I held up my hand to stop him before he could get out the rest of his sentence. “No, Pat. Listen to me. You want me to trust you, but you keep giving me reason after reason not to. Do you know how embarrassing it is to be planning a wedding to a nigga I barely get to see and to get a voicemail fromhisphone of him fucking another bitch, six months after I caught him with the first side bitch? C’mon, Pat. How would you feel if you were me?”
Pat lowered his head as a full burst of wind pushed through his nostrils. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. I never meant to make you feel like that, baby. I panicked when I finally got a new phone and saw what you’d sent me. I’m here because I don’t wanna lose you, . . . lose us.”
“Oh, I believe you don’t want to lose me. But I also believe you want to have your cake and eat it too. I want you to change, but maybe I have to fuck around and accept the things I cannot change and live with the fact that you’re incapable of doing that.”
“I’m trying, baby. For you.”
I sucked my teeth. “That’s the problem, Pat. You shouldn’t be doing it for me. You should be doing it because it’s somethingyougenuinely want to do. Because you want to be a better version of yourself. A better man.”
He paused. The air between us was thick with tension. Every passing second felt like a ticking time bomb ready to detonate. Listening to him made me realize that a lot of men wanted a good woman until it required their asses to be better men. And if I could treat myself better than he treated me, what did I even need him for?
“Do you wanna cancel the wedding?” he asked finally.
His question caught me off guard. We were at the point in our relationship where we were supposed to be on the same page, not trying to find the right book and rebuild our foundation of trust weeks before our wedding day. But full-on canceling it after months of planning and the numerous down payments that had been made? If we didn’t go through with it, it wouldn’t only be us affected. There were his parents, his grandfather, the wedding vendors, and Liv’s family to consider—all who had already put in a lot of time and effort to help make our day special. And if we did cancel the wedding, what did that mean for our relationship?
“Alexis, do you want to cancel our wedding or not?” Pat probed again, more direct that time.
I cleared my throat. “I need more time to figure out what I want.”
Frustration furrowed his brow as he looked at me. I knew I hadn’t given him the answer he wanted to hear, but it was the truth.
He scoffed. “Are you serious right now, Lex? I told you I love you. And although you didn’t ask me, Idon’twanna cancel this wedding.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you love me, Pat?” I questioned.
His brows creased. “What kind of question is that?”
“One I want to know the answer to.”
He huffed out a sharp breath, clearly annoyed that the conversation wasn’t going the way he wanted it to. “I love you because I just do, okay? Isn’t that enough? I mean, damn, Lex. C’mon. You got a nigga damn near on his knees, begging you right now.”
I looked him up and down his six-foot frame. “Looks like you’re still standing to me.”
“Fine. Fuck it. If you wanna play childish ass games and shit, you can do that by yourself.”
He turned back toward the living room as if he were headed toward the door. I remained rooted in the kitchen, refusing to chase after him or give him the attention we both knew he so desperately craved.
“I’m not playing about how I feel, Pat. I’m being as honest as I can with you about how I feel right now. I’m all over the fucking place, and instead of you trying to understand that, you’d rather have me feed your ego by telling you it’s okay and that I’m not going anywhere, when I don’t know if that’s the fuckin’ truth right now!”
“Well, when you find out, you call me,” he snapped back before reaching the door and slamming it in his wake.
A hot, angry tear slipped down my cheek.
And to think, I’d had my reservations about having a face-to-face conversation with Pat, thinking it would somehow make me regret what happened between Oak and me. But it didn’t. Did that make me heartless, or had I just finally gotten my lick back?
Two weeks later.
I drove down the curved, gravelly driveway and parked. With no other cars around, I was the first to arrive. The naked oak trees above swayed in the cool breeze, and leaves scattered across my feet as I opened the door and walked over to my trunk to get mybag. Up ahead was the Gray family cabin, nestled between pine trees as tall as giraffe necks and facing Lake Michigan.
The aged structure had timber siding, a stone roof, and a chimney. Two weathered rocking chairs sat on the wraparound porch, with fairy lights wrapped around the railing that led to stone steps to go straight down to the water or off to the firepit with five chairs around it—one for each of us. I didn’t admit it often, but I was really a part of the Gray family.
I stepped up to the front door and punched in the code to unlock the door. Inside was an open concept living room. It was spacious, with windows on all three walls that framed the quiet views of the lake and a high exposed-wood-beam ceiling. Three deep couches with lots of throw pillows and fur blankets surrounded the wooden coffee table, with an oversized game of Connect Four in the center and stacks of old family photo albums underneath. There was an oversized flat-screen TV above the wooden mantel over the stone fireplace, playing the football game.If nobody’s here, why the hell is the TV on?
“Hello?” I called out with hesitance laced in my voice.
