CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
She moved so fast that she made it upstairs just behind Vince.
And she followed him across the landing and into a room around the corridor on the left side of the stairs.
When he swept open the door, they entered a large bedroom.
Lying on that bed was a tall white woman uncovered and completely naked.
Ricki could hardly believe what she was seeing.
But it was clear to her from jump that this woman was no casual girlfriend no matter how Vince tried to spin it (if he tried at all). But this chick had to have some serious balls to be this bold. Or was this how Vince rolled?
“Vincent, darling,” she said with a grand smile on her face when she saw him enter that bedroom. “I knew you’d eventually come home.”
“What are you doing here, Cecily?”
“What do you think? I came to see you,” she said. But her eyes, like the eyes of that butler downstairs, immediately looked past Vince and fixated on Ricki. “Who’s that?”
“Get out of this bed,” Vince said to the woman he called Cecily, “and get out of my house. You know better than this!”
“Better than what?” she asked. “A girlfriend can’t visit her boyfriend’s home all of sudden?”
“You’re not my girlfriend and you know it!”
“That’s news to me,” she said firmly.
But when she said those words, something snapped inside of Vince.
It was as if seeing Cecily claim ownership of him, even if it was nothing more than a lust relationship, would expose the kind of man he truly was.
Which, he knew, wasn’t the kind of man Ricki needed.
He hurried to her side, grabbed her by her long arms, and snatched her out of his bed.
“What are you doing?” she cried out as he grabbed her. “Stop treating me like this.” Then she added: “You told me to come!”
When Cecily said those words, it seemed to remind Vince that she wasn’t lying.
He always had a woman come spend time with him whenever he was at his home in Connecticut.
Or in DC too for that matter. Although all the drama with Ricki had taken him out of his routine, Cecily reminded him just that quickly that she was an invited guest. He told her to come up and spend a few days with him. He told her that before he left DC.
He rubbed his forehead. He knew he should have apologized to her for treating her so harshly, but she knew that wasn’t his style either. “Just get dressed,” he said to her with an exhausted voice. “Go back to DC.”
Cecily was hurt, Ricki could tell. “You’re throwing me out of a house you invited me to come into because of her? How dare you treat me this way!”
But Vince was confused. “What?” How would she know about Ricki? “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about that floozie behind you!”
Vince quickly turned around. And that was when he saw that Ricki had followed him up those stairs and into that bedroom. He was so filled with rage that he hadn’t even considered the possibility that she’d want to see for herself what was going on.
But when he saw that look in her eyes, as if any hope she might have had of them ever getting together on a more permanent basis was squashed forever, his heart dropped. “Rasheda,” he said with desperation in his voice.
But Ricki didn’t want to hear it. “You don’t have to leave on my account,” she said to the woman. “I’m out.” And she hurried out of that bedroom.
“I’m out, she says like she’s some rockstar. Who does she think she is?”
Vince looked at Cecily with anger in his eyes. “Get dressed and get out!” he said to her and then hurried out behind Ricki. “Rasheda?” he yelled out as he hurried. “Ricki!”
But she was already rushing down the stairs.
She was just that nimble and fast. Vince had to nearly racetrack run to get down those stairs and toward that front door before Ricki could hurry out of it.
He made it down the stairs and across the foyer just as she had flung that door wide open to leave.
He slammed it back shut. “She’s not my girlfriend,” he said as quickly as he could say it to her.
Ricki turned and looked at him. Their bodies were less than an inch apart. She had turned to tell him she didn’t care. It had nothing to do with her. She was so over this drama!
But as soon as her big brown eyes looked into his big green eyes, she knew that wasn’t true at all. She did care. It had everything to do with her. “What is she to you then?” she asked him.
Vince stared into Ricki’s eyes. What was he doing?
If he cared at all for this girl he would let her walk on out that door and have Baines drive her back to Milton to be with her family.
He was too old and too entrenched in his ways to be of any good for her.
He was a man who liked variety, and always had, when he knew she wanted nothing to do with a man like him with his varied tastes and needs. She was far better off without him.
But then why couldn’t he just let her go? Why was he so insistent on making her stay? “She’s an acquaintance of mine,” he said to her.
“What kind of acquaintance?” she said to him. “A sex acquaintance?”
Vince hated to admit it. But it was the truth. “Yes.”
“One of many I’m sure.”
Vince hated to admit that too. But it was the truth. “Yes.”
Ricki should have felt repulsion towards him. He was everything she hated in a man. But then why was she still standing there? Why hadn’t she just walked on out on his trifling ass?
Upstairs, Cecily had dressed and was standing at the rail on the second-floor landing looking down at them.
When Vince said she was just a sex acquaintance, her heart fell.
He’d told her as much himself. He never pretended that she would ever be anything but an easy lay for him.
But that wasn’t how she felt about it. And it broke her heart.
“What kind of man,” Ricki said, “would use women just for their bodies? How could you be that kind of man, Vince?”
Although she spoke the truth, it was a terrible thing to hear from her.
He felt so exposed that it angered him. “Who do you think you’re talking to like that?
” He had heat in his voice. “You ask me how can I be that kind of man as if I’m the lowest thing moving.
Well what kind of man do you expect me to be, Rasheda?
I’m not the only user. Every woman I’ve ever known has used me for what they can get out of me too.
This shit isn’t one-sided. They know exactly what they’re getting from me.
Just like you know exactly what you’re getting from me. ”
Ricki frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean? I never asked your ass to help me!”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“Then what the fuck are you talking about? What am I getting from you that you didn’t voluntarily give to me? Because here’s your money right here,” she began reaching into her purse.
“That’s not what I meant, Ricki.”
“That’s what you said!” He could tell she was devastated.
“I never asked you for one red dime,” she said as she grabbed a wad of that money and threw it in his face.
“I only asked for a ride to Milton. That’s all I ever asked from you.
And you have the nerve to claim I’m using you too?
Fuck you!” she said so angrily that she thought her very soul trembled. It hurt just that much.
And then she opened that door again and hurried out of it.
But to the shock of Baines, who stood afar off, and even Cecily on the landing, Vince hurried out of that door and grabbed her before she could get across the porch. “Ricki, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it that way at all. I know you aren’t using me.”
Tears were in her eyes as she looked at him. “Then why did you say that to me?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “I didn’t mean it.”
But she fought against it, and pulled away from him. Tears were streaming down her beautiful, expressive face. “I can’t take any more heartaches. I can’t take it, Vince.”
“You won’t have to,” he said, pulling her back into his arms. “You won’t have to.”
But when she continued to fight against him, he broke down. “Please don’t go,” he begged.
And those three words had never been spoken by him to another human being ever before. It shocked even him.
Ricki was shocked too. She knew he was not the kind of man to beg anybody for anything. But he had begged her. She heard the emotion behind those words. She felt the agony it took for him to say those words. It might have been an act, but it worked. She needed it to work.
She fell into his arms and hugged him too.
They stood there for several minutes. Cecily, who had come downstairs, stood at the door staring at them. “How cute,” she said, breaking up their moment. Although, in truth, she wished to God it had been her he had begged.
Ricki pulled away from Vince, and they both looked at Cecily.
“You would give up all of this,” Cecily said as she swept her hand down her lithe body, “for that? How is this person going to fit into your world? She has no culture. She has no background nor breeding. She’s young and you don’t even like’em young.
All she has going for her is a pretty face and an okay body just like a million other girls in our circles.
But at least they’re in our class. This witch looks like she just came up from the mud. ”
Then Cecily attempted to look angry, although Ricki saw the pain behind that anger. “You can have him,” she said as she brushed past Ricki and then pushed her so hard it caused Ricki to stumble.
Before Vince could grab Cecily and make her apologize, Ricki took matters into her own hand.
Because as soon as Cecily had pushed her and attempted to just walk away like she was pushing trash, Ricki pushed her right back.
Only she pushed her so hard that Cecily lost her footing in her stiletto heels, stumbled sideways, and then fell on her butt.
“Push me again, bitch!” Ricki yelled out over her.
It was Ricki that Vince had to pull away from Cecily.
Then Cecily reached out her hand to Vince, and Vince reluctantly pulled her back on her feet.
“This will be the last time you snap your fingers and I come running,” Cecily said to him. “The last time!”
And then she headed toward the guest house garage where she always parked her rental car whenever she was summoned to Connecticut or Mali or Beverly Hills or wherever Vince wanted her to come and sleep with him.
Because even she knew he wasn’t lying: That was all they did whenever they were together.
They waited until she came tearing out of that garage in her rental car to make her way back to the airfield where her private plane was waiting to fly her back to DC.
She could do so much better than him and she knew it.
And she was tired of letting him dictate her life as if he was one day going to see in her what she saw in him. She was done.
When she left, barely missing Vince’s Bentley, he looked at Ricki. “This has been an exhausting night. Why don’t we call it a night? Get some sleep.”
“Where?” asked Ricki.
“In my bed. Where else?”
“I’m not sleeping in that bed!”
“What bed?” Then Vince realized she meant the bed in which Cecily had been lying naked. He smiled. “That’s not my bedroom, Ricki. Nobody has ever slept in my bedroom but me.” Then he pulled her into his arms. “And your mean ass,” he added, and slapped her ass.
She didn’t smile. She was still coming down from the sight of Cecily Lang. But she did wrap her arms around him again.
It was so touching to him that his heartbeat quickened as he continued to hold her, late that chilly night, on his now quiet front porch.