Chapter Four
~Mahogany~
A few feet from Majestic’s room, Dr. Blane walked out of another patient’s as I was placing an order with Tommy for chicken broth in the largest container that could be found in the store, a cheeseburger, and fries. He was so damn excited about Majestic’s health taking a turn for the better, I was smiling, Chance grimacing in my side view.
When was the last time he smiled? I would ask him, but he probably wouldn’t tell me. I’d experienced what happens when Chance doesn’t want to talk about something. His idea of the cold shoulder changes worlds. Mine had gone through enough changes lately.
“Chance, what do you want to eat?” That question should be a safe one.
“A well-done steak, coleslaw, loaded baked potato, and water. I’ll fill in Dr. Blane while you order for me.”
They begin to chat quietly outside Majestic’s door, Chance twining his fingers a little tighter around mine as if he was sure I’d run away given half the chance. I would. His touch was blistering my skin, doing weird things to my stomach. It felt like old times when he was mine and loved to hold hands and I was lucky to be his.
“So he’s still here, huh?” Tommy inquired dryly, dragging me back to the here and now. “Bring him by here. I’d like to meet him.”
“That’s good, Tommy, because he definitely wants to meet you, and make you understand his side of the story so you don’t spit in his food.”
“Spit in his food? Please! I’d put my foot up his ass first for letting Majestic go two years without him. On second thought, no I won’t. I just avoided going to jail for hitting people, not trying to find more reasons to go or lose my business for spitting.”
After what I’d just heard about Tommy and his fists of fury, he’d definitely try putting his furious foot up Chance’s ass. Chance wasn’t going to stand by and just let him do it though. I wanted no parts of this meeting at all.
“Be civil for me, Tommy. Just let him say what he has to say. He’ll be gone in a few days… I think.”
Chance’s hand clenched even tighter around mine. He was eavesdropping for sure and listening to Dr. Blane, who was excited himself and dropping medical terms like they were names of celebrities. I didn’t recognize a single one. Chance seemed to understand him though. Yep, I was doing my own eavesdropping, speculating on how he could understand a thing Dr. Blane said.
Tommy snorted into the line. “I can only promise to be half civil to your baby daddy.”
“That’s more than usual for you, boss, so I’ll take it. See you in about forty minutes and hopefully, I’ll be back to work in about a week if Majestic comes home.”
“Stop worrying about your job, Mahogany. Plus, if I fired you, I’d have to deal with Kat, and there’s too many things here that can be turned into projectiles for her when she’s mad. You don’t ever want to make her mad. She’s like a vicious dwarf, and my man parts are in easy striking distance. I just got one question for you though.”
I knew it was time to be the butt of one of his jokes, a daily occurrence and his way of paying me back for not being a model employee.
I puffed air out. “Go ahead and get me while you can.”
“Who’s babysitting Majestic when you come back? I’m not doing it. She’s probably extra hungry after being in the hospital for a week and cannibalistic right now. With all this succulent, dark meat I got, she’d mistake me for chocolate and bite my ass for sure. Then I’m suing you, and you know you don’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. Make your baby demon keep her teeth to herself, Mahogany.”
Unable to help myself, I cracked up laughing. Majestic would chew on a car if her teeth were bothering her enough. Her back molars were coming in slowly and she was definitely going to bite someone. Chance gave me a strange look, which gave me an idea.
“You know you could sue Chance, Tommy. He’s rich and I’ll probably have to bring Majestic to work with me. Mrs. Kindleton is still laid up with a broken hip.” The retired school teacher was sixty-years-old, lived across the street alone, and the only one that Majestic didn’t give hell… that I knew of.
Tommy hummed into the line. “I forgot about your baby daddy’s rich ass. In that case, bring her with you then… whenever you come back. I can handle about four of Majestic’s teeth in me. Should be enough to get me forty acres and a mule. Damn, I’ll have to share that with Kat, and she’s going to give me the ass end of the mule to clean up after. Why am I getting married again?”
“Because she’s the only one who can put up with your craziness, and Kat’s the love of your life. If you know like I know, you’d hold on tight and never let her go again.”
What would have happened if Chance had never let me go? If I thought he’d step up when Majestic made her presence known inside my womb, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere, still holding on to him, but I no longer had the right to. The longer he was around, the easier it was to recall the good things about him, like how he could be leaned on and how easy it was to be with him every day. To hurt when he was gone.
“I didn’t sign up to share my shit with Kat though, Mahogany. This is going to be one long ass engagement. When I don’t have anything but a pot to piss in and a window to throw it out of, then I’ll marry her. I’ll know if she really loves me then.”
“Stop lying, Tommy. You’ve been holding on to an eight-carat, illegal blood diamond for ten years just to put it on her finger. Your niece Astrid hasn’t arrested you for having that ring yet?”
“Did Malisa tell you that shit? I swear to God if that lie gets around town, and the FBI knocks on my door, everybody that spread the rumor is going down for a crime they didn’t commit too, including my niece Malisa! What happened to blood protecting blood even if you’re in the wrong?”
Covering my mouth to contain the giggles coming from it, I knew I’d stirred him up as I usually do as repayment for cracking jokes on me, and it was time to get off the phone. “Bye, Tommy. See you in a bit.”
“Bye, Mahogany. Give Majestic our love from the crew.”
“I will.” I hung up, snickering to myself, noticing Chance watching me closely and Dr. Blane gone.
“Ready?” he asked with a quizzical look on his face.
“Yeah. What did Dr. Blane say?”
He led me to the side of Majestic’s bed where she was already napping. “Majestic’s white blood cell count has gone down some more. He’s going to give her another transfusion tonight, and expects her to be stabilized enough to go home day after tomorrow. Getting the broth for her is better for her system. She’s been sick a long time and he didn’t want to push our luck with her stomach lining not being as thick as it should be after the chemo treatments and being tube fed for three days. Her keeping the chocolate down was a fluke in her condition, but her cancer is losing the fight, Mahogany. She’s headed into remission already.”
My emotions swelled up, making my eyeballs and nose burn. I shut my eyes to work on closing the barrier between my feelings and I again. Chance released my hand to wrap his arms around me. It didn’t occur me to not collapse against him, letting him take my physical and emotional weight, to revel in being comforted by him. I didn’t need comforting though, I was thrilled he was close, wanted to shout Majestic’s victory to anyone that would listen... and I was taking advantage of Chance. He was built like a rock, immovable and steady, what I’ve longed for since we broke up, especially during Majestic’s illness. Being too terrified of what he’d do if I asked for his support, I endured alone.
Don’t get used to him being here now either. He’s got another life that he’s going back to. That’s right, this rock had feet and I should continue standing on my own two. Stepping back from him was one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do, which I didn’t do until I was calm again and had stolen some of his allure by breathing it in. It nearly choked me with how good it felt to be in his arms again. Everything regarding him was difficult. Yet, I’d missed his touch.
“Thank you,” I murmured to his chest.
“I think I like you saying thank you to me all the time.”
Then, he smiled before quickly replacing it with a cold mask. I wanted that grin back instantly. It was like the sun bursting through the clouds after a month of rain that anybody would be sick of, revving up the wants and needs of a woman that hadn’t been satisfied sexually in a very long time. Bad Mahogany for wanting him. I whirled around to Majestic, bending to kiss her cheek.
“I’ll be back before you wake up, baby girl,” I vowed before following him out, after he’d taken his turn promising to return.
In the elevator, we stood side by side. In my peripheral, Chance glanced down, getting an eyeful of the messy ponytail on top of my head. Putting my big girl panties on, I turned to face him. “You can tell me off now, Chance. There’s no one in here to hear you and I don’t want to have this conversation in front of Majestic.”
He knotted his fingers behind his back and looked up at the floor numbers lighting up above our heads as we passed floors on our way to the ground. “I need your address, Mahogany.”
“What? That’s it?”
“For now,” he replied in a monotone.
The air thickened with tension and crackled between us with electricity. I wished he’d just hit me with his angry thoughts already and get it over with it instead of letting them fester inside him. Yes, I was dead wrong for not telling him about my pregnancy, but I was convinced I’d done the right thing for everyone and would defend my actions to the death.
“Just say what you’re feeling, Chance.”
“In time.” When he did, he’d blindside me and knock me for a loop.
I started putting up guards around my feelings right then, praying the shields were strong enough to withstand whatever he said whenever he got around to it. The elevator came to a smooth stop. After coughing up my address on the way to his car, I sat perfectly still in on the passenger side, hoping he’d forget I was even there, dreading the ‘talk’ he kept mentioning then putting off. Torturing me.
Arriving on my street, I became a little ashamed about where I lived. It was a crime and drug free area, but I didn’t reside on the side of the street with homes owned by mostly middle-class families. Chance’s GPS system advised him that he’d reached his destination in front of one of several tiny, cinderblock duplexes that I’ve rented since I came back to Colorado.
I scrambled out of the car with my purse and keys in hands. “Be right back.”
At my front door, I heard a car door open then slam shut. “Chance, I’ll be right out. No need to come in.”
When I unlocked the deadbolt, he was right behind me. No such thing in getting him to do what he didn’t want to do, so I let us both into the small living area. The air was a little stale from the place being closed up so much. The furniture, here when I moved in, consisted of a ribbed-cloth, green couch and armchair that had seen better days. The tan carpet was vacuumed but in the same condition as the chairs. I squared it with the landlord to dump the oak coffee and end tables that were a part of the furnishings, the wood splintering and a danger to a child. I didn’t bother with replacing them. Money was tight and each year, the prices for things Majestic needed rose.
The other three rooms also had the bare necessities in them. Where I should’ve bolted straight ahead for the tiny hallway with the bathroom and single bedroom, I watched Chance for his reaction. He veered left toward the kitchen even smaller than the first room, stopped in the doorway between the rooms where he gripped the wall. Wasn’t going to find anything interesting in there but a two-chair table, old-fashion appliances and outdated cabinetry. In the far corner behind shuttered doors was a washer and dryer. When he finally had his fill of taking everything in, he shook his head and gazed at me.
“Are you judging my home, Chance?”
A rhetorical question because I knew that’s exactly what he was doing from the expression on his face, as if there wasn’t one good aspect about my space. And there wasn’t any when comparing my apartment to his penthouse.
“I am judging it, Mahogany. Your place is clean, but far from the best you lived in with me. You both could live better than this.”
He had the nerve to criticize where I take care of my daughter when he didn’t even want her? I almost went rabid on the man, and yes, I would have surely taken a page out of Majestic’s book and bit his ass. I settled for pointing a finger at him instead with my jaw compressed so tight it ached.
“Taking care of her was getting you here to give her stem cells, Chance. Taking care of her was putting aside my own wants and needs to give her everything she needs. Taking care of her meant owning up to my responsibilities after I’d done the deed that made her existence a reality even when I tried to prevent it. You taking care of her stopped at my first sentence because you never wanted her, so I didn’t make you take care of her. I’ve lived in pretty surroundings before and the people who owned them were unable to be counted on when it mattered the most. So fuck you and your penthouse and the Jefferson’s and their house. And you don’t get to come in here and tell me that I’m an unfit mother. You wouldn’t even know she was alive if I hadn’t told you. I bet you wished it would’ve stayed that way too. Well, it can. All you have to do is leave and don’t. Come. Back.” Oh, the things we say when we were angry usually aren’t the things we mean but can’t take back, and I certainly didn’t mean that last part.
His nostrils flared, eye sockets stretched wide, good and riled up now. Well, so was I.
“You’re right I didn’t ask for her to be here, Mahogany, because I would’ve given anything for her not to be suffering, but never did I want to be an absentee father.”
I was inclined to think that he’d like to have prevented his child growing up in a four-room apartment that was sparsely furnished, too. The upside to that is Mahogany has plenty of space to move around without hurting herself on sharp corners and pulling expensive knickknacks down on her head that are in his apartment. Screw him if he couldn’t see that. And screw him because his place was nice and he could stretch me out in any room and then screw my brains out until I screamed his name and begged him to stop making me come.
Where in the hell did that come from, Mahogany? Stay on topic even in your head, ole girl.
“Well, you are an absentee father and I’m sorry that life gave you a blow that your small mind can’t handle, baby daddy. As for the rest of us, we find ways to deal with what life throws at us like surprise pregnancies. This apartment, clean and a roof over your child’s head, is my way of dealing until I can do better. I’m sorry you can’t deal at all.
“First, I didn’t call you an unfit mother. Second, no, I don’t like your apartment. Third, do you want to know why I really didn’t want kids, Mahogany?”
Yep.
“Chance, nobody likes this apartment. It is what it is; a functional, affordable space for a working single-mother or college student. That’s what the rest of the apartments are filled up with. I happen to be both. No, you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want me to know unless it concerns Majestic’s health.” Liar.
I may have been lying to myself, but I was feeling petty. When I needed him to tell me everything, he didn’t, so he could keep his deepest feelings to himself. Plus, talking to him now was bringing up good memories at a bad time. I wanted them to stop. He had to go.
“You need to leave, Chance. Your job here is done.”
His shoes became very interesting to him. “The time for me leaving passed the minute you called me here, and you’re going to listen to me anyway. I’ve been in the same bed, suffering through the same thing that Majestic is. I didn’t want my children to inherit the genetic defects that comes with my blood type and my genes. Leukemia for starters.”
I gasped, taken aback. “You had cancer? Knew your children could possibly carry it and you didn’t tell me?” Suddenly, I was enraged and sympathetic to his past suffering at the same time, but my anger wanted to be vented the most, so I let it loose. “Don’t you think if I had known what any child of yours would go through with a blood type so rare that only someone with the hh blood type can give them blood, that I’d have understood your stance on bringing kids into the world and considered you have every right to feel the way you do? You could have warned me of everything that your children could go through, but you didn’t! That makes you a rat bastard and even more undeserving of Majestic than you already were!”
Chance grew blurry. Again, I was realizing too late that I was crying, falling apart again. Hoping that would stop once he gave my baby her only chance to live must’ve been like wishing on a star. What had I done to my child just by having her? What all had Chance gone through in his lifetime?
He lifted his tired eyes to mine. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want your pity, or for you to be disappointed in me when I told you that I couldn’t, wouldn’t give you kids. That I was cursed,” he whispered gutturally. “Could make kids, wanted them, but they probably wouldn’t survive one illness or another all because of me. There was no need for you to know that when we had getting pregnant nipped in the bud… to keep me from becoming a killer.”
“A killer? Is that what you think you are?” He rattled me with that statement.
“I know that’s what I am, Mahogany. I’m the reason Majestic nearly died.”
I thought he would blame me for that, but nope, he was blaming himself.