Chapter 9
I was playing a dangerous game with Eastley’s pretty ass.
Having her sleep in my bed was . . . stupid.
There was no other way to call it. I had a hard time keeping my thoughts and feelings at bay when it came to Eastley.
I needed to put more space between us, not less.
Those were the thoughts going through my mind as I stroked my dick in the shower.
I had to get the nut off. I couldn’t take the chance on my shit getting hard while we were in bed together.
While there was definitely a part of me that wanted to pound her sweet, sexy ass into the mattress, there was also a part of me that just wanted to protect her. To be her safe space.
I washed the evidence of my orgasm down the drain, cleaned my body, then got out of the shower. I typically slept naked, but since I had an overnight guest, I threw on a pair of basketball shorts. I opened the bathroom door, stepped into the primary bedroom, and said a silent prayer.
Lord, help me.
Eastley lay on one side of my bed. Her sleep shirt wasn’t necessarily fitted but hugged her body close enough to let me know she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her head rested on a pillow she brought in from the guest room. Her hair was covered by a navy-blue bandana.
“No bonnet?” I teased, gesturing toward her hair.
She grinned. “Nah, they make me too hot.” She patted her covered head. “This is the best I can do.”
I climbed into bed and made myself as comfortable as possible. I didn’t want to get too close to her or make her feel awkward. So, I kept my distance without obviously keeping my distance.
“Other than the fireworks catastrophe, I feel like my first Braveheart Brotherhood outing in eight or so years went well.” She sighed.
“I was so proud of myself. I felt good. Everything was flowing. My anxiety—I mean, I had some anxiety. I always have some measure of anxiety, but it was relatively low. I thought we would come back here, debrief about what went well, and what we could work on for next time . . .” She let her thoughts trail off.
I chuckled lightly. “Debrief.”
She chuckled too. “Yeah. I was hoping. But then everything went left.”
“You can’t prepare for what you don’t expect.”
“I probably should’ve expected fireworks on Juneteenth, though. It’s black people’s Independence Day.”
“Stop purposely looking for fault with yourself. You were concentrating on the hurdle of being in a wide-open space with a lot of people.” I tried to fight it, but the yawn slipped out.
She gave me the sad face. “You’re tired. Don’t feel like you have to stay up and entertain me. You can go to sleep. Just having you next to me will help keep my nervous system calm.”
“You need sleep, E. Slide over here by me.”
She moved closer to me, giving me her back. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her closer until we were touching—back to chest.
“Do you have to get up early?” she asked. “You don’t teach self-defense on Sundays, do you?”
“Nah, I go to church.”
“You go to church?”
I had to snicker. “Is that shocking?”
“For some of the Braveheart brothers? Definitely. For you? Not so much. What time is service?”
“Nine o’clock in the morning.”
“Would you mind if I went with you?”
She surprised me with that question. “Uh, the only thing is that every week after church, I stop by and see Teagan.”
I couldn’t see her face when she spoke, because her back was to me, but her voice gave away the fact that she thought she overstepped or something. “Oh, don’t worry about it. I don’t want to infringe on your time with Teagan.”
“I could drop you back off here before I swing by the cemetery,” I offered, because I wasn’t ready to share that part of my life with anybody. There was no way I could take another woman with me to visit Teagan. Especially not one that I wanted to . . . shit, I didn’t know.
“Or I could just drive myself.”
“That would be crazy, E. If you wanna go, we can ride together. Like I said, I’ll just bring you home after church.”
Lying in the bed with Eastley while talking about Teagan helped my dick stay soft. Two hours later, Eastley was fast asleep. I was wide awake, trying to figure out how to reconcile my feelings for Teagan with the fact that I was drawn to Eastley.
When the alarm from my phone cut through the remnants of sleep, I opened my eyes slowly.
I wasn’t sure when I’d drifted off, but it definitely didn’t feel like I’d gotten much sleep.
Still, I was greeted with the sun’s bright rays in the form of a smile from Eastley.
We had separated our bodies from one another at some point during the night, because she was on the opposite side of the bed.
“I slept straight through,” she told me, the smile never wavering. “After everything that happened yesterday, I never expected that.”
“No nightmares?”
“Nah.” Her head shook back and forth. “No nightmares.”
“That’s what’s up.” I yawned and stretched.
“I’m going to get ready for church.” She climbed out of bed.
I watched her go, then headed for the bathroom to begin my own morning routine.
My plan had been to drop Eastley back off at the house after church, but she had other ideas.
Before we could even make it to my truck, Asia came tearing into the church’s parking lot.
Eastley had given me a sweet smile and a quick wave before she ditched me which, honestly, made me feel some type of way.
Then my eyes landed on the bouquet of flowers for Teagan, and I had to wonder if they made her feel some type of way.
Choosing not to dwell on that thought, I followed my routine and stopped by the cemetery. I cleaned off Teagan’s headstone, though there weren’t many errant leaves or much debris. I replaced the prior week’s flowers, then told her how much I loved and missed her.
Instead of driving home, I headed out to the unincorporated area of the county where my father, Quincy Bishop, lived. When I pulled onto his property, he was sitting on his porch, kind of like he was waiting for me.
He took a long pull of his cigar, never taking his eyes off me as I parked in his gravel driveway. His knowing gaze stayed on me, both as I exited my truck and as I approached the porch.
My father was my best friend. Growing up, it had been me and him against the world.
My mom was there. She was present, loving, and nurturing.
And I loved her. She taught me about the softness of love, the strength of a woman, and the importance of prioritizing your own mental health.
Still, there was something about my relationship with my father that was rooted in being kind of kindred spirits.
That ended up being a blessing, because right after I graduated from high school, my mother decided that life as a homemaker in a rural Southern town wasn’t all God had for her.
She moved to Londynville and enrolled in college.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in communications, she decided to earn her real estate license as well.
Now she was one of the top-selling agents in her brokerage firm.
She smiled more, laughed more, and generally seemed happier whenever I saw or spoke to her.
My father and I leaned on each other when she first left.
I’d been blindsided as a teenager that she was unhappy, when all I knew was them together.
As an adult, I understood that she had probably told my father a thousand times that she needed something different.
He’d just been unable to give it to her, because he couldn’t imagine a life outside of Sweet Jackson.
She had to pursue it for herself, and he had to let her.
“You got an eye problem, old man?” I asked when I got close enough to the porch for him to hear me. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you that starin’ is rude?”
He chuckled. “Maybe. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that showing up unannounced is rude?”
“Nah. My daddy ain’t teach me that. But what can you expect? He’s an uncouth rascal.”
He let out a belly laugh, and I joined him. I walked over to the rocking chair where he sat and gave him a hug, followed by a handshake. “Dad.”
He returned the love. “Son.”
“You sittin’ out here like you were expecting me.”
“Kinda was. You know Janey goes to Sweet Jackson Church of Holiness. She ’bout went into a tizzy today. She could barely wait ’til church was over to call me and tell me you showed up with a woman she didn’t recognize.”
Janey Majors was my father’s “special lady friend.” According to my mother, she’d been after Quincy since high school and had been madder than a rattlesnake when he chose my mother over her.
It wasn’t long after their breakup that Janey started showing up at the house with casseroles for us to eat and homemade sweet tea for us to drink.
Next thing I knew, I started to catch her sneaking out of our front door in the early morning hours.
A little while after that, she stopped sneaking.
“Janey ain’t keeping nobody’s business to herself,” I joked.
He snickered. “Never could. Back in the day, they called her eyewitness news. Anyway, I figured if you were seeing somebody new, you were probably gonna need to talk about it.”
One thing I appreciated about my dad was that he wasn’t like the stereotype of men of his generation.
He wasn’t the strong and silent type. He believed in talking things out, especially after my mother left.
He told me that he felt like if he had been more communicative back then, he and my mother could’ve probably worked things out.
But back then, men talked, and women listened.
In retrospect, he could see the error of his ways.
“I’m not seeing her.” I explained to him the living situation with Eastley.
“Sleeping in your bed, you say?” he joked.
“Not sleeping in my bed, man. Slept in my bed. One night. Because I was worried about her and wanted to keep an eye on her.”
“Was an eye all you kept on her? You didn’t keep any hands on her, right?”
“Nah.”
He watched me carefully. “You’re a man. As I remember little Eastley Davenport, she was a cute little thing. Her mother, Dana, wasn’t no slouch in the looks department, either. Beautiful woman. Pretty and popular in high school. Eastley probably grew up to look a lot like her.”
“E’s beautiful. Gorgeous, really.”
“Gorgeous woman in your bed. You didn’t feel any . . . stirrings?” Apparently, I didn’t respond quickly enough, because he kept talking. “I’m presuming she’s single. You’re single—”
“That’s the thing.” I cut him off. “Am I single? Because I can’t say that I feel single.
I’m thinking about Teagan all day, every day, .
. . except for when I’m thinking about Eastley.
She asked to go to church with me, and I took her.
But I felt so damn guilty, Pops. Sundays are my day with Teagan.
“I mean, I don’t spend all day at the cemetery, but I stop through there.
I clean up her headstone. I lay fresh flowers.
I tell her that I love her and miss her.
That’s my time with her. It kinda annoyed me that Eastley asked to infringe on that time.
But at the same time, I wanna be with her, so I’m willing to let her step on Tea’s time.
I don’t feel good about that. I also don’t feel good about the fact that she gave me space to be with Teagan with no pushback.
She had her friend pick her up from church so I could have my time at the cemetery.
Part of me feels like she should’ve been more, I don’t know .
. . bothered by me needing time with Teagan.
” I took a deep breath. “Tell me that I’m fucked up in the head. ”
“Nah.” He took a deep pull from his cigar, then put it out. “Nah. You’re not fucked up in the head, Son. You’re grieving. And it sounds to me like you’re getting to the place where you’re realizing that there’s life after loss.”
I rubbed my hands down my face. “I’ve got so much stuff, man. And she, she’s got stuff of her own. I just don’t want to pull her into my world if I can’t do right by her. My heart still belongs to Teagan.”
He looked off into the distance. “Teagan’s not here to claim ownership of your heart anymore, Son.
Saying your heart belongs to her is kinda like saying the struggle of black people belongs to Dr. King.
He’s not here to do that work anymore. We can’t give him a job he’s not here to do.
We can keep the essence of his spirit with us, though.
Teagan can live in your heart, but she can’t actively participate in keeping your heart safe, filled, or fulfilled.
Only somebody on this side of glory can do that. ”