The Sordid Promise (23 page)

“What?” I asked, wondering if I was still not allowed to turn him down.

“We have a thing with my friends.”

“That thing wouldn’t include Tamala, would it?”

“It would not. Don’t worry about prepping. I want you to rest. I’ll get groceries for dinner and cook after work. I traded around and got the good shift today. I’ll be home at a reasonable hour for a change.” He gave me one last kiss, having trouble moving towards the door.

“Eric.” I pointedly eyed the door.

“I’m going. I’m going.” He walked backwards, watching me through half-closed eyes and almost ran into the door.

I giggled.

“This is a crime—leaving you here all alone.”

“Then, maybe you should take that leave of absence.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“Go.”

“Shit,” he muttered and turned around. He stopped at the door. “I like this, Nikki. The relaxed you. You have no reason to worry about us. You know that, right?”

I gave him an even broader smile. He finally left.

I sat back on the bed and sighed for a moment. But, my smile….my genuine smile seemed plastered on my face. I glanced around my room. Eric had been busy cleaning again.

The memory of last night began to consume me. My mother didn’t have to die. My mother betrayed me. Eric lied to me. Eric…
tranquilized
me.

Like clockwork my phone rang from the table. “I want to meet,” I said to her, regretting the words as soon as I said them.

“For what?” Tamala asked through annoyance.

“Find out when you meet me Tamala. I’ll name the place.”

I threw the untouched omelet in the trash downstairs, and moved to the bathroom to get dressed for my day. I wanted to be dressed to kill and actually went through the motions of curling my hair and putting on makeup. Dressed in a pinstriped pencil miniskirt and a wine red chiffon blouse, I was ready to let Tamala know; I was done fucking around.

The restaurant was nearly empty when I arrived. The lunch hour ended, pending closure, until the dinner hour at six.

With the restaurant empty, Tamala arrived. “Do you have special permissions here or something? I thought they closed right about now.”

“I have a family connection with the owner.” More to the fact, my mother had a connection with the owner. She’d brought him a lot of business by having many of her highly expensive business functions there. “Sit. I ordered wine.”

“It’s too early to drink, Nikki.”

“Because, you’re a good girl who only drinks after six?” I poured her a glass and took a sip of mine.

She watched me intently and eventually took a sip. “I know why you invited me here. It won’t happen. I’ll never leave him alone. Eric and I are supposed to be together. He knows that. I know that. You’re in the way.”

“I am?” I asked through a raised brow. “What’s the plan? Get my mother’s money and run off into the sunset for your happily ever after?”

“I never thought about that, but that’s actually a good idea. Especially if it means you’re dead in the end.”

“When I met you, I thought you were an idiot. Then, I thought maybe you were one of those tragic girls who lost her mind over a man with a pretty face and a talent with his cock. I’ve read about that happening countless times. The advice column in women’s magazines is filled with situations like that. Now, I know you’re just an idiot. I would never want someone who didn’t want me.”

“He still loves me,” she warbled as her eyes watered.

I shrugged. “Does he? Why don’t you come to the dinner tonight and prove it?”

“Fine….I think I just might.”

“Since you want us to break up, why don’t you tell me all the things you know about him that will make me run screaming to the opposite coast?”

She leaned forward with a smile. “Believe me, Nikki, the shit I know about him will make you want to move to another country. First, you should know that he’s not in love with you.”

I tapped my fingers on the table in impatience. “I’m waiting for you to tell me his fascinating life story. But I guess you don’t know it. If he kept things from you, how could he really love you? He obviously doesn’t love you or trust you.”

She leaned forward, clasping her hands across the table. “He hasn’t told you either.”

“I’m good, because I wasn’t stupid enough to fall in love with him.”

She laughed as if I told her the funniest joke she’d ever heard.

“I’m thinking of leaving and stiffing you with the check unless you start talking.”

“He’s the son of his father’s mistress,” she said quickly as she leaned further forward. Her tidbit of information successfully drew me in. “That’s why his father and stepbrother were murdered. Murder-suicide. His father took Eric home to his wife and told her it was the illegitimate child of his cousin. When the wife found out it was really his son from an affair with his assistant, she went crazy. Shot her kid, the husband, then herself.

“Eric was there, Nikki. The only reason he wasn’t shot is because the wife didn’t know he was there. He hid inside the closet. I guess his father thought the wife would never find out the truth. Whole thing blew the fuck up. It was huge news in our hometown.

“Eric used to get in trouble with the local police every other week before the tragic stuff happened. His father would pay off people to get him out of his pickles. After that crazy thing went down with his family, he changed. He got his life straight.

“I don’t know what happened to his real mom. He doesn’t talk about it. He doesn’t talk about anything. She might be alive. She might be dead. I know his uncle, on his mother’s side, took custody of him. The father didn’t make provisions for his illegitimate son; all the money went to his dad’s mother. The grandmother wasn’t going to give her son’s bastard a cent. The uncle was smart, though—guess he had to be, being that he was a doctor—proved that Eric was blood. Just before the grandmother croaked, Eric got everything.”

I propped my elbows on the table and gesticulated my hand. “Go on….”

“It wasn’t a ton of money, but it was enough. Eric, being as book smart as he is, invested the money and made it grow. Allowed him to go to med school without student loans to choke him like they do the rest of us. He did the whole nine. Med school...boards, residency, and he was offered a really good spot at a really good hospital in Baltimore. For some reason, he declined that offer to come to this shitty small town. He’s good. Too good for this place, but—” She shrugged. “I know the E.R. stresses him out. He needs a release from that stress sometimes.”

“And?”

“I don’t think I want to tell you. If you don’t know, he hasn’t invited you in yet. He hasn’t claimed you. That’s a good thing. He needs what I give him. Still needs what I give him. Something you’re obviously too fucking uptight to give. You’ll lose him as quickly as you got him, and I’m going to laugh in your face when it happens.” She slowly grinned as she downed the remainder of her wine.

I folded my hands in my lap and crossed my legs under the table. “I don’t think you could have him in the way you wanted, even if I wasn’t in the picture. I think you know that. I think you know he has no intention to leave the place he’s in…with me. Does it drive you crazy? It probably does. You want to compete with me. But you can’t compete, because you don’t know what I have that made him diminish your position in his life.”

Her brow furrowed as she clenched her fist over the table. “You’re crazy,” she shrilled. “I can tell, because you aren’t running scared. Any normal woman would. You’re not right in the head.”

“Say something that will make me run,” I goaded her.

She tapped her fingers erratically on the table. I could literally see her mind churning through ideas, but the gears kept getting stuck—at least that’s what it looked like to me.

“Here’s what I know.” I sat up tall and crossed my arms as I looked down my nose at her. “I know you’re lying about fucking him. I know…he disappeared from your life, and you didn’t know where he was for almost two years. You know what he was doing? He was talking to me.” I wasn’t going to tell her the truth. If she didn’t know, she didn’t need to know. The more I talked to her, the more the fight, I didn’t know I had, came out. I didn’t want her to have what she wanted. I didn’t want her to have it because…it was mine.

He was making me fight for him. Making me do the things I saw other women do and abhorred. Despite the garbage that surrounded our relationship, he was worth the fight. He was worth it for the things he made me feel.

“Do you really need me to lay it all out there for you?” she hissed. “You won’t ever really have him. I’ve been there for him since the beginning. I nursed him through his tragedy. I’m the one who will always be there. The bitches come and go, but I’m still here. We’ve broken up many times before. He always comes back to me. You don’t know him like I do. He needs me. He loves me.” She took a larger gulp of her wine, staring me down as she did. “You’re temporary. Very temporary. I knew it at the dinner. He disciplines me, because he still loves me.”

“You didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know,” I lied. The news about his family was very new, but I couldn’t let her know she was slightly useful. The news about what really happened between she and him at the dinner was new, too. “In short, you’re useless. Sort-of how you’re useless to him.”

“Wait.” She held up her hand. “You know Estelle isn’t just his roommate, right?” She suddenly scowled as she looked at the ceiling. She went silent for a moment as her eyes watered. “They call each other roommates, so people don’t ask questions about their arrangement. But what they really are to each other…” In a stark contradiction to the palpable sadness in her eyes, she grinned brightly. “It’s a doozy. But that one I’m going to let you find out on your own. I know Estelle, and she’ll let it slip once she’s tired of the time you two are spending together. She always fucks up Eric’s fun somehow.” She leaned forward with her eyes heavy. “But, if you are as stupid of a bitch as I think you are, and you still decide to stay, I’m going to find you, and I’m going to beat you to a pulp.”

Before I could ask for clarification on Estelle and Eric’s relationship, she sashayed out of the restaurant.

I visited the locations I used to frequent when I didn’t want to be home; the park, the computer café, and the library. Places where not very many people frequented. I’d always been wrapped up in my thoughts, but I’d never been indecisive. The sudden mood was annoying. I received the information I needed, along with information I didn’t want. I always thought Eric and Estelle were more to each other than he let on. From the way Tamala spoke of it, I started to think they had something deeper than he and I could ever have.

I hated the way I felt. I hated the attachment I felt to Eric. I hated how he could make me feel confused, yet so sure sometimes.

The more involved with Eric I became, the more his chaos infected my life. He tried to keep me from it, and I pretended it didn’t exist. Still, the chaos found its way to me. If I wanted order back in my life, I had to let him go. Although it was what I should’ve done, it was something I couldn’t do. He was the most interesting thing in my life. He made me feel something I’d never felt for anyone—something deep, unforgiving, and unrelenting. I think they called it love.