Authors: Niobia Bryant
Mistress No More (4 page)
Aria pounded the wheel in frustration as she cruised at fifteen miles per hour through the winding streets of the cul-de-sac. Richmond Hills was the very epitome of suburban upper-middle-class living, but she saw none of the well-manicured lawns, perfectly maintained homes, and clean streets. For all outward appearances it was the epitome of nothing but happy homes.
“A bunch of bullshit,” Aria muttered, cruising past the security station and through the electronic wrought-iron gates to the world outside of Richmond Hills.
She listened to some classic R&B as she made the forty-minute drive to her mother’s house in her hometown of Newark. Although she didn’t get home weekly like she used to, Aria always felt a different energy as soon as she got into her hometown and began to reminisce on the days growing up in the city. She’d gotten her street smarts from growing up on Sixteenth Avenue, her book smarts from her full scholarship to Columbia University, and her common sense from her mama. All that equaled one bad chica not taking no shit.
She floated easily between the roles of the doctor’s wife and the inner-city girl willing to deliver a cussout and a beat-down.
Aria knew she had come a long way from her past to being an award-winning journalist and writer married to a prominent surgeon. She was proud to be a ghetto girl who had fought hard for her dreams. And that’s why it was damn hard to think of life without Kingston. Or a life where she had to swallow him cheating on her.
She didn’t want her happily ever after fucked with. But if she discovered Kingston had cheated with Jessa—or any other woman—could she forgive and forget?
Sighing, Aria turned the Range Rover off Springfield Avenue onto Seventeenth Street. She smiled a little as she passed her old school, South Seventeenth Street Elementary, on her left and Westside Park on her right. Eighteen years of her life were spent in this part of the Central Ward. There were so many memories she would never forget . . . and many she wished she could.
She parked in front of the three-family apartment building where she’d grown up. Aria grabbed her purse and made sure to lock and alarm the Rover before she stepped up onto the sidewalk.
Aria was headed up the brick steps but paused at the sounds of laughter and music coming down the alleyway in between the two apartment buildings. She headed that way, knowing her crazy, tell-it-like-it-is family was in the backyard.
Sure enough her family was scattered about the small yard. Her mother and three aunts were in the middle of the paved backyard laughing and doing the Electric slide.
“All right now,” Aria said loudly, raising both her hands in the air as she rushed over in her Guiseppe heels to join them.
Her uncle and cousins, scattered around the yard sitting in chairs, cheered her on. Heather Goines, an older, slightly shorter, and far curvier version of Aria, winked at her daughter as she rocked her hips down to the floor and then brought her body up with a sassy little kick and a big laugh that echoed from deep within her.
Aria loved her mother endlessly.
Heather was a no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is woman who loved to laugh, to dance, and to help everyone.
Just laughing, dancing, and chilling with her family, Aria was almost able to forget about the troubles in her marriage. Almost.
“I didn’t know you was coming down,” Heather said as they all left the makeshift dance floor.
“And I didn’t know y’all was chillin’ and grillin’,” Aria countered as she hitched her purse up higher on her shoulder before taking a seat next to Uncle One-Eye.
He turned and peered at her through the oversized shades his optometrist had given him thirty years ago when he had surgery on his left eye, a casualty of a car accident during his young and running wild days. “Ain’t seen you in a while,” he said, the smell of his AXE body spray heavy in the air around him.
Aria blinked as her eyes filled with tears. She leaned back from him. “I’ve been busy with work, Uncle One-Eye.”
He leaned over and nudged her with his shoulder. “Your mama brag on you all the time, making all that money and married to that doctor.”
Aria reached in her purse, not at all missing the hint, and folded a couple hundred dollar bills in her palm to slide to him. While in college, it had been her mother and her uncle scraping to send their last so that she had money in her pocket. Now that she made a good living, Aria made sure to take care of them.
“Hot dayum. That’s my niece. Heh-heh-heh!” Uncle One-Eye laughed like he’d won the lottery as he slid the bills into his shirt pocket and stood up to shuffle onto the dance floor.
“Aria, you want something to eat?” her mother called over from the smoking grill positioned by the rear door leading into the apartment building.
“Yeah, Mama.” Aria reached for her cell and dialed Kingston’s cell number and office number. Both went straight to voice mail. That made her stomach nervous as hell.
Was he really at the hospital or was he locked away with Jessa Bell?
Aria closed her eyes at a vision of Kingston’s dark and strong buttocks clenching as he stroked between Jessa’s thighs. His mouth on her breasts. His hands on her body. His words of love whispering in her ear. His seed filling her womb.
Heat filled her chest. It was a mix of anger, mistrust, pain, and complete frustration.
Aria kept calling Kingston’s phone, unable to explain her need to keep trying to reach him. Knowing with each failure to reach him that her emotions were running high and she was likely to go off on her husband, Aria stood up and headed for the alleyway.
“You leaving?” someone hollered out after her.
Aria shook her head and kept it moving up the long alley. Kingston’s voice mail came on again.
Beep.
“Kingston. I don’t know where you are or what the fuck your sneaky ass is up to, but I am not the one to fuck with . . . and you know that. You better call me ASAP or shit ’bout to get real motherfuckin’ hectic—”
“Hey, cuz, can I talk to you for a sec?”
She paused, turning to find her cousin P-Nut standing behind her.
Did she ear hustle my damn conversation? What the hell?
Did she ear hustle my damn conversation? What the hell?
“What, P-Nut?” Aria snapped, her face filled with the frustration she felt.
P-Nut pushed her hands into the back pocket of her jeans. “I hate to bother you but—”
Aria ended her call and rammed her cell inside her purse. “I don’t have no money.”
“What?” P-Nut snapped, her round and pretty face filling with anger. “I wasn’t gon’ ask you for no fucking money, Aria. I wanted to use you as a reference on a job application. Damn, why you come at me like that?”
Oh shit.
“P-Nut, I’m sor—”
“P-Nut, I’m sor—”
“You get on my damn nerves, Miss High and Mighty Ass, acting like everybody need you and your money.”
Aria went from apologetic to pissed. “P-Nut, don’t front like your ass don’t borrow money. Matter fact you been in my pocket for five hundred dollars for the last five years. Since you took it there . . . hello, here the fuck I am, too.”
“Ooooh my God. Lord help me pay her back that five hundred damn dollars.” P-Nut stomped her foot.
Aria raised her hand. “Amen to that.”
“Hey, hey, hey. What the hell going on?” Uncle One-Eye hollered from the end of the alley.
“Nothing but your niece acting like she better than somebody with her nasty-ass past,” P-Nut snapped, eyeing Aria with a head roll that screamed, “Now what?”
And
that
brought out the old Aria from the early nineties and not the doctor’s wife living in a home worth a quarter of a million dollars. She swung quick as shit but P-Nut stepped back to avoid Aria knocking her the hell out.
that
brought out the old Aria from the early nineties and not the doctor’s wife living in a home worth a quarter of a million dollars. She swung quick as shit but P-Nut stepped back to avoid Aria knocking her the hell out.
Her mother raced up the alley and squeezed past P-Nut to jump in between them. “Oh hell to the no. We don’t play this fighting bullshit. Two grown women in the alley like a couple of drunks. What the
hell
?!”
hell
?!”
“I’m sorry, Auntie,” P-Nut said.
“I don’t have time for this.” Aria just turned and stalked to her Range Rover. Her mind was on finding out just where the hell her husband was. Not family drama.
“Aria Monique Livewell!”
Aria heard her mother but she kept moving until she was behind the wheel of her Range Rover and headed toward home.
I’ll worry about that shit later
, she thought, pushing her past and her family behind her as she drove as fast as she could. If she came to a red light, she turned and made her way up another street. She laid on her horn at any cars driving slowly or pedestrians taking their time crossing the street.
I’ll worry about that shit later
, she thought, pushing her past and her family behind her as she drove as fast as she could. If she came to a red light, she turned and made her way up another street. She laid on her horn at any cars driving slowly or pedestrians taking their time crossing the street.
She was beyond road rage. She was on a mission to catch her husband in a lie.
Images of Kingston and Jessa laughing it up together pushed her. Kingston denied cheating just as strongly as she accused him. The last thing she wanted was to actually catch the love of her life cheating, but she damn sure didn’t want to be made a fool of by him either.
Pulling up outside Kingston’s brick and stone office building, it was hard to miss the emptiness of the large parking lot. Aria snatched her cell phone up from the console. Her heart was pounding and the anger she felt was becoming too familiar to her lately.
His cell phone rang once.
“Hey, baby.”
Aria pressed the phone to her ear with one hand and banged on the steering with the other. “Don’t ‘hey baby’ me. I’m at your office . . . where you at—”
“Aria, are you kidding me!”
She raised a threaded and shaped brow at the anger in his voice. She fought the urge to throw her cell phone out the window and then crush it under one of her tires. “Where are you, Kingston?” she snapped.
“Home,” he said, his voice hard and cold.
Negro, please.
“Hold on.” Aria clicked over to her other line and dialed their landline house number.
“Hold on.” Aria clicked over to her other line and dialed their landline house number.
It rang once before it was picked up.
Aria felt relief.
“I’m your husband, not your child . . . and if you don’t cut out all this craziness I don’t know how much longer I’ll be that.”
Click.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Renee’s head was pounding harder than whoever was beating down the door to her . . . to her . . .
She winced as she lifted her head from the carpet and looked around from where she lay sprawled on her stomach. “I’m in my bedroom,” she said, her mouth dry as a cotton field as she came out of her drunken stupor.
Renee remembered grabbing her bottle of tequila and fighting like hell to make it up the stairs to the solitude of her bedroom. In between sitting on the edge of the bed sipping her way to the bottom of the bottle and waking up on the floor was a huge indistinguishable blur.
BAM!
“Open up, Renee!”
She frowned at the sound of Jackson’s voice. Taking a huge breath and mistakenly inhaling a small dust ball into her open mouth, Renee struggled and worked her way up to stand on her bare feet. She pulled the dust ball from the back of her tongue, thinking it still didn’t taste worse than the combo of bad breath and stale liquor.
BAM! BAM!
“Go away,” Renee hollered over her shoulder, sounding more like a drag queen than herself.
“I’m not leaving until we talk, Renee!”
The nap had sobered her up, but she still didn’t want Jackson to see her with carpet dust and sleep creases on the side of her face. Her short and naturally curly hair was either matted down or sticking off her head like she was a descendant of Buckwheat.
Dragging herself into the bathroom, she rinsed her face with cool water and brushed the hell out of her tongue, teeth, and gums.
BAM!
Renee stood and eyed her reflection in the large wooden oval mirror over the pedestal sink. She shook her head. She was far from crazy. Obviously the kids had called Jackson and he was pissed.
“Hmph. Daddy Dearest ain’t so perfect anymore, huh?” she said smugly to her reflection as she fluffed her short curls out with her fingertips.
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