Chapter Thirty-One
Renny
Back in Brent’s kitchen, the raised voices upstairs appeared to quiet down. I saw a response from President James pop up in my email box, a surprise given it was shortly after six a.m., during a long holiday weekend.
I love this, Renny. Great work. Prepare this in a slide deck for the cabinet and leadership team.
From there, I’ll coach you on how to campaign and who to schmooze in order to get this passed through the Academic Senate.
I’m proud to have you on the C.U. Bay Area Team.
Now, enjoy the rest of your weekend, and I don’t expect to hear from you work wise until your official first day on campus next week. —Taylor
I reveled in the quick and positive feedback. I couldn’t wait to let Brent know about my first win as a university colleague. I turned away from my laptop toward the front door as I heard a key and a chime indicating someone was entering his place.
“Macy?”
Still beautiful, dark, and lovely as she’d been in college, Macy walked toward me in the kitchen and sat her hot pink bag on the kitchen island.
Just looking a little more Ms. California than Miss Teen California, the title she made sure everyone knew about back in Missouri twenty-something years earlier.
“Larenz?”
I couldn’t tell from the tone of her voice if her greeting was friendly, surprised, contemptuous, or what.
“It’s me.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Macy said, looking me up and down. My attire definitely said I’d slept over, and I didn’t know how to tread this face-to-face with Macy.
“At what part?”
Macy rolled her eyes and flicked her braids as she turned toward the nearby countertop appliances. “So I guess it’s your turn with him again, Larenz,” she said, her back to mine. Then she sucked her teeth and said, “This is so Brooke, Ridge, and Taylor.”
I remembered a group of us in college spending our lunch time in the TV lounge near the cafeteria watching the fictional love triangle of characters Brooke Logan, Ridge Forrester, and Dr. Taylor Hayes play out on The Bold and The Beautiful , with Ridge going back and forth between the two women and seemingly never being able to decide between his sexual desire for Brooke and his need for stability and grounding with Taylor.
“Do you want a response, Macy?”
“No response needed, Larenz. Or is it Renny? That’s how Brent refers to you when we talk.”
She turned on Brent’s coffeemaker as if she were familiar with the home he’d been living in since their separation and divorce.
She scooped a few spoonfuls of coffee into the filter and filled the reservoir with a couple bottles of water from the nearby pantry where Brent kept a number of cases of water piled high.
“I go by Renny now, yes,” I said, wondering what the dynamic was between Brent and Macy, now that they were divorced and co-parenting. “You two have talked about me?”
“Of course we’ve talked about you.” She went to the stainless steel fridge to take out a package of turkey bacon, again an indication she was familiar with his new place.
A nice, subtle way of putting me in my place, intentional or not.
“Not only was he my husband, but he was my best friend for years. We’re still close.
I’m sure you’ve heard his phrase ‘radical honesty’ that he picked up in our therapy sessions as a couple and as the King-DuPree family. ”
I grinned. “I’ve heard it on more than one occasion from Brent.”
Maybe this wouldn’t be as difficult or awkward as I thought, I wondered, hoping my smile would lighten the mood.
“I joke and tell him that if I hadn’t pressed him to go to therapy in order to figure out why I felt like I was only getting sixty percent of him in the past five years or so, maybe we could have—” Macy stopped, checked her phone, and tapped a quick reply before continuing.
“I’m glad we did therapy. He was pretending, and I was pretending like I didn’t know what was going on with him.
Ever since college. There’s a lot to be said about a woman’s intuition, even a young and somewhat naive pageant woman in college. ”
I didn’t say anything, because it seemed like Macy wanted to continue sharing.
“There’s nothing like living a twenty-year lie to make you realize your marriage was being held together by a very thin dam of twigs, so to speak,” Macy said.
“Because my husband wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy because he wasn’t happy, and the kids could see we were unhappy, and it was affecting them.
All of us. We built this life in California together based on a lie. And now, here we are.”
I didn’t know what to say. All I mustered was “How are you? How have you been?”
She stopped fidgeting around the kitchen and looked me in the eye.
“Other than interrupting my morning workout and driving all the way over here to San Francisco from Oakland at sunrise to check in on my grown daughter who was upset to see her father in bed with his new boyfriend, only to find out that said new boyfriend is our old college pal Larenz Ross,” Macy said as she pulled out a black cast-iron skillet from one of the cabinets, “I’m fine.
Living my best life. Living that newly single life in my forties and thriving.
You look good. You look happy. You look like you’ve maintained yourself well since we were in school in Missouri. ”
I couldn’t read the cat-and-mouse of Macy’s words, but I felt even more guilty and awkward sitting in Brent’s kitchen with Macy, knowing we had shared similar, yet different, parts of Brent over the years.
“I could say the same for you, too. Black don’t crack, even after twenty-something years.”
Though it felt like ice still needed to thaw between Macy and me, the kitchen was filled with the delicious aromas of coffee and bacon, and it reminded me of mornings at home when I was a kid.
I felt like a kid at the moment, not knowing what to say to Macy or how to say it.
After all, our history had been intertwined around Brent for decades.
She sat at the table across from me and smiled.
“Brent never lied to me,” Macy said, as she wiped away a single tear that ran from one of her eyes.
“That’s the one thing I’ve always admired about him.
Even when we were on breaks in college, and he started up with someone else, and we got back together after a break, he never lied.
He never even took me up on my offer to open up our marriage to other people, emotionally or sexually.
I just wanted him to be happy—want him to be happy now.
He’s been my best friend for the longest time. ”
“I see. So you knew?”
Macy flicked her eyes at me and pursed her lips.
“Looking back, I suspected something was different in Brent after I hired you to help him with his class during that one winter break,” she said. “Little did I know you’d end up servicing my boyfriend, no shade.”
“I can take it, Macy. I deserve a little of that. Though you two were on a break. That’s what he told me.”
“Famous words from the other woman.” She chuckled her signature laugh and got up to check on the bacon in the skillet.
“Yeah, we were on a break. We went on lots of breaks. We had our ups and downs, typical little college drama. We all had our fair share of relationships back then, like college students do. We were hoes, like they say in the streets. If I could turn back time.”
“Same,” I said. We were warming up to each other. “We had a time last night, as the aunties would say, back in our college days.”
After checking and turning off the bacon, Macy took out two coffee mugs, poured coffee into them, and brought them, along with a bowl with a variety of sweeteners, over to the table where I sat.
She returned to the fridge, pulled out two bottles of different flavored creamers, and sat across from me again.
“Cheers, Renny. You’re the leading man in his life, if that’s the role you want to play now,” Macy said, raising her mug.
Anticipating something dramatic, I braced for hot coffee to fly into my face.
But we were adults, and her daughter and Brent were upstairs.
I raised my mug to hers and toasted. “Is that what you want?”
I couldn’t believe Macy was, in essence, handing Brent over to me.
Or, at minimum, giving her endorsement and permission for us to move forward.
Not that Brent didn’t have choice or agency in his future.
Or that I didn’t. But this time, in full transparency and honesty, Brent and I could be together if we wanted. No secrets, at least from me.
“I’ve only been in California for a few days and back in Brent’s life for a little over a year,” I said as I prepared my coffee the way I wanted it, a couple of sweeteners and a nice pour of hazelnut creamer.
“I’ve told him I want to take things slow with him this second time around.
There’s a lot about my life and the past twenty years that I need to continue working on for myself.
But as long as Brent’s patient, and he’s indicated that he doesn’t plan to rush me, I’m all in. ”
Macy raised and tapped her mug to mine. “I’m glad. I want you and Brent to be happy.” She stirred coffee around, almost like she was nervous about something. “You ready to play stepdaddy to two grown kids?”
I smiled and rolled my eyes up into my head. “I already told Brent I don’t think I’m the parental type for a number of reasons that shall not be mentioned at this time.”
“Now, I need you to be a lot more confident about being in my kids’ lives, since it looks like you’re going to be in Brent’s for a while.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when it comes,” I said. Macy’s words gave me perspective. A relationship with Brent was a package deal—Macy, Bracee, and Little Brent. “Let’s change the subject from kids for a bit. What about you, Macy? Are you finding your happy?”