Chapter Eight
Gutted, with the wind knocked out of my sail, no life left inside of me and no life on earth from “my oasis”: Remedy, anymore; the “heaven” he last cried tears with me and said I felt to him is where his soul was on its way to. I had to accept that.
For weeks, I secretly suffered a private little hell that I could muster the strength to tell nobody but God-that, along with the shame, guilt and the “what if” [he had been with me instead of us fighting, would he still be here] was taking control of my sanity.
Just like everybody would eventually make their way back around to me-later in my sophisticated and seasoned life from knowing or loving me in my innocent and naïve years-unexpectedly, an even bigger “Ghost” moment showed up in my life like “boo!” and manifested itself in ways that caught me totally off guard.
But for now the remedial thing to do was pick my face, heart and life up off the floor and accept the fact that like our favorite songs “Show Me” and “I’m Coming Back,” that fateful day was really real-and seeing that wonder-full man: my beautiful future husband’s lifeless body laying in that casket; I was officially shown how far I could not let this go anymore and that no…my Remy was not coming back. I never knew heartbreak could be so very cruel.
You know…it’s one thing to break up with somebody in the middle of loving them when what they thought was love for you was lust. I loved that one person enough for the both of us, and surprised myself with knowing that I had it in me to walk away. Even in my naivete, I knew that going forward, me simply “loving’ somebody was never going to be enough to stick around stupid. I mastered knowing how to walk away and knew that I could do that again if I had to-no matter the situation. Nobody could hurt me enough that I didn’t have it in me to walk away because I had health so much from the love of Rem and hurt too much from the loss of his being snatched smack dead in the middle of loving me and me loving him. He didn’t just die, he was taken.
It’s another whole level to have been shown what pure, good, real, deep love was by someone who brought ways out in you that you never knew you had in you. Never in my life had I felt so centered, safe, protected and loved so hard and healthy-and just like that, somebody had the audacity to decide to take him away. Through this man and with this man, I was learning things about myself that was growing me the fuck up.
I learned continuity. I learned flow and fluidity. I learned patience. I learned what intimacy was. I learned what the difference between love and lust was and how and when the two, or three was to be intertwined. I learned. Being love by him taught me-early on-to recognize what real love was or wasn’t. And oh how I missed him so.
I miss his masculinity, his smell, his body, his mind, his smile, his eyes, his hair, just…his whole vibration. He was so electric yet, so magnetic. I miss him immensely. But for now, I had to let go, because that wonder-full man was gone. Dust. I was sitting in the middle of knowing how the heart, burning tears, and the brain could easily split the mind. And I knew that the remedial answer was if I didn’t at least try to participate in life going forward-yes, pretending as if there never was a Remedy-I was about to check out and go backwards and meet Remedy where he was at.
Going forward, I had to wing it, or clip them. One or the other. So I got back to winging it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Throughout the months going by, Mitch was coming around, no more or less than before Remedy passed. No, I didn’t mind his company while I was with Remedy, but I wasn’t in the mood for it as much, for a few months after Rem’s murder.
Ever since the day I had known Mitch, he had always been sweet to me. I felt very bad that he got shuffled to the back and watched me love and respect another man that, ultimately pushed him way out the way.
In the worse way, I would soon find out Mitch did something with all that extra time on his hands but for now, I could only make peace with how I played him by making him know and accepting the truth in the fact that his timing was just wrong-it wasn’t him, per se. I knew someone before him and that someone knew he loved me first. And he came and got his woman. And I went. And let him lead the way. It was unfortunate that Mitch and I were intimate in such a way and because of, apart of me allowed him to hang around ‘cause I kind of felt like I owed him that much-to have a place in my life-because he really liked me and the fact of the matter was, we were about to begin ‘something’ yet, my old friend from several jobs we’d worked together, kept showing up, and showing me just how far he wanted to let this thing go…Rem had that certain something that, unfortunately for Mitch, got him shuffled to the back.
Eventually though-trying to go forward-I gave Mitch a little more rhythm because he was working really hard at trying to be closer to me than the arms reach I always had him at. He didn’t know about Remedy just yet, but he did know that some door opened a little wider for him and this time, he wanted to win when little did he know, the loss that he was fighting to avoid was a loss that I was fighting hard to forget. He won default by death at the emotion and expense of my loss.
Mitch was in a good position, and pretty much had Rem to thank that he did cross paths with Rem and Rem already knew he used to kick it. Mitch’s presence was actually good after my losing Remedy because, he, along with Ciara, were a physical bodied presences in my life that knew Rem and were in receipt of the breath in his living body at one time or another-therefore served as more comfort to me than each could ever really understand. So any man other than Mitch was not up to bat, discussion or acceptable.
This time though, Mitch was trying to show me a more mature ‘him’ and step his game up with me to prove to me that he really was serious about me and trying to be a man. Besides getting shut down trying to talk slick at Remedy on the phone with Rem calling him a lil’ sucka, he could tell that it was something responsible and respectable about Remedy that made me love him.
In the meantime however, he had started working a lil’ mall job, and when he would get paid, he would give me half of his check to buy food and for other stuff around the house. We would end up out and about spending his little check at the movies, out to dinner and any where we could find for fun and conversation.
He was so happy around this time-with his fine ass and that million-dollar smile of his. I would try to spark up some self-nostalgia to get back into him on remembering that at least. I really worked hard to pick up where we left off and give him the attention he felt he was owed and due.
He was so excited that we were more consistent than we had ever been. That’s when he decided to step things up.
I guess he needed his renege-free assurance that I was all in this time around, especially considering the fact that it seemed to him, that I had broken up with Remedy when little did he know, the only “broken up” with Remedy was my heart and the fact that I needed to let go. Because the liquor had to
be poured on my Remy or else I would up there with him sooner than planned.
The step-up.
Mitch wanted me to come to his mother’s and stepfather’s house for dinner for meeting, wine and spirits. Truthfully, emotionally I was in no mood to do it but I could tell that Mitch really meant well and was going out of his way to win-this time.
That night came.
Mitch’s cousin and his girlfriend were there already, along with Mitch’s younger sister. I had already been out with Mitch and the cousin few times, so he knew me already. Both he and Mitch introduced me to the cousin’s girlfriend, Mitch’s adorable sister who looked like a female version of Mitch and then I was introduced to Mitch’s stepfather. He was very pleasant.
His mother hadn’t made her way downstairs during the meeting and spirits but boy when she did; she
made her presence known in the worse way. It was like she was waiting on at the DOOR.
It was like she set me up-knowing she had NO plans, place or place setting for me at that damned table to be blessed on that night. She played this whole scene out in her mind; I could feel it-the moment she walked down the steps. I could read the transmission of her energy as much and her face was becoming more and more familiar to me-each step she took down those stairs.
Talk about familiarity breeding contempt. When she sashayed down those steps, she hadn’t even reached the bottom before turning her head to the right and down at me. She locked eyes on me and squinted with a look of familiarity-verifying I was just the one she wanted to see. I could tell that it was “me” she was expecting me-all the way down to the pace that she tread that damned staircase-giving off a vibe that of out of everyone in the house, she already knew something that was about to go down that no one else in the house knew nothing about.
When she reached the bottom to face me, she looked at me as if I was over for a visit tonight to have a pow wow with her about her husband with whom I had some torrid affair with.
She pierced into me as if I was that same woman who, as well, once boiled a rabbit in her kitchen and once stood in her home with a knife in my hand-cutting into my thigh and shaking like I had Tourettes Syndrome.
That moment she waited on-to look me in the face-was so strong that she forgot to speak—or, didn’t even plan too.
She lost all her manners and formalities. Everyone in the room could feel the tension. Even Mitch looked stunned and clueless.
All of that was confusing as hell to me-compounded with the fact that (up close) she had the nerve to be pretty-exceptionally pretty at that. “You pretty bitch,” I said in my mind.
I had to break Cruella Deville’s invasive stare and the tension in the room. I said to her:
SNEAK PEEK FROM THE UPCOMING/NEXT EXCERPT:
I know she hated the sight of that. She probably would have blown her ruffled embroidered hanky if she knew that since then-by this time-I had my own apartment that Mitch also contributed to. We now sit on my porch, to my own two-family apartment house, biiiitch.
Riding shotgun and as if she held a loaded and smoking one, she instructed by pointing her husband to pull directly into my mother’s driveway-with a vengeance-just like she pointed in that direction already many-a-Sunday and Wednesdays with her eyes.
She thought she was busting open a secret. But I was on to it-on to her thinking.
She wanted me to recollect my memory of her being that very same beautiful, “Dominique Devereaux”-like woman that would stand out from the church crowd letting out-and looking up at me and Lucky on the balcony and other times, down on the front porch. She wanted me to feel the force of her knowing just who I was so much so that I could tell that she fantasized about this our whole [finally meeting eye to eye] just so she could shun me, shove me in the car and drive me to where her eyes would be meeting mine most probably on the following upcoming Sunday or Wednesday. She was transmitting so much nonverbal communication that my synapses was in overdrive.
When the car stopped, she turned on the inside light and prepared to turn her body around to me to say something again, but by the time she could say more, ‘more’ had ejected the door and my right foot was out and on the ground about as quickly as I stood looking at her shotgun seat.
If looks could kill.
“Thank you much-thank you both” I said-crisply, rolling my eyes in my head-as I fully exited with my grown ass.
“Bitch you don’t have shit to say to me. I’m grown and so is your son,” I said in my head-to whatever it was she turned on that light and prepared her lips to part and say after the words “Angie, I’m going to talk to you and Mit..”
I was pissed.
That was a complete culture shock to me.
When I stuck the key into my mother’s door, it seemed like the push, pushed tears to my eyes. I was too mad and dared them to fall fast-trying to catch up with my beating heart. My feelings were so hurt. When I got safely into the house and closed the door, I placed my foot on the first step to head upstairs. My tears were fighting to be free.
It actually had nothing to do with Mitch-or any feeling about where he and I would stand, because not even his mother could peel him off of me-I was confident in that fact. But my mind couldn’t help but for a second, replace Mitch with Rem…or some man that I really loved and wanted to be with. I couldn’t imagine being treated that way by the mother of a man that I loved. Mitch was not that man in my heart, eyes, and mind yet, but my feelings about it could not be immediately dismissed. I would never get serious or monogamous with a man whose mother didn’t like me unless she was on her dying bed. My rule. All bets are off.
Before I could get into my mother’s house good, Mitch was ringing the telephone.
“Hello?” I said.
“Angie, I’m-I’m so-so sorry. I don’t have any words to say but that Iiii..” he said.
I interrupted:
“Don’t worry Mitch. It’s okay. I’ll be okay.”
“How are you feeling?” he asked, concerned about my feelings.
“I’m feeling kind of bad,” I returned.
“Actually-that really hurt me. I’ve never been treated that way in my lifetime and I didn’t appreciate it-at all,” I replied, with the tears still in my eyes.
I just sat on the phone, quiet because there was nothing much else I could say.
Mitch began to cry and that made my tears fall down with his.
He kept apologizing and replaying New Edition “Can You Stand the Rain” –seriously trying hard to sing it to me. I could relate because I remember what it was like singing to Rem. I remember what it was like singing for somebody that you love.
Somewhere in my mind, hurt feelings and softened heart, I received Mitch trying to serenade me-secretly entertaining the thought that this perhaps was another “Ghost’ moment: Rem serenading me this time-speaking to me through the lyrics.
It was a cute moment between Mitch and me.
I guessed, hoping that at some point in these rewinds, I would eventually let out that laughter that was under my breath and behind my tears the whole time. He sounded horrible, sort of like he knew he was sounding good but out of love and sentiment; I’d better not disturb his groove this time-because he was really trying to make me feel every word.
“BWHAAHAAAAA! Bless your heart Mitch!” I laughed out-I couldn’t help it.
“Oh shut up! You love it!” he replied.
“You like it!” he corrected himself.
I continued to giggle.
It got quiet for a few seconds.
“Angie, may I ask you a question?” whispered Mitch.
“Sure, what’s up?” I probed, whispering back.
“Do you love me?” he asked-curiously-innocently-hopefully.
“Well, I could love you. I’ve grown well past liking you. I have a fondness for you,” I replied.
“Oh, because I’ve always loved you-I thought you would flat out just say ‘yes,’ “ he laughed.
I laughed with him-it was cute.
“Since the word ‘love’ is the key word right now, I could tell you that I love you more than anyone I know or have in my life right now. No one could like…come before you right now,” I offered-secretly knowing that the one man that could, and did was never coming back to me.
“Even Remedy?” he asked-knowing that answer already, but was still hopeful.
I got quiet for a second:
“Mitch, Rem got killed a few months ago,” I revealed.
(Dead silence).
“Killlllled?” asked Mitch-empathetically-innocently-curiously.
“Yeah, killed, just: killed. Snuffed…lights out,” I replied, snapping my fingers just-like-that.
(Dead silence).
I could tell that he wanted to ask more questions-namely: “how?” but I always had a way about me that could communicate to you, just how far you could go with me-with questions.
(Ongoing dead silence).
He moved on to the next question.
“Angie, may I ask you a question?”
“Sure Mitch. What?” I tuned in.
“That’s who you loved-all the time, didn’t you?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I replied-simply.
“Did you feel anything for me at all? I mean like, it felt like you did. It seemed like you always liked me too-years ago,” he said.
I replied: “Yeah, I always thought you were gorgeous, you’re one of the prettiest men I’ve ever seen. You are a sight to behold (and hold onto),” I laughed.
I continued:
“It’s just that all the years that we’ve known each other, I was always involved with someone emotionally or in a relationship already.”
“Who were you in a relationship and emotionally involved with the night we had sex?” he challenged.
I laughed so hard.
“Actually Remedy and I had been very close for years, but around the time you and I had sex that night, we were more than friends but we hadn’t had sex yet. I hadn’t had sex in a while around that time actually, and…there you were,” I said, like: “viola!”
“Oh, so you just used me for sex?” he asked.
“No Mitch. No. I was just emotionally involved with someone else-well let me not say emotionally-at that time. But, mentally, I was into Remedy at that time and then our relationship took off to a level all its own,” I explained.
“Wow, that hurts to hear,” he replied.
“I mean, we are being honest with one another tonight. It’s not like you didn’t know what my feelings were for him. I don’t think any of us had any secrets, Mitch.” I replied-simply.
“Yeah, I guess. I guess you’re right. I mean, I didn’t want to actually hear you say something like that, though. It just sounds…I don’t know. Maybe something you should’ve kept secret-like how you felt about him,” he explained.
“But you asked! I feel that I was still fair to you-I was good to you. You were much too sweet to me for me not to-or to just completely disregard you,” I expressed.
He replied:
“But you weren’t sleeping with me though. It was like, you had me to a point where-even though we spent a lot of time together, you had me feeling like I had better not touch you. You are a funny kind of girl like that. Like, after a while, I started feeling like that bomb ass sex we had that night was a dream-like…it was some entity, but not really you, especially how we didn’t pick up after that night-you just went cold on that.”
I laughed.
“I guess I expected more, after that night,” he explained.
“Yeah,” I simply said.
“There’s no sense in asking if you enjoyed it because I know you did-you were so horny. You were giving me all that pussy. I was loving that shit, too. I had never fucked a girl like that in my life! And I never been with a girl that knew what she wanted and turned her man on in ways that made him do and say things he never thought he would have. It was incredible and you were loving that shit, too. I thought I was a new man after that night,” he laughed aloud.
“Hence, why your mom hates me, who were you caught telling this same thing too?”
I laughed.
“Nobody! Seriously,” he laughed.
I replied:
“So, since I haven’t been giving you any…I know your fine ass has been getting you some from somewhere. Don’t act like you’ve been marking your calendar down in red X’s waiting on me.”
He came on out with it.
He confessed:
“Well I had met this girl that
THE ABOVE-POSTED EXCERPTS ARE FROM THE NOT YET PUBLISHED PREQUEL / BOOK 2 “Angie Situation” series/trilogy
BOOK 1- PUBLISHED:
TABLE of CONTENTS
PREFACE 5
- The Roots of Picked Fruit 17
- The Precocious Ripening 33
- Ripe & Ready. Gangs, Bangs & Pangs 39
- The Queen Bee in Me 63
- Another Level. Blossoming. Beautiful. 80
- TGGF, Male Model & Me 101
- TGGF & Me 112
- Divorcing Dad 124
- You Know Who 130
- First Flings First 139
- In the Lion’s Den 170
- Cold Shoulders and Frozen Dancing Feet 195
- Pills & Frills 204
- You Know What: I Told You So 209
- Dichotomies & Dazes 228
- Situations, Decisions & Transitions 241
- Up, Out & Away 244
MEET the AUTHOR Q & A 254
READING GROUP GUIDE 257
SNEAK PEEK into book2 (“Angie Situation NAIVETE’” )’s CHAPTER ONE 260
OTHER BOOKS BY ANGELA SHERICE 269
ABOUT the AUTHOR 270
