AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I do love you, Kiss.”
“And I love you; but sometimes, love is not enough.”
“And sometimes, love is everything.”
With that, I took her back into my arms and made love to her until checkout time. It was painful to say good-bye at the airport that day. I was weak as I watched her walk away down a gateway to get on a plane. By the time I settled into first class on my flight, I craved to be with her. But that was not to be. Kiss refused to even trade phone numbers with me. I was willing but she said that it only meant trouble. I prayed that I would be able to forget her, or at least function without her.
KISS
Calibri picked me up at LAX when I got back to Los Angeles. She was looking fly in a hot red pant suit that complemented her flawless skin. As I climbed into her Infiniti SUV, she couldn’t wait to ask me questions.
“So what happened between you and Aleck in Dallas?” she inquired before she had pulled out into the next lane. “Did the two of you fuck?”
“Damn, Calibri. It’s nice to see you, too,” I said sarcastically. “I shouldn’t have told you that I ran into him.”
“Well, you told me, so you can’t take the shit back.” She paused as I tried to adjust my seatbelt. I must have been taking too long to answer. “Kiss, what went down? Don’t do this to me. I need to know.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Why do you need to know if Aleck and I had sex?”
“Because this is a monumental moment in your life, Sis. It’s been nearly a decade since you’ve seen him. I’ll never forget the expression on your face in Jamaica after the two of you got busy. It was one of the happiest moments of your life.”
“That was a long time ago.”
She pulled on I-405 and headed toward Santa Monica. The sun was setting; she put down her visor so she could see. The traffic was crazy, as usual. We both knew what topic was being avoided so I decided to come out with it.
“No, I did not tell him that A.J. was his son.”
Calibri gawked, stared at me and almost slammed into the back of a delivery van. She hit the brakes just in time but we swerved to the left and almost ended up in the other lane.
“Why didn’t you tell that man the truth? You should have contacted him in the first place when you found out that you were pregnant.”
“Really? Should I have called him before or after I was walking down the aisle with Darrell?” I sucked my teeth and laid my head back on the headrest so I could clamp my eyes shut. “This damn sun is relentless.”
“You admitted fooling around to Darrell,” Calibri said. “He forgave you and agreed to raise another man’s child. Why couldn’t you—”
“Hmph, and we see how that situation turned out,” I whispered.
“You and Darrell didn’t split because of A.J.”
“Thanks for reminding me why my marriage failed,” I said sarcastically. “For the record, I was there.”
The fact was that my marriage had not ended because of A.J. It had ended because I was still in love with my son’s father, Aleck. Over the years, I had tried to get him out of my head, tried to appreciate the love that Darrell offered. It was not to be. Aleck was inside my head, inside my heart, inside my soul.
I had lied to my friends, though. Not really lied. I told them that Darrell and I had different life goals and, in a sense, that was true. His goal was to love me and my goal was to love someone else.
Calibri fell silent for the remainder of the ride back to my house. I had a lovely little bungalow in Santa Monica, not that far from the Third Street Promenade and within walking distance of the boardwalk. Like everyone else, I would have loved to live directly on the water, but wasn’t in that income range yet. So A.J. and I would get up on the weekends and run with our two Shar Peis, Max and Ruby, named after A.J.’s favorite cartoon characters.
A.J. and Nancy were waiting for us on the front stoop, along with my nanny, Rosalita. A.J. ran into my arms, reminding me what my main purpose in life truly was.
“Mommy, I missed you!” he said, before throwing his arms around my neck and placing a kiss on my cheek. He had the same dark skin as his father, along with his eyes, lips and just about everything else. It looked like Aleck had spit him out, which is why I lied about not having any photos of A.J. when we were together in Dallas.
“I missed you, too, Baby. How was school this week?” I asked him as we walked toward the front door.
“It was so boring. It’s always boring.”
Everyone laughed because that was A.J.’s newest favorite word. He would find a word he liked and wear it into the ground. Sometimes, he would not even understand what the word actually meant, but he had the “boring” concept down. A.J. was a bright child and school was not a challenge for him, at all. In second grade, he was reading on a sixth-grade level and doing math on a fifth-grade level. His principal had discussed skipping him, but I had done that as a child, and I wanted A.J. to have the childhood social experience.
“How was your trip?” Nancy asked as we reached her and Rosalita.
