The Sweetest Taboo (24 page)

Yuri

         Yuri stuffed the positive pregnancy test to the bottom of the garbage and then she poured sour milk on it. It was Britt’s thirty-second birthday, and she didn’t want to ruin it. Besides, she wasn’t so sure what she wanted to do. The relationship with him was a mess. He made a better side niggah or best friend than a main man. All the sweetness had turned sour and his perfect representative had long since left the building. Now she was stuck nursing a broken heart while not being able to accept that her season with Britt had ended.

For the past month he would come home for a few hours to shower and change and then head back out. Lately, the only time she ever saw him was when he was between her legs, either kissing her pussy or nuttin’ up in it.

Yuri set the table with shrimp scampi, chilled sparkling cider and a birthday cake. Then she propped up the pillows behind her back and lay on the couch dressed in a leather bra, matching thong and stilettos.

She prayed practically every five minutes that he would hold true to his word and come home early tonight, especially since he was already an hour late.

In the midst of waiting Yuri drifted to sleep and by the time she awoke the sun was creeping into the sky. She couldn’t believe it, somehow this had to be a nightmare. She looked at the clock for confirmation that it was a new day and it read seven
A.M.
Still not convinced this was real, she looked at the table she’d set, only to see the cake was uncut, her sparkling cider was hot and her shrimp scampi was cold. She sat up on the couch, her stomach feeling like a volcano had erupted, and she began to cry like a distressed baby. Her life was in shambles. And here she sat, all by herself, with nobody to talk to except God, and even He’d fallen asleep.

As Yuri rose from the couch to shower and change (after all, it was a workday) the doorbell rang.

“Britt, you forgot your keys again?” A sigh of relief came over her as she wrapped a robe around herself. She didn’t want to go off right away for fear of his becoming pissed and storming back out. “One day I’m not gon’ be here,” she said as she opened the door, “and then what you gon’ do?”

“I’ll move in.” Troi smiled.

“What the fuck are you doing here?!” Yuri spat. She never expected to see Troi standing here, not in a million years.

“Excuse you, is that how they say good morning in the school of rudeness? Anyway, I thought Britt woulda been here.” She handed Yuri his wallet. “Tell him he left this at my house last night and I found it after he left this morning.”

“What?” Yuri stood in shock; suddenly she felt like a zombie.

“What’s the problem?” Troi placed her hands on her hips. “How about this, because I don’t have all morning, you need to understand that I’m not leaving Britt alone. And I’m not stopping at him being back in my bed, I want him back in my life as my man. As my husband. He loves me and you know it. So don’t envision me leaving anytime soon, ’cause I’ma be the worst fuckin’ bitch you’ve ever seen. Do us all a favor: Save yourself some heartache and disappear.”

There wasn’t much to say outside of a “bitch” here and a “ho” there; especially since, at the end of the day, it all added up to be the same. Britt loved Troi and he would never stop loving her. Yuri just hated that she built so many damn dreams on the two of them being in love. She treasured the day he would one day call her his woman or his wife. But now here she stood face-to-face with her worst nightmare. “Kiss…” Yuri spoke slowly, “my ass!” And she slammed the door in Troi’s face.

Yuri held on to the knob until the cold metal felt clammy. She was too hurt to cry and too emotionless to scream. Here she’d been waiting for him all night and he was out fucking Troi. The same bitch that he swore he had nothing with.

Yuri went in the bathroom, showered and changed. By the time she grabbed her purse and hospital overcoat it was a quarter after eight and she was fifteen minutes late for work.

Once she got to work, she was silent most of the day. She worked in the geriatrics unit and usually the old people, who reminded her of her grandparents, would make her smile, but today she was depressed.

“Smile, chile,” one of her patients said. “I’m the one death’s looking for.”

By the time her day ended she wanted to crawl under a rock. She opened the door to Britt’s loft and there he was, lying in the bed. “Wassup?”

“Where’s your wallet, Britt?” Yuri tried not to sound anxious.

“Why, you need some money?” He picked his pants up off the floor and searched his back pockets. “Damn.” He sucked his teeth. “I must’ve left it.”

“Left it where?”

“I left the shit…in the car—at the studio—shit, what the hell are you asking me all these questions for?”

“That’s all I needed to know.” Yuri went in the closet, pulled out her suitcases and started packing them.

“Where you going?” He sat up.

“Did you forget that I waited for your birthday yesterday?” She turned to him, tears rolling down her face and her eyes turning fire red. “I waited here all fuckin’ night for you. Do you remember you told me you were coming home early?! But instead you were fucking Troi!”

“Oh, here you fuckin’ go!”

“The bitch came here!” She threw his wallet at him and everything in it scattered to the floor like drops of rain. “And she told me you were fucking her! You left your wallet at her house! I really can’t fuckin’ believe this. Here I thought it was me, that I was imagining shit, that I was this and I was that, and all along it wouldn’t have mattered what I did, because you woulda still been fulla shit. I been holding on to air. You love Troi? You love Troi, then guess what? Troi can fuckin’ have yo’ ass, cause Yuri is through. It’s over and I’m the fuck outta here. You don’t ever have to worry about my ass again!”

“Yuri, please.” He waved his hand. “I’m tired and you shootin’ a buncha shit that I don’t wanna fuckin’ hear! If you think I’m fuckin’ her, then hell, maybe I am, maybe I should be. Then you can be right for once.”

Yuri stood and gave Britt a crooked grin. The salty tears running from her eyes slid into the corners of her mouth. “Now I know you’re really lying because that’s the same shit I said to Jeff when I was cheating on him with you. Oh my God, Britt, you’re really fucking Troi—” Yuri felt like her body was closing in on itself. “What am I doing?” she said as if she were in a daze. “What the fuck am I really doing?”

“How about this?” He shook his head. “Maybe you need to step, and we need to end this. You don’t trust me, you believe any fuckin’ thing, you nag me, you don’t understand me and I’m tired of it. For real, I am. It’s a wrap for this bullshit. Change your fuckin’ position and be out!”

Yuri was convinced there would never be enough words in the English language to describe how she felt or how her heart ached. The feeling of your feet slipping from beneath you was something that could never be put into words.

Her bottom lip trembled as if she were freezing cold. Britt sat on the edge of the bed, shaking his head. “Yo,” he said calmly. “Sit down. I’m sorry, I ain’t mean that.”

Yuri started to pack her clothes. Although she was unsure of where she would go, she knew for a fact she had to leave. Maybe she would stay with Nae-Nae long enough to give her job two weeks notice and then go to Chicago, move in with her mother and plan her life from there.

As Britt’s words screamed in her mind, Yuri’s head throbbed. She turned and looked at him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his eyes pleading with her to calm down.

She swallowed and walked over to him slowly. She wasn’t sure if her feet were moving; all she knew was that she was getting closer to him. She stood before him and tears clouded her eyes, yet she could see a blurred vision of his face. She sniffed as she squinted, bit down on her bottom lip, and then proceeded to smack the shit out of him. Immediately after she slapped him she began fighting him as if she’d been waiting on this tussle all of her life. As if she was warring against life, love, and everything fucked up in the world.

“Yuri.” Britt held her by both arms so that she would stop punching him. “Hold it.” He swayed back. “Listen to me.” He shook her. “Listen to me! Stop fucking hitting me and listen! I’m sorry!”

Yuri was able to free one of her hands and smack him again. She looked at him and screamed in his face. The type of scream that translated to mean you’d been in pain for years. The type of scream that asked why a thousand times over and over again.

Britt gained control of Yuri’s free hand and squeezed her tighter.

She hated that she couldn’t move; now along with her soul her body was paralyzed. Tears poured like a river down her face and snot clogged and oozed from her nose at the same time. “I kept asking you if you wanted me to leave.” Her voice ached, her body ached, and her head ached. “I told you I wanted to leave. I would’ve been okay had you agreed that I leave then…back then…at that time…when I wasn’t so caught up, when I had control over my life…I woulda been okay…but now—now, I’ma mess.” Tears poured from her eyes. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who I am. I’m lost. Where”—tears were now blinding her—“where do I go from here? What do I do now?”

“I love you—I love you—I love you—I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I love you—I love you—I love you—I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m sorry…” Britt said it over and over again. He said it so much, he began to sound like a scratched CD stuck on repeat. He knew he’d more than fucked up this time. This time he’d gone too far. He didn’t know what to say, he didn’t know what to do, all he knew was that he wasn’t letting Yuri leave because if she did he knew she wasn’t coming back. “You ain’t going no fuckin’ where, Yuri. We gon’ work through this. I don’t know what she said but I promise you I ain’t fuck her. And I don’t love her. I don’t love nobody but you. I never loved nobody like I love you. I’m here and I want you. Please don’t leave, baby, what I’ma do if you go? I’m so, so sorry.”

“Well sometimes, Britt”—Yuri relaxed her shoulders, as he released her from his embrace—“sorry ain’t good enough.”

“You ain’t leaving.” He pulled up a chair and blocked the path. “I don’t give a damn you say, nah. You mad right now, but you gon’ chill the fuck out. This is about us, me and you. We’ll camp out in this motherfucker until you get it together. So you may as well sit down.” He reached over to the stand that sat next to his entranceway and lit a cigar.

Yuri stood there for a moment and looked at Britt. Confusion started to set in and then she remembered that she was pregnant and maybe she needed to see if they had anything left worth saving. But then she thought about how tired she was and how she just couldn’t do it anymore. She needed some time. Some time away from this. All of this was simply too much. She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked straight ahead out the window at the moonlight.

Britt stared at Yuri and studied her beauty. And he studied why he’d fucked up. What in the hell possessed him to kick it, even in the slightest fashion, to Troi? He didn’t love her and he knew Yuri would never believe that, especially after the way he acted and the way he spat knives at her from deep in his throat. Damn, he meant to slice her jugular but he didn’t mean for the shit to twirl and enter her heart.

He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t; all he could do was sit there in the chair blocking the way to an inevitable good-bye, with his legs gapped open, his arms locked behind his neck, and his dreads swaying over his shoulders.

What was he thinking, to fuck up like this? He knew he loved Yuri. He loved everything about her, her smile, the way one cheek sat slightly higher than the other when something was really funny to her. The way her lips folded into her mouth when she was surprised, and the way her mouth curled just a little on the right side when she was about to cry. And she was so pretty, and yeah she had the bomb pussy but now when he fucked her, he didn’t just fuck her because her body turned him on, he made love to her because of how she made him feel. Like he was king of the fuckin’ world. He knew that she was the type of chick that even if he lived in the projects she would make it feel like a mansion and here he’d ruined it all, in one sweep, one silly-ass night where he stayed out, lay next to Troi with all the intentions in the world to do her, only for her to take her clothes off and for he and his soft dick to realize that he didn’t want anybody but Yuri.

Britt walked over to Yuri and stood between her legs. He could look in her eyes and tell she still loved him. The only thing missing from her glare was a second chance. He didn’t want to say anything because he knew his words weren’t having any effect, so he figured he would try this: running his hands through her hair, kissing her, caressing her and holding her tightly. He knew his hold was too unyielding but he needed her to understand how much he loved her and that he was never letting her go.

Yuri knew he was trying to tell her he loved her by the way he was kissing her. His tongue was speaking a language all its own as it licked a trail down her neck, over her breast and to her sweetness. He pulled her pants off. “I love you so fuckin’ much,” he said as he spread her legs, “I can’t let you leave. Because then what I’ma do?” He sucked her pussy soft and slow and then fast and hard. With every thought he had he stroked his tongue and the faster he moved the wetter she became and the more he said I love you.