Fool and Her Honey (9781622860791) (4 page)

“Candis, I heard that Russell is getting married.”

Russell? What?
Hearing Dina say those words felt like a blow to my head with a baseball bat, but I didn't want it to show. “Really? Good for him.”

“Guess who he's marrying,” she continued.

I shrugged my shoulders, pretending to be preoccupied with engagement photos I shot of her and Bertrand that were spread out on my kitchen table. “It doesn't matter to me,” I lied.

“Well, I'm going to tell you, anyway. Girl, he is marrying Latrice Chambers.”

“That's nice,” I replied without hesitation, instead of verbalizing my true thoughts.

Latrice Chambers? Four-kids-having Latrice? Big belly, bigger booty Latrice? Twenty- eight-pounds-of-weave- and cat-claw-nails-wearing Latrice? Humph!

“Look at this one. It's so cute.” I pushed a photo across the table toward her and Celeste while I tried to digest what Dina had just said. First of all, I wasn't sure if she was being a friend or a foe by telling me that news. Why would she want to share that with me? But, on the other hand, I was sure to hear it eventually, and I guess it didn't matter whom I'd heard it from.

“I think it's serious this time, because I got an invitation to her bridal shower,” Dina added.

“What do you mean, this time?” I couldn't help myself.

“You know how Russell is. The same way he was with you. Noncommittal. This is, like, her third time setting a date, but she's talking like it's really gonna happen on this go-round.”

“Are you going?” I asked, still not making eye contact.

“I haven't decided. I might.”

“Oh.” I had mixed feelings about Dina's indecision. I wanted her to say, “Hell no, I ain't going to that wench's shower.” She knew my history with Russell, but maybe she didn't know that sometimes I still thought about him . . . a lot. Never to the point that I'd picked up the phone in the past year and called him, but I would often wish I could. In my imagination he'd answer the phone and say, “Baby, I was just thinking about you, wishing I could hear your voice. Wondering how I could make it right between us.” But that would be a lie. Russell never did put too much effort into us being a couple. It just wasn't what he wanted. I would have liked for things to have turned out differently. I'd wanted the whole marriage, two kids, a house, and a dog thing with him. Regardless of the many ways I tried to make myself “the one,” simply put, I just wasn't the woman for him.

“Y'all want some more wine?” I stood and started toward the refrigerator to hide my face for a moment. The coolness from the fridge helped to keep my tears at bay, and I needed all the help I could get right now. I didn't want to cry over Russell, and I really didn't want Dina and Celeste to see it.

To be fair to Latrice, she wasn't really a wench. From what I knew of her, she was a nice girl, one of Dina's hair clients. I just couldn't believe he was marrying her instead of marrying me. What about me wasn't good enough for him?

“I'll have a little bit more,” Celeste said, picking up her glass to sip the last little bit from it before she handed it to me.

“None for me. Thanks,” Dina answered. She never drank, so really the offer was solely for Celeste.

Russell and I did what I called “dating” for about eighteen months. He called it ‘just hanging out.” I was such a dummy for choosing to believe he felt more in his heart for me than what his mouth was willing to say, instead of believing the truth that there was really nothing between us as far as he was concerned. Well, initially, I could understand there being nothing. We were just getting to know each other, and not everybody falls in love, or even strong like, at first sight, but I sure did.

Everything about the man appealed to me, from his piercing gray eyes and gleaming smile to the way he was dressed in tailor-made suits, to his slightly over six-foot build, to him owning his own insurance company. I was tired of dating blue-collar workers who often smelled like sweat, grease, and dirt. Not that there was anything wrong with blue-collar professions, but it was just something about a professional man in a suit that made my goody box hungry.

We'd met at a Phoenix Chamber of Commerce event and started seeing each other on the sly, under the guise of business meetings. The first few meetings, we talked heavily about my “insurance needs” and made some small talk about our personal lives. He was single with a set of preteen daughters, had never been married but had a peaceable relationship with his girls' mother, and had owned his own insurance agency for almost ten years.

I thought we'd hit it off pretty well, enjoying each other's conversation, sharing business strategies, and bouncing things off of each other, and I tried not to be too transparent with my personal interest in him, although he did a little flirting. I'd tricked myself into believing that men didn't flirt with women they weren't interested in. We started calling each other every day, meeting for lunch, watching movies at each other's homes, all cuddled up on the couch, eating out of the same popcorn bowl. And eventually we started having sex. And once I started taking my panties off on a regular basis, in my book, he was my boyfriend. In his book, I was just a friend who afforded him a lot of benefits. How was a man spending the night at my house four and five nights out of the week, getting all the sex he could handle—including the extras—while I washed his clothes, cooked him meals, and even babysat his kids on the weekends when he had visitation but had to work, not considered a relationship? I didn't understand what was so “just friends” about that. I was playing the part of the wife, to say the least, thinking and hoping that one day he'd claim me as his very own, to have and to hold, etcetera.

I was cool with that for a little while, knowing that having sex didn't exactly make a relationship, but after several months of cooking him dinner, helping him with some of his business tasks, and freaking him like I was getting paid for it, I expected an official title. Like a fool, I thought he would eventually come around, but all I was doing was giving him 100 percent free punanny. I never got a thing for it, but not so satisfying sex and hurt feelings. Even though he wasn't even all that great in the bedroom, I was willing to settle. I mean, it wasn't
that
bad. Not really. Hell, who was I kidding? It was awful. He never really took the time to make love to me gently and tenderly, like I wanted at least every now and then, but he was always in a rush to satisfy his own selfish needs. Thrusting in and out of me like a wild dog, rarely lasting more than ten minutes, then rushing home or to work or just to sleep. But at least he wasn't married.

Clearly he just wasn't that into me, but because I was in love with him, I just couldn't let him go. It's stupid, I know, but that was my reality. I just kept trying to win him. Kept cooking, kept trying to add value to his life, kept letting him in the temple, and kept believing that although he wouldn't say it with his mouth, I was his girlfriend and he was in love with me too. He even took me to Jamaica one time for a whole week.

I didn't call him again until three months later, and only because I needed a physical tune-up. You know, a little maintenance work. It was a mistake, because all it did was reengage my emotions and get me hoping for a serious relationship all over again. When I realized all I was getting was more of the same, I weaned myself off of him for good. I was spent. I was done. I'd given him all I had, and I had to come to terms with the fact that he just didn't want me. Then here it was, not even a good six months later, and his ass was getting married to Latrice Chambers? He better be glad that I'd given up keying cars and busting windows in my early twenties.

Although I refused to speak to or see Russell following that trip to Jamaica, I did spend a fair amount of time scoping his Facebook profile, doing what was called Facebook drive-bys. I just couldn't help myself initially. I'd mosey around to see what he was posting, if there were new photos, who was in them, who was liking and commenting on his stuff. There were a few females who'd posted on his wall, but nothing that looked interesting. Why I cared, I didn't know. Well, yes, I did. It was because he still consumed a lot of space in my mind. I missed him. I missed the good times we'd shared, the laughter, the fun moments. I thought we made a great couple, but he constantly denied me the title of girlfriend. I wondered what would happen if I texted him. Would he answer me back? Or suppose I left a comment? I was feening for the man bad. Not because I wanted more of a dried-up relationship. I just missed him. After a few months of privately stalking him, I eventually stopped. He wasn't a very public person, anyway, and hardly ever had anything new posted to his wall. But now, with this new marriage announcement, my curiosity was renewed.

After looking through Dina and Bertrand's engagement photos and chatting some more, Dina and Celeste decided to head home, and I was on my own for the rest of the evening. I was supposed to be online, completing some marketing tasks for my photo studio, but I kept getting distracted by people's constant Facebook status updates. As I clicked around from one profile to the next, I found myself on Russell's profile, just to be nosy. My heart dropped when I saw engagement pictures of him and his so-called fiancée wearing big smiles and sharing loving embraces, being the happy couple he and I were supposed to be. I felt my old disappointment slowly creeping up inside me, with anger closely following. He rejected me for that? For her? He deserved a good in-box cussin' out.

“Let me stop before I do something stupid,” I told myself, reshifting my interest to my news feed. There I saw an interesting post from one of my acquaintances.

I wanted to post, “Hell to the no!” I thought about how much emotion I had wasted on Russell and how he hadn't paid me a bit of attention—not real attention. And as much as I loved him, it was not enough to build a relationship, nor was it enough to make me want to stick around and hope that one day he'd develop deeper feelings for me. Just as I set my fingers on the keyboard to offer up my opinion, another person posted. His answer caught my attention and intrigued me.

Before I left my comment, I clicked on LIKE for SeanMichael's comment, then clicked his name. His profile was public, so I perused his photos first, eyeing shots of a nicely tanned brother with a wide smile and bright eyes. His face reminded me of Brian McKnight. By the time I looked through all fifty-seven of his posted pictures, he'd left another comment on the thread.