11. Old Thang #4
This time, the dots took longer. Like he was typing and retyping some shit too before he finally settled on what to say.
Eazy: Go take your bath and get in bed, Lotus.
She stared at the message. Damn him. Of course, he knew she hadn’t rested since he left.
She’d been moving around too much today.
Although he irritated her like no other, Eazy simultaneously made her love him even more.
Tossing the phone aside, she leaned back on both hands and looked down at her belly.
“I can’t stand your daddy.”
A tiny flutter answered her, and Lotus gasped.
“Oh, you definitely defending him now. I see how it is, son.” She laughed and reached up to stroke him.
Deciding on a late-night snack, she let the music continue to play because she was in fact lonely and needed some noise to drown out all the silence.
Jewel FaceTimed her while she was in the kitchen slicing an apple with strawberries, and kiwi.
He was at home with the girls since Rhema was working late.
She was trying to get all her nursing hours in, and he supported it.
Lotus fell over laughing when she saw the straw hat on his head with a pink daisy attached to one side.
“Ain’t shit funny, Lo. I’m glad you was the oldest, and we didn’t have no more siblings. I ain’t have to do shit like this growing up.” He lifted a teacup and pretended to take a sip with his pinky in the air and everything.
“That’s right, Daddy! You did it!” Clover clapped her hands together in the background where she and Cyn had set up an entire tea party with their dolls and stuffed animals.
“Shouldn’t they be in bed?” Lotus took a bite of her apple and carried it with her through the house toward the front entryway.
“Yo, where can I get some of that melatonin shit at?” Jewel leaned forward and whispered into the camera. “Rhem don’t really want them on that shit—” He was talking about it like it was a drug.
Lotus couldn’t help but chuckle and shake her head on her way up the staircase.
“Did they eat? They need a bath, a snack, and a story, Jewel. Get it together.”
“And if that don’t work, a shot of cognac, right?” He checked with her.
“Lord, let me pray for my nieces.”
“Yo, Eazy just left. Me, him, and Bull had to sit down and talk about some shit. You good?” Jewel pried.
“Why wouldn’t I be? He say something to you?”
“Nah, nigga was just hella preoccupied. I could tell. Check it, I know that bitch Niva trying to press up and act like what they had was some fairytale shit, but I was there, sis. Yeah, the nigga loved her. It was the first time he ever felt like that about a bitch. We all saw it—”
“Jewel, if there is a point…” Lotus arrived at her bedroom door.
She set her plate of fruit on the dresser and went to run her bath.
“My point is it takes a real woman to change a man. Not that nagging shit either, I’m talking about when the nigga starts moving different without being told.
That’s when you know a nigga in love. Without Niva, maybe he never would have gotten to where he is now.
So, think of it like that. His past led him to you, that baby, and your future. ”
“Excuse me, who are you and where the hell is my brother? It sounds like Rhema got you moving differently, too. You at home on a Wednesday night instead of in the club looking for your next victim. And I know it’s Wayback Wednesday at Clout.”
“Ain’t nobody in there but the same tired hoes.” Jewel adjusted the hat on his head.
“Ran through ’em all, huh?” Lotus teased.
“Fuck you.” Jewel flipped her the bird.
“Thanks for checking on me, bro.”
“Aye, I am my sister’s keeper. Don’t get that fucked up.”
“Love you too! Night, girls!” Lotus waved to them in the camera before hanging up.
She added bubbles to her running water and went to grab her pajamas to change into and finish her plate of fruit while it ran. Deciding to sleep in an oversized t-shirt of Eazy’s that she stole, she left it on the bed and put her phone on the charger.
Lotus soaked for at least ten minutes, releasing the tension of the day and keeping her back pressed against the porcelain claw tub with her head back, hair pulled into a messy bun. When Michael Jackson’s “Heaven Can Wait” stopped playing, her head immediately popped up and turned toward the door.
“Alexa?”
After no response, she rolled her eyes, assuming the speaker died or disconnected.
Then she heard it. She’d left the bedroom door open, and someone closed the refrigerator door downstairs.
Eazy? Anxious and excited at the thought, she hopped out of the tub.
She grabbed a towel to pat herself dry first then her fluffy rube from the back of the door to slip into.
Halfway down the winding staircase, she spotted a figure rounding the doorway from the kitchen.
The blood in her veins turned to ice when Evren strolled out, sipping a bottled water and smiling like this was normal.
Hands gripping the thick wooden bannister, Lotus froze.
“You changed your number.”
Although she didn’t see it coming, somehow she expected Evren to appear in her life again. Like a wrecking ball, ready to destroy anything good because he wasn’t a part of it.
“Get out of my house.” Lotus told him in an ice cold tone.
Evren’s eyes traveled around the foyer before nodding.
“Nice place. He buy this?”
He? Eazy. There it was. This wasn’t even about getting her back.
She was pregnant, with another man, and her life was going on without him.
He maintained some delusion that Lotus was confused, or scared, and eventually she would come back.
Now it was collapsing around him. She gradually eased her way back up the steps.
She had to get to her phone in her room. And where was the fucking guard?
“You need to leave,” she warned.
“I’ve been trying to talk to you for months.”
“And I’ve been trying not to talk to you for months, Evren. What part of that keeps getting lost? You’re not that dumb.”
Suddenly, she saw firsthand what Eazy was trying to tell her about this man.
No, she wasn’t having a relationship with him, but Evren was a man not willing to accept that things ended.
Slowly, he started up the steps, and Lotus screamed for the guard.
Spinning on the ball of her heel, she turned and sprinted up the rest of the staircase.
When she reached the double doors to the bedroom she closed the one that was left ajar, but Evren used his shoulder to stop her.
The hit sent Lotus stumbling back. When she hit the floor, she winced, and when he knelt to reach for her, she kicked him in the leg.
“Agh!” he yelled, face shifting into a hard grimace before doubling over.
Lotus jumped up and rushed toward the door, but Evren was swift. Gripping the back of her head, he yanked at her hair that had fallen from the loose bun when she fell.
“No!” Lotus’s scream echoed through the hollow walls of her new home.
Evren pinned her to the wall, but she twisted and turned against him, doing her best to shield her stomach from his aggression.
“Why couldn’t you just talk to me, Lotus?”
“Because I don’t want you!” she screamed, eyes wild while bouncing around his.
The front door crashed open, and Lotus’s heart stuttered. Eazy. He wasted no time darting up the staircase and gritted his teeth watching Evren with his hands on her.
“Get your fucking hands off her.” He growled once he reached the top floor, forcing Evren to slowly turn.
The fear on Lotus’s face angered him. Instead of reaching for the pistol on his hip, Eazy’s fists practically balled on their own. Evren couldn’t get a word out as he released Lotus and turned.
Whomp!
Eazy hit him with a hard right to the jaw.
It wasn’t pretty or stylish as he went blow for blow, driving him away from Lotus with tunnel vision.
Evren swung back, managing to connect a few times, but it was no match for Eazy’s rage.
Months of accumulated anger were delivered with each blow: the calls Lotus hid, Evren at the night market trying to be slick, Lotus changing her number, and Eazy having to question her and them.
Now this nigga was in their home, where she and their child were going to sleep.
“Eazy!” Lotus screamed, curled up in the corner near their bedroom door, watching them spar.
He couldn’t hear her, and he wasn’t done.
Crashing through a table nearby, holding each other at arm’s length, the two men tussled.
Eazy was able to lift himself up first, while Evren stumbled back toward the second-floor overlook above the foyer.
Eazy rocked him again with one last punch, this time knocking him into the balcony railing.
He heard the crack when his weight pressed against it, and for a fraction of a second, Evren’s hand gripped the rail before falling over it.
The sound of his body hitting the marble tile below silenced the entire house.
Breathing hard, blood dripping from a cut on his head, Eazy didn’t move.
“Oh, my God.” Lotus whispered, hands falling over her face.
Eazy stared down at Evren, eyes open, glossed over, and unable on focus on them. Whimpering and shaking like a leaf, Lotus came up beside him.
“I can’t… my legs,” he croaked.
Eazy turned to Lotus, worry clouding his face as he looked her over. She couldn’t stop her body from trembling as she clung to him, her robe partially open from Evren’s attack. Cradling her belly, hair all over her head, she looked into Eazy’s eyes.
“Call the police,” he instructed.
Lotus nodded and padded into their bedroom for her cell phone.
She and Eazy walked downstairs to wait for the ambulance and police to show up.
By this time, Evren slipped into unconsciousness, but neither of them went near him or touched him.
Lotus sat on the third to the bottom step, rocking, praying her baby was okay because she was so shaken, and her back was throbbing.