Chapter Two #2
didn’t leave the house without a full face of makeup and perfect hair, and she
hadn’t changed.
This was what he got a load of right then.
So this was why he turned his wide shoulder to me and gave
her his full attention.
Her smile got big and her come hither blasted out farther
than her Hollywood looks.
Right, I’d lost Toni.
I did my own scan, some people shifting, giving me a direct
shot to the back of the bar, and I froze.
The people shifted back, hiding me from her, but I’d seen
her.
And she’d seen me.
Darius’s Aunt Shirleen.
Okay, now it was official.
This was a bad idea.
“We’ve got to go,” I told Toni.
Her head jerked. “What?”
I pulled some money out of my wallet, threw it on the bar
for our drinks and slid off the stool, all the while repeating, “We’ve got to
go.”
“I’ll take you home,” the guy said hurriedly to Toni.
I straightened my spine and tapped his arm to get his
attention.
He twisted my way.
“No, you won’t,” I told him. “Like a gentleman, you’ll ask
for her number. You’ll then call her, not in three days, so she’ll have to
wonder for those three days if you’re into her. You’ll call her tomorrow.
You’ll talk and see if you vibe. If you vibe, you’ll ask her out to dinner and
take her someplace nice so she can dress up. Bonus for you, you’ll want to see
her dressed up. And then you both will take it from there.”
I thought he’d get upset about me being so bossy, but he
grinned, returned his attention to Toni and said in a soft voice, “Can I have
your number, baby?”
In my opinion, he could have lost the “baby,” but I could
see from Toni’s face it worked on her.
She fished a receipt out of her purse, and at her request, I
fished a pen out of mine. She gave him her number, and they did a lot of
checking each other out, Toni doing it twisted to look behind her as I pulled
her out of the bar.
I would have advised against the finger wave she sent his
way right as we walked out the door, but it happened before I could stop it.
“Something else is official,” she announced when we were in
the car. “You are now my official wingwoman. You rock
that shit.”
Well…
Duh.
What were friends for?
“Wanna tell me what our swift exit was about?” she asked
after I’d started up the car and headed through the parking lot toward Colfax.
“Darius’s Aunt Shirleen saw me.”
“Okay, I might be slow right now. I got a little dazzled by
the attention of a good-lookin’ man, but weren’t we
there looking for him?”
“Looking for him, yes.”
“Not sure I understand the emphasis,” she noted. “But just
to say, she’s his aunt. Wouldn’t she know where he is?”
“Looking for him, Toni. Not finding him. I
didn’t want him to know I was looking, remember?”
“You were just at a bar, Malia. You’re allowed to be at a
bar.”
“Not legally.”
“Hmm,” she didn’t quite agree, even if she agreed.
“And it’s a bar everyone knows he hangs at.”
“Because his aunt and uncle own it,” Toni stated. “Which
would stand to reason, since she owns it, she’d be there.”
Something else was official.
“Okay, I get it. I’m an idiot,” I told the street.
Toni reached out and patted my leg, saying, “Hon, you aren’t
an idiot. You love the guy. You miss him. Shit went down, and I can see that
time has passed, so now you think it’s time he sorted himself out and stood up
for you and Liam. There’s nothing idiotic about that.”
I should have known my girl would come through for me in the
end.
“Thanks, Toni,” I whispered.
“Just call him,” she whispered back. “Finding his phone number’ll probably be a lot easier than tracking him down
on the mean streets of Denver.”
Darius lived on the mean streets.
I didn’t usually take those.
“I’ll think about it,” I told her.
“I hope you do, because, don’t forget, I was around during
the great love affair of Malia Clark and Darius Tucker. I know it was high
school, but some things transcend high school, and you two were one of those
things. Everyone knew you were the real deal. Everyone knew you two were going
to make it. Thick and thin. Life smacked you both in the face way before it
ever should have. You’re in thin. I know that boy and the man he’ll become.
He’s Mister Morris through and through. He’ll do right by you.”
Even though I knew she was right, I still hoped she wasn’t
wrong.
I laid my sleeping son in his crib, marveling at how
beautiful he was, reveling in how peaceful he slept, pleased he hadn’t woken up
when I picked him up from Mom and Dad’s house after I dropped Toni, and
thinking I was crazy for missing him being awake and driving me crazy by
learning his way around the child-protection latches Dad installed on the
cabinets.
I touched his chubby cheek, his little nose, then bent over
to kiss him before I pulled up the side of the crib and locked it into place.
It was a moot action. He’d learned how to climb out, which
was why I had stacks of pillows around the crib just in case.
If he woke before me (and he always woke before me), they’d
come in handy.
Before I left him in there with his blue elephant
night-light glowing, I made sure the pillows were where they needed to be, and
only then did I head out.
We had a two-bedroom apartment, even though the second
bedroom was just bigger than a closet. Since Liam didn’t need tons of room yet,
it worked. But I needed to get my degree and get a job that paid better,
because soon he’d need his own space, and more of it. Liam was at the top of
the scales height wise. He was going to be tall, like his daddy. And it was
time to get him out of the crib and into a bed.
These were my thoughts when I went out of his room, headed
for our tiny kitchen to get myself a glass of water before I got ready for bed.
I stopped dead and squeaked when I saw the man standing in
my living room.
After the surprise wore off, I saw the man.
He had his arms crossed on his chest. He’d had his hair done
into twists. He’d lost weight, looking lean…
And mean.
But no less beautiful.
Darius.
Shirleen had told him I’d been out looking for him.
“Who’s the kid?” he asked.
Oh God.
He’d seen me with Liam.
This wasn’t how I’d wanted this to go.
“Darius—”
“Who’s the fuckin’ kid, Malia?”
“How did you—?”
He leaned toward me, not uncrossing his arms, and gritted,
“Who’s the fucking kid?”
I’d turned the light on in our tiny entryway to guide my way
through the apartment, so even though no other lights were on, I could see him.
He was still handsome. Fit. Broad shoulders and trim hips
and long legs that made his simple T-shirt and jeans look like a fashion
statement.
But his expression was all wrong.
His eyes were cold, his face hard.
“Malia—”
I cut him off this time by blurting, “Liam Edward Clark.”
He leaned back with a jerk and the air in the room got
oppressive.
This was it. It wasn’t how I wanted it to go, but I had no
choice. I had to work with it.
“I had to guess, but I named him what I thought you’d want
to name him,” I shared.
And I had. Liam, his best friend Lee’s name. And Edward, for
his other best friend, Eddie.
“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ shitting me.”
“No.”
“You had my kid, and you didn’t fuckin’ tell me?”
His voice was quiet, nevertheless, his rage was glaringly
evident.
The man he was now, I was certain most people quaked in
their boots at his mood.
But…wait.
Hang on.
I was pretty even-tempered. I had great parents. I was close
with my sister Lena, who was my other best friend, along with Toni. I had a
tight-knit family. I had friends like Toni who thought I was an idiot, and she
still packed her scarf and sunglasses to go on some moronic quest with me.
Growing up, we weren’t rolling in money, but we were never hurting. I was a
teenage mom and not a single member of my family or that first friend did
anything but support me and help me through my pregnancy and beyond.
I didn’t have much to get shitty about.
But with what Darius just said, I was feeling the need to
get shitty.
“Well, you know,” I started sarcastically, “I did call…eighty
thousand times. You refused to speak to me.”
“You got my baby in your belly, you figure out a way to
fuckin’ tell me,” he shot back.
“I’m sorry.” Yep. Still sarcasm. “How was that supposed to
go? ‘Oh, hey, Miss Dorothea, I know you have a few things on your mind, but I
really need to speak with Darius, since he got me pregnant.’”
“Don’t take that tone with me, Malia,” he said in that
quiet, scary voice. “You don’t got the high ground here.”
Oh yeah.
I felt the need to get shitty.
“I don’t? Wait, was it you who found out you were
pregnant at sixteen? And was it you who called and called and posted
letters and begged to speak to me, only to be shut out time and time
and time again? And was it you who carried a child, pushed
that child out, breastfed that child, changed his diapers, chased after him
when he started crawling, chased after him more when he started walking,
struggled to put clothes on him when he went through that phase where he decided
the only suit he wanted to wear was his birthday suit? And was it you
who took classes even though all this was going on, leaning on your family to
help out, so you could eventually make decent money to put a roof over his head
and food in his belly? Sorry, I thought that all was me.”
“I could have given you money,” he bit out.
“I don’t want your money, Darius,” I retorted. “I wanted you
to be Liam’s father. Which was why I was at the bar for Shirleen to see me
tonight. It’s time for you to be his father.”
“I’ll get you money, how much do you need?”
“Darius—”
He threw a hand my way. “You got this, obviously. You don’t
need me.”
All I could do was stare.
“There were ways, woman,” he went on. “You made your choice,
don’t put that shit on me.”
“You can’t be serious,” I whispered.
“I didn’t disappear for three fuckin’ years.”
It felt like he’d punched me in the throat, the pain so bad,
I couldn’t speak.
And the look that came into his eyes, the look of
disgust…no, revulsion, nearly brought me to my knees.
He was also whispering when he said his last.
“Fuck, the one person in my life I didn’t think would carve
a piece out of me cut off the biggest piece of all.”
And with that, he walked right past me and out the door.
Three days later…
The envelope was on my kitchen counter when
Liam and I got home that evening.
It had my name on it, written, and I didn’t recognize the
handwriting.
Inside, in fives, tens, twenties, a few fifties and two
hundreds, was three thousand dollars.
I could buy a toddler bed with that money.
I could feed both of us for three months with that money.
I was still furious at Darius. How our conversation went
three nights ago was not okay. This wasn’t about him. It wasn’t even about me.
It was about Liam.
I was so furious, I wanted to take that money to that bar,
hand it to Shirleen and tell her to tell Darius from me he could go jump in a
lake.
The thing was, this wasn’t about me.
It was about Liam.
He needed a toddler bed, and he was going to need a room
that it would fit in.
So I took the cash, stuffed it in my underwear drawer and
went about my evening, making dinner and being certain my kid didn’t figure out
how to pull the childproof plug from an outlet and electrocute himself.