~ Twenty-Three ~
Somewhere out there was a graveyard, and it was filled with the remains of relationships that had been done in by a single, ill-timed text message.
Sam hadn’t yelled or screamed when she presented him with his phone.
‘What’s this mean?’ she asked. She was sitting up on the edge of their bed, and her voice was eerily calm.
Looking down and reading it, Colt’s first reaction was exasperation. He got an average of ten text messages from Janelle a week. Most were innocuous, like she was yanking his chain, reminding him that she was out there, and less apt to recall being ‘taken advantage of’ if he bantered meaninglessly with her every once in a while. So, he did.
Mostly, her messages were about her workout regimen, her social life, occasionally tinged with flirtation or invitation. She didn’t really expect him to bite, but she dangled the offers out there anyway, and Colt made half-assed excuses. He had even begun to view her as the equivalent of a dog barking from behind a fence. An unlikely threat, so long as it remained contained.
But as he told Sam why Janelle continued to text, it dawned on him that he would also have to explain why he continued to respond. And that explanation required a confession. So, he bit the bullet and gave her one. He told her everything.
‘You … slept with her?’ Sam asked, again with the same calm. ‘After we almost …’
‘Yeah, but … We hadn’t really done anything yet, you and me. We were …’
She was looking at him intently, like she was trying to read the eyes of a stranger and figure out whether they were trustworthy or not.
‘We hadn’t really done anything yet?’
Her tone had changed. Now she sounded incredulous, and her eyes were glittery with the beginnings of unshed tears.
‘I mean …’
‘That you hadn’t actually put your penis inside my vagina,’ she said, nodding. ‘Right? Close. But no cigar?’
‘Sam.’
‘Colton,’ she said, simply, her eyes never leaving his. ‘You are exactly the same.’
And that was when the tears fell.
Reaching behind her somewhere, she produced her own cellphone.
‘I got a text message too,’ she said. ‘I want you to read it.’
Hesitating, and unsure that he wanted to know what was on her phone, Colt finally took it from her, and when she opened it, he read an exchange from a number that didn’t have a name attached to it.
At first, the flirtatious tone irritated him, and then he got to the end, where Sam shut ol’ boy down. Nicely, but she still shut him down, and made it clear that she was spoken for.
Colt handed her back the phone, and swallowed, ashamed.
Sam shrugged. ‘Now you know all my secrets,’ she said, her voice sad.
Sighing, she pushed herself up from the bed and went into the bathroom, shutting and then locking the door.
He waited a while, and when he didn’t hear water, or the sound of flushing, Colt realized she was in there solely to get away from him and would probably stay there for some time. So, he went running, hoping it would give her the space and time she needed, and that when he got back, they could talk.
He almost felt good, because now Janelle was no longer like an anvil hanging over his head. He and Sam would be fine. They always were.
But when he got home, her car was gone, along with a fair amount of her clothes.
“Yes, she’s still here, and no, you cannot come over to my house,” Leah said. “I’ll get my husband to shoot your ass if you do.”
“Leah, I’m not playin’. Put her on the damn phone,” Colt said.
“What about ‘she doesn’t want to talk to you’ do you not understand, Colton?”
“I don’t believe she said that.”
“She’s my sister. She doesn’t need to say everything for me to know what she wants.”
“You are such a …”
“Say it,” Leah dared him. “Sam would be … ooh! I wish you’d say it. You would be dead to her if you called me a bitch, Colton. Believe that.”
Colt pursed his lips and took a deep, silent breath. It had been seven days. And nothing. That wasn’t ‘thinking-it-over’ time. That was ‘it’s-over’ time.
“By the way,” Leah’s voice was almost sweet, as she relished each word. “She doesn’t know it, but I blocked your number on her phone. She doesn’t need all that. Not right now.”
Leah hung up on him and Colt leaned back into the sofa, fuming and considering his options. He could go to Sam’s job, meet her outside when she was going in for the day, or leaving.
He could swing by Leah’s anyway, because he knew her husband wouldn’t shoot him even if his crazy-ass wife told him to.
Or, he could go to Ma Maxine’s later, when Sam was sure to make an appearance for dinner.
The option most likely to bear fruit would be going to her job. But that might make her even more angry. She took her work seriously, especially now that she was lobbying. Having him show up would throw her off her game. She might cry, or something. And then she would blame him for making her the subject of gossip in her workplace.
But calling her at work; that he could do. If she didn’t want to take the call she wouldn’t.
Reaching for his phone again, Colt scrolled through to find another number and dialed it.
Drew answered with a grunt. “‘Sup?”
“Let’s go push some weights, man.”
“Bet. Meet you over there.”
Within an hour, Colt was at the Sports Club, doing a full weight circuit with Drew, working himself to the brink, and only letting up when he felt his muscles burning and trembling. He grunted and yelled with each heavy weight he lifted, dropping them with a loud clang, and breathing hard with his hands on his knees after each set.
After a difficult set of bent over rows, when he was gulping in air, and inhaling through his nostrils, he looked up to find Drew watching him.
“Gimme a little more weight,” Colt said.
Drew shook his head.
“Gimme a little more weight!” Colt yelled.
Around the weight room a few heads turned, and then everyone went back to minding their own business.
“Nah,” Drew said calmly. “So you can fuck up your back before pre-season? Tear a muscle, maybe?” He shook his head again.
Colt added some powder to his hands and reached for two more plates. Drew grabbed him by the arm.
“C’mon talk to me outside right quick.”
Colt shrugged him off. “I ain’ tryna … The last motherfucker I want to talk to about … anything is you.”
Drew shrugged. “You called me, bruh. And I got a feelin’ it wasn’t ‘bout pushin’ no weights.”
They sat on the wall outside the Sports Club, both of them looking out across the quiet streets. Downtown on a Sunday was a ghost-town in Washington DC. There was practically tumbleweed rolling down the streets. Few pedestrians or cars. Most of the action would be centered around the National Mall, Dupont Circle, and further in the upper northwest quadrant of the city, in Georgetown. Almost all the traffic around them—foot-traffic and cars—was related to the gym.
“What’s goin’ on?” Drew asked.
“Tell me about you and Sam,” Colt said.
“Something goin’ on with you and her?”
“Yeah,” Colt said bitterly. “She left. Almost a week ago.”
“Shit. What’d you do?”
Colt looked at Drew. “What makes you think …?”
Drew gave him a wry look and Colt was surprised to hear himself laugh.
“Yeah,” he said again. “I do be fuckin’ things up with her, don’t I? Always have.”
“And she just seems to love you more for it,” Drew said. This time, it was his turn to sound bitter.
“I don’t even know why I would tell you this,” Colt mused. “Give you an opening to …”
“Look, man. I’m not … that’s done. I loved her, and when I came back, I thought maybe …” Drew licked his lower lip and looked away into the distance. “That ain’t happening. I can’t make her love me like she loves you.”
“But you think she loves you.”
Drew shrugged. “Little bit, yeah. But a little bit ain’t enough for me. She did the right thing by turning me down that time. That’s some hard shit to come to terms with, but there it is.”
Neither man said anything for a while.
“You want to know what she was like?” Drew asked. “With me?”
Colt hesitated. Did he?
“I can tell you if you do,” Drew continued. “But at the end of the day, bruh? What matters is what she’s like with you. Ain’t no sense comparin’. She loved me once. But she’s always loved you.”
Colt didn’t speak.
Drew clapped his hand on Colt’s shoulder, so hard that it hurt. “And that, my friend, is some painful-ass shit to have to admit. So, whatever she’s puttin’ you through right now, I can only hope you’re sufferin’.”
Laughing, Colt nudged his old friend’s hand off his shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said shaking his head.
“Did you tell him that for real? That you blocked his number?”
“Put the fear of God in his heart, yeah. I give him 24 hours before he shows up at my house. He still thinks that’s where you’re staying.”
“Well, thank you. I thought for sure he would figure it out and come here right away. And he even has a key, so …”
They were lounging on the sofa in Sam’s townhouse. Her townhouse that had been vacant for the entire time that she’d lived with Colton. She hadn’t put it on the rental market like she told him she would, but left it on Airbnb, just in case.
Just in case.
Even when she thought that, she hadn’t really imagined that there would be a real reason to come back here.
“And what about the other thing?” Leah asked.
Sam looked down at the object in the center of the coffee table. As if by continuing to stare at it, the result would change. But no, positive meant positive. And if there was any doubt about it, she had three more pregnancy tests in the bathroom trash upstairs that said the same thing.
“I’m going to have to talk to him, to tell him,” Sam said shrugging.
Leah nodded. “And Maxine, too.”
“I know.” Sam covered her eyes with both hands, then abruptly uncovered them again. “This time you have to let me do it, Leah. I mean it. I swear, I will …”
“I wasn’t the one who told them last time! Those big mouth Greens beat me to it.”
Sam laughed then shook her head. “You think I’m an idiot for being in this situation, don’t you?”
Leah nodded. “You are an idiot.”
“It’s not my fault. I forgot that antibiotics could …”
“That’s why you use a condom, stupid. Not to mention, now you know he fucked that other girl …”
“I’m sure he used something with her. He would never …”
Exhaling, Leah leaned back into her chair, eyelids heavy and expression exasperated. “Still taking up for him. Even now.”
“It wasn’t like he legit-cheated. We were …”
“I know. You said.”
“And it’s true!”
“It’s true, but not,” her sister said. “I mean, that was dirty. How long was it before he was diggin’ you out raw?”
“Leah!” Sam grimaced.
“I’m jus’ sayin’ …”
“And we didn’t have sex right away. It was a while. He wanted to, I don’t know, take it slow or something.”
At that Leah looked up again, her head falling to one side. “He said that?”
“Yeah. It was so cute. He was trying to, I don’t know, court me or something. Date me. Make it different.”
“For real?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t like it,” Sam said speaking slowly. “I wanted it to be …”
“The same?” Leah finished for her.
Sam nodded. “And he wanted to tell everyone right away, and make a thing of it and get it out there. And I stopped him.”
“Wait …” Leah held up a hand. “Are you telling me that you’re the one who fucked it up?”
“I didn’t think I …”
“So, he wanted to court you. And to tell everyone, and you said no?”
“Don’t rub it in. I was …”
“Just answer the question.”
“Leah, it wasn’t that simple. I mean, he was always saying things like ‘it’s okay, don’t be scared. This is me and you,’ like nothing had changed, and we weren’t different. And then I talked to you and all of a sudden, I felt like we weren’t different enough, and that he was just so … relaxed about everything. And then he mentioned marriage and I freaked out.” Sam shook her head. “We were like a pendulum swinging back and forth … We just couldn’t figure out how to be. It was crazy.”
“Why did you even listen to me?”
“Are you serious right now?”
“Yeah. All I mean is … you never took my advice about your relationship with Colton before, so …”
“Oh my god, I can’t believe you!”
Leah actually looked chastened. And that was not an expression she was known for having.
“I’m jus’ sayin’ …” She paused and hunched her shoulders while she grimaced. “It sounds like Colton had it … handled. And you … maybe … overthought things a little bit?”
Sam covered her face again. “So what are you saying? I should …”
“No. Don’t look at me,” Leah said, shaking her head. “I think I might be better off staying out of it from now on.”
“Great. Good timing. Now that I’ve left him. Now that I’m pregnant, you’re staying out of it.”
“Well, I didn’t make you pregnant, Sam.”
They both collapsed into laughter, holding their stomachs, and trying to make themselves stop. They only managed it after several tries, and tears were streaming from their eyes. Sam’s laughter was amusement, edged with fear and a little hysteria at the thought of being pregnant; and a lot of relief now that she’d settled on the decision to call Colton.
“Our babies will grow up together,” Leah cooed, coming to sit next to her and placing a hand on her abdomen.
Sam smiled, and put a hand over her sister’s. “That part will be cool,” she admitted.
“Sam, there is no part of it that’s not cool. You’re tired, your nipples might crack, you gain more weight than your bones can comfortably bear, and afterwards your husband gets all weird and jealous about the baby he helped make … but all of it is cool.”
“My husband?” Sam snorted. “Colton and I haven’t even properly dated yet.”
Leah shrugged. “Hey. Just do you. Screw everything I ever said. Everything Maxine will say. Just … you and Colton do you.”