Chapter 13 #2
She let out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh and wasn’t quite a cry either. She pressed both hands over her face and stood there.
“You laid next to me every night for weeks knowing this,” she said through her hands. “You let me talk about our future. You let me start the process of purchasing a house with you. You let me get excited about what we were building and you knew the whole time.”
“I was trying to find the right way to tell you—”
“There is no right way Gutta.” She dropped her hands and her face was wet and she wasn’t trying to do anything about it.
“There is no version of this that has a right way. You should have told me the day you found out. The same night. You should have come home and sat me down and told me the truth and let me decide what I wanted to do with it. Instead you kept it and kept it and covered it up. and let me keep falling deeper into something that was built on a lie. You forced me to stay here when I wanted to go home and the whole time you’ve been lying to me. ”
“It wasn’t a lie—”
“What would you call it?”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
She pressed her hand flat against her chest and I saw it then. Her breathing had changed. Short and tight and her other hand came up to her chest too and her eyes went wide.
“Simone.”
“I can’t—” She stopped. “I can’t breathe! This shit hurts so bad!” She cried as she held her chest.
“Baby sit down—”
“Don’t touch me.” She stepped back. “Don’t—” She stopped again and pressed both hands against her chest and I could see her trying to pull air in and it wasn’t coming the way it was supposed to.
I went to the bathroom, wet a towel and came back with it. She slapped it out of my hand before I could put it on her face. It hit the floor and she sat down on the edge of the couch, then she bent forward with her elbows on her knees.
I crouched down in front of her and didn’t touch her, I just stayed there while she worked through it.
It took three minutes for her breathing to even out.
When she finally sat up straight she looked at me crouched on the floor in front of her, she looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.
I stayed where I was.
“Talk,” she said. “All of it. Right now.”
So I talked.
I told her about Sandra. Not everything — not the full truth of how I knew her because that was a conversation for a different time and a different level of trust but I told her enough.
A woman I dealt with briefly before Simone and I got serious.
One night that I never thought about again.
No relationship, no feelings, nothing that continued after.
A situation that was over before it started.
Then a little girl bumping into my leg in a grocery store cereal aisle while Simone was standing right next to me.
I told her about seeing Amara’s face and knowing. About the weeks of trying to get Sandra to cooperate and finally getting the test done. About the results sitting in that envelope confirming what I already felt in my gut from the second I looked down at that little girl.
When I finished Simone was quiet for a long time.
“How old is she,” she finally said.
“Three. She’ll be four this summer.”
She nodded slowly like she was counting backward in her head.
“That was before us yes, but you were still chasing and pursuing me at that time.”she said. Not a question. Working through it.
“Yes, I was still chasing you when that happened. You weren’t even giving me the time of day yet and I’m a man with needs. I was young then too. I didn’t know better or else I would have used protection.”
She looked at her hands in her lap.
“I always thought our first child would be ours,” she said quiet.
“Together. Something we planned and wanted and built. That was supposed to be mine first.” Her voice dropped on the last part.
“And now there’s already a baby out here and she’s not mine and I don’t know how to—” She stopped.
“I don’t know how to accept that Gutta. I don’t know if I can. ”
I got off my heels and dropped to my knees on the floor in front of her.
“Look at me,” I said.
She looked at me.
“I cannot and I will not call that little girl a mistake. She didn’t ask to be here and she doesn’t deserve to be treated like something that I should be ashamed of.
But I also can’t walk away from her now that I know she exists.
I won’t do that.” I held her eyes. “What I need you to hear is that none of this changes what I feel for you. None of it changes what we are or what I want for us. I want you to be there. I want us to figure this out together. I know I’m asking for a lot.
I know this is not what you signed up for.
But I’m asking you to stay and let me show you that this doesn’t have to break what we have. ”
Simone looked at me on my knees in front of her.
“We all want a lot out of life Deon,” she said. She used my government name and it landed different than it usually did. “That doesn’t mean you get all of it.”
She stood up.
I stood up with her.
“I need to go home.” She went to the bedroom and I heard her moving around. I stood in the living room and didn’t follow her because following her right now wasn’t going to help anything.
She came back with her overnight bag on her shoulder and keys in her hand.
She looked at me standing in the middle of my living room and I looked back at her, I had nothing left. No argument, no play, no move that was going to change what was about to happen.
“I love you,” I said. “That’s all I got right now. I love you and I’m sorry and I need you to know both of those things are real.”
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then she walked out.
The door closed behind her and I stood there in the quiet of my apartment and for the first time since I was a little boy in my mama’s house on Delmont I felt something I didn’t know what to do with.
Helpless.
Like the one thing I actually wanted, I couldn’t move, fight, buy or talk my way into keeping had just walked out my front door. I had nothing left in me to stop it.
I sat down on the couch where she had been laying against me an hour ago and put my face in my hands.
And for the first time in longer than I could remember, the first time since I’ve been a man, I came close to crying.
Hurting Simone had hurt me even more. She was the one thing I never wanted to lose, and she’d just walked out my house and probably my life.
As a man, I could say that I was scared for what was next to come.
What I did know though, was that I was going to be a part of my daughter life. Even if that meant Sandra losing everything. That fuck nigga husband of hers wasn’t about to raise my baby as his much longer.