Mistress, Inc. (6 page)

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Authors: Niobia Bryant

BOOK: Mistress, Inc.
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Jaime raised her hands quickly and pushed Jessa.
As she stumbled back, caught off guard, Jessa’s hand went to her belly as she tried to keep her body from falling back down the stairs.
My baby!
She fell back against one of the columns flanking the porch with an
umph!
Jessa eyed the other woman as she stood there looking pleased with herself. She licked her lips as she stood up straight and pretended to dust herself off. “You really have to be more careful with how you handle a pregnant woman, Jaime. Eric would hate for something to happen to his unborn child,” Jessa said, knowing she was completely wrong for the satisfaction she felt as Jaime’s eyes got as big as half dollars and her mouth fell open in shock.
She hadn’t meant to tell her like that. She really hadn’t.
“Jaime, look, I really came to apologize and I didn’t mean to tell you like that—”
“You’re lying,” Jaime spat.
Jessa shook her head. “No, Jaime. No, I’m not. I’m not lying,” she said softly, feeling a stress headache beginning to pulse at the base of her neck. She turned and walked down the stairs.
“If you think you are going to pimp your bastard child off on Eric, you are mistaken. You tell Pleasure or whomever you were sleeping with that they have a baby on the way, but don’t bring that bullshit on my front step, Jessa Bell! Do you hear me?” Jaime screamed at the top of her lungs.
“Hell, everyone can hear you,” Jessa muttered as she just continued to walk away, not bothering to explain that she had no other lovers except Eric or even acknowledge Jaime still screaming at her like a fool.
“Do you hear me, Jessa? You and your bastard stay the hell away from me!”
 
Later that evening, Jessa dropped her robe and stood nude in front of the full-length mirror of her dressing room. She cocked her head to the side as she studied her body. Soon her breasts and belly would swell.
Oh God, and probably my nose,
Jessa thought, raising her hands to touch it as she twisted this way and that in the mirror.
She pressed her hand to her flat belly.
The day after she took the pregnancy test she had herself in her OB/GYN’s office. Everything was all confirmed. She was two months along. There was a baby on the way singing, “Sign, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours.”
Jessa closed her eyes as she tilted her back and released a long, steady breath filled with all of her stresses. She hadn’t even decided if she was going to have the baby yet—if she even deserved to have the baby—but today when Jaime pushed her and she thought she was going to tumble down the stairs, her first thought had been the baby.
Her
baby.
Her baby by the married man who killed himself after trying to kill her because she wanted to end their affair.
My life is a fucking soap opera.
Turning from the mirror, she quickly walked back into the bedroom and snatched up the deep purple sheer demi-bra and thong she had laid out earlier. She pulled on a fitted matte jersey dress, but then changed her mind and grabbed a pair of linen slacks and button-up white shirt to put on instead. The dress said vamp. Not the image she needed for where she was going.
It took her just twenty minutes to drive to the hospital and another five minutes to find the chaplain’s office. It was late and it was hardly the spot for a confession, but Jessa knew she had to lay her burdens somewhere in order to make some hard decisions on what to do.
Taking just a moment to pause, Jessa knocked briefly on his door.
“Come in.”
She entered and smiled a bit as the chaplain, Reverend Dobbins, rose from his seat and barely looked that much taller. He was a man of short stature with a pleasant round face and not a bit of neck. His scalp and cheeks were almost as red as his hair. But his presence that night had calmed her, and tonight she sought that same peace as she struggled with all of the repercussions of her affair with her best friend’s husband.
“Hello, Reverend Dobbins,” she said, strolling into the brightly lit office, and extended her hand to him.
He nodded and smiled, causing his cheeks to rise and nearly close his eyes. “How are you, Ms. Bell?” he asked, patting the back of her hand while he warmly shook it.
Jessa settled into the seat he offered with a wave of his hand. “You remember me?” she asked, setting her clutch in her lap as she crossed her ankles.
Reverend Dobbins nodded. “Of course, and I’ve been praying for you,” he said, taking his seat. “Your story was quite unforgettable, Jessa.”
“That’s an understatement,” she joked lightly, looking down at her hands briefly. “And there’s more.”
More than I am even willing to acknowledge.
“Okay.”
Jessa sat back in the chair. “I truly want to be forgiven by God—”
“You have been,” Revered Dobbins added gently.
“Without question He forgave you as soon as you asked him to.”
Jessa was confused. “And it’s just that simple?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
“But how can he forgive me when I can’t seem to forgive myself? I honestly believe that all of my sins were the reason I was almost killed a couple of weeks ago. You know? Karma, right?”
Reverend Dobbins shook his head. “The Lord doesn’t punish us for our sins ... and you can’t continue to punish yourself. The only way to move forward and to feel better and to do better is to say I messed up, but I see where I went wrong and I won’t do it again.”
“But I am still dealing with my anger and I have done things since I was released from the hospital that were wrong, but in the moment it felt like I needed to pay back the people who hurt me.” Jessa thought of Renee’s dismissal, Kingston’s anger, and Jaime’s scorn.
“Again, you recognize your misstep, you pray for strength and guidance, and you make the correction. No one is perfect.”
Jessa fell silent.
“Have you been reading your Bible, attending a church, or going to Bible study?” he asked.
She shook her head, feeling conflicted. She understood the anger everyone had for her, but she had never been one to let anyone talk to her or treat her any kind of way. “I tried to apologize to these people, Reverend, and everyone threw it back in my face. So why should I still feel guilty if I am saying I was wrong?”
“You have to be just as willing to forgive as you are to be forgiven.”
Jessa hated the tears that filled her eyes. “But I feel like I am being punished for my sins and I don’t want that on me.”
Reverend Dobbins leaned forward and folded his pudgy hands on top of his desk. “Are you truly regretful of your actions, or are you doing what you think God wants you to do to be forgiven?”
“I want back in God’s good graces,” Jessa admitted with ease, blinking away her tears.
“But are you truly regretful of your actions?”
Was she? Jessa stood and paced in his small generic office. “This is not me. I do not feel like
me,
” she stressed.
“And so the change has to be with you, Jessa, and not with other people.”
Jessa crossed her arms over her chest as she continued to pace back and forth. She stopped and faced the clergyman. “So I shouldn’t think of this baby as another payback for
all
my secrets and sins?” she asked softly.
Reverend Dobbins’s blue eyes filled with surprise. “You’re pregnant?”
“By the man who tried to kill me,” Jessa added before he even needed to ask. She felt overcome with emotions and tears filled her eyes. “All I can think about is this baby growing up and people pointing fingers or talking about all the scandal or that their mama was a mistress. I don’t want that for this child.”
Jessa dropped down into her chair and covered her mouth with her hands as she tried to breathe through the tightness in her chest as her tears flowed freely. “I don’t want my sins on this baby,” she whispered brokenly through her tears. “And there are things no one knows. Things I will carry to my grave. But why should this baby suffer? I don’t deserve this baby.”
And there was the truth.
Suddenly, Jessa felt Revered Dobbins’s presence near her and she looked up as he took her hand in his and knelt.
“That baby, even in the midst of the darkness of your life, is a blessing. God has blessed you, Jessa, and only you can write the story of your life that will be told.”
Jessa nodded, but her doubts nipped at her.
“I’m going to give you some Scriptures that I want you to read every day. But right now I want to pray with you, child. Can we pray?”
Jessa lowered her head and closed her eyes, tightening her grasp on Reverend Dobbins’s hands as he began to pray for her strength and serenity in a low voice that was meant for just them and God to hear.
 
Jessa returned to her beautiful home in Richmond Hills, among the neighbors who scorned her, just as confused as ever. Was she ready to have this baby? Was she ready to take the walk to being saved? How often would her anger and need for revenge cause her to backslide? How many times could God truly forgive?
She pulled up to her mailbox and was surprised to find nothing but a business card when she reached her hand in for the mail. Frowning, she reached up to turn on the interior light as she looked down at it. “V
INCENT
G
RANT
. I
NSURANCE
A
GENT
,” Jessa read aloud.
Jessa tossed it onto her passenger seat, assuming a random insurance agent was going house to house to sell premiums. When she reached up to turn off the interior light, she noticed handwriting on the back of the card that had flipped over when she tossed it. Frowning again, she picked it up.
She read aloud again:
“Perhaps this time we could dine together at the Terrace Room. Call me.”
She immediately thought of the man at the restaurant that day trying to get her attention before his wife, woman, or whatever walked up. She suspected he was also the one who sent the note to her that day. “And now he had his happy ass to my
house?
”
Jessa turned her car onto the driveway and grabbed her cell phone. She blocked her number and dialed his cell phone.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Grant, this is Jessa Bell,” she said, shutting off the Jag and climbing out of it to stride up the drive to her front door. “I don’t know how in the hell you got inside Richmond Hills—”
“I live here. Me and my wife just moved in around the corner about a month ago,” he said.
“What the fuck ever? Didn’t you just say you were married, so why the hell are you dropping notes in my mailbox?” she snapped.
“Oh. I assumed you didn’t care—”
“You assumed wrong,” Jessa told him in a hard voice, her heart pounding just as hard.
“I just wanted to try some pussy that was good enough to make a nigga wanna kill you,” he said. “Sheee-it.”
Jessa pulled the phone from her face as she walked inside her house. “My patience is just as short as your penis, so stay the hell away from me, freak.”
She ended the call and fought the urge to throw her phone against a wall.
You brought this on yourself. You made them think you are a serial mistress. The eternal side-chick.
Kicking off her heels, Jessa jumped a little when her landline phone rang suddenly, echoing inside the spacious house. She padded barefoot into the kitchen and grabbed the cordless from its base on the granite countertop. She looked down at it and didn’t recognize the number but knew it was a New York area code.
Jessa answered it. “Hello.”
“Hello, is this Jessa Bell?” a female voice asked.
“Yes ... and you are?” Jessa asked coolly, her guard immediately up.
“My name is Myra Moseley and I am with Power Up Publicity,” she began, her voice husky and refined but with a tinge of a street vibe around the edges.
Another Aria,
Jessa thought. “I’m not sure why you would be calling me, Myra?” Jessa said, sounding and feeling tired. She just wanted to go bed—well, drink a glass of wine and go to bed, but that was a no-no now.
“Well, I have a friend at the news station in your hometown there in Jersey who sent me info on your story.”
Jessa immediately tensed.
“And I thought the statement you made after you left the funeral really struck a chord with me, and I think there’s an audience out there who can either relate to your story or learn something from it. You are absolutely right. Why on earth do you deserve to be brutally attacked in your home for ending an affair that everyone blames you for anyway.”
Jessa remained quiet, still wary, but listening.
“With my connections, your story, and how well you come off on camera, I think we can really get you booked on talk shows across the country and give you a chance to tell your story. Give you a chance to put a spin on how your life is told.”

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