When Love Hurts (7 page)

“Why? So you can just run back to me a couple weeks later? ‘Jay, he’s hitting me! Jay, he’s cheating on me! Jay, can I stay with you because my boyfriend’s an ass, but I knew that, though!’”
 

“That’s not—” she starts, but then stops. She lets a tear fall, and then another one. She grips her bag and starts walking toward his car. I reach my hand out and catch her easily. “Let me go!”

“No,” I say.

“Leave me alone!” She thrusts and twists, and to all the spectators outside it looks like a regular domestic violence case, but I’m not letting up.

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing,” I say. “Don’t be stupid.”

Jessica stops moving and turns to me. “I’m not stupid. I don’t want to stay with Malcolm. I don’t want to stay with you. I want to be with Chris. Now leave me the hell alone!”

I drop her arm then, and she rubs it with her free hand. She looks at me for a long time before she starts walking toward Chris’s car, and this time I don’t stop her.
 

Just as she opens his car door, I take two steps forward. “Jess, I swear if you leave with that man, you’re dead to me. Don’t call me no more. Don’t text me telling me he did this or that shit. It’s done. It’s over. Have a fucking good life.”

Jessica looks in the car at Chris, and then back to the sidewalk at me, and says, “Fine, because you’re already dead to me.”

I stomp on my brakes just as the car in front of me stops. The freeway traffic’s on that bull, and I’m not in the mood to be dealing with this crap. Malcolm’s with me to check out some property I can lease or rent for a new sports bar I plan on opening. Even though I’m satisfied with my first bar and the income is good, it’s time to expand the Miller brand.

Malcolm’s sitting next to me not saying anything. When I had told him everything that happened last night with Jessica, he was furious. When I came to the part where I cut her off from my life, though, he didn’t agree with that. He probably doubts that I’m serious about it.

Traffic starts moving again, and I blow out a heavy breath. I just want to look at this building and get it over with.

“You all right, bro?” Malcolm asks.

“Yeah, I guess. Why?” I ask.

“Aw, ’cause you gripping that stirring wheel like it owed you money. You still thinking about Jess?”

I shrug and relax my hands. “Fuck her, man.”

“You don’t mean that. Hey, you want me to call her and make sure she’s all right?” He starts to dig in his pocket for his phone.

I shake my head. “Don’t even bother with her, man. She’d be all right if she was here with us.” I get off the freeway and make a sharp right.
 

Malcolm doesn’t say anything after that, but I see him shake his head. Eventually, I pull up to the brown-and-red building on the corner of the street. We get out and walk to the iron steel door that needs to be repainted or completely removed. A few seconds later the owner of the building opens the door wearing blue plaid shorts and a red polo shirt, and a thinning mustache that makes him look well over fifty. He stretches out his hand with a big smile. “I’m Donald Refer—nice to finally meet you, Jaylen. How’ve you’ve been?”

“Good. Thank you. This is my brother, Malcolm. He’s tagging along ’cause I’ll be making him manager of this sports bar if we have a deal.”

“Oh, all right. That sounds like a plan. Well, don’t just stand there; come on in!” Donald says, smiling and stepping aside. The front room is spacious, the windows are barred, and the floor is entirely concrete. The building gives off a cold feel. “You can probably add the bar on this side over here next to the wall.” Donald points to his left. “The bathroom’s over this way too, and there’s also a hallway for a back office if you want. Or most likely you can use it for a break room for your workers, if you’re hiring.”

“How many rooms is it? I got to make sure I can build two bathrooms out of one room, but I need a break room and an office.”
 

“Umm . . . you can go half-and-half on the break room and office, can’t you? Your main office is in your other bar on the east side anyway, right? And how many employees you expecting to hire? All they need is a locker and a time-punch machine.”

I glare at him. “They need more than that and you know it.”

It’s not the day to test me, and Malcolm may be the only one who can sense this because he speaks up. “We can only start off with one or two employees for a while, and I’ll be working here all the time. When we get the right amount of customers, we can think about knocking out one of those walls in the back to make more room, Jay. Cool?”

I shrug and start to walk to the back rooms to see exactly how big they are. The rooms aren’t as big as he said, but they are reasonable for a few workers to deal with. We spend the rest of the meeting trying to negotiate a price, but the dude has a stubborn head, and the place isn’t worth half as much as he’s asking for. Eventually, I get fed up and stand up, shaking off his deal and leaving the man with his mouth hanging open. When he sees that I’m serious about walking away from the deal, he drops the price almost by half. We keep walking, and he lowers it to five hundred dollars above the price I originally suggested.
 

One foot’s already out the door, when I turn back to face him. “We’ll think about it.”
 

I feel a hand grip my thigh, and my eyes pop open. I’m lying in bed, and Angela’s lying next to me smiling as she caresses me. “Good morning,” she says. “Have a good dream?”
 

I frown as I sit up, and she sits up too. I look at my alarm clock that reads 6:50. Ten minutes before it’s set to go off. I lay my head back down and cover my eyes with my arm. “Let me sleep for a while, okay?”

“You know I was thinking,” she says in the same weird voice while playing with my chest hairs. “You know, when you told me that Chris came over here to get Jessica and she left with him.” She pulls my arm off my eyes, forcing me to stare at her. “What was she doing over here, if we both was at work?”

“Um. I don’t know. She must have forgot something over here, and Malcolm let her in with his spare key, so—”

“Wait. You didn’t tell me Malcolm was here when you had that big fight with Jess. Yeah, matter of fact, you told me that you had to tell Malcolm what happened the next day.”

I sit up again and look at her eyes that are squinting at me. “Nah. Malcolm wasn’t here. He dropped her off and kept going to work.”

“What could she possibly leave here that was so important? And why did you show up, and how long was y’all two alone?”

My alarm goes off. “I got get ready for work,” I say, and try to push her off of me, but she won’t budge.
 

“Just tell me the truth, Jay.”
 

“I got a call from Malcolm, while I was at work, telling me he dropped Jess off at my house because she had to get something. He didn’t have time to take her back to his crib because he had to go to work. So he asked me whenever I had the chance if I could pick Jessica up from my house and take her back to his place. I showed up here, and she was already packed . . . um . . . like ready to go, but she told me she was going with Chris, and that’s how the whole argument started.”

I’m talking fast, and Angela just stares at me for a long time. Her face is now much more relaxed. Finally, she sighs, says “whatever,” and moves over so I can get off the bed and start getting ready. I go to take my shower away from her glaring almond-shaped eyes.

As soon as I turn on the shower, Jessica pops into my mind, and I wonder if she’s all right. Hell, I wonder if she’s still alive. I feel the urge to drive past his house to see if I can see anything suspicious, but I shake it off. It’s her life, like she said, and if anything happens to her, that’s on her. I lean my head against the shower wall and let the water run over my face. I hate thinking like that about her, but I hate just being okay with her decision. What the fuck was she thinking?

Angela pulls back the curtain and my heart drops. “What the fuck is you doin’?” I ask with a hand over my heart.

She’s naked and looking sexy with her small breasts, wide hips, and thick thighs.
 

“I wanted to join you,” she says, stepping into the shower.
 

After we dry each other off, Angela lies down on the bed as I start to get dressed for work. I could have enjoyed the head she gave me in the shower a lot more if I could’ve gotten my mind off Jessica.
 

Angela smiles at me as I slide on my jeans, and I smile back. “Jay, you know my mom was thinking about charging me rent to stay with her.”

“Aw, for real?”
 

“Yeah, so I told her, ‘I ain’t gonna spend no money to stay here with you.’ Then I thought about you.” She smiles. “Why don’t I move in here with you? I’ll be closer to work, to you, and not have to deal with my mom with her crazy ass.”

“Uh . . .” I look at the clock and make a fake panic face. I grab my keys and wallet from the dresser. “We’ll talk about it later. I gotta go.”

#

I pull up to Malcolm’s apartment as soon as I finish my shift at the bar. I use my spare key to let myself in and find him on the couch watching the game in his drawers, but it’s his house so I can’t say shit. “What up?” I say as we shake hands. I take a seat next to him on the couch. “I see you watching Kobe.”

“Hell yeah, that’s my nigga.” Malcolm’s nodding his head as he talks, like there’s music playing. “What you up to, though?” I just shake my head. “You still thinking about Jessica? I called her, and she said she was all right. I told her if anything happen she can call me.”

“I’m trying to keep her off my mind. You know she dead to me, right?”

“Yeah, she mentioned that to me over the phone,” he says. He reaches in front of him to grab his beer. “She asked if you was still mad, and I said yeah.”

“I’m surprised she cared. She didn’t care what I thought when she got in the car with that nigga.”

Malcolm shrugs. “I knew she was still in love with him.” I don’t say anything for a while and just watch the game. Eventually, Malcolm turns to me and asks, “So if you didn’t come here to talk about Jess, what you come here to talk about?”

“Oh, yeah. Angela wants to move in with me I don’t know if that’s gon’ work.”

“I thought her mom was making her stay with her.”

“Yeah, but now she’s charging her rent, so Angela wants to move in with me. Don’t get me wrong. I love Angela. She’s my ‘ride or die’ chick, but we act too much alike sometimes, and I know we gon’ be bumping heads in that house.”

Malcolm chuckles. “What couple don’t fight, though?”

“We don’t argue a lot. It’s just . . . I don’t know. You know I’m not really the commitment type. The next thing she gon’ want to do is get married,” I say, leaning my head back. “You got another beer, bro?”

“Yeah. But it’s self-serve, nigga.” He nods toward the kitchen, and I get up. “Yeah, you right about the getting-married part. Don’t get me wrong—she gon’ play wifey for a while, though. Don’t get her ass pregnant, then she really gonna want the ring.”

I laugh. “We’ve been together for like five months almost, so it’s too early for all that marriage talk.”

“Yeah, but her moving in with you is the next step before that ring, bro. I’m telling you.”

“Yeah, I hear you.” I don’t say anything for a while and just watch the game. Then the thought of Angela bringing up marriage starts nagging me. “What would you do if a woman wanted to move in with you?”

Malcolm smiles. “Now, you know—”

“Yeah, I know you get more hoes than cows get grass, but what I’m saying is how would you deal with someone that wanted to take it to that next level with you?”

He looks at me for a while before he lets out a breath. “You know, you don’t have to move in with her. Just tell her you ain’t ready.”

“Yeah, just make me sound like a bitch.” We laugh.

“Nah, I mean, if a woman wanted to move in with me, I’d kick their ass out on the spot. If you got your own home, why you need to stay with me? I can’t imagine myself living with my girlfriend. I can’t imagine myself in a relationship, girlfriend-boyfriend, with someone at all.”

I hold eye contact with him. “Are you gay, bro?”

Malcolm’s face drops, and I’ve never laughed so hard in my life. “Nigga, I’ll beat yo’ ass,” he says, looking down at me on the floor. “Get yo’ weak ass up. It ain’t that damn funny.”

I crawl back on the couch and wipe my eyes. “For real though, bro. Why you don’t want to be in a relationship?”

Malcolm leans back and keeps his eyes on the TV. “Just don’t. But what you need to do is figure out why you want to her to move in with you and not just because she needs a place to stay.”

I nod. “Yeah, I know. Probably won’t be that bad as long as we stay on that level.”

He snorts. “Just remember you the one that’s gon’ be proposing so she ain’t got no choice but to wait, when you really think about it.”

“Yeah, you right about that.”

“So what you gon’ do?” Malcolm asks, eyeing me.

I lean back into the couch. “I don’t know. Just wing it, I guess. If she wants to stay, she can. I ain’t about to have her on the streets since she can’t stay at her mom’s.”

Malcolm nods just as my phone starts to ring. “Here she is now” I answer, “Hello.”

“Where you at?” Angela asks.
 

“Malcolm’s. I’ll be home soon.”

“I want to go out to dinner.”
 

“Why tonight?” I ask, rubbing my temple.
 

“Ain’t nothing here to cook.”

“How about I order something or bring something back?” I hear her sigh. Eventually she says fine and hangs up. “Damn. I love her, but she just . . . something. Sometimes, man, I swear. You lucky you single.”

“That ain’t luck; that’s planning.”
 

We laugh and chill for about another hour before Angela starts calling again. I decide to call it a night since I’m tired and getting hungry myself. I pick up some Chinese food and drive home.

Angela’s up waiting for me on the couch looking sexy as she pouts with only my oversized T-shirt to clothe her. I’m not sure what she has on underneath, but I bet it ain’t much. She stands up when she sees me and reaches for the food.