Authors: Niobia Bryant

Mistress No More (10 page)

BOOK: Mistress No More

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“Ma, why are you sleeping in the car?”

Renee opened one eye and looked up at her son and Darren peering through the driver’s-side window at her. For a few seconds she struggled between that sleep and wake zone as she wiped the sweat from her face and neck. She avoided their eyes as she sat up straight and then opened the car door.

“I just felt sick at the store and fought my way home. I couldn’t even get out of the car,” she lied.

“How long have you been out here?” Darren asked, setting the box he held onto the driveway.

“Not long,” she lied again. “But I feel better.”

In truth she didn’t remember even driving home from Jackson’s apartment. Her head was pounding and she felt nauseous.

“We finished the brochures, Ma.”

Darren nodded before he picked up the box. “I’m heading home. See you Monday.”

“Where’s your sister?” Renee asked, watching Darren as he carried the box to put into the trunk of his late-model black Lexus.

“She went bowling with her friend Gina. She called to ask permission, but you weren’t answering your phone, so I told her to go, to get out of her room.”

Renee smiled at her son as she rose to her feet, trying her best not to wobble on her feet. “Thank you, Aaron.”

He stepped forward. “You want me to help you into the house, Ma?”

Renee slammed her mouth shut and shook her head no, knowing if it tasted like shit��and it did—that it had to smell twice as bad.

Darren blew his horn briefly before pulling off.

Aaron waved him off and then turned to head into the house.

Renee tilted her head back, enjoying the feel of the summer rays on her face. She smiled softly when she thought of barbeque and the get-togethers she and Jackson used to host all through the summer season. They both loved the heat and would lay in the yard, in hammocks—back before she went to work. Back before their marriage was over and her husband began playing buck to some white woman.

“Hey, Renee.”

She opened her eyes and looked at Aria walking up from her Range Rover parked on the street. She couldn’t keep the surprise from her face. “Hey, hi, Aria. Something I can help you with?”

“I left you a message to call me back and when I got home I saw you outside so I decided to drive down,” Aria explained, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Yeah, I didn’t hear my phone ringing,” Renee stumbled to explain.

Aria came to stand beside Renee and leaned back against the Benz. “You’re probably wondering why I’m here.”

“Considering you hate my guts because I’m the whore of Richmond Hills . . . uh, yeah, I did kinda wonder,” Renee drawled sarcastically.

“I don’t hate your guts, Renee, I just—”

Renee laughed. “No, you just judged me and threw our friendship in the trash like a rotten banana when I needed you most,” she admitted, ending with her voice barely above a whisper as tears rolled down her cheeks. “You and Jaime just pulled away.”

Aria eyes widened in surprise. “Is that about Jessa—”

Renee waved her hand. Slashing the air. “Jessa. I fucking wish the only problem Jackson and I had was Jessa’s dry behind. My husband has a baby on the way with another woman—”

“Oh my God,” Aria gasped, reaching out to wrap her arms around Renee’s shoulders. “Are you okay, Renee?”

“No,” she admitted, dropping her head in her hands. “Ain’t a damn thing about me all right.”

She hadn’t shared even twenty words with Aria since that day, but it felt easy, natural, and damn good to finally have someone to talk to. Never underestimate the value of friends.

“I’m sorry, Renee, I didn’t know. I shouldn’t have judged you, just you almost had an affair and Jessa’s stupid message and all the shit I was going through. I overreacted. And then I was so caught up in falsely accusing Kingston and couples therapy and . . . and—”

Renee looked over at Aria with red eyes. “Falsely?” she asked.

Aria nodded. “Did you get Jessa’s invite to lunch today?”

Renee nodded. “I was so busy trying to tear all the blond hair out of my husband’s baby mama’s head that I told Jessa to just tell me.”

Aria arched an eyebrow. “Blond hair?”

“All pussy is the same color in the dark,” Renee said, sliding her hands into the pocket of the cotton peasant skirt she wore.

“True.”

“Did you go?” Renee asked, thinking maybe it would have been good to lay a little ass whupping on Jessa, too.

“I did and the bitch is moving back to Richmond Hills. Now you tell me she doesn’t have a clit on her big as a set of balls on an old man.”

Renee shifted her eyes to Jessa’s house with a snort. She thought back to the day they’d gotten the message and then used her alarm code to break into her house to snoop for clues on the guilty husband. It was that day that Renee had learned to use alcohol to numb the pain.

“It’s crazy, but I spent that whole damn day thinking it was my husband, wishing it wasn’t my husband sleeping with my friend, and he comes home to tell me another woman is pregnant with his child.” Renee closed her eyes against a wave of pain. “I never thought I could actually hurt Jackson but that night I knew that if he didn’t leave my eyesight I would have shot him.”

“What are you going to do?”

Renee looked down at her bare left ring finger. She’d stopped wearing her wedding rings the morning after Jackson’s announcement. Everything the rings stood for felt like a mockery anytime she looked at them. “He wants me to forgive and forget but I can’t see it. I can’t envision it. I can’t do it . . . as much as I love him I can’t forgive this. I won’t.”

“Just even thinking Kingston was cheating drove me crazy so I cannot even imagine what you are going through,” Aria admitted.

“It is horrible. It is the worst feeling. It is my worst nightmare. And I wish like hell that I could just wake up and all of this shit was a bad dream or movie or some shit, you know.” Renee looked down at her toes bared in the flip-flops she wore. A tear fell from her eye and landed on her big toe like a raindrop.

“You yanked her a bald spot, huh?” Aria asked, nudging her with her shoulder.

Renee actually laughed a little, before looking up at her younger and usually feistier friend. “I had enough to make a blond ponytail. O-
kay
?” she joked, thinking it felt good to laugh.

Aria smiled. “You shoulda kept it. I coulda made me some highlights.”

Renee flung her head back and laughed.

“And how about Jessa and I were asked to leave the Terrace Room after I bounced that bitch’s BlackBerry off her forehead. Put a lot on her mind, you know what I’m saying,” Aria said with her normal sass and spunk as she did a two-step. “I know she ’bout deep as hell in a Tylenol bottle.”

Renee shook her head as she smiled. “I missed you, girl,” she admitted, completely honest.

Aria turned and hugged Renee close. “Me, too, friend. Me, too.”

Renee cut her eyes up to the blue sky, wishing her life felt more like a clear summer day than an April shower downpour. “It wasn’t Kingston, was it?” Renee asked softly, wishing like hell that she knew it wasn’t Jackson. Her mental plate was full.

“No, it isn’t. Wasn’t. Whatever.”

Renee pulled away from Aria’s embrace, stepping back to look at her. “What did you need to talk to me about?” she asked, finally feeling ready to hear the truth.

If Jessa and Jackson were lovers it would just be the crappy icing on top of a shitty cake.

She studied Aria’s expression.

“Renee, you not gon’ believe
this
shit. . . .”

Some things you never forget.

For all her bravado and stance that her new life was all her own, Jaime had been raised a certain way to live life a
certain
way.

She made concessions to the rules over the years: her affair, her professional-sexual relationship with Pleasure, and leaving her husband—but most of her mother’s training on what was and was not appropriate was as deeply ingrained in her as her own DNA.

Standing in a living room with your mother when your lover-for-hire walks in with his dick swinging like a bat was just the utmost level of impropriety. In the hours since her mother had stormed out, Jaime had tried calling her, but Virginia Osten-Pine wasn’t having it. Jaime shook her head knowing that was the only other dick her mother had laid eyes on in over forty years. “Lawd,” she sighed, still feeling embarrassed and anxious about the whole incident.

She released a stream of smoke, watching it fan out against the window from where she sat in the club chair beside the front bay of windows. She looked out through the sheer curtains at the children in the neighborhood playing double dutch, running, playing tag, or sitting on the porch with their heads bent down over portable video games.

Enjoying life. No worries. No concerns.

“Hmph.” Jaime picked up her tall glass of white wine and took a deep sip.

The grocery-store brand was a long way from her days of spending a hundred dollars or better a bottle, but it was working just fine to settle her nerves.

Everything had changed in just a little over a month. Everything. Most for the better. Some for the worse.

Like marriage,
she thought,
but less stressful.

“Hey, Jaime, I gotta go.”

She looked up at Pleasure dressed in a black sleeveless tee and basketball shorts, his dreads pulled back at the base of his strong neck. He was texting away on his cell phone, his eyes not on her. “Busy, busy, busy,” she said sarcastically, flicking the ashes from the tip of her cigarette into the ashtray on the windowsill.

Pleasure cut his eyes up at her before he squatted down beside her chair. “Can you handle this?” he asked, the deepness of his voice seeming to vibrate within the strong confines of his chest.

Jaime allowed herself to take a deep inhale of his spicy and warm cologne. “What is
this
?”

“Listen, I met you stripping and slinging my dick for dollars. Harsh but real . . . and that’s what I am.” He locked his eyes with hers. “I mean, we ain’t in no relationship so why you been actin’ up?” he asked.

Because I want more.

Pleasure reached up and took the cigarette from her hands. “You shouldn’t smoke. It’s not good for you.”

She laughed sardonically. “Neither are you.”

He broke the cigarette in half and dropped it into the ashtray. “You control this, Jaime. It’s all on your demand. Turn it loose,” he said, finally looking up to lock his eyes with hers.

“I can’t,” she admitted softly, her heart pounding fast and hard as hell in her chest. She was ad“dick”ted and knew it.

Ding-dong.

She looked out the window and her eyes widened. “What the hell?” she said, jumping to her feet and rushing to the front door to fling it open.

Aria and Renee both smiled at her as she stepped forward. She couldn’t help but feel and show surprise.

“Don’t look crazy. We called your mother and she gave up the address,” Aria said, stepping past Jaime into the foyer. “And she said something strange about it being a whorehouse over here. I was telling Renee what in the devil’s drawers is Mama Pine talkin’ about.”

Renee stepped into the foyer. “Whatever it is your Mama is fired up. . . .”

Jaime gave what had to be her thousandth heavy breath that day as Aria and Renee eyed Pleasure as he rose to his full height. Both of their heads tilted back a bit to take him all in.

“Oh,” they both said in sudden understanding.

Jaime watched Pleasure smile and give them his intense stripper eyes as he walked up to them with his large and very able hand outstretched.

“Um . . . ah . . . well, hey now. Say what, say who?” Aria stumbled softly as she eyed him.

Jaime’s stomach clenched as he kissed the back of both of their hands.

BOOK: Mistress No More

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