Chapter Fourteen
The next morning
~Christian~
After Tony dropped Foreign and I off at her place, she showered then drove off in the blue monstrosity parked outside her home. The car sounded like rumbling sex under the hood, but the vehicle was hideous cosmetically. For a moment, I thought I was a stay-at-home boyfriend seeing his girl off to work, included with a kiss at the door and marking tonight for date-night after she got off at five. Would’ve reveled in the fantasy of living in Arrow with her—or her with me in Los Angeles, as long as we were together—if my mind wasn’t occupied already.
I felt as if I was keeping Foreign in the dark, but how in the hell did I tell her that my past might be haunting and hunting us silently, without raising her doubts about whether being with me was worth all the trouble Natalia could cause? I didn’t want to worry her for nothing if Natalia stayed away, certainly didn’t want Foreign caught from the blindside either.
Running my hands backwards through my hair in front of my laptop perched on her living room table, I wished to God I had just remained a damn virgin until I found the woman meant for me. Slaking my lust wasn’t worth this shit that may or may not ruin my chances at love. I could just be overreacting to my mother’s warning, but it didn’t feel like it. Bugged me all night as a matter of fact. The secret was laying like a slab of concrete in my chest and mind.
Caught between a rock and a hard place, agonizing for hours over what to do while Foreign was blissfully ignorant, I decided it would be best to err on the side of caution and give her the heads up anyway tomorrow, so I wouldn’t ruin our date night. Hopefully, I’d smooth over whatever wrinkles developed while keeping both of my eyes on Natalia for the foreseeable future. It was better to be proactive than reactive. As easy to do as tracking her phone with…
“Oh fuck! Tracking my phone was probably how she had found me in Arrow.” Apps for that were readily available and didn’t discriminate between who they worked for.
I’d developed one myself for the market, and if one was working for Natalia, she knew where Foreign lived. If she’d track my phone and come to the resort without an invite, she’d certainly come here to catch Foreign by herself and who knows what would happen? Suddenly paranoid as hell and , I jumped to my feet while texting Tony.
Talking to Foreign about the woman who could be living on the outskirts of our lives, possibly waiting to upset our worlds, couldn’t wait. It was an hour and a half before she got off. There was every chance I was going to upset her at work, so I would stick around Tommy’s, hoping my presence was a comfort to her, and bring her home if she was too upset to drive. That was if she didn’t tell my ass to hit the road and don’t come back. She wouldn’t if there was really a God in heaven.
*********
~Foreign~
On the first break I could take before time to clock out, I stood at the cash out stand on the customers’ side with my back to the dining room, sipping water from a Styrofoam cup, chatting with Mahogany about going to the movies tonight when she wasn’t cashing out diners or gone to retrieve to-go supplies. At the moment, she was gone. I was just glad to be at a standstill after working my butt cheeks off in the kitchen from the time I got here.
The rise in temperature from ‘fuck that, it’s cold enough outside to freeze testicles’ to ‘I’ll only lose a toe from hypothermia’, brought an all-day rush of customers. More like fiends who’d been deprived of Tommy’s food for over a week. There wasn’t a moment to take a deep breath in six hours, but time had never slipped by so slowly in all my days. That was more than likely because I had been watching the clock, impatient to go home. To go to Christian.
Down to almost the last hour of my workday, I quenched my physical thirst, my emotional thirstiness for him raging out of control. Wanting to not appear as a clinger, I didn’t call him just to hear his voice, possibly bothering him while he was trying to work. Or, I’d have been calling every hour on the hour, but God, I was dying inside. Even that felt good—I knew what was waiting for me when I got home.
While imagining what all I’d do to him when I got there, a hand landed light as a butterfly between my shoulder blades then glided downward, docking in the curve where my spine turned into my ass… make that Christian’s ass. I tensed up. Somebody was trespassing. That won’t be tolerated even if I hadn’t signed all privileges and territory to my body over to my guy. Somebody was going to pay dearly.
Reacting before looking behind me, my fist was already airborne as I’d spun around only to recognize Christian too late. Eek! Momentum was about to make me hurt my man who was standing too close for me to stop the incoming punch in time. Christian angled his head away as his palm rose lightning-quick to block, then cradle my fist in his, or I would’ve busted his lip.
I was horrified. “Shit! I’m so sorry, baby.”
He chuckled, dropping my fist to tug me to him by my hips. “You’re fast, I give you that much.”
I propelled my hands through his arms to knot my fingers at the base of his spine. “Obviously, you’re faster.”
“Thank God for the decision to spar in the gym, when I can, with buddies of mine. I take it you don’t like being touched on the ass.”
“No, I don’t like anyone but you touching me without permission period. I didn’t look first though, so yeah, you almost caught a lick meant for someone else.” That earned me a grin, showcasing all his pearly white teeth.
“Remind me not to touch you from behind until I’ve made my presence known.”
“Got it.” Doing as told was not bad at all sometimes, especially if it saved a lip. “And I’m so damn glad to see you. Been thinking about you all day, but what are you—”
“Domestic!” Tommy yelled from behind me.
Oh. Shit. I glanced back at him loitering at the door of the stairwell to his office. I hadn’t had the chance to ask him for my birthday off to fly across country, but I might already have it. He had likely saw me about to assault another one of his customers. I was undoubtedly about to be fired for that again, maybe not just for the day. Double. Oh. Shit.
“Yeah, boss?” I answered meekly, without releasing Christian—no point when the likelihood that I was about to be leaving with him was great.
My boss stuffed his hands in his charcoal gray slacks’ pockets topped by a black dress shirt, then rocked back on his non-slip sneakers. “Isn’t your break over by now? And yeah, I saw you about to punch that man who’s obviously your man. But if he likes you in vicious dwarf mode, I love it as long as your puny fist isn’t flying at my face. You can go on home if you want since you couldn’t clock out to take most of your breaks today. I’m not interested in paying you overtime.”
“Pot meet kettle, I mean Tommy meet Christian,” I shot back. “My boss has forgotten that Kat is a vicious dwarf, too, and yeah, I’ll go home.” I was already clocked out anyway.
Tommy’s fiancée, Kat, was short but still taller than me, and she had no problems brandishing a butcher knife in the restaurant during business hours. At the time, she was ready to cut up Nevaeh’s ex, even after she had seen the man leave the property.
No one dared go near her, except Tommy, who walked over to formally meet Christian and extend his hand. “I don’t know how you deal with this one, but God bless you, Christian.”
I sidestepped out of their way.
Christian shrugged. “The heart wants who it wants, Tommy.” Then stretched his hand out, taking Tommy’s, before it dropped to his side, the other in the small of my back.
Tommy flinched. “Oh God, you sound like you’re in it for the long haul. You poor man. You should know she stabs people with forks too. Nearly got me sued.”
Christian burst out laughing. “The guy must’ve touched her.”
“That he did, and now, he won’t even risk touching the cashiers’ hands when paying for his food. He drops the money on the counter rudely, then hauls ass out of here. Won’t even come in when Foreign’s working. That poor man has done more illegal U-turns on my sidewalk than the cops of Arrow have written tickets for.”
“Lesson learned for him,” I remarked smugly.
Christian cracked up again, while peering down at me. “He should’ve kept his damn hands to himself.”
Tommy snickered. “Well, he does when he’s in here, that much I know, and I have to go. If Foreign’s leaving, the orders are going to back up. Nice to meet you Christian.”
Tommy rotated around to walk backwards, pointing at me. “If she loses her shit on you, call 911, and don’t let her come here until she’s calmed down. Too damn violent on her good days. I don’t want to be around her on her bad days or I might go home with holes in me, and I ain’t explaining that shit to my woman who is another vicious dwarf. Kat’s liable to think I brought the shit on myself, then trying poking me with something else. So, help me out with keeping your leprechaun calm, Christian, and you’ll keep mine from thinking the worst of me. Trust me, she’s done it before.” Ten years ago to be exact, when Kat was tossing around potted plants at Tommy like they were baseballs because she’d been tricked into thinking he’d cheated on her.
Because of that deceit, I don’t think Kat will make that mistake of believing the worst about Tommy again before getting all the facts, but no one can blame Tommy for being cautious. It was his body that would pay the price.
Christian chuckled harder. “Deal, Tommy, and it was nice to meet you too.”
After cracking enough jokes based on reality at my suspense, Tommy waved then vanished into the kitchen. Nevaeh cheesed from behind the bar at us. I figured I might as well conduct the rest of the introductions that were predestined and led Christian to the amazon with gray eyes. Mahogany exited the kitchen, stopping at the bar too, looking at Nevaeh for a silent second before they both chanted, “He’ll do.”
I had to laugh at that. “Seriously, chicks, you two have standards for my men?”
Mahogany posted up on the bar between the stools, with her elbow supporting her weight, one foot crossed over the other. “We do if he’s going to be the white king to your black queen, we can’t just let anybody up in your life.”
Nevaeh nodded. “Besides, being in the black queens, white kings club is for life. He has to last and take care of you for that long, so you can stay a member, and he needs to because not too many men catch your right hook. Color me impressed, Christian.”
His grin widened. Oh yeah, he gloated like everybody else did.
I shook my head. “In that case, take care of him while I’m gone to get my stuff, madam president of the black queens, white kings.”
Nevaeh pointed at Mahogany. “She’s the president, she found her man first. I’m the VP. You get to be the treasurer if we ever decided to sponsor a charity for those with jungle fever.”
Mahogany whirled around on Nevaeh. “You make interracial dating sound like a disease!”
“Can you prove that it’s not?” Nevaeh asked innocently. “Every damn thing else is, and it is called jungle fever.”
“Sounds like an ailment to me,” I said glibly.
Christian barked laughter. Highly tickled myself, I went to go empty my locker of my belongings, pit-stopping in the kitchen to ask my boss for a day off next week to fly—
“Is somebody dead again?” he asked, cutting me off.
“No,” I admitted, the smell from the stir fry he was whipping up making my stomach grumble.
“Then hell no, you can’t have that day off. Fly away on one of your days off like tomorrow.”
I gave him puppy-dog eyes. “The airline has the cheapest flights on my birthday next week. Even the marketer for the airport knew there was nothing special about that day. I’ll trade my birthday with someone else so you’re not shorthanded then, but I need to do this, Tommy.”
He dead-eyed me. “Domestic, you want your birthday off the first year you have a man that you’re publicly claiming, and you want me to think you’re not trying to celebrate getting old with your dude? Do I look stupid? Don’t answer that. I did take a woman back who’s violent like you. Now, tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re wrong,” I deadpanned. “I haven’t celebrated my birthday in twelve years. All I was doing was getting older then too, but nothing was changing, so I stopped celebrating it and still don’t.”
He knew that—after working for him close to three years, never requesting that day off before. Yet, he still glared at me for a few seconds. I stared back until the stir fry started to burn.
He went back to pitching the ingredients around the wok again. “Hmmph. You’re not lying to me. Your left eye isn’t twitching. Okay, seriously, what is going on with your folks because you don’t start talking about flying anywhere until you have to go to California?”
Because he was a boss that understood more about his employees than we understood about ourselves, I decided to give him the bare bones of why I needed to fly away for a day. “It’s what’s going on with me, not them. I think I need some therapy for, well, being me. I’m tired of being me. I need to know why I’m like this. If it’s my family’s fault, or if they”
“Weren’t being as hard on you as you thought,” he supplied, finishing off my statement.
“Yep. My birthday is the only day I can get a ticket that won’t break the bank.” I propped a hip against his iron station with a six-aisle burner built into it and the other line cooks looking on. “After I come back, I’m either going to find a therapist or create a program for my issues myself, but something has to give.” Christian deserves a more loving woman, and dammit, I’ll figure out how to love him or kill somebody trying.
One side of Tommy’s mouth lifted up. “You are broke as hell, aren’t you?”
I heaved giggles like a dry-throated dog. “Yes, and I’m trying to get my shit together on a shoestring budget.”
The line cooks, who I only saw at the job but was just as cool with as I was Mahogany and Nevaeh, worked silently around us. That wasn’t normal. Everybody in here was a cut-up like Tommy, and like me, they were nosy as hell. Definitely eavesdropping. Didn’t bother me who was listening; I had nothing to hide anymore. I didn’t want to hide anymore.
Tommy slid the stir fry from the wok to a plate. “Since I wish you all the emotional health you can grab, which ain’t much since your hands are smaller than you are, you can’t have your birthday off.”
Well hell. I truly expected him to understand after he had to transform his ways to let Kat in again, but his business had to take priority over my troubles, and I understood. “Okay.”
“But you can find someone to switch days with. If they don’t show up in your place, I’m firing every damn one of you in here. Y’all find more reasons to be off than you work.”
I had heard that threat too many times to count, and didn’t take Tommy seriously, but just in case, I’ll be making sure my replacement showed up.
Janeva, who was my height, cursed like a sailor, and smoked more weed than Snoop Dogg, squeaked, “Wait. What the hell, boss? That’s not fucking fair,” like the little girl she looked like at her station on the opposite side of Tommy’s.
He banged his fist on the iron top in front of him, then glared at her with his eyes bulging out of his head, had effectively been set off. “Janeva, listening to you curse every day with an Italian accent that I can barely understand is not fucking fair. I don’t know if you’re saying fucking or ducking. Smoking a blunt with you and getting higher than a damn spaceship and can’t feel my toes is not fucking fair. I thought I was walking on a cloud goddammit, and nobody could tell me I wasn’t. Whatever you put in that cigar is not fucking fair. How the hell did you roll it anyway? Your hands make Foreign’s look huge and…”
He looked around wildly, having lost his train of thought. “What the hell was I talking about?...Oh! Having to call Kat for a ride home and explain that I couldn’t tell if she was a man or a woman, let alone see the road, and that I was scared to touch her because I wouldn’t take the chance of doing a man is not fucking fair. Unable to see because my eyes were so red and puffy from smoking with you is not fucking fair. You should’ve been explaining that to Kat. And you’re the one that Foreign is switching days with.”
Jerry Toller, a blue-eyed, blond giant, bowed at the knees beside Janeva, laughing so hard his sides had to be splitting. She slapped him in the back of the head with her opened hand. He popped up like a jack-in-the-box, looking for the culprit, but there was only one person on the other side with him.
Having given her irritation an outlet, Janeva grinned like the tiny devil she was at Tommy. “I don’t have to work on Foreign’s birthday. Jerry does.”
Tommy pointed his spatula at her. “You do now. Now, you can whine about what’s not fucking fair, like how I’m getting payback for not knowing if I was going or coming for two days after chiefing with you. Next time I catch you smoking behind my building, I’mma… smoke with you again. Don’t tell nobody though. Order up! Somebody come get this damn plate! It’s in my way!”
Having gotten what I wanted, I slipped out of the kitchen, while he was distracted, before he changed his mind about what was fucking fair to Janeva and gave her back her day off. Low and downright dirty of me? Probably, but life at Tommy’s Cuisine wasn’t fucking fair either. I walked out to Nevaeh, Mahogany, and Christian huddling at the bar. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see they were up to something, especially since my birthday was in a week. No way in hell Christian wasn’t going to go all out for it. It was wishful thinking to hope he wouldn’t, but I knew what he could do in a week and behind my back, so no use fighting it. I could get the details of what to expect though.
None of them even noticed me come through the door only a few feet away until my hand slid up Christian’s back and he whirled around like a tornado, nearly knocking heads with Mahogany. I would not want to be the one explaining her goose egg to Chance. That man felt heavy from a yard away, like he carried a real son of a bitch inside him. However, Mahogany and Majestic had Chance and his inner son of a bitch wrapped around their fingers, so yeah, he’d do.
“Where’s my surprise birthday party going to be?” I asked with tongue in cheek. “At Mahogany’s or Nevaeh’s house?”
Mahogany eyeballed Christian with a ‘well, are you going to throw yourself under the bus or do you want me to push you under it’ expression. He breathed out as if resigning to his fate but kept silent, which ramped up my curiosity.
Nevaeh started wiping down her area. “We’re caught. Might as well own up to it.” She gave in too easily; there was still a surprise in the works I hadn’t caught on to and wouldn’t if they had anything to say about it.
Christian captured my hand in his, planted a quick kiss on my brow “Your party is at Mahogany’s house on your birthday. Bye, ladies. See you tonight at eight.”
“Bye, guys,” they chorused.
I waved to them as we strolled through the dining room for the front doors. We would have to circle the building to get to my car parked in the back lot.
“You never did tell me why you were here, Christian,” I mentioned over the clatter of the customers.
For a moment, we just walked hand in hand. When the bitter cold started hammering us outside, he spoke up.
“Because I need to talk to you about Natalia.” The middle of a perfectly good day was about to go downhill on skates with no brakes.
“I should’ve known she wasn’t going to stay down. What’s she up to now?” I asked, just as we reached the front of my car.
I released his hand to scrounge for the keys in my purse. When he didn’t answer, I glanced at him. He looked so solemn. I could clearly see he was worried about me calling it quits on us before we’d even got to the middle of our relationship. He wasn’t a fool, knew my running shoes used to be worn to bed when it came to men. I handed him the keys to the car as a show of good faith, before moving past the keys in his outstretched hand to snuggle into his body, pressing my chest into his, then craning my neck to make eye contact.
“Don’t look like that, babe. I’m not going anywhere. She’s a problem. Okay. I haven’t been in a relationship, but I’ve been around enough of them to know that all of them have problems. She’s ours and we’ll deal with her. Trust me to stand by you, Christian.”
His arms came around me and rocked me gently as he just stared down at me. “I trust you, love, but I was afraid you’d decide Natalia wasn’t worth the hassle she could and would probably cause us.”
“Well, I kinda can’t blame Natalia. She knows what a good thing I have, so yeah, she wants it. You just have to make sure she doesn’t get it, and I’ll do my best not to kill her for coming after you… or me. Now, why do you think she’s got it in for us?”
He pecked my nose. “I’ll tell you in the car where it’s warmer. I don’t want you getting sick. Come on.”
He guided me to the passenger side, opening the door before getting in on his side, cranking the engine. While we sat in silence, giving the car a few minutes to warm up, Christian took time to adjust the driver’s seat then peruse the guts of the vehicle, taking in the dull-gray leather seats and dashboard with small cracks here and there.
“I like this car. It’s muscles and sex on wheels. Can I have it restored for you?”
I rolled my eyes. I had the feeling I was about to lose my man-magnet to my man and get stuck with a newer model car in return. It was sweet of him, but I didn’t want either of us in more debt than we already were.
“Oh lord, Christian. I know my baby could look better, but why can’t you just leave your money in your pocket? If you must give me something, give me what’s between the pockets.”
He got this glint in his eye that reflected his instant arousal and amusement. “Everything I have and am is yours, sweetheart.”
“I can tell,” I mocked, “but I just want you.”
He dropped the side of his head back on the headrest. “Unfortunately, I have a bank account that wants to be spent on you.”
“No, you want to drain it on me. I want to rise in tax brackets on my own, so if you decide I’m not worth the hassle anymore I’m not depending on you, therefore I don’t fall. If you restore this car, you’ll want to drive it too. Then, I’ll end up with a Hybrid or some other environmental-friendly vehicle.”
“You are worth so much more than the hassle, Foreign, and I just want to give you whatever your heart desires materialistically and emotionally. How about a Maserati?” He was getting worse.
Flattered and wasn’t going to win this discussion, I giggled. “Do you have a Maserati?”
“Yes, and a Ferrari, and an Escalade SUV.”
I accepted I was going to have to compromise again, or Christian would find something else to give me. It was time to nip this ‘giving’ in the bud.
“I tell you what. Ship your SUV over here, don’t offer me anything else that’s not attached to your body, and you can restore the car… and drive it.” I had to love him, I didn’t let anybody drive my car.
He grinned so damn hard I thought I’d need sunglasses to shield my peepers from his bright smile. “Deal.”
We started our journey out of the lot. It was time to cut to the chase of his visit to my job—Christian didn’t just show up unless he had a reason.
“So, we’re warm now. What has Natalia done?”
He breathed out heavily. “Nothing yet, but my mother is convinced that Natalia’s vindictive, despite her seeming to have moved on after welcoming you to my trailer park trash ass.”
I gasped. “She called you that?” The bitch like to hit where it hurt, huh?
But I knew that about her kind, the same as everyone else when they were mad; the insults flew. At least I wasn’t guilty of name-calling while I was pissed. Words hurt worse than fists sometimes.
He nodded. “She wasn’t the first, won’t be the last, and she didn’t care where I came from until I told her who your mother was. I promised her Ma-ling and I would double team her ass the next time she tried something stupid or bothered you.”
Him linking up with my mother didn’t irk me like it would have. “I don’t care what number she is in calling you derogatory names, Christian, the skank shouldn’t have been that nasty. I get she didn’t want to end whatever you two had, but why don’t people value others’ feelings?”
“I have no answer for them, sweetheart, just me who will always value your feelings,” he commented while turning onto the street.”
“I truly believe that, and that’s why I lo…” I gulped before I let the thought finish, still speaking my thoughts aloud, and now, blown away because I had a first love.
Before he came here, I hadn’t been ready for love in any form. It was sad that I was just now realizing what he truly was to me and had to catch myself before three little words fell out of my mouth. They meant too much to just be flung around. Separate the words ‘I love you’ and they had no meaning. Combined, they could make or break a heart. My own heart wasn’t intact, yet, and I wasn’t going to say those words carelessly to another person before I was ready to push Christian and I to another level when I hadn’t put my other emotional hurdles to bed. Until then, I couldn’t focus solely on proving to him that I truly meant them with all my heart. Suddenly, I needed an anchor as my emotions skyrocketed. Christian’s thick, firm thigh was the closest object still attached to the ground.
Grabbing it, I gathered the nerves to finish. “That’s why you mean so much to me Christian.”
He cut his eyes my way along with a lopsided smile, he absolutely knew what was almost said. “Thank you for telling me what I mean to you, Foreign.” Thank God he didn’t push the issue.
Dropping his hand on top of mine, his leg muscles contracted under my fingers as he switched from the gas to the brake at a stop sign. “I came to your job to ask you if there’s anything about you that you want to stay out of the limelight because right now, Natalia’s probably looking for dirt. No, I don’t think there isn’t any level she wouldn’t sink to if she’s planning any kind of revenge. The best way and most common way to get that is to make you look bad, maybe your family, too, if she can. Everybody knows I’m trailer park trash made good. Nothing new there.” Christian was insulting himself too now.
That got me good and riled up. “I swear to God if you say that again about yourself, I’ll hit you. The environment we’re raised in doesn’t define us. Who we become does, and no, I have nothing to hide except the sextape you made that I’ve gotten rid—” No, you haven’t.
Anything that would make me look bad in front of the whole wide world still existed.