Chapter 5 #2
“I know she did, Poppy. How about you, though? Are you excited to come and see me marry this beautiful lady?” Pat questioned, squeezing my hand.
Poppy nodded before looking at me again with a satisfactory grin. “The goal is to marry the love of your life because love is a commitment, not a feeling.”
He said the words with such clarity in his voice that a small gasp slipped from my lips. Before I could reply, my phone dinged, alerting me to an incoming email. I unlocked my phone to see an email from a client I was doing graphic design work for, but didn’t have reliable enough service to reply.
“Hey, I’m going to step out and respond to this email from my client. Service sucks in here. Are you gonna be okay, baby?”
“Yeah. I’ll be okay. We can say our goodbyes when you come back.”
“Are you sure? I’m not trying to rush your visit.”
“Yeah. It’s cool.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll be back soon.”
I exited Poppy’s room and walked down the long corridor toward the lobby, watching the service bars on my phone rise and fall until I found some stability near the front door.
After typing my reply and hearing the familiar swoosh of a successful email send, I slid my phone into my back pocket and started back toward the room to say my goodbyes.
I was on a good pace until I turned the corner and froze mid-step.
Pat, in true fashion, was leaning against the nurse’s station a few feet away from his grandfather’s room.
A young Latina nurse was giggling at something he’d charismatically spewed out, no doubt.
Pat could charm the lace front off a bald bitch.
He had his signature playful grin plastered across his face as he reached out to touch the tattoo on her forearm. My stomach plummeted to my feet.
The fuck?
As innocent as it may have been to the naked eye, it set my insides on fire.
Here I was with his ring on my finger, by his side to visit his sick grandfather before he slipped away from us completely, and he was relaxed enough to flirt with another woman, knowing I could come back at any moment.
I didn’t know what I felt. Rage? Hurt? Replaceable?
My jaw tightened as my steps minced forward. Before I knew it, I was by his side.
“I’m back,” I announced, eyeing them both.
“Oh, hey, baby.” Pat greeted me. “I was talking to Taina about her new tattoo.”
I kept my poker face intact, appearing unbothered, but my insides felt like a fucking pressure cooker ready to blow at any second.
“Nice. Let me see.”
Taina paused for a second before holding out her arm to me with a hell of a lot less enthusiasm than she had for my man.
There was no cutesy smile, no demure giggle.
Nothing. Just a dry viewing of her crusty ass flower tattoo with some scribble on it that wasn’t even all that cute.
But let Pat ogle over it, and she ate that shit right up.
“Wow. It’s such a cute . . .” I paused, hoping she’d take the hint to fill in the blank because I didn’t know what the fuck I was looking at.
“It’s Spanish for what will be, will be,” she informed me.
“Right,” I responded dryly before turning my attention back to Pat. One look at him and I knew he felt the heat radiating off my body. “Are you ready to say goodbye to Poppy?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
We walked out of the facility in silence.
Pat reached out to grab my hand as if nothing was wrong, and as much as I wanted to recoil, I knew we were in public and was trying to hold my peace until we were alone.
Once we got into the car, the tension was thick enough to cut with a knife.
The music was playing, but it was too low to drown out the loud ass thoughts tormenting my head.
I kept my daggering gaze pointed out the window, with my arms folded across my chest and my body angled away from him as if I didn’t want shit to do with him.
He sucked his teeth, giving all the energy I needed. “Are we good?” he queried, glancing at me as the car eased to a halt at a red light.
I refused to look his way. “Mm-hmm.”
“Because it doesn’t seem that way. You look pissed.”
I didn’t respond. That nigga knew what he was doing.
I didn’t want to start an argument. It would only make me look insecure, and I’d been trying my hardest not to make it look like I cared as much as I did.
But in the same breath, I couldn’t pretend like I was okay.
I mean, was I trippin’? I was always taught to look with my eyes and not with my hands.
Why the fuck did he have to graze her arm like that, as if he was staring at a fuckin’ work of art by Vincent Vangough?
I thought we were past this.
Seeing that shit hit different. It was like PTSD for me.
Suddenly, I was right back in my feelings from six months ago, when I found the messages between him and a fucking thirsty-ass flight attendant on his iPad that he left at my place.
After confronting him about it, I received an apology, a proposal, and the promise of my dream wedding.
Because, in his words, I ‘deserved to be treated like the princess I was.’ Now I knew it was only an eight-thousand-dollar Band-Aid over a much deeper wound.
That was strike one. Now this flirty nurse shit? Strike fucking two.
Finally, I gave in to my emotions and opened my mouth. “Are we really going to sit here and pretend like I didn’t see what I saw?”
“What did you see, Lex? Help me out. I’m confused.”
I finally twisted my neck toward him. “You flirting with Poppy’s fuckin’ nurse, Pat!” I accused, simultaneously blowing the lid off the pot of my bottled emotions.
He pushed out a breathy laugh as if he were brushing off my suspicions. “Baby, what are you talking about? I wasn’t flirting. She wanted to show me her new tattoo, and I was being nice.”
“You touched her, Patrick,” I reminded him, while also calling him by his government name.
His hands gripped the wheel a little bit tighter. “It wasn’t like that. I wanted to know what the words meant. That’s all.”
I sucked my teeth. “Bullshit. C’mon, now. The last thing you need to do right now is play me for a fool.”
Pat sucked his pearly white teeth. “You’re reading too much into this shit, Lex. I’m tellin’ you it wasn’t like that at all.”
I tapped my chin, as if I were thinking. “Hmm, and I wonder why I’m reading too much into shit. Is it because you’re the one who cheated six months ago with a fucking flight attendant?”
The silence detonated like a fucking bomb between us. It was quiet enough to hear a pin drop. Pat closed his eyes for a second as a long sigh deflated his chest.
“I thought we were past that.”
“Yeah, well, up until fifteen minutes ago, I thought we were too. And now, you got my head all wrapped up in shit that I don’t need to be worried about this close to our wedding.”
I watched his Adam’s apple bob in his throat as he swallowed hard.
His lips parted, but no sound came out. His ass knew I was right.
Yeah, sure, I hadn’t caught him balls deep in the bitch behind the nurse’s station, but the way my stomach knotted up when I saw him touch her like that, I might as well have.
It was crystal clear to me that Pat hadn’t learned from the dog-ass behavior that led him down the wrong fuckin’ path the last time.
He had infinite chances to fix all his issues and kept finding ways to make more.
“You wanna know the worst part about it? You wanted that bitch’s attention.
I could see it in your eyes,” I said, my voice cracking with disappointment.
“And the whole time I was standing there watching you, I was thinking, is this how it’s going to be even after we’re married?
Because if this is what I have to look forward to—”
“Don’t,” he cut me off. “Don’t say that, baby. I’m sorry. Okay? I didn’t mean to make you feel a way. That was the last thing I was trying to do.”
He reached out for my hand, but I recoiled from his touch as if he were a leper.
I felt myself slowly pulling back, not only physically but also mentally and emotionally.
I’d been feeling it off and on since our engagement.
I’d already given him one chance to right his wrongs, a chance he probably didn’t deserve.
I was all in until I wasn’t, and once I was out, I was done.
Taking the hint, he returned his free hand to the wheel, gripping it tight again as his shoulders slumped in defeat. “I fucked up, baby. I’m sorry. Okay? I mean that shit. I’m not trying to lose what we have.”
“Then stop tap dancing on thin ice, Pat, because it’s about to break,” I warned.
My words landed like a blow to his heart. At least I hoped they did. I wanted him to want to stay. To do better. I could push him to be better until I was blue in the fucking face, but he had to want to be that.
I turned my attention back toward the window as Poppy’s words replayed in my head.
“The goal is to marry the love of your life because love is a commitment, not a feeling.” And my husband-to-be definitely had me feeling a way.
I realized I was secretly still nursing my heart back to life and guarding it from the man I was a couple of months away from marrying.
It was a wound he’d caused, but I couldn’t help but wonder if it was one he could heal.
One week later.