In Full Bloom: Liana

Prologue

“Noeva tell me to turn around.”

“LeeLee, I can’t do that. I should, but I can’t. Ordeal is playing a dirty game and the only way to prove it is to pop up on his ugly turtle-looking ass.”

“Odeal.”

“Huh?”

“You always call him Ordeal. His name is Odeal,” I said with a chuckle.

“Is he not an ordeal?” she asked. “Look what he got my good sis out here doing.”

Noeva had been on the phone since I got on the highway, and she hadn’t said a single word about turning around, which meant she was just as with the shit as I was. We were both going to pretend otherwise until we absolutely couldn’t.

My work badge was still clipped to my hip, which really summed the whole situation up perfectly. I had gone straight from work to stalking my husband with my best friend on speakerphone like we were detectives instead of two grown women with careers and sense.

“Okay, so you’re about to turn on Oleander,” Noeva said, focused on being my personal GPS.

“I know where I’m going. This fool has taken me here before.”

“I know you know. I’m stressed, girl.”

“What if I see what I don’t want to see, Noeva?”

Palio’s sat halfway down the block under its warm yellow entrance light, valet podium out front, the whole place screaming opulence.

I wanted to love this place but I didn’t.

Truthfully, I didn’t love many things in Midtown or Coupeville anymore.

Pretentious from the curb in, and a country girl like me was anything but.

Still, I tried for Odeal.

I remembered this restaurant vividly because one night Odeal ordered for me without asking and almost killed me with my shellfish allergy. The worst part wasn’t even the ambulance ride. It was the fact that he never came to the emergency room after.

Work, he said.

I still stayed.

That was the kind of wife I had learned to be over six years.

I was only now understanding it.

I cut the engine and sighed.

“I made it.”

“Okay, so what’s the plan? Are we busting in waving the fo’ fo’?”

“There is no plan, Noeva. I’m winging it here.”

“There has to be a plan. You can’t sit outside this restaurant with no plan.”

I laughed despite myself and pressed my forehead against the steering wheel for a second. Outside, a couple walked past the entrance holding hands, and I watched them until they disappeared around the corner.

“Remember when you made me drive to Ty Henderson’s mama’s house at two in the morning,” I said.

Noeva screamed. “Why are you bringing up pigeon-toed ass Ty Henderson right now?”

“Because you had me parked outside a woman’s house in Haven Hills for an hour and a half and she was his mama. His actual mama came to the door in a housecoat.”

“The light was on at two in the morning, that was suspicious behavior?—”

“Old Black women leave lights on, that is a documented fact?—”

“He was lying about other things, even if that particular thing was his mama’s house, I stand on that?—”

“All I’m saying is I got you beat.”

“This is completely different, and you know it.” Her voice shifted under the laughter, just enough. “Because Odeal is not Ty Henderson, he’s your husband. And you are not twenty-two.”

I sat with that.

“I know something is wrong,” I said. “I’ve known for months. I feel it the way I feel things at work. Pattern recognition. Things shifted, things changed. I can’t put my hands on it, and it’s making me crazy.”

“I know, Lee.”

“I need one concrete thing. So I can stop feeling like I’m inventing it.”

Noeva started to speak.

“Shh, he’s coming out.”

I watched my husband walk out hand in hand with another woman.

She was a tall, young, pretty girl. She laughed at whatever he said while his hand rested at the small of her back, familiar and proprietary. He walked her to the valet loose in the shoulders, fully satisfied with how the night had gone.

I stopped breathing for a moment.

“I see him.”

“Sis, listen to me?—”

“He has his hand on her back, Noeva. I’m going to kill this nigga and his bitch too.”

“I know. But baby, I need you to stay in the car. We are getting proof, not doing life behind bars.”

“Speak for yourself,” I muttered. “After all I did for that man? For his career? Ego? I might qualify for temporary insanity.”

“Look, Betty Broderick, that man is not worth it. Smack his ass if you need to, but don’t kill him.”

After careful consideration, I decided to stay in the car. I had a feeling the night wasn’t over yet, and I needed the whole truth. Only Odeal could give me that.

Odeal opened the passenger door for her like the gentleman he wasn’t.

“Nigga please,” I hissed as he rounded the truck and pulled off.

I followed immediately.

“What’s going on girl? They leaving?”

“I’m just driving, Noeva.”

“I can’t believe you are actively tailing your husband. Bastard.”

“If his stupid ass was at home, or wining and dining me, I’d have nothing to follow.”

Her cackle came through the car speakers as I fought back tears with a laugh of my own.

But she didn’t tell me to stop. I wouldn’t anyway, and she knew that. We were both the responsible ones in theory and neither of the responsible ones in practice until shit actually caught fire.

“Noe, do I even care?” I asked it out loud, but I already knew the answer was complicated. But I took those vows standing in front of God and everybody we loved and meant every word. That was my problem. I always meant every word, while Odeal was busy meaning every word conditionally.

It hadn’t always been this way. I wouldn’t have married him if I thought he would’ve become this prick that lies, cheats, and nags like a bitch. Odeal was insufferable at times. All high and mighty, because of his job, money, and access.

Odeal had forgotten where he came from, and it happened so quickly, it was just now that it was catching up to me.

I kept driving, eyes locked on Odeal’s taillights through Midtown and onto an avenue I didn’t recognize. We’d made it to a residential complex twelve minutes from the restaurant. Odeal backed in with a smile, like he lived here. Like he had done it a hundred times.

What the fuck?

I parked on the street. I couldn’t even allow myself to be sad at this point.

He walked her to the building door. She had a key. They went inside.

I sat in my car watching the light come on in a second floor window. Truth washed over me and settled cold and complete.

This had a parking space. A second-floor window.

A whole geography.

“Noeva,” I said.

“Right here.”

“How long do you think?”

A beat. “Liana.”

“Please tell me what you think.”

“I think,” she said carefully, “that it doesn’t matter how fuckin long because it was always too long. Some shit you don’t do. Like, take my best friend from me to mistreat her. I told that fool to return you better or the way you left.”

I opened my car door.

“You’re right. Odeal forgot who I am. Maybe I did too, but I’m remembering right now. I’ll be back.”

“Liana. Liana, no. No ma’am. You stay in that car,” I heard her say through my car speaker. It was too late, I was already on my way across the street, phone in my pocket, with Noeva still screaming.

The building had one of those lobbies that buzzed you in if somebody upstairs hit a button, which meant I stood outside the glass door for approximately forty-five seconds before a man coming out with his dog held it open for me without a second thought, which I’d call divine provision. Look at the Lord.

I was on some covert shit, my heart pumping and palms sweaty, but the need to bust this fool pushed me toward the second floor. I knew which direction they’d turned getting off the elevator, but not the exact apartment.

Then I saw Odeal’s ugly ass loafers sitting outside one of the doors and all doubt disappeared.

I had grown up hunting with my daddy in the woods outside Bloomington. I had spent fourteen years professionally tracking people who did not want to be found. Odeal definitely forgot who he had married.

“Bitch I don’t think I’ve ever heard you this quiet. It’s a miracle.” I joked because that’s what I did when I was nervous.

“Girl, I’m praying over here. Lord, let it be some bullshit like a secret fantasy football meeting and not dicks and leather out.”

“Are you seriously referencing the movie Knocked Up at a serious time as this?”

“I’m nervous, friend.”

I knocked and heard movement inside. Then a pause.

“Who is it?” I heard from the other end of the door.

“Delivery,” I said in a soft, flowery tone, causing Noeva to snicker on the other end of the phone. I grinned because, through it all, this shit was comical.

The door opened, and Odeal stood there in his shirt untucked, and by the time he realized the mistake he had made, a woman came around the corner in her robe.

“Baby, who’s at the door?”

His face went completely, totally still. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it looked like a stroke was approaching. Not surprised exactly. But definitely not planning for this to happen tonight.

“Liana.” My name came from his lips, not out of curiosity but in warning. His hands went up.

“Hey, baby,” I said, attempting to push past him.

He tried to close the door, but wasn’t quick enough for all that. I hit that door with my whole body pushing him back. I was inside a nicely decorated apartment with toys on the fucking ground in no time.

“Are you fucking serious right now? A baby?” I asked before lunging at him.

What happened in the next four minutes, I will give you in broad strokes because some of it is not my finest hour, and some of it I genuinely do not fully remember in the correct order.

A bitch blacked out. There was yelling, mine mostly, because I had been swallowing things for years and had run completely out of room.

There was Odeal trying to talk me down, and in a fucking circle like I wasn’t seeing exactly what I was seeing.

This nigga patronizing me made it worse, considerably worse.

“Evelyn, go to the back room.”

“No, I’m calling the cops.”