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I met Paul on my second day at work. I work for one of his family’s magazine’s and and he’s the Chief Operating Officer of their publishing company.
They’re a large family. He’s the youngest of six. They didn’t mind that I was a nobody, that my mother worked as a nurse’s aide and lived in her third-floor Bronx walk up. They made me feel like part of the family and so, I snatched what he was offering me and held on.
Even though I knew, from our first kiss, that I was trading passion and love for stability and certainty.
He pursued me hard. Freshly in the grip of my determination to finally get over Remi, he had felt like a godsend.
When he told me we were coming to Houston for his friend Marcel’s wedding, I hadn’t even considered our paths might cross.
He lives in DC.
If I had known I was going to see him, nothing could have convinced me to come.
Just thinking about him makes my head and heart ache with the same intensity as the day he left them both bruised and battered.
He was the boy who taught me just how painful love could be. But, I’ve never stopped carrying a torch for him. I know that now because seeing him brought all of my feelings rushing back. Like a volcano that suddenly erupted, the wash of affection, desire, and longing took me by complete surprise.
And then, as if I jumped out of the fire into a frozen lake, it’s gone. And in its place stands ice-cold jealousy.
He’s standing there next to Joni. And all I can think is that she gets to fuck him. She gets to hold his hand and see him naked. All of that should have been mine.
It was a lifetime ago. He’s hers now. And, I’m with Paul. But to know that’s who he ended up with, seeing how right they look together, it hurts.
I turn those crazy thoughts off real quick. He’s nothing to me. A summer fling in the burgeoning youth of my womanhood.
I smile up at them as they join us at the table. I can’t believe these seating arrangements. I put it down to
my overactive imagination that I feel sure that it was deliberate.
Joni’s eyes are darting all over the room like she’s taking note of who is watching her and who dares not to.
Remi’s face is tense as he looks everywhere but at me.
He still looks like the quintessential college basketball player. Tall, well-muscled, and lean.
God, his light gray suit fits him like he was sewn into it and I hate that I missed the chance to watch him grow from the very fine eighteen-year-old to the drop-dead gorgeous man who looks like the tall, dark and handsome prince in every single fairy tale I’ve ever read. Right down to the small cleft in his chin.
And yet, inside all of that, wrapped in all of that perfection is the Remi I knew. The one who picked me flowers. The one who drove me out to the country so I could see the stars. The one who kept my journal and read the first stories I ever wrote.
The one who fucking lied to you, Kal.
“Remington, where’s your drink?” Paul shouts
Remi taps his temple and smiles with all of that swagger he drips and says, “I don’t need a single thing to stimulate this mind. I’m high on life, man.”
“Rubbish! Come let’s leave the ladies to it, walk with me,” Paul declares and then lurches out of his chair. He’s a terrible drunk.
Remi eyes him and then seems to decide it’s not worth the trouble to argue with him. He gets up. “Excuse us, ladies.”
I can’t bring myself to look at him.
“Kal, so tell us about your new windfall,” Joni shouts at me across the table, her smile curved vindictively.
I don’t understand how in the world Remi is dating her.
“Windfall?” I ask, attempting to sound bored, but really my stomach is roiling. I don’t want to be here alone with these women. I’ve purged my life of people like them, and I can’t stomach the petty one-upmanship they seem to thrive on.
“I meant, Paul, Kalilah,” she says caustically. “That windfall.”
