The front door opened from the outside at the exact moment Griz reached it from the inside.
Brendon walked in.
He had a bag of food in his hand and he was already smiling before he fully registered what he was walking into. Griz stopped walking and looked at him, and I watched something pass across Griz’s face that wasn’t anger exactly. It was colder than anger. He held Brendon’s eyes for exactly two seconds with a look that could have meant a hundred things, then walked past him and out the door without a word.
Brendon turned and watched him go, then turned back to me. “Who was that?”
“Client,” I said. The word came out smooth and immediate.
Ashley had both hands over her mouth. Savannah was looking everywhere except at me.
“I was in the area,” Brendon said, holding up the food bag, already moving past it. “Thought I’d come have lunch with you.” He looked around and smiled. “I know you’re in the middle of training but I figured we could eat in your office.”
“Let’s use the break room,” I said. After what had just gone down in my office, I wasn’t about to disrespect my man like that.
He nodded like that made perfect sense and followed me. I felt Ashley’s eyes on my back the entire way.
When Brendon left, I had to explain to my girls what had happened when they left that bar that night. Of course they judged me, and told me that I was playing with fire. Savannah was more open to the fact of me being with Griz, she liked the way he moved and said that she could tell he didn’t play about me. Ashley was scared of the outcome and felt bad for Brendon. Hell, so did I.
They both remembered me talking about Griz and wondering where he was in life, so this was shocking to them, that he walked into the exact bar that we frequent. After he just blew my mind in my office, I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do. Hell, I needed to smoke.
And that was another thing. I smoked occasionally to ease my mind, I could never tell Brendon that. I had to hide it, and sneak around just to be able to relax my nerves. He’d look at me it’s lessthan a woman, but with Griz, I could just be myself. Yes, that was something small, and maybe I was finding anything to complain about. But the two men were just totally different. And I was totally different with both of them.
This shit that had just happened here today had put a little fear in me. Griz popping up, then my fiancé immediately after. I could have gotten caught and my world would be upside down. Even knowing this, even with my heart in the pit of my stomach, I knew that I was still gonna see Griz again. One thing I had always pride myself on, was being a woman of my word. Now I was a damn liar. I kept telling this man that I was done with him, that we couldn’t do this again, but the way he just teased me in my office, the way he just ate me until I almost screamed… I know that I had lied yet again, because I needed to see him immediately. He was about to finish what he had started. I needed to feel him.
The next two days passed quietly and I hated every minute of it.
No calls. No unknown numbers lighting up my phone. No roses showing up anywhere. Nothing.
I called him twice the first day and it rang out. Three times the second day and same thing. By the third day I was doing something I had not done since I was a teenager which was checking my phone every twenty minutes waiting on a notification that wasn’t coming.
I had told myself I was done with him. He had apparently decided the same thing about me first and now I was the one sitting in my feelings about it, which was so far outside of how I operated that I didn’t even know what to do with myself.
Griz had seen Brendon coming into my office. That had to be what it was. Saw him walk into my spot with food and decided to fall back. Which made no sense given that he had been the onepushing me to end the engagement, but men didn’t always make sense and this one in particular seemed to operate on a system that I didn’t fully have the manual for yet.
What was really getting under my skin was how uneven this whole thing was. He knew everything about me. My home address, where I worked, that I had a fiancé, what my business looked like, how many staff I had on deck, apparently. He had shown up at my office like he had mapped the place out beforehand which knowing him he probably had. And I knew nothing. I didn’t know where he lived, didn’t know if he had someone, didn’t know anything about the life he was living beyond what little he had let slide through in conversation.
Was he out here doing this with someone else? Was there a woman somewhere who knew him the way he I didn’t. This nigga had me acting and thinking like a weak ass bitch. I didn’t know how to accept the feeling of being cut off. He’d done all that tough taking about taking me from my man, and now this nigga was ghosting me. Fuck no!
The thought of it moved through me in a way that I was embarrassed about privately because I had a fiancé. I had a whole man at home who loved me without conditions and I was spiraling over whether Griz was entertaining somebody else.
I ordered the tracker on day three.
Small, flat, magnetic. Discreet enough to slide anywhere without being noticed. It arrived in two days and I put it in my bag and told myself I was just leveling the field. He wanted to know everything about my life, fine. I was going to know where he went too.
More days passed. Nothing.
He had gone completely quiet and the silence was louder than anything he had actually said to me. This was an unfamiliar feeling, and if I could describe it as anything, I would describe it is hurt.
—
Now over a week had passed and my man could see the shift in my mood, but I tried to keep it together. I was sad as hell without my bear. Griz was rough, but soft and sweet to me. Well, somewhat. Brendon kept asking me what was wrong and I wanted to tell him, “because of yo ass, I done lost the love of my fuckin life!” But, of course I didn’t say that. I just told him that running both businesses had me exhausted. So what did he do, he ordered me a spa day, and got with my girls for them to run the class so that I could take the entire day off.
This was the man that I had cheated on. This was the man that I was growing to despise because I was in love with a nigga I had no business ever entertaining. A nigga who had ghosted me for over a fucking week now. I was disappointed in myself. I needed to get it together and just do better.
—
Brendon brought it up over dinner on a Thursday.
