chuckled. “Girl, don’t be naive. Mama tried to put plenty of common sense in that head before you went off to college for them book smarts.”
Aria could only shake her head. Her mother was the self-proclaimed guru / Oprah / Confucius of the ghetto and there was more to come.
“Listen, every city has good and bad. Some of it is just covered up better, but once you get past them iron gates and big sprawling front doors you’ll find a lot of the same shit that goes down around here. Bullshit is still bullshit even with icing on it.”
“But the icing makes it easier to deal with,” Aria countered.
Heather waved her hand dismissively. “Well, cleaning up the bullshit instead of living with it would be the easiest thing to do.”
Hmph. Mama just summed up the same thing Dr. Matheson told me earlier.
Dr. Matheson had some serious competition on his hands.
More than working on your marriage, Aria, you have to deal with your unresolved issues, your guilt about your past. The first step is talking about it. Tell me about it.
She had shared a lot with Dr. Matheson today. A lot but not all. Aria turned her face to look back out the window, locking her eyes on a lone figure walking down the street, his head down, chin nearly buried to his chest. She briefly wondered what his story was. What was his own pile of bullshit to deal with?
“There’s a lot about me that you don’t know,” Aria began.
“I might know more than you think,” her mother said.
Aria shook her head. “Never. Not about this, ”she admitted softly. . . .
Aria took each step leading up to their second-floor apartment carefully. She definitely wasn’t able to run up the stairs like she’d done earlier.
“You a’ight, cuz?” Jontae asked from behind her.
Aria paused on the landing and reached out for the banister. She nodded. “Just cramping up,” she said, wincing as an intense spasm radiated across her lower back.
“It’s gon’ be like that all day,” Jontae said around a wad of gum she was popping like fireworks on the fourth of July.
“I know, I remember from the last time,” Aria said, taking a deep breath before she continued up the stairs to the front door of the apartment. It opened before she could use her key and she looked up at her mother standing there, wiping flour from her hands with a dish towel. Aria forced herself to stand up straighter and smile. “Hey Ma. ”
“Hey girls. What you two been up to today?” Heather asked, walking down the hall to the kitchen.
“We went downtown, Auntie, to look around in all the stores,” Jontae offered up from behind her.
Liar,
Aria thought as she fought not to wince while she made her way to her bedroom at the rear of the apartment.
“Aria, are you okay?” her mom asked from the kitchen just as she passed.
“I think something I ate messed up my stomach,” she said, avoiding her mother’s eyes.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
“You probably need to shit it out, ” Heather said, sliding battered chicken wings into the bubbling deep fryer.
That made Aria smile even through her discomfort. Her mother was off the chain. “I’m okay. I’m just gonna lie down, Ma,” she said over her shoulder.
“I’ll be in to check on you, ” Heather called back.
“I know.” As soon as Aria stepped into her bedroom she kicked off her bright purple Reeboks and lay down on her side on her twin-sized bed covered with her Strawberry Shortcake comforter.
Jontae closed the door before she dropped down on the other twin bed and reached over to turn on the radio. “On and On” by Erykah Badu filled the room.
Aria rolled her eyes heavenward as Jontae began to sing along completely off-key. Before she could reach the next chorus, Aria’s bedroom door opened. She was facing the wall and turned to look over her shoulder as her mother stepped in.
“Jontae, since Aria isn’t feeling well, why don’t you head on back to your dad’s. ”
That was a nicely worded order and not at all a request. Jontae was sneaky with her shit and never showed outward defiance. Playing nice and sweet got her way more freedom. “Okay, Auntie. Bye, Aria. Hope you feel better.”
Behind Heather’s back she motioned to Aria that she would call later and then she left. Aria loved her cousin and summer companion, but she was glad to see her ass go.
“You sure you okay, baby girl?” Heather asked, coming over to touch Aria’s forehead.
Aria closed her eyes and enjoyed the smooth and warm feel of her mother’s touch. Tears welled up in her eyes behind her lids. She fought like hell not to let them fall.
She fought like hell not to speak the truth.
Mama, I just killed my baby.
She fought and won both times.
“I’m good, Mama,” she said, feeling really tired and just wanting to hug her pillows to her stomach and wait for the cramping and bleeding to stop like the nurses at the clinic said it would.
Heather turned on the window air-conditioning unit and closed the blinds to block some of the sun’s summer rays.
“If you don’t feel better I’m going to give you a laxative,” she said, pulling the pillow from the empty twin bed to settle gently under Aria’s head.
Aria chanced a look up and she felt surrounded by the love in her mother’s eyes. That look eased the throbbing aches of the cramps.
“Mama don’t want nothing wrong with her baby,” Heather said, smoothing Aria’s head before she softly patted her cheek.
Mama don’t want me lying here recovering from a second abortion at just sixteen.
Aria couldn’t stop the tear that raced down her cheek.
Her mother’s face filled with concern.
Tell her, tell her the truth. Let her help you through this,
she told herself, all the while knowing she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Not ever.
Aria reached up and wiped the tear away. “Something must be in my eye, ” she lied.
Heather sat up straight and crossed her arms over her chest as she eyed her daughter. “Somebody bothering you? Somebody hurt you? What you and Jontae been up to?”
Aria forced herself to smile. Her mother was in detective mode and that would end real fucked up for her. “Just not feeling good, Ma. That’s all.”
Her mother walked to the door. “I had you. I raised you. I know you, Aria. Mama here when you want to talk. You hear me?” she asked over her shoulder.
“I hear you, Ma. ”
Long after her mother stepped out of the room, closing the door softly behind her, Aria lay there with her eyes locked on the wall silently crying....
Aria remained quiet and kept her gaze locked on the male figure getting smaller and smaller in the distance.
Her mother sighed and it was filled with a lot of things Aria recognized—regret, disappointment, anger—but still the love a mother has for her child, especially her only child. “Do you regret having the abortions?” she asked softly.
Aria turned in the dimly lit room to eye her mother in surprise.
“What, Aria, you think I’m gonna grab a brush and beat your ass like Diahann Carroll in
Claudine
?” she asked, leveling her eyes on her daughter’s face. “Don’t get me wrong, I woulda did it back then, but now? Now you’re a grown woman living under her roof with her own husband.”
“I’m sorry, Mama,” she said.
Heather Goines smiled sadly. “So am I because you could’ve come to me. I don’t care what the situation I always got your back, Aria. It hurts that you didn’t know that.”
“I should have,” Aria admitted, looking down at her hand as she twisted her three-carat wedding band around her finger beneath her three-carat solitaire. “Just like I shoulda known not to keep secrets from Kingston.”
“More secrets?”
If only you knew,
she thought, thinking of all the things about those summers her mother still didn’t know. If Heather “keep your panties up” Goines knew just how much sex and scheming her little girl had done....

Other books

1982 Janine by Alasdair Gray
Cassie by Barry Jonsberg
The Choice by Jean Brashear
The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink
The Fatal Eggs by Mikhail Bulgakov
Tori Phillips by Silent Knight
Anyone? by Scott, Angela
Dead or Alive by Ken McCoy
Love In a Sunburnt Country by Jo Jackson King