I crossed my arms over my chest, the heels dangling in my hand, tempting me to launch them at him. I hated Ducati. Hated him because despite finding out about a secret child, I still loved him. Wasn’t that crazy? I hated him for making me love him. Hated him for making me believe we were actually trying. Hated him for making me believe he’d actually changed. Damn, he was good.
I swallowed as tears threatened to spill over my bottom lid. I didn’t want to cry anymore. I’d shed so many tears over this marriage already. I should have been drained dry. But I wasn’t. I felt like it was because it wasn’t just the marriage I was crying over. It was me. I was mourning my life. Mourning who I was. Mourning the only identity I knew. Mahogany Mills-Morris. She was dead. This was dead. Us.
I don’t know how long I was standing there, watching him sleep before he turned over, stretched and looked over at me.
“Shit, Ne, you scared the fuck out of me.”
I bet I did. The bedroom was fairly dark, with the only light shining in the room coming from the small crack through the bathroom door, so I was practically standing in the dark. Just… watching him. Watched him for so long, standing in that same spot that my feet tingled. Stood there, watching him for so long that the tears I did cry dried on my skin.
I didn’t say anything. Dropped the shoes I’d been holding for only God knows how long and slowly walked over to the bed.
“What’s wrong? Something happened at work?”
Still, I was quiet.
Stood next to the bed, looking down at him with more tears building behind my low eyes.
“Ducati,” I mumbled.
He sat up on his elbows. If I could see his face, I’d see the deep furrow in his pinched brows, as he looked up at me, confused. I was happy I couldn’t see his face. I didn’t want to. If I seen it, I’d probably spit in it.
“Yeah baby, what’s wrong? Come here.”
He reached out to touch me and I jerked away. He sighed. Sighed like he had the right to be annoyed. Fuck out of here.
I said I was going to wait.
Said I was going to play the long game. Make him suffer. Sell him a dream and then rip it away but… I couldn’t. I was strong. Had been strong for so many years. But I wasn’tthatstrong. I couldn’t hide what I knew. Hiding, holding on to it, was only hurting me. You see what just happened? I went to Pandora’s and as always, lost pieces of me doing shit to get back at a man who didn’t deserve anything but my absence. I was tired. Tired of hurting myself like that. Tired of mistreating me, giving myself the short end of the stick.
So, I decided enough was enough. I’d endured too much already.
“I’m going to ask you a question,” I said, as my heart began to race. “And…” I paused to swallow. “And… I need you to be honest. If you lie..” softly, I laughed. “Just… just don’t lie.” Again, I laughed. “If you lie…”
5
DUKE
“I don’t haveshit to lie about, Ne. I can’t believe you on this type of time and I haven’t seen you all day man. Why am I wakin’ up to insecure shit?”
I had to flip the script.
It was necessary.
My heart was racing out of my fuckin’ chest.
Mahogany knew.
She knewsomething.
She checked the fuckin’ bank statements. Had to. Because what the fuck was this? We were cool and then all of a sudden, she come home on some staring at me in the dark, asking me questions shit. I wasn’t in the mood. Today was rough. Very rough. The last thing I needed was for her to come home on bullshit. All day, I thought about laying up with her ass. Wanted to bury my face between her legs. Couldn’t remember the last time I tasted her. It was weeks ago, for sure. Before her birthday. I needed some. Needed to bust a nut like crazy.
I was stressed.
Shit with moms and Ms. Rochelle wasn’t going well and I needed it to. Earlier, moms went to Ms. Rochelle’s house tograb Diary, and they got into it. Said she didn’t like the way Ms. Rochelle questioned her. She didn’t trust my momma. And shit, to be honest, I wouldn’t neither. Moms was a stranger—Ms. Rochelle was just trying to figure her out. Shit was crazy though, for real because they got along just fine the first day. Fucked me up when moms called and said they got into it, so Diary stayed home.
Seemed like nothing in my life was going right. It was fucked up.Iwas fucked up. Trying my damnedest to make this work without having to tell my fuckin’ wife. But… seemed like that didn’t matter. She knew. She had to know. Ain’t no way she was standing in my face, grilling me about something other than that. Unless she thought I was cheating. I prayed to God she thought I was cheating.
“Who is Diary?” She asked in a low, chilling tone. Loud enough for me to hear her. Low enough to hear the pain behind the question.
