The Deal, the Dance, and the Devil (5 page)

When they stood in front of us, I couldn’t take my eyes off the new boy. Not that he was all that—he was all right. What got my attention was that he was almost the same color as my favorite food in the whole world—banana pudding. Even his freckles looked like the vanilla wafers that Marilyn used when she made that dessert every holiday.

Besides that, though, he kinda looked like a nerd, wearing some big ole round glasses and a short haircut that wasn’t a fade or nothin’. What was worse—he was carrying a book! A big, thick book. Now, what kind of guy was carrying a book in
the middle of the summer? Nuh-uh, he was too nerdy for me. I liked boys who had a little edge to ’em.

Remember, I was twelve.

So Cash and his boys walked right up to the front of my house and stopped.

“What’s up, Brook?” Cash asked my girl.

She sucked her teeth, rolled her eyes, and stuck out her chest even more. “Come correct or don’t come at all. My name is Brook—Lynn!” She said all of that with major attitude, as if she was offended. Please! Brooklyn had been chasing Cash from way back—like way back in kindergarten. Every chance she got, she told me that she was going to marry him one day.

Yeah, right. That was never gonna happen because my bet was that Cash would be behind bars by the time he was sixteen. He was already running drugs for Duke, one of the biggest hustlers on these streets. Cash would never make it to being old enough to vote, let alone marry anyone.

He said, “I know what your name is,” as he sucked on a toothpick like some of the older dudes did.

“So … what … y’all … up … to?” Buddy asked. He wasn’t my type either. Not because he was a nerd but because he was kind of slow. Everything he did took way too much time. The way he talked—slow! The way he walked—slow! It took him an hour to finish off a twenty-cent bag of potato chips. Dang, that boy got on every single one of my nerves.

I answered Buddy’s question so that he would shut up and not say another thing. “Nothin’. We’re just hanging. We were gonna practice some double Dutch moves”—I held up the rope—“but it’s too hot.”

“Oh, yeah,” the new boy said. “What you know ’bout double Dutch?”

“More than you do,” I gave it right back to him. I knew Banana-Pudding-Guy wasn’t trying to diss me in front of my
house, in front of my girls. Obviously, he hadn’t heard about my rep. I had beat boys and girls down in this neighborhood.

“Sweetheart,” he said in a voice that sounded like one of those nighttime DJs on the radio, “I don’t think there’s a subject in the world where you know more than me.”

“Oh!” Cash gave Buddy high five, and even my girls laughed.

I had to admit, I was kind of impressed. I mean, the way he said it and the way it sounded, it didn’t seem like Banana-Pudding-Guy was our age. But he didn’t look like he was sixteen or seventeen either. Already, he was a wonder to me.

But I couldn’t let him get away with frontin’ me like that.

I stood up like I was big and bad; the rope was wrapped around my hand like I was ready to use it—and I was. “You talking to me?”

He stepped closer—I guess to make sure I knew that he was. “Yeah, so what’s up?”

“You got game,” I said, working my neck so that he would know who he was dealing with. “Bring it.”

He laughed in my face. “Ah, man, come on. I’m not into beating down no girl. I don’t roll like that.”

I held the rope up and stuck it in his face. “You scared or somet—?”

I don’t know exactly what happened, but in two seconds flat, I was on the hard, dry ground, on my back. Banana-Pudding-Guy was straddling me, and now he was the one with the rope in his hand. He leaned forward, and his lips were so close that I thought he was gonna kiss me.

“Just for the record, sweetheart,” he whispered, “there ain’t nothin’ in the world that scares me.”

Then he jumped off me, adjusted his glasses, picked up his book, and said, “Peace,” to his boys, who were standing there
with my girls, laughing. Banana-Pudding-Guy strolled down the street and never looked back.

It was love at first fight.

Not that it was exactly a fight. I hadn’t had a chance to do anything—not slap his face, stomp on his feet, kick him in the groin—nothing! And he hadn’t really hit me. He tossed me down and then gave it to me straight—he wasn’t afraid of nothing. …

That was our beginning. Adam’s declaration that there was nothing in this world that scared him. But that wasn’t exactly true. Because Adam had a very real fear—he was afraid of being Adam. He was afraid of people finding out about his life, the way it was now.

What Adam needed to accept was that being laid off from a Fortune 500 company in this economy made him common, not the exception.

But knowing that didn’t make Adam’s fear go away. He fought that fear, though, hid it behind his pride. And that pride had my husband tied up in a knot.

Pride.

Pride was a word that had always scared me because of what Big Mama had told me.

“Pride’s a sin,” she always said. Then, the part that really frightened me was when she said, “God hates pride, and He’ll make you pay for it.”

She even had a scripture that she used to recite that scared me straight, and I wondered if now maybe that same scripture could help Adam. I couldn’t remember where to find it exactly, but I still rushed into our bedroom and opened the Bible that we kept on the nightstand next to Adam’s side.

It didn’t take me very long to find what I was looking for. Proverbs. The eleventh chapter.

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace.”

As soon as I spoke the last word, that churning in my heart started again—just like it had this afternoon in the office when I’d held the five-million-dollar check in my hands.

I shuddered, not knowing why I felt so much uneasiness inside me. Neither Adam nor I would do anything to disgrace God, ourselves, or our family.

Never!

But then I looked down at the scripture. Read it aloud again. And the churning inside continued, this time, stronger.

Gingerly, I returned the Bible to the nightstand. I closed my eyes and hoped and wished that the pride in Adam’s heart would somehow dissipate.

Because if he didn’t get rid of his pride, I didn’t have any idea where this road would lead us.

Chapter 6

W
E WERE BACK AT IT.

A few minutes after Adam brought Ethan home from his practice at the indoor driving range, he came into our first-floor master suite, where I was sitting on the edge of the bed, still praying.

My eyes were closed, but our connection to each other was so deep that I could almost see him.

He knelt in front of me, and, with the tips of his fingers, he stroked my cheek. There was no need for me to see, no need for him to speak. His apology was in his touch. I opened my eyes and silently forgave him for speaking to me the way he had before he’d left.

He leaned forward and kissed me gently, but that was where our tenderness ended. Now, it was all lips, all hands, all legs.

It was mouth to mouth. Skin to skin. Center to center. We couldn’t get enough.

I adored the pieces that made him a man.

He worshipped the parts that made me a woman.

Our rite as husband and wife went on and on. Until our cries shook the walls.

Spent, we lay back, holding hands. Resting, thinking. I knew Adam’s thoughts were the same as mine.

He finally spoke. “We’re going to make it.”

Our problems were never far from our minds, not even when we were making love.

I said, “I know, but until then, we need to tell …” He stiffened before I could finish, but I held his hand until he relaxed again. “Listen to what I’m saying,” I pleaded. “You’ve prepared our children for this.”

He shook his head. “Not this.”

I rolled over so that I could look right into his eyes. “Yes, you have. They understand money because of you. They understand that you’ve worked hard all your life, and they’ll understand that you were laid off.”

“What they’ll understand is that their unemployed father let them down.”

Pride!

“We promised the girls a party and cars,” he said.

I wanted to scream! Yes, we’d made a deal with our daughters: If they kept up their grades, we would give them the sweetest sixteenth birthday party and matching cars, too. Yes, they’d done their part, carrying straight As for the last two years, even while Alexa had excelled in ballet and was the editor of the school newspaper, and Alana had become freshman and then sophomore class president. But situations changed. Life happened. Our children were smart enough to get that.

“We’ll explain it,” I said. “And then we’ll give them the best seventeenth birthday party.”

He shook his head. “Don’t you get it, Shine? It’s not just
about a party or a pair of cars. It’s about how I’ve always wanted their lives to be. Better than ours.”

There it was—his real fear. Which was more about remembering the past than looking forward to the future.

He kept on. “Remember how it used to be? Our mothers, us, always worried about money. Coming home and the lights being off. One day, no electricity, the next day, no food.” He paused and stared, as if he was reliving every single moment of those pitiful days. “How many days did you have to do homework by candlelight? Or beg a neighbor for spare food?”

“This is not the same.”

“To me it is. I’ve worked hard so their lives would be different.”

“So the plan is to say nothing? Just wait till February and hope the twins don’t notice there’s no party? No cars?” I shook my head. “They’ve already started telling their friends.”

This time, his silence scared me. Because I knew what he was doing—calculating in his mind. He was really going to try to make this happen!

Finally he said, “Let me handle this.”

“Maybe that’s part of the problem. You’ve been handling this alone when I want to be in it with you. I’ll always have your back.”

He smiled, a little. “This I know. But you do enough; it’s you and your job that’s keeping us afloat.”

My job. Hours had passed, but with those words, this afternoon’s anger washed right through me again. My husband had no idea what had gone down today at my job. With my boss. Five million dollars. How many parts of this discussion would that check solve?

But what I’d have to do for that money made my heart stop. I would die … just die … completely die.

Adam’s kiss brought me back to life. “All I want,” he said,
then kissed me again, “is for you,” another kiss, “to just take care of me,” another one, “and our children.”

I rolled over until I was straddling him and my eyes inhaled the handsomeness of my husband.

Adam’s was not a face that was made for movies or magazines, though don’t get me wrong—my man was good-looking. There were just many who were finer. But what brought my husband to the top of the male food chain was that he had chiseled his body to beyond the perfection that had already been bestowed upon him by our awesome God.

Adam was truly an Adonis. My Adonis. Mine. Not to be shared with anyone.

This man belonged to me, just like I was his. And with another kiss, thoughts of that five million dollars went straight out of my mind.

Chapter 7

O
UR HOME HAD ALWAYS BEEN FILLED
with love, but for the last few months, mounting stress had been making our house feel like a simmering volcano. So far, our children hadn’t seemed to notice (though I knew they’d had to peep how often our bedroom door was closed). But the secret Adam and I held wouldn’t stay hidden. It couldn’t.

The children would soon catch the clues. Like the fact that Adam no longer left the house every morning to go to what they thought was work but was in fact the out-placement office that had been provided by Rapid Delivery for the last eighteen months. That had ended for Adam last week. So now he was home and our savings were gone; the children would have to notice the tension and the changes soon.

Not that I was too concerned about Alexa. She rarely saw anything beyond her personal space. But Alana—and Ethan—were sensitive children whose cares went beyond their world.
The day would come when one of them would start asking questions.

That’s why, over the last few months, my concerns about home had made work so attractive. For just a few hours, I could escape into a world where money was never an issue; Shay-Shaunté had almost as much as God and Oprah.

Not that work was all escapism; I enjoyed my job. From the day I’d been hired, Shay-Shaunté had brought me into her world, exposing me, teaching me about managing a multimillion-dollar conglomerate. Although business wasn’t my thing (I left that to Adam), Shay-Shaunté had a way of making it interesting. I loved watching her in meetings, making men who were sometimes a foot taller and two times wider cower to her. From suppliers to account managers all respected Shay-Shaunté for her toughness, yet fairness. I respected her because she always won.

Then there were the people I’d met because of her—celebrities who thought Shay-Shaunté was the hair god. I’d put through many calls to her from Hollywood’s elite. But the best times were when her famous fans stopped by: Mary J, Vivica, Jada …

Thinking of Jada, why hadn’t Shay-Shaunté asked to share
her
husband? Surely she found Will as attractive as she found my Adam—even if it was just because of Will’s checkbook.

Maybe I needed to suggest that to her, I thought as I headed down I-395 before merging onto the George Washington Parkway. This reverse commute had always been an easy flow, but today, I didn’t do my normal seventy-five miles per hour. I crawled along just below the speed limit, pissing off drivers behind me.

But I had to take this slow; I needed the time to strategize.

Last night, I’d plumped my pillow one hundred times and kicked the covers off one thousand times, wishing that I could
talk to Adam about how to play today. He was an expert at office politics, but there was no way I could tell him what had gone down with Shay-Shaunté because after going off, he’d want me to quit. Since we couldn’t afford that, it was best not to lay this burden onto his heart.