Chapter 18 Maurice #2
Maurice looked up at Tommie, who knew every detail of what he’d done and still thought he was good.
“What if she doesn’t agree with you?”
“Then you keep showing her the truth.”
“What if I mess up again?”
Taurion chuckled. “Oh, you will royally fuck up. Many, many times.” The other men nodded. “We all will. But you try again. You listen, and you learn.”
“How was it with Lanie?” Maurice asked Tommie.
Tommie secured his rod and turned around.
“It took just about half my life to figure out how to love her, but once I got that, everything else fell into place. I was a kid when we met. Her family was so different than mine. Moms was so locked in on trying to save you, and Mother was always clocking for Moms. Daddy was just there, caught in between duty and something none of us had words for.”
Maurice nodded, remembering the elaborate charade that was Tommie’s family. Genuine, authentic love and care had always been there, but they could never love out loud in the way the Turners had. With Lanie, it was like Tommie was making up for lost time.
“Love, at least how Daddy would sometimes say, comes when you’re ready. It does what Papa Turner said: not to correct, but to repair. To fill in those spaces, those cracks. You’re different, stronger, because you love. Not perfected.”
“Hmm,” Richard grunted and turned to the water. Maurice did too.
They were quiet for a long time, just letting the water collect their thoughts in its foam and dissolve.
The city came into sharper focus, but still at a distance. The fellas were right: he had it bad. He saw her everywhere now. He blinked at the figure in the distance. Monique? Alone, on the promenade just above the docks.
Maurice’s phone buzzed in his pocket. A text from Deb.
BOSS LADY
Monique’s taking her friend’s news hard. She walked out of the spa. But I don’t think that’s all she’s angry about. Can you find her?
His stomach dropped. Bile filled his mouth.
“What’s wrong?” Tommie asked.
Carlos claimed that he’d gotten them back in record time, but to Maurice, it felt like an eternity. He bounded up the stairs from the dock to the street, two at a time.
Maurice looked up, trying to track her movements. She walked as if every step cost her. His chest tightened as he approached the intersection where their paths would cross.
She saw him.
Just a few dozen yards sat between them, but the distance felt just as tall as it was wide.
She took a step toward him, and then another until she reached the hotel entrance. She paused and looked back at him.
Déjà vu. Monique pushed her way inside.
She didn’t look back again.
He stayed where he was, there in front of a four-hundred-year-old hotel. Petrified.
Maurice stood on the curb until his watch buzzed with a wedding alert. He went to his room to shower and dress.
The clerical collar pressing against his neck served as a reminder of his place, his function. He’d deviated too far this week, forgot himself. But he couldn’t regret any of it.
Twenty more minutes before he needed to be downstairs, and Maurice stood outside Monique’s door. He knocked and waited.
The door opened.
She stood there, silhouetted in the setting sun, wearing a light pink dress that made her skin look luxurious. His mouth went dry at the sight of her. There were jewels in her hair and in her ears. She looked like a goddess.
But her eyes were sad, hollowed, puffy.
“Have you been crying?” he asked in a rush of worry.
“Maybe,” she said, stepping aside and opening the door wider. “You coming in?”
“What happened?”
“I got a call this morning that Chickie—a girl from my cancer support group—was transitioning, and I didn’t take the news well.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Is it, though? Ever since I met her, she’s been preparing us for her death. I was such a bitch to everybody.” She put her head in her hands. “I made a scene.”
“I’m sure they understand.”
“I’m not sure that I understand.”
He sat with that. Both of them not knowing.
“Monique,” he said softly, his hand aching to touch her hair.
“Do you want to tell me about her? Your friend? Sometimes…” He hadn’t told her his whole story.
Not about the counseling. Not about the anti-recidivism work and the fullness of Returning Home. He needed her to know everything.
He sat at the foot of the bed.
She sat beside him. “Sometimes what?”
He took a deep breath. “Sometimes I have talks like these with my guys.”
“You mean the guys in Deb’s program?”
He nodded.
“And you were in her program too.”
He nodded.
“I’m starting to think it was more than that, though.”
He cocked his head in question.
“I know Aunties Don and Deb have been together my whole life, even before Uncle Tommie passed. I can count. But Fairbanks and Returning Home started in Philly, then moved to Newark. And now she’s been in Chicago like eight times in three years.
Talking to my kids, fixing things in my house. And you’re her guy?”
“Chicago?” Maurice said slowly.
“Dude. You didn’t know?”
“I stay in my lane.”
“I see that.” She gave him a hard look, but her lips pulled into a smirk.
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Not exactly.”
“What’s the opposite of that?”
“I don’t know. But I am getting pretty tired of these lanes.”
“So, it’s not bad, and it’s not good.”
“Now, I didn’t say it wasn’t a good thing.”
“But is it bad?” He smiled because she was smiling.
Monique bumped her knee against his. “Cut it out.”
She went stiff. Her knee was still against his, but her smile vanished.
“What’s going on?” he asked, reaching for her hands.
Monique kept her head down and pressed her palms together in her lap. “You left.”
“I did.”
“You promised you wouldn’t.”
He had. After the calm, the noise came like a thousand sirens. “I am sorry.”
She nodded slow, like she was processing all the things he wasn’t saying.
“Okay,” she said. It almost sounded like a question. Then she turned to him and held his eyes. “Okay.”
This lightness that bloomed between them relaxed his nervous system. They shared easiness. They could talk, smile, and lean into each other even when everything was so heavy around them. Especially when things were heavy.
“Tell me about Chickie,” he said, his hand finally on hers.
Monique turned her head, not looking at him but also not letting his hand go. “She’s twenty-eight. And she’s been dying her whole life. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. But she’s”—Monique took in a shaking breath—“she’s so alive, man, more alive than most people.”
Maurice listened to her talk about her support group and their inside jokes that he had become the butt of. She talked about the friendship they’d forged that was literally lifelong.
“Some of us, like Eleanor, have been in remission for well over a year and keep showing up because cancer changes you, and not just on the inside. We get her and make her feel normal.”
A shiver moved through her body, and Maurice moved closer.
“And I’m supposed to go to this wedding tonight and pretend that Chickie isn’t likely breathing her last breath.
That cancer didn’t almost kill me too. I’ve witnessed so much death, Maurice.
I’m tired. But this wedding doesn’t correct anything.
I can’t act like I believe in what Tommie and Lanie are selling.
Not when I know death better than I know life and love. ”
“What do you need?”
“Hell if I know. I just need for it to stop hurting.”
“Monique—”
“And last night—” She pressed her hand to her chest, right over where he knew a wound was.
That same spot she favored when she was upset but covering it up.
“I let myself want—” She stopped. Shook her head.
“But Chickie’s dying. And I’m standing here acting like I get to have this. That I get to have you.”
He took a breath to slow his racing heart and not make this moment about him. Show that your yes means something. Show up. “Your friend is dying. That’s real. But you’re also scared and thinking—what? That you’re next? That last night wasn’t real?”
Her face crumpled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe not in your specific case.” Maurice’s voice was steady. “But I know what running, hiding, and living small looks like. I know what it looks like when someone thinks they don’t deserve to be happy. I see that in the mirror every day.”
She wiped her face roughly. “So, what do you want me to do? Stay here? Pretend everything’s fine when I really don’t want to be here? I made promises to her too.”
“I get that. I want you to do what you need to do.” He didn’t move. Didn’t do anything but rest his hand on hers. “Go home. Be with Chickie. Grieve. I won’t ask for anything you can’t give right now. Not even that you forgive me for this morning.”
Earn her trust every day.
“I like you, Monique, more than what’s logical. I want to be what you need when you need it.”
“Maurice—”
“I’ll be here when you’re ready.” He paused. “Please understand that I’m not scared of your diagnosis or your scars. I want you. All of you.”
Monique stared at him. Her throat worked. Her eyes went glassy.
“The wedding,” she said finally, clearing her throat. “The wedding starts soon. You should probably go, and I gotta fix my face.”
Maurice nodded and stood. He paused with his hand on the doorknob.
“I’m sorry about Chickie,” he said without turning around, his heart heavy. “Above all, I’m sorry you think you’ve had to carry this alone for so long.”
Then he left. Let himself back into his room, where he sat on the edge of his bed with his hands shaking and his heart wanting.
Wanting her to be free from fear and the guilt of surviving. He understood all too well. God, he understood.
But he had to let her decide. That was all he could do.