Chapter 8
Bryse
“Are you angry?” She pushed her hair back from her face.
I knew that we looked ridiculous sitting up on the big rock that overlooked the city, her in her formal gold and black ballgown, and me in an all-black tux with a gold cummerbund. Our masks were set aside like a discarded remembrance of happier times.
“No, I’m not angry,” I confessed, dragging my fingers through my beard.
“What are you feeling?”
“Confused. Disappointed. Hurt. Hopeful.”
“Why disappointed, Bryse?”
“Because I’m wondering how in the hell we could have allowed ourselves to get here. We’re two brilliant people who know ourselves and each other very well.”
“Or so we thought,” she interjected with a sad laugh.
“Yeah.”
She rested her head on her knees and turned her face sideways to look at me. “How come you never told me that you liked Hennessy punch?”
“Same reason that you never told me that you liked walks in the rain or that autumn was your favorite season,” I replied.
She closed her eyes, and I took a moment to take in the delicate features of my woman’s beautiful face.
The high cheekbones and pointed chin gave her face such an angular structure, but her full, heart-shaped lips and Nubian nose softened her features.
When she opened her eyes, her nut-brown, tilted, almond-shaped eyes assessed me the same way that my eyes did her, as if we were seeing each other for the first time.
My woman was beautiful and fine, with her petite ass, and smart as shit.
“You almost got someone killed.” My tone was calm and nonchalant, as though I told her the oven had just reached the right temperature.
Her eyes widened, and she sat upright. “Excuse me?”
I inhaled sharply and turned to look back out on the city. We had left the ball, grabbed some coffee, and came here to wait for the sunrise, something we discovered we both liked to do, but no longer did because of our busy lifestyles.
“I thought you were cheating on me, and I may have arranged to have you followed and for the problem to be eliminated.”
“Bryson!”
I shrugged. “You knew who you were getting involved with when you met me. You know my background, and you know the things that I’ve done for clients. What makes you think that I won’t take those same measures when it comes to my woman?”
“But murder, Bryson? Why not just leave me or confront me, or even him, for that matter?”
“I wouldn’t leave you because I didn’t want to lose my woman. Even when I was speaking with you on that app, I was in turmoil, because I knew that I didn’t want to leave. But you gave me no other choice.”
“I didn’t leave murder on the table though.”
“The next nigga will know that he should keep his hands to himself, and we won’t have those problems.”
“The next nigga? Are you serious? Can you hear yourself, Bryson? There was no other nigga. There was only you.”
“But you didn’t know that. Be warned: If you cheat on me, that nigga will be pushing up daisies from six feet under or swimming with the sharks. You choose, I ain’t picky.”
She shook her head, and then a small smile formed on her lips. “I didn’t think you still cared as much.”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Because you’ve been so dismissive of me lately.”
“Do you know why?”
She shook her head no and followed it with, “It hurts.” She reached out and took my hand in hers and squeezed it.
“It hurt me that you kept pushing me away. It felt like you didn’t want me anymore, or us. I don’t do well with rejection, Kenni, and that’s no fault of yours; it’s just the way that it is.”
“Is it because your dad refused to allow you to see him in prison, and then he died without you ever seeing him again?”
I bobbed my head as my throat thickened. That shit was hard to talk about. I could barely handle the memories.
“All I see is me trying to make us a priority the way that we were the past three years, and all I get is rebuffed. If it’s not work meetings, photo shoots, campaigns, or work travel, then it’s needing to work late for some other reason.
I started thinking that you found someone else, and clearly, you were looking for someone, because we met online. ”
“And so were you, Bryse. Don’t make this all about me. We were both wrong in how we handled ourselves.”
I nodded, conceding her point. “How did you get an invitation anyway?”
She sighed. “I was at the bar a few weeks ago, that Saturday night that you had a meeting with that client. Anyway, the girls and I were talking, and they were trying to lift my spirits. I was sharing my concerns with them about how I felt like our relationship was heading in the same direction that mine and Brent’s had.
You were always complaining and forcing me to choose between you and my career rather than supporting me.
“I walked to the restroom and met an older lady in there who told me that she overheard my concerns. She handed me the invitation and said that it was exactly what I needed to make things better.”
“And did it?”
“Only you and I can determine that, Bryse. But I have to tell you a secret. At first, I thought that she was coming on to me. I turned her down in the worst way. That woman checked me so fast and so hard.”
I chuckled with her, loving to see the gleam in her eyes again. It had been a long time since I had seen it, but it disappeared quickly.
“What about you? How did you get your invitation?”
I sighed because I definitely didn’t want to share this story, but I refused to go back to a place of dishonesty and mistrust. Before we left that rock, I wanted us to be fully committed to being together or completely sever our bond. Being together didn’t start with lies or omissions.
“That client you mentioned that I met on that Saturday night?”
She bobbed her head. “Was it him?”
“No. He wanted to go to a strip club after our meeting, so we did. I got a private dance, and she approached me afterward when I was leaving the restroom. She was waiting in the hallway for me, and she handed me a card.”
Kennedi’s face scrunched up. “Was that all she handed you?”
“Look at ya ass getting jealous for ya boy. I didn’t think you had it in you anymore. I was starting to think that I was a distant memory in your life,” I confessed, dragging the backs of my fingers down the side of her face.
“Where do we go from here, Bryse?”
“You already know what I want, Kenni.”
“Do I?”
It fucked with me when tears pricked those beautiful brown eyes, and she pressed those thick lips together. I reached out and wiped her tears before they could fall, and then pulled her lips apart.
“I want you, baby. I want the woman who jumped out of her car in the middle of the street and cussed me out over a parking spot that I crept into while she was backing up because I was late for court. The woman who sat on those court steps and waited for me, demanding that I cover the cost of the scratch on the side of her car. The woman who made me want to know her little fiery ass, and who I had to work hard to convince to go on a date with me after meeting up at the autobody shop where I willingly paid for the scratch in your old rust bucket. The woman I first fell in love with six months after knowing her, and then again here recently online when I thought she was a stranger.”
Tears sparkled in her eyes and then fell in rivulets down her face. I reached out to her, and she turned her head away from me, swiping her eyes. It hurt that she wouldn’t let me comfort her.
“Talk to me, baby. Where did I go wrong?”
Finally, Kennedi turned back to me and shook her head.
“I just needed you to take my dreams and career as seriously as you do yours. I’ve had a lifetime of people belittling my career goals and abilities, starting with my father and my mother, who claimed that I was too beautiful to worry about things like that, and it would be easier for me to find a man to take care of me.
I didn’t need that shit in my relationship, too, Bryse.
And I told you how hard it was for me with Brent doing the same thing all those years, as well as students who swore I only got good grades in college because I was sleeping with the professor. ”
“Who do you have to prove something to?”
“Nobody. That’s just it. I’m doing this because it’s what I want for myself, Bryse. Why can’t you see that?”
I thought about how I had chosen my career path because of my father, and how I let nothing stand in my way. I finally understood her.
Lifting Kennedi onto my lap, I kissed the side of her neck. She pressed her face into my shoulders. “I see you, baby. I see you.”
“I want you, Bryse, but only if you can love and support me unconditionally the way that I do you.”
“I can and I will.” We kissed deeply before I suggested, “Let’s go away for a few days.”
“I like that.”