Page 93 of Surrogate For My Best Friend’s Man 2

Her face changed. “Oh.”

I tried stepping forward, and she still didn’t move, now I knew something was up. “Shante, move.”

“Girl, I’m tired. I was about to go back to sleep.”

I stared at her, I had known this woman too damn long. Shante wasn’t slick when she was hiding something. She started doing little shit that didn’t make sense, like right now, standing in her doorway trying to keep me outside when normally I walked into her apartment without knocking half the time. I pushed past her. “Move, girl.”

“Alisha…”

I stopped, the bag of food damn near slipped out of my hand. Her apartment was empty. It looked like somebody had backed a U-Haul up and said take everything. I slowly turned around and Shante wouldn’t look at me. “What the fuck happened in here?”

She closed the door behind me. “It’s a long story.”

I set the food on the kitchen counter and walked farther inside. The more I looked around, the worse it got. The baby stuff was still there and her clothes were still there. But damn near everything else was gone. I peeked inside the kitchen and it was bare. I opened one cabinet before Shante told me to stop going through her shit. I looked over my shoulder. “What shit?”

She rolled her eyes. I wasn’t trying to be funny either but I had questions. Then it hit me I hadn’t seen one thing in that apartment that looked like Malik still lived there. “Where is Malik at?”

Shante went quiet, whatever happened in this apartment had something to do with him. She eventually admitted they had broken up. I couldn’t believe it because just recently, I’d been sitting at my nail station asking her about Malik, and she’d made it seem like everything was good between them. She even talked about him being excited for the babies. Now I was standing in an apartment he had damn near cleaned out.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Shante shrugged and said she wasn’t ready to talk about it.

That bothered me, not because she owed me every detail of her relationship, but because this was us. Shante knew every ugly part of what I was dealing with when it came to Deuce. I would’ve never wanted her sitting alone in an empty apartment pretending everything was okay.

“So what happened?”

She hesitated. Then she told me she’d found out Malik was cheating. Everything in me went hot. “Cheating?”

She nodded and looked away. I stared at her stomach. This nigga had lost his damn mind. Shante was walking around carrying two babies, uncomfortable as hell, barely able to get off the couch without rocking herself forward… Well, when she had a fucking couch. And Malik had been out cheating and then he left her? Then took damn near everything with him? The more I thought about it, the madder I got. “That don’t even sound like Malik.”

Shante looked at me. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing.” I replied, but it did, I had known Malik long enough to know he loved Shante. Hell, I’d run into him recently and asked about the babies. He hadn’t given me any indication that him and Shante weren’t together. Then again, hadn’t I learned enough lately about thinking I knew what a man was capable of? I thought I knew Deuce too, look where that got my ass.

Maybe Malik was just another nigga who knew how to look solid while doing bullshit behind closed doors. Shante told me she caught him talking to another woman and things got ugly from there. According to her, Malik packed his shit and left. I looked around the apartment again. “He packed his shit and everybody else’s too, apparently.”

Shante sucked her teeth. “Can you not?”

I wanted to laugh, but I was too pissed. What kind of man left a pregnant woman like this? I noticed she had a few new kitchen things and some towels. When I asked, she told me Grandma Lorraine had helped her get some necessities. That pissed me off even more. Grandma shouldn’t have had to do that. Malik should’ve made sure Shante was straight whether they were together or not, especially with twins coming.

“Call him.”

Shante immediately shook her head, she didn’t want to. She kept talking about not wanting any more drama and how she was done arguing with him, but I wasn’t. “Call his ass.”

“No, Alisha.”

I pulled out my own phone. “Fine, I’ll do it.”

That made her nervous I could see it. She started telling me to leave it alone, but I had already found Malik’s number. I called but no answer. Now I was really irritated. Shante stood there rubbing her stomach, telling me it wasn’t worth it. Maybe not to her but that was my best friend.

I had been dealing with my own marriage falling apart while Shante had apparently been going through all this shit without saying anything to me, that didn’t sit right. I looked at her standing there in that empty ass apartment and felt guilty that I hadn’t noticed. Maybe I’d been so wrapped up in Deuce’s bullshit that I hadn’t been paying enough attention to what was happening with her.

I walked over and hugged her, at first she stiffened, then she wrapped her arms around me.

“I got you,” I told her.

Her grip tightened. Then I felt her shoulders start shaking. “Girl, don’t cry.”

She blamed it on hormones. I rubbed her back. “Fuck Malik.”