Chapter 16
The food for Ernie’s seventy-seventh birthday party was prepped and stowed away in the fridge.
The kitchen was clean, dinner was already on the stove keeping warm and every dime she spent today was deposited back into the account Erys gave her access to with a text message to confirm.
Any other woman in her position or looking from the outside in would be screaming at her about her disposition.
Remedy knew better than she knew anything else that a man with that much money, this much access he could give and he could take away.
The chime of the security system alerted her to the Moore men returning. Like she was programmed to fulfill a duty, she unglued herself from the spot in front of the window and moved toward the garage door. She plastered a faux smile that warred against the weight on her shoulders.
“Rem! I had a time. Cart girls in short skirts, betting every muhfuckas ass on the course. Some stuck up nigga who had a lot of shit to say is out of a whole band, you know why?” Ernie asked as he tiredly strode past her.
“Because you’re Sweet Lick Ernie?” Remedy retorted.
“You muhfuckin’ right I am,” Ernie spoke, his cane thrown over his shoulder as he pimp walked up the stairs.
“Ernie, you know you like to stumble,” Remedy huffed, ignoring that Erys was walking in and following Ernie up the stairs. “Did you drink something?”
“Nah, your boyfriend still got a little bit of a dick up the ass and wouldn’t let me have no good shit. He was givin’ me some bitch shit,” Ernie complained, strolling into his room and plopping down in his arm chair.
“Mocktails?” Remedy asked, squatting in front of him to take his shoes off.
“Yeah, that. Bitch shit,” Ernie grumbled with a yawn. “You made dinner?”
“I did. May’s baked chicken. You ate?”
“I figured if he was going to give me some bitch shit to drink, I was going to have me a nigga steak,” Ernie shared making Remedy laugh. “Make him put it away, I’ll eat it.”
“I know you will. Don’t worry too much about it. Let’s get in the shower so you can sleep good,” Remedy spoke as she stood and reached for his hand. “Any idea what you’re wearing tomorrow?”
“Not yet but I’ll figure it out in the morning. You got my hoes?” Ernie questioned.
Remedy nodded.
“You the best bottom bitch a nigga could ask for, Cherie,” Ernie grumbled, shuffling into the bathroom behind her.
After finishing their nightly routine, she curled up in his arm chair and waited until he was sound asleep before kissing his forehead and tip toeing out of his room. As if Ernie were a toddler, she left his door ajar before wandering back down the stairs.
Erys was in the kitchen, a plate in each hand and void of his golf clothes. A white t-shirt stretched over his muscular chest, fresh haircut and freshly-manicured goatee, gray sweatpants hanging low on his hips. Her eyes lingered over him. Bittersweet recalls of the night before.
“Come eat,” he softly directed.
“I’m not hungry,” she stated. Her mind was too bogged down with everything to think about eating. This was how she’d gotten this small.
“I know you’re hungry because there was no food charge on the card and there’s no way you could cook this meal and not want to eat. So come on,” Erys commented and started out toward the patio.
Remedy followed him, finding a bottle of wine on the table he’d set while she was upstairs with Ernie. “You’re not as undomesticated as I thought you were.”
“Yeah and your mean ass can cook. I just knew the man was lying,” Erys teased. “I like your hair.”
Remedy barely smiled. “I’d like to keep it like this.”
“I can’t promise that. I can promise to keep it done,” Erys said, sitting down across from her. Remedy tried to hide the dis-ease in her spirit but he caught it. “You good?”
She chose the safest answer. The safest way to keep her from having to open and expose herself to him. “I’ve been thinking that what happened last night shouldn’t happen again. I don’t need access to your money… that never turns out well.”
Erys delayed eating his food to tune into what she was saying. “Tell me how it turns out. I’m new at this.”
Remedy looked past him, across the lake to the set up lights that haunted her. She barely blinked, a set of tears falling from her eyes she didn’t even realize had formed. Just anguishing memories of everything she endured for the name of love.
Erys looked over his shoulder in the direction that her terrified eyes were focused in. He’d seen a lot – heard a lot – but her tears and the haunted look in her eyes unlocked something new in him. Protection. He rounded the table and repositioned her seat before taking another seat.
“Talk to me. What’s this? What’s that?” he quizzed, wiping her cheeks free of the tears.
The gesture so simple and only one person in her life had ever validated her feelings.
Remedy licked her lips and sighed. “I was always the black sheep of my family. Too loud, too mean, too much. The youngest and my parents couldn’t stand me.
I guess it was because I wasn’t like my brother or sister.
I didn’t conform easily. When it finally clicked in my head that I wasn’t going to be loved like they love them unless I stuffed myself into a box, I stopped fighting it. I conformed.”
Remedy closed her eyes to steady herself. “I did what they wanted. I acted the way they wanted me to. I dated who they told me to. Whatever I had to do for them to love me, I did it. God knows how badly I wanted them to see me.”
Every tear that fell, Erys wiped. Although her eyes were closed, she could feel his eyes on her. They were filled with the intensity of a man who’d been locked in with his woman; a man that wanted nothing more than to make sure all she had and all that came to her was softness.
“I wanted to study fashion merchandising in school. Saying that in a family of doctors was like telling them you didn’t believe in science. Crazy but it didn’t matter. So I dropped that dream and went to school for nursing.”
Erys grunted. “That’s why you’re so good with Pops.”
“Yeah. If you were going to be in that family, you had to be the best. But being just a nurse wasn’t good enough.
I needed to get married too. No input from me.
No regard for if I loved him or not. Or if he even remotely liked me.
It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I stopped being an embarrassment.
It was a mind fuck. I’ll never forget that I bucked against the proposal, told my grandmother and they swore she was crazy and had her put under a conservatorship.
She couldn’t see me without permission. I couldn’t see her without permission.
So the one person I had throughout my whole life who saw me, was stripped from me.
“So I behaved. I planned the wedding. I covered the bruises from being beat every time something went wrong in his life. I showed up to the galas. I smiled. I played the role of future wife to ADA Paul Chisom. I did everything right until I didn’t.
I lost myself in that box and I was so desperate to have something.
Even if it were so small. I just wanted something.
I remember it with every breath, every second of the day…”
Remedy was now in full-blown tears, gasping for air as she talked. Her eyes were still clenched closed and Erys didn’t stop her, he just held space for her to break.
“I’d been working so hard at the hospital, I got a promotion.
God, I was so excited because I was validated.
Someone saw me and saw my value. I booked a reservation for dinner, had my family in one spot so I could say hey guys look at me…
I did something right. I deserve this last name.
I deserve this space. I’d been carrying this agonizing pain of being a Worthy, and never ever feeling that.
I just knew that night, in that moment, I would have finally earned it.
No. When I told them you would have thought I told them that I cheated on Paul.
That the wedding was off and I was running away.
They were so mad at me for being who I’ve always been and I just couldn’t get it. ”
Remedy’s eyes were open now, her vision was clouded by tears and the break she needed was happening and there was no turning back now.
“Dinner ended early, the food was boxed up because no one wanted to eat anything I ordered. And I was standing there at the valet of this private restaurant holding all of these bags of food and he looked at me and said, “who the fuck told you to do that shit? Do you know who I am?” My smart mouth did what it always does and I told him I didn’t care who he was.
I deserved that promotion and I was going to accept it and I wasn’t quitting.
He hit me so hard…so hard that I fell out of my shoes.
He hit me in front of my mother, sister, brother, and my father and they did nothing.
They said nothing. They stepped over me like I was nothing.
That day proved what I knew. What I fought from being true.
They never loved me. They never fucking wanted me.
He beat my ass so bad that night. I had had enough.
I was tired of being beat on. I was tired of being berated.
I was so fucking tired and it was going to be him or me.
All I can remember is taking the knife off the block and stabbing him. I just wanted it to stop.
You would think when the cops came, because of all the commotion, someone would see I was the victim.
That I was protecting myself. No. What they saw was a man with a long family history of serving Waynesville, laid out on the floor in a pool of blood and a knife in my hand.
I was charged with attempted murder and felony assault.
Even with bruises and marks all over my body, I was sentenced to six and a half years because I never said anything, so clearly I loved the lifestyle he provided.
I lost my nursing license. No lawyer would represent me, so I was stuck with a public defender who was in over their head.
I went to prison – no money on my books, no access to my accounts.
No trust. They’d effectively gotten rid of me.
I came home a year ago on probation. I got my grandmother’s house because they thought it was useless.
I had maybe forty thousand dollars to my name before I went in, and zero when I came out.
That house across the lake is theirs. And every time I look over there, I am reminded that I am not enough.
You say you want me, there’s no way you can after knowing that. ”
Remedy stood, attempting to walk away but was stopped. “Erys, please.”
“No,” he softly spoke, pulling her down into his lap. “No one has held you. You deserve to be held. You deserve to be seen and you got to know you’re more than enough.”
Remedy came apart. She was safe to sob and not be ridiculed about it. Erys held her as the mixture of tears and snot wet his tee. He comforted her but the most important thing was he let her have what she needed. They sat and clung to each other until her sobs were whimpers.
“I’m sorry,” she spoke just above a whisper.”
“Don’t apologize. Just tell me what you need and I’ll do it.”
“I don’t know what to ask for,” she spoke with a sniffle.
“You do. Tell me.”
“Don’t stop holding me,” she sniffled.
“What else?”
“I don’t want to sleep alone.”
He kissed the top of her head and nodded. “It’s done. But I need you to eat.”
Remedy groaned, finding comfort in his hold.
“You’re trying to get force fed?” he asked with a soft laugh.
“Can’t threaten me and not follow up on it,” Remedy replied. Erys reached for her plate and tapped her hip, signaling her to accept the forkful. After she was fed, face cleaned and the remainder of the food put away, Remedy was chest to chest with Erys. “You sure this is what you want?”
“Wanted you since you slapped the shit out of me. I’ll show you. Aight?”
“Okay,” she conceded, snuggling into his arms. “If Ernie gets up, wake me up.”
“I got him. You sleep.”