Page 16

GANGSTA

VANESSA

T he countdown was on. There was now less than a week to go before the Montreal trip.

She’d put in her due diligence at work, avoiding Claremore’s creepy lascivious stare during more trial prep and took a long ass shower to wash off the sensation.

Scott was taking her to dinner in Manhattan, where they would discuss the final details and catch up on each other’s busy lives.

Taking one last look at herself in the mirror, she was glad to see the silk press was going strong despite the humidity and her workout before the shower.

Flipping it over her shoulder, she served herself a seductive lip pout.

She’d loved the outfit she chose earlier and had thought it looked good.

The soft pink blazer and bootcut pink linen pants did look good with her dark cherry blouse but now she was critical when she turned to check out her own ass.

Maybe she needed to add more squats to the routine.

Oddly, she felt flat about the evening ahead rather than excited. She’d been through so many dates in her thirty-five years, minus the three she’d been married to “the baby” and the last year when she decided she was ready to try again. So many dates, so many hopes. So many disappointments.

“I have lived a thousand lives…” she murmured to her reflection. It was from a song she’d been playing a lot lately, but she also thought she might have seen that phrase in a novel she’d read. She was a self-described encyclopedia of useless facts and scraps of knowledge.

There was one last finishing touch left. Vanessa put her diamond studs in her ears, then removed them after a moment of thought. Santino had given her those earrings on their first anniversary. It felt wrong wearing them on a date with someone else.

The earrings weren’t the issue. The question still hung in the air over her head like a cartoon thought bubble. Was she ready to start a serious relationship with a new man, especially when everything in her life was still tied to her ex?

Tick-tock, tick-tock . She didn’t have time for thoughts of Santino or second-guessing anymore. She’d better get over these nerves and get her shit together if she wanted a shot at a family with a good man.

Scott’s car pulled up right on time. Vanessa grinned and left the house before he could text.

Approaching the car, she peered in to see Scott with his hands gripping the steering wheel, staring ahead with his features creased as if distracted by some troubling thoughts.

When he spotted her standing there waving at him, he exited the beautiful vehicle, and walked around the hood to her side.

“Hi, handsome,” Vanessa greeted him. He gave her a small smile, and the tiny parakeet in her chest chirped again.

“What’s up?”

Scott didn’t kiss her cheek as he normally did when he opened the car door for her.

She missed that, missed the ticklish sensation of his red-gold beard against her cheek.

He didn’t do it when he went back to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel.

In fact, he was barely looking at her. A small pit opened up in her tummy, and doubt welled up from its center.

“Everything okay?” she asked. Maybe yesterday’s negotiations had gone south after they’d spoken. Or maybe it was his father, who hadn’t been well these last few weeks.

“As well as can be,” he answered cryptically.

That wasn’t usual. She hoped they hadn’t already reached the stage when they’d run out of things to say.

Not giving her the chance to pipe up and talk about anything, Scott turned up the volume on the radio until the hip hop was loud enough that they’d have to raise their voices to hear each other.

There was frost in those ice-green eyes when he glanced at her, then his eyes went back to the road.

His narrow lips stayed firmly closed the whole drive down to Harlem.

The doubts got louder, ringing like alarms as he found parking and they walked to the restaurant. It was a fusion restaurant, Caribbean and African American soul food. She’d heard raves about it, and she was excited to try it out.

“I’m Jamaican and Alabaman. This whole place is basically me,” she whispered to him as they were ushered to their table.

But Scott’s grin at what she meant to be a cute comment didn’t reach those cold eyes.

And he didn’t guide her through the restaurant by her elbow the way he normally would.

Her sense that something was drastically off grew by the minute.

She sat down at the table and, instead of looking at the tension bunching his shoulder muscles as they strained against his gray button-down shirt, she looked at the other patrons and the restaurant.

“Hello. I’m Cherise, welcome to Philo’s, what can I get you?” the server said once she’d given them some time. She was really pretty, about Vanessa’s complexion with long locs swinging down her back, golden beads and cowrie shells interspersed in the thickness.

Scott, who was typically pleasant with the waitstaff, didn’t smile at her but Vanessa scanned his face all the same.

They gave their orders and sat back while Cherise poured their water, then took off.

Scott didn’t look at her ass as she went, unlike the man at the next table. He still didn’t speak as they waited.

Compelled to fill the silence, to somehow end this sudden awkwardness and ward off the strong feeling that something bad was coming, Vanessa decided she had to say something, anything.

“So, I’ve been watching this streaming show. It’s a post-apocalyptic murder mystery. Sounds crazy, but it’s somehow really believable.”

“What, the apocalypse or the murder?”

Scott lifted one eyebrow and sat back, looking at her and listening while she rambled for the next twenty minutes, only making noises in his throat in response to whatever point she was making.

His complexion was naturally ruddy, but she could still detect a flush of a deeper red rising up from his throat and spreading into his cheeks.

While he fiddled with his knife, she looked at his big hands, the hands that, up to this point, she hadn’t allowed to touch her body, anywhere.

He’d said he didn’t mind waiting, but maybe he’d grown impatient after all?

She glanced at the tattoos on his knuckles, her mind replaying Santino’s accusations about him being a gang member.

She’d dismissed that outright, but she stared at these marks now, wondering if the Celtic symbols held more meaning.

It had never occurred to her before that Scott could be involved in anything like that, despite coming from a neighborhood where gang activity wasn’t unheard of. But now…

The food arrived. Scott had ordered ox tail and dirty rice, while she dug into her jerk chicken and sweet potato fries. He hunched over his food and dug in, eating fast as though he had somewhere to go. Vanessa gave up chatting about random shit and said, “This is really good.”

Scott only nodded and went “Uh huh,” with that quirked eyebrow again.

“Okay, what’s wrong?” Vanessa finally asked, not able to take another second of his silence. “You’ve been acting agitated since you picked me up. Is it your dad or work?”

“Neither,” he answered flatly, his gaze finally becoming direct. He wiped his mustache and short beard with a napkin before setting it down. “I got a visit this afternoon at work from somebody named Santino. He said he’s your husband.”

Stunned, she was momentarily tongue-tied.

All she could do was sit there and watch as Scott pulled out his phone, unlocked it, scrolled through it, and then turned the phone in her direction.

He showed her a pic of her and Santino on their wedding day at the beach, laughing, happy, unaware of the deep potholes in the road they were about to go down.

“It’s his screen cap. He texted it to me after I asked for proof of what he was saying because when he first told me you were married and I had better not take you to Montreal, I honestly didn’t believe it.

I said there was no way you wouldn’t tell me about a whole ass husband.

I came out tonight to ask you about it because I still can’t believe it.

Like maybe you’re divorced and he’s delusional and can’t accept it.

So, are you divorced? Or are you married?

” Scott put the phone down, staring at her.

This was it. She was going to lose her shit and kill Santino once and for all.

Fingers shaking, she managed to pick up her glass and take a long sip of water. It nearly choked her going down the wrong pipe. The other patrons were glancing over at their table, so she put her hand over her mouth and willed herself to calm down.

When she could finally speak, she said, “Legally separated. I was going to tell you about him tonight. I was going to tell you before Montreal so you’d know and… we could move forward from a place of honesty.”

“A place of honesty?” Scott spluttered with a disbelieving laugh.

Then he sobered and his face turned darker.

“We’ve been seeing each other for four months.

You said you had a bad breakup with an ex and that’s why you wanted to take things slow.

Is this why you wouldn’t let me stay over? Are you still sleeping with him?”

An image popped in her head of Santino’s face as he stared into her eyes, his mouth so tantalizingly close while his thumb rubbed those little circles…

She shook her head clear of those thoughts, but the guilt didn’t leave with them.

“I didn’t want to rush into that until we’d known each other better.

And yes, getting to know each other meant me telling you about him when the time was right.

But I’m sure what he didn’t tell you was that we’ve been separated since he cheated on me with his ex-girlfriend. ”

Scott’s eyebrows rose at that information. “Cheating, huh? I bet.” For some reason, he didn’t sound convinced.