Brothers and Wives (6 page)

“Scottie, you don’t have to go that far. I can do these things for myself, ya know.”

“I know, but I don’t want you to. I got you!”

Scottie’s as anxious as he would be on an all-day job interview.

In some ways, Scottie believes he can handle Dani. He’s dated enough women to know what they like and want. But what if he goes all out to impress her and she gets bored with his ways and accuses him of trying to buy her? How can he also show her that he simply enjoys being around her, too?

Scottie decides he needs to calm himself down and take a seat.

“How’s it taste?”

“Not half bad.”

Immediately after she finishes her meal, he sets the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, takes her by the hand into the living room to sit on the sofa, props her feet on top of the coffee table, removes her sexy little sandals from her feet, and sticks a throw pillow behind her back.

He looks around the living room until he locates the remote control for the cable, hands it over to her, and lets her take charge.

She speeds through the menu until she locates a program on TV One.

“This feels kinda nice,” he murmurs. It’s all he can do to keep from resting his chin on top of her head. He wants to reach out and let his fingers play in her hair.
What does her hair smell like? Does she smell as good as she looks?
To Scottie, Dani is a princess who’s honored him with her presence. The thought of that makes him want to be worthy.

“I want to ask you something, but I’m not ready to know the answer,” he says. He wants to ask her about her relationship with Neil but is having second thoughts about possibly spoiling their moment by discussing such a serious issue.

“Oh, please don’t do that. You can ask,” she says.

“Tell you what, when the time is right, I’ll ask you lots of questions. I just want to chill with you and enjoy myself. That is, if you don’t mind.”

“Dammit, Scottie,” she scolds. “I knew you were the smooth type, and that’s fine, but next time you need to just spit it out.” She looks agitated.

“Dani, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I’m not offended. I just hate when people do that. It–it’s no biggie, though. Let’s watch TV.” She picks up the remote and increases the volume.

Oh, hell
, he thinks.
I’ve messed up. I gotta do something
.

“Young lady, pay attention to the show. I’m going to give you a pop quiz once it’s over, okay?”

Dani and Scottie sit cozily together for several minutes. The quietness ushers in a peace that Scottie hasn’t experienced in a long time.

Suddenly, Scottie’s cell phone screams loudly, like a wailing siren from several police cars.

“Who the hell is this calling …?” he mumbles. “I ain’t answering it.” He retrieves his phone from the clip off his belt and glances at the caller ID. “Damn, how in the fuck …?”

“What’s the matter?” Dani asks.

Darkness flickers across his face. But he doesn’t say a word. They continue to pick up where they left off, watching television. He absentmindedly strokes her bare arm with the tips of his fingers.

“Scottie!” screams a voice.

Alarmed, Dani tosses Scottie’s arm off her shoulders. She sits up straight like a dog sensing danger.

“You hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That?”

More screams of Scottie’s name ring out, then a loud, persistent banging at her door. Her doorknob even rattles.

“Aw, hell nah.” Dani jumps to her feet and zips to the door to peer through the peephole. “Shit,” she grumbles and steps back. She just stands there, frozen in place, wondering why LaNecia is standing in her doorway.

Scottie then comes over to look.

“Um, wait a second.” He opens the front door and disappears behind it.

“What the fuck you doing here?”

“I should be asking you the same thing.”

“You don’t have the right to ask me shit….”

“Scottie,” she yelps, “don’t talk to me like that….”

“LaNecia, I swear this is not how I want to be, but what choice do I have?”

“Choose to be nice to me.”

“You’re going to have to act different if you want me to respect you, or else …” He pauses. “Or else I’m going back to Michigan.”

LaNecia gasps. “You serious? Okay, fine. What do you want me to do?”

“You cannot be rolling up at Dani’s spot like you have the right to be here. Not cool.”

He thinks about how he actually did the same thing, coming over without Dani knowing in advance, but he knows he’s more welcome than crazy-ass LaNecia.

“How’d you know where she lives? You followed me?”

“Mmm hmmm.”

“See, that ain’t gonna work. You can’t be harassing this woman. You understand?”

“Hmm, okay, Scottie.” LaNecia sighs. “I’ll do it your way.”

Scottie exhales. “Because I know you very well, if you want me to talk to you in a way that’s respectful, you need to completely leave Dani alone. Don’t call. Nothing.”

“What you gonna do for me if I do what you say?”

“What do you want?”

“Promise me you’ll take me out one last time, for old times’ sake.”

His eyes glaze over. “Promise.”

Satisfied, LaNecia extends her arms toward his waist. “Hug?”

She places her head on his chest, closes her eyes, and squeezes her arms around him so tight that he can feel her
breasts. For a second, Scottie’s mind leaps back in time. Back then, he savored how it felt to caress LaNecia’s young, hot curves—a feeling so good it made him forget where he was sometimes.

He coughs and loosens himself from LaNecia’s grip. “I’ll holler at you later. I think it’s easier for me to go ahead and listen to what you have to say than it is to have to watch my back and wonder when you gonna jump out the bushes like the damned Bigfoot.”

“Ha-ha. That’s the Scottie I know. That’s all I want,” she says in a barely audible voice. “I want to see and still hang out with the man I used to know.”

“Um, yeah. Anyway, I’ll call you.” Scottie waves at LaNecia, then slips back inside Dani’s apartment.

He returns to the living room to find Dani sitting on the sofa, blankly staring at a Viagra commercial.

“Everything okay?” she asks.

“Everything is A-okay. You all right? You need something else to drink?”

“What did she want?”

“What do you think?”

“What did you say to her?”

“It’s too damn long of a story.”

“It is
not
. You weren’t outside long, Scottie Meadows.”

“Long enough to get the job done.”

Dani gasps, then giggles. “You didn’t kill the bitch, did you?” she says jokingly.

“You’re silly, you know that? You really think I’d kill for you, Mariah?”

“Word on the street is that you’re a bad boy….”

“I’d love to show you how bad I am once you become mine. You know that’s gonna happen, don’t you?”

Dani’s cheeks flush red and she doesn’t respond.

Scottie continues talking as Dani leans against his broad chest while he tells her stories of his life. How his mother, Sola Meadows, met his father, George Foster, when she’d already had Neil by another man, a man she never married.

“We grew up in a single household. My mom got jerked around by her boyfriends, but she raised me and Neil to treat a woman with love, respect, kindness. That didn’t always happen, of course.”

Scottie admits to Dani that as a young boy, he felt lonely at times, because his only brother was quite a few years older. Sometimes Neil would let him tag along; other times he didn’t want to be bothered.

“Did you wish your mom would’ve had another little boy and not just Vette? Someone you could play with?”

“You can’t miss what you’ve never had, Dani. But I missed you from the second I laid eyes on you.”

“Eww, sounds like someone is running game on me.”

“Not running game. I’m the real deal, Mariah.”

“I wish you’d stop calling me that.”

“Okay, future Mrs. Meadows.”

“Ha-ha.” Dani laughs. “I never thought I’d hear anyone refer to me as
that.”

“You weren’t supposed to hear that until you hooked up with me, lovely one.”

“Scottie, you don’t have to lie to kick it with me.”

“Oh, so you doubt me? Where’s your faith? You gotta have faith to be with me.”

Dani doesn’t say anything.

“I’m not hearing anything,” Scottie says softly.

“I’m not saying anything.”

“Then do something. You don’t have to say a word. Do something.”

“Do what?” She frowns.

“Wait a second.” Scottie lifts himself up from the couch and strolls over to the music. He knows music and the spines of CD cases so well, it only takes him seconds to find what he wants.

He slides the CD case from the tiny shelf and pulls out the disc, carefully placing it in the CD player and searching until he sees the track he wants to hear.

He turns off the television, then walks over to Dani and lifts her to her feet.

“May I have this dance?”

“Oh, Lord.”

“Too late to pray now, baby.”

Dani lets out a sigh while Scottie gives her a bear hug and embraces her around the waist. His heart leaps forward when she starts moving with him to the music. They slow-dance to a Stevie Wonder song, an artist who happens to be one of Dani’s all-time favorites.

Does she have faith in me? Can she picture us doing this more and more?
She lets him fold her sensuous body into his arms. She closes her eyes and rocks with him, slowly rotating around the room.

After a while, Scottie can’t even hear Stevie Wonder singing anymore. He’s too busy getting lost inside his thoughts.

I don’t know how long this is going to last, or where it’s headed, but damn it feels so good to be with this woman right now
.

It’s early August, a
few weeks after Scottie returned to Houston and decided to stay for good.

“I’m about to pull up in your driveway right now. Are you ready for Brax?” I’m down the street from Neil’s house in my truck, babbling with him on my cell phone. According to our child support arrangement, it’s his weekend with Brax. So every other Thursday, Brax cries for a good ten minutes and wildly kicks his feet when he’s strapped in his car seat. It’s not that he doesn’t want to spend time with his daddy; it’s just that whenever I drop him off, he has a hard time letting go. Today is one of those days.

“Aw, is that my little man pitching a fit again?”

“Yes, I think it’s because your little man was deep into his favorite cartoon. And it seems we always have to leave just when the good part is coming on.”

“I hate hearing him cry.”

“You aren’t alone. I keep explaining that our DVR will pause and wait for him until he comes home, but it’s kind of hard for a three-year-old to completely understand.”

“I’ll make him forget all about that cartoon.”

It feels refreshing to hear Neil sound more chilled out
than he was at the reunion. Since then, we’ve made somewhat of a pact. It’s important for us to get along for Brax.

I turn the truck onto Neil’s driveway and park. He’s waiting for us under the covered entrance that leads from his sidewalk to the front door of his two-story brick home. The concrete walkway is bordered with three-feet-high bridal wreaths accented by decorative gravel stones that Neil scattered and arranged last summer. As soon as the engine of my pickup sputters into silence, Neil rushes over, barely looking at me he’s so busy trying to fling open the rear door of the double cab to unstrap his son.

“Daddyyy!” Brax happily shrieks, wiggling in his baby seat.

Neil smiles and kisses Brax on the center of his forehead.

“Are you gonna miss me?” I ask Brax and extend my knuckles so we can do a fist bump.

“Mommy, you stay here, too. Okay?”

“No, honey bun, I gotta go grocery shopping. We’re getting low on milk and eggs and bottled water and bacon.”

“Figures.” Neil smiles as he hoists Brax into his arms.

Before I can continue explaining my shopping plans to Brax, we’re interrupted by the noise of a car that turns into the driveway and comes to a stop behind my Toyota.

The music in Scottie’s Escalade is playing so loud it pulsates like the sound of a washing machine.

While holding Brax, Neil covers his ear and shouts at Scottie to turn off his music. Instantly the thumping music goes silent, and Scottie slowly steps out of the car.

I avert my eyes and start barking instructions to Neil. “Anyway, everything he needs is in his day bag as usual. Please do not let him have any sweets. I don’t care how
much he begs. And make sure he goes to bed at a decent time.”

Neil lowers his questioning eyes at me. Scottie’s car door slams. Soon I can feel his body standing inches behind me. He’s so close I can smell his cologne. Since that day he popped over unannounced a couple of weeks ago, we’ve been hanging out more and more. But this is the first time we’ve been at Neil’s house at the same time. I can tell Scottie’s growing more comfortable with me, but I haven’t exactly wanted Neil to know just yet, especially now that Scottie’s living with Neil.

“You come by to see me?” he whispers. The heat of his minty breath tickles my ear. Neil flashes us a suspicious look.

“Um, hey Scottie, what’s up?” I ask, feigning surprise.

“You want to go up to my room?”

“What’s going on here?” Neil asks. Brax is now tugging his daddy’s shirtsleeve and ordering him to carry him inside the house, but Neil barely pays attention. With Neil’s eyes locked on mine, I hear him mentally asking,
What do you think you’re doing?

“Let’s go inside,” Scottie says to me. Neil is holding Brax and his day bag in one arm. He grabs me with his free arm and pulls me along with him. I stumble on the walkway but don’t say a word.

“Hey, bro, you’re trying to do too much. I can handle Dani.” Scottie removes Neil’s hand from my arm and places his hand in mine. We follow Neil into the house, and I can’t help but wonder what Neil is thinking.

Neil sets down Brax and his day bag once we are inside his foyer. It’s a wide, open space that gives a full view of the staircase. A tiny office with French doors is located right off
the foyer. The stained concrete flooring gives Neil’s house a homey feel.