Page 28 of His Last Wife

Ernest was about to turn the knob. He really was. But something made him stop.

“Why you so fucked up?” he asked, looking at Val over his shoulder. He turned to her.

“Shut up and get out!”

“Who did this to you?”

“Shut the fuck up and get the hell out!”

As Val spoke, Ernest spoke beneath her. “Can’t you see what I’m trying to do? Why I’m here? I want you. I’m here for you. Nothing else.”

“You know what?” Val was saying over Ernest’s words. “You want to know why I’m so fucked up?”

“Why?”

“Because of niggas like you. Niggas. I’m so fucking tired of this shit I don’t know what to fucking do. You say you want me, but for how long? How long? Huh? You don’t know me. You don’t know where the fuck I been. What the fuck I been through!” Val was screaming so loud her mother had covered her ears in the kitchen and was praying aloud.

“That’s what you’re missing, Val. I do know you. I know exactly who you are.”

“No you don’t.”

“I do. Look, I didn’t know when or how I was going to tell you this but, I knew you before.”

“You knew me?”

“We . . . um. When I was playing for the Falcons, we—I slept with you,” Ernest admitted, afraid for sure of what Val would do or say next. He hadn’t wanted to tell her, but also feared not telling her.

“Get out,” Val said bluntly, like all emotion in her had been turned off at the clear mention of the reality of her past.

“I didn’t say that to embarrass you. I was just—”

“Get out.” She cut him off.

Ernest chose to ignore her again and kept up his explaining. “I just wanted you to know that I don’t care about your past. I have a past too. We all do.”

“So I’m your charity case now?” Val posed. “What? Because you slept with me you’re supposed to just slide right back in and get it again? Sorry, the kitchen is closed.” Val tried to reach past Ernest to open the door, but he blocked her.

“I’m not here to get anything from you. I’m here to give something to you,” Ernest said.

“Like what?”

“Well, what do you want?”

Val crossed her arms over her chest like she was holding something in. “I don’t know. Okay? That’s it. I have no fucking clue. Thought I did. Thought I wanted all of this!” She held her hands up and looked around the foyer. “But now I know it don’t mean shit. ’Cause I got it and you know what, the only thing I can think about is that it ain’t mine. None of it. Because every time I pull into that driveway in his car, I look at this house and think, this is his house too. And he ain’t even here! He ain’t even here!” Val started crying inside, but she wasn’t the kind of woman to let those tears pooling up fall to her cheeks—not then and there.

Ernest wrapped his arms over her arms and around her body and pulled her into his chest, where his big frame made her so small, discounting years and years and years of growth and dissipating the sad occurrences on a timeline marked up by a brokenhearted little girl. And he felt that energy transferring into him the way a father does when he kisses his daughter’s fresh bruise and causes the crying to instantly cease. It was what he’d felt that firs

t night they’d slept together in that bed upstairs. When Val had finally fallen asleep—not when she’d faked sleeping by closing her eyes and breathing hard through her nose, but when she’d really left the world and her worries—she actually rolled over toward Ernest and threaded her hand through his arm and around his back. She leaned her head into his chest like he was a pillow. Ernest leaned back and slowly moved her body on top of his before wrapping his arms around her waist, making a cradle of himself. Into the night, he laid there still and listened to Val’s slow heartbeat. It might have been the most beautiful thing he’d ever felt. The closest he’d ever been to someone. Still, he knew it wasn’t for him. It was just for her. All of this pleasure in rest, she needed it. That second night when he’d returned, it was for Val to get some sleep. Not him.

“He may not be here,” Ernest said to Val. “But I am.”

“But I don’t want you to be. Don’t you understand? I don’t want you to save me. I don’t want to be saved. Please just go,” Val said, hardly holding onto those tears.

“You really want me to go?” Ernest asked.

There was silence at first.

“Yes,” Val answered soon. “Just go.”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com