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“Man, I’ve had enough of this. Get the fuck out,” Jabarri says, and she springs up from the seat, so mad the tips of her ears are tomato red.
“This ain’t your house! You can’t put me out,”
“I just did!” he says and the next events happened in slow motion and fast forward simultaneously. She turns to him, hocks up phlegm, and spits on him before turning around to me. I punch her so hard that she flies back on the sofa blood sprays everywhere, and I am on her before the second bounce. I punch her again and again before choking her and slamming her head on the back of the sofa. She claws my face, drawing blood, causing me to loosen my grip on her, allowing her to push me off of her. I stumble back, and she hops off the sofa and punches me in my temple. I jab her in the eye, the skin underneath it splits open and her eye instantly swells. I draw back and crack her jaw, before hitting her dead in the mouth, causing both lips to burst open. I pick her ass up and slam her on the coffee table, breaking it before I kick her so hard she slides across the floor. Before I can do any more damage I am lifted off of the ground and set behind Jabarri.
“I suggest you leave before I let her go,” she spits on the floor, and in the midst of blood and spit are a couple of teeth. She struggles to stands, holding her side. I’m sure I broke a few of her ribs when I kicked her.
“You should probably go to the hospital and have your side looked at,” he tells her. His arms band around me, holding me back, when I come from behind him and stand to his side. I look at the woman I loved for years, the woman I planned to spend the rest of my life with and feel nothing but empty regret. The tears in her eyes when she looks at me soften me a little, but I am done nonetheless. I watch her leave, dropping to the sofa when the door closes, and hiss in pain when Jabarri presses a cloth to my face.
“Your face, baby,”
“It’ll be fine,” I tell him, holding the cloth.
“Are you okay,” he asks and I don’t have an answer for him. My face hurts, and where she hit me hurts but hearing how she thought about me might hurt worse.
“I failed her,” I tell him.
“No, she failed you and your relationship. She should have come to you with how she felt instead of acting in retaliation for her preconceived notion that you were unfaithful.”
“I have never felt for another man what I feel for you, and it scared me when we first met, but no matter how much I denied it, she still saw it. I was supposed to be a safe place for her, and she was supposed to be a safe place for me, and I let her down, Jabarri. Yeah, she should have come to me, but she was here in Mississippi because of me, around my family, I should have done better.”
“Don’t do that, don’t take all the blame. Even if you insist on taking the blame, it’s not all on you. She has a lot of the blame on her shoulders, too. It’s all about communication, and she didn’t give you that. Come back to bed so I can tend to you. I want to hold you,” he says, and I am too tired to argue, so I let him pull me back in the bedroom into bed, and even though I just got up a little while ago, I fall asleep almost instantly.
SKAI
Lennox is retiring, and we have decided to do a Gideon version of Lip Sync Battle, Lennox’s favorite TV show. I need to get to the house to rehearse our songs and performance. I grab an extra set of clothes to change into for afterward since we’re supposed to go out to dinner. I shove the clothes in my bag and brush past Jabarri without saying a word to grab my shoes and other stuff.
“Skai, are you gonna keep giving me the silent treatment?” he asks as he watches me move around my bedroom.
“I don’t have anything else to say, Barbie.” I call him the nickname I gave him.
“Please, Skai, just listen to me.”
“For what, Jabarri? I told you how I felt, and you told me I was the one being unreasonable. She called you and you got up out of my bed with me to rush to her! And if that was a one-time thing, I may have let it slide, but over these past several weeks, it has become a common occurrence,”
“I am only gone for less than an hour in most cases,”
“I don’t give a damn if you were gone for less than one minute! You getting up out of my bed in the middle of the night to run to the aid of another woman is not going to fly with me. I know she is your friend, and you promised to be there for her, and I am okay with that, but what I am not okay with is her constant and increasing need for you. She was supposed to be telling her parents that she is gay, but instead, she is using you to front for her parents and enjoying her relationship with Scottlyn. She has her family believing that Scottlyn is a friend! Even so, what butters my biscuits is the fact that she constantly has you putting us at risk with her requests of you, and it’s pissing me off that you keep going for it. That you expect me to just eat it!”
“You’re making a mountain out of a mole hill, Skai, you knew the situation from jump, and now you’re frustrated that it’s inconvenient? You are being ridiculous being jealous of a woman who isn’t attracted to me at all, and I’m not attracted to her,”
“Are you still planning to take her to the retirement party?”
“I was,”
“Why, Jabarri?”
“She’s meeting up with Scottlyn later, and it’s not like we can go together,”
“Okay, so you’d be okay with me going with a man?”
“Why would I be okay with something like that?”
“Exactly! And you only say that because you know I would never date any other man than you! Okay, well, then what if I showed up with another woman?”
“Our little secret situationship wouldn’t be a secret anymore,”
“Sometimes I swear you are not a real Gideon, but then again, you were conceived from one of your mother’s older eggs! None of your brothers would dare expect any of the women in their lives to accept what you think I should. But don’t worry about it, I’ll make it easy. You won’t have to worry about me being ‘jealous,’ ” I say with air quotes. “Don’t come back here until you can get this shit straight with Natalie. I would never expect you to accept what you think I should, and that is why I am going to take myself out of the equation altogether,” I tell him as I angrily zip my bag and storm past him and out of my house. I get in the car and leave the driveway so fast there is actual smoke coming from my tires. Halfway there, I begin to feel guilty for trying to force him to choose between Natalie and me. I know she needs him, and it’s not a matter of being jealous it’s about respect and the lack of it on both of their parts. I make it to my mom’s in record time, we run through the routine, change, and head to dinner. The entire time I am running off of pure anger, but I put on a front so no one gets to asking me any questions. Luckily for me, since the breakup, no one pushes me too much so I make it through the night without any problems. But once I make it back to my house, and he isn’t there, the loneliness hits me hard. The party isn’t for a couple of nights, tomorrow when I get to work, I am going to ask Saint to send me someplace far away so I won’t be here until it’s time for the party. I shower again and don’t bother with pajamas as I crawl into bed and into a fitful sleep.
