Ellie looked at Shy curiously and lowered her voice.“So, bitch, you be scissoring and humpingcoochies and shit, and you ain’t told us shit! Spill the fucking tea! I can’t believe you been holding out on us!”
“Girlllllllll!” Shy exclaimed.“Best motherfucking orgasm in life!”
The girls fell out in giddy laughter as they listened to Shy’s freaky lesbian tales over wine. It never failed. Their come-to-Jesus meetings were always healing. Their friendship had survived many phases of their lives, and their bonds had only strengthened over the years. It was rare that Black women maintained healthy relationships with one another, but they were committed to friendship. Most women valued men over every other relationship in their lives, but Ellie, Sloan, Courtney, and Shy realized very early that this foursome would be the bond that sustained them through all seasons of their lives. Men came and men went. Through breakups, makeups, parents passing, children being birthed, and even children being buried, this friendship had remained, and it had held each of them when they needed it most. They would always come to Jesus when they felt like their bond was being tested, and they would always make sure that their friendship came out intact.
Ellie pulled back from their circle, and Shy went into the kitchen to grab wine. Ellie turned to Courtney and took her hand, gripping it extra tight.
“Ellie, what’s wrong?” Courtney asked.
“I heard you, sis,” she said.“And I see you. You and Christian are never going back to him. Ever. It’s not normal how you’ve been living and it’s over now. We’ve got you.”
She saw relief flood Courtney’s eyes, and she pulled her in for a hug. Ellie could only imagine the shit that Courtney wasn’t saying. She had a feeling that James had done much worse, but she’d be damned if he ever touched her again.
“I’ve got you.”
Chapter 20
December 23rd
The covers swallowed Sloan. She cried so hard that she was hyperventilating. Sometimes a bitch just had to cry. She had been strong for a long time, and it felt like everything she had ever suppressed was pouring from her. She had lost her favorite patient. A little boy was motherless at her hands. That one event had been the move to bring the house of cards she had built tumbling.
She was thankful for the solitude because there were no witnesses to this sorrow. It was pitiful to cry over a man the way she was. It was unhinged to be a doctor and expect not to experience losses. Neither event should send her in a tailspin the way they were, but she knew at the root of it all was unhealed trauma. It was the little girl mourning the death of a mother taken too soon. The scars of that were causing her to miss out on what felt like the love of her life. The motherless child in her identified with that baby she had delivered. Oh, how she ached for him. She had never felt so lonely. She had always had her friends’shoulders to cry on, especially Ellie’s. Ellie knew things that only existed inside her mind. That’s how close they were. Sometimes Ellie could look at Sloan and pull a thought right into reality. The notion of their friendship changing behind this was tragic. She wished she could take back everything with Cassidy, even the night when they were kids because it had started there. Seeing him again as an adult had only convoluted things. If she never knew what it felt like to feel his heartbeat against hers, she couldn’t need it. If he had never been inside her, she couldn’t miss it. He lived rent-free inside her head. One night together had exposed a vulnerability she had worked hard to cover. Absence was the solution. She couldn’t be around him. Not now. Not ever. Because after 23 years, all it had taken was him happening upon her, sitting in front of a fireplace, to breathe life into dormant emotions. She had thought it had been just a teenage crush on her sister’s older brother. She had thought it was innocent and one-sided. She had been his mental anchor in a tumultuous sea. For so long, he had thought of her behind those bars, and nothing about that was casual. She wished he had never told her because her ears couldn’t unhear confessions of love that deep.
“I’m in love with you. I been on that type of time with you, Sloan.”
She heard it clear as day. The moment had been theirs for the taking. All she had to do was take a chance on Cassidy, and she had fumbled. Sloan couldn’t cope. The shit ached in a place deep down in her belly, and the only cure was time— even that would only dull it. It would never truly go away. That’swhy she hated love. It was why she had never allowed herself to feel it before him. When the right type of man loved you, the end would break you. He would break you so bad that it would send you into the abyss to chase any type of relief. Be it dick, drugs, liquor, or prayer. A woman would just go searching for something to ease the pain. Whatever gave her relief first became her addiction. Sloan was in dangerous territory. The grief was strong. She had tried to find him before she developed an unhealthy attachment to something or someone else, but Lola had taken him first.
Now, Sloan was left to her own devices to find the remedy. She didn’t even know where to begin searching. She was stuck between love and loss. It was a lonely place to visit— twice— over the same man. She was too old to be going through bullshit like this. Cassidy was pulling her back in time with him. These were tent poles of trauma she had grown past. Her mother’s death, his imprisonment, those were things that had been cauterized and sterilized so that they didn’t break her. She was reinjuring some of the most painful things she had ever felt, and she hated it. Sloan wondered if there was a way she could get past Cassidy’s violent history.
I just don’t understand how the same person who loves me like that could be so violent that he killed that poor, old man with his bare hands, she thought. Her heart raced just thinking about it. She remembered the day the police had come to arrest him. She had been asleep in Ellie’s room when an entire SWAT team kicked in the door and carted him off to jail. He didn’t say one word as they manhandled him, forcing his hands behind his back, and slamming him to the ground. She remembered the sound of his body as it hit the wood floor. There had been so much screaming, so much crying that day, and as he lay on that floor with their knees in his back, she had thought they would kill him. She had run out onto the porch, behind his parents, behind Ellie. His entire family had been frantic. She had been desperate to remember everything about him because in her gut she knew he would be different the next time she laid eyes on him. It was the second worst day of her life, only trumped by the day she lost her mom.
Before Sloan could stop herself, she was pulling her laptop from her nightstand drawer. She opened it and typed his name into a search bar.
It wasn’t the first time she had looked him up, but it had been years. His case had made national news, so article after article popped up and she read them. One after another, she searched for anything, something, that would make this make sense. The old stories only reaffirmed her fears, and when she got to the crime scene photos, her stomach turned. She slammed the computer shut and kicked out of the covers in frustration as she fought her way out of the bed. She was driving herself crazy.
Her room was funky and nasty. Used Kleenex was everywhere. Sloan had been bawling.
“Bitch, get your ass the fuck up,” she scolded aloud.“Not over no nigga, especially not over no nigga that is literally out fucking with the next bitch at this very moment. He’s not crying. He’s not bothered. He’s not worried about you. Pull it together.” Tough talk for a tough girl, but the tears were still falling. She hated being weak. Sloan snatched the sheets from the bed and carried them to the laundry room. She started a load of laundry and then went back to her room to clean up. She opened her window, not caring that the freezing winter air was getting inside, and then she spent the next hour resetting her space. Her peace was impacted. Love had robbed her of it, and she would have to fight with all her might to restore it. How a reunion with the women she loved most had turned her life upside down, she didn’t know, but she no longer wanted to participate. She needed to escape. A mental reset was overdue. She couldn’t be strong for anyone if she was pouring from an empty cup, and Sloan was depleted. She decided then and there that she needed to take some time for herself. A suitcase and a flight somewhere warm would do the trick. She took out her phone and opened the group chat. The first thing she saw was the video they had sent. Her lip quivered as she read the words.
Our come-to-Jesus meeting. We couldn’t leave you out.
Sloan played the video, and she cried even harder at the revelations she heard. She desperately wished she had been there to pour into her circle and to empty some burden off her own heart, but she hadn’t, and right now, she just wanted to be alone. Her heart was too shattered to face anyone at the moment.
Sloan
I love y’all, so I didn’t want to leave without letting y’all know.
I’m not in a good head space.
If I’m honest, I’m heartbroken.
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like this.
I can’t let it get bad this time.
I need to take care of me.
I’m taking a few days to reset and find peace.
