BELLA
A
couple of days later, Bella was at the hospital visiting a member of her congregation when she saw Crystal walk down the hall.
“Crystal!” she called out.
Crystal turned around. “Bella! Hey.”
They greeted one another with a hug. Crystal had become Bella's confidante. She was able to tell Crystal things she would normally keep to herself. This was the first time Bella had a real “sister girl” and it took a lot of weight off her shoulders because she wasn't holding so much in her soul now.
“How's Faith's husband doing?” Bella asked.
“Better, he'll be going home any day now.”
“Good for him, he's in my prayers, as is she.”
They were walking down the corridor heading for the front door when Bella asked Crystal, “Do you have a minute?”
“Of course.”
“Let's go sit down, I need to bounce something off you.”
They headed toward the sitting area outside the hospital.
Bella had already told Crystal about James and Ramsey, briefly. She didn't know how much she really wanted to reveal, but she did tell Crystal about her and James going out and about Ramsey being an old love from her past.
When they sat down, Crystal asked, “So what's up?”
Not one to beat around the bush or sugarcoat anything, Bella told her, “I slept with James.”
This threw Crystal for a minute. She wasn't one to judge and she believed that people are people, even if they are in charge of churches.
“You slept with James?” Crystal repeated. She didn't know what else to say.
“Well, I'm not even sure if I did it knowingly.” Bella needed to run that whole incident by someone because something bugged her. She couldn't understand why she didn't remember how they ended up in bed.
Not only that, but the last couple of Sundays, James would show up at church and stare at her through the whole sermon. It was starting to frighten her. He even tried to enter her office when she'd told him not to. Now, he'd taken to calling all her numbers, leaving stalker-like messages.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, one minute I was telling him he should leave and the next day I woke up naked and he's coming out of the bathroom.”
Crystal recognized this pattern of events. Some of the young girls whom she'd counseled in the past told her of similar situations, where they had sex and couldn't recall a thing. It turned out they were slipped a mickey. “Did you have anything to eat or drink when you with him?”
Bella closed her eyes and tried to recall the order of events. She opened them. “I remember getting water.”
“Did you leave it unattended?”
“You know what? I did. Ramsey called and I excused myself to go speak with him.”
Crystal shook her head and told Bella, “I think he put something in your water.”
Bella was stunned. “What do you mean, he put something in my water? He wouldn't do something like that.”
“Are you sure about that, Bella?”
At this point Bella wasn't sure about anything and she told Crystal this.
“What I would do is tell your boy, Ramsey.”
“How am I supposed to tell him, I slept with James?”
“He drugged you, Bella, and he needs to be taken care of. You told me yourself that back in the day Ramsey was a thug and the way I see it, you should let him handle it. Some situations you take to Jesus and some situations you take to the streets.”
Bella looked at Crystal and asked her, “Where's the Jesus in that?”
Crystal wasn't trying to hear that. “You know what, Bella, you really should let Ramsey handle it and just ask for forgiveness on this one.”
When Bella got to her car, she asked the Lord to please forgive her for what she was about to do. She dialed Ramsey's number.
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Over the past couple of weeks, Bella and Ramsey spoke a number of times. He'd stopped by the church and she finally allowed him to come visit her home, where she cooked dinner for him. It appeared to Bella that they were rekindling the old flame.
“Hey sweetie,” Ramsey said into the phone.
“Hey, Ramsey, can you stop by the church today?”
Ramsey could hear that something was wrong. “What's going on?”
“Nothing, I just need to talk to you about something.”
“Are you sure everything is okay?”
“How soon can you get there?”
“Are you there now?” he asked.
“I'll be there shortly.”
“Well, I'm on my way.”
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When Bella pulled into the church parking lot, she looked around. Ramsey wasn't there yet but James's car was. Furious and tired of the whole situation, she made the decision to confront him. The fact that Ramsey was on his way gave her the courage she needed.
She walked into the church and the only people inside were Jasmine, the church secretary and Antonio, the janitor. She didn't see James anywhere.
Where could he be?
Bella walked toward her office and there he was, sitting by the door.
“What are you doing here?” Bella asked, as she wondered how long before Ramsey showed up.
“You've been avoiding me.”
“You've been stalking me.”
“You can't stalk someone that you love.”
“What!”
Oh yeah, he's lost all his mind.
“What about our lovemaking?”
Nervous because she didn't want anyone to overhear, Bella unlocked her office door and pulled him inside.
She decided to get gully on him, because this was getting out of hand. “James, you don't love me and I don't love you. What happened between us the first time was a mistake and the second time, it is my belief that you slipped something in my water.”
“Woman, please, I didn't do any such thing. You wanted me just as much as I wanted you. You can't stand the fact that you're a freak just like everyone else and now you want to be in denial about what transpired between us.”
It was obvious to Bella that James had lost his mind, that he had gone past the point of no return. “James, I think you need to leave and not come back. I really think you need to find another church.”
“You're kicking me out of the church?” James started to laugh like that was the funniest shit he'd heard in a long time.
“And if you continue to stalk me,” Bella threatened, “you can best believe that I'm going to call the cops.”
James got up in her face and in a menacing tone asked her, “and tell them what? That you fucked a member of your congregation? You would really be willing to let that become public knowledge? How do you think your congregation would feel about that?”
All of a sudden Ramsey appeared out of nowhere. He pulled James back by the collar, released him, and asked, “Feel about what? What the hell is going on here?”
Bella looked toward her office door, which was still open.
Ramsey walked over to it and shut it, then asked again, “What the hell is going on here?”
Bella rushed over to Ramsey and stood near him. “This is what I had to talk to you about.”
James looked at her. “What? You're going to tell him I fucked you?”
Ramsey frowned, anger spread over his face. “What is he talking about? You slept with this nigga?”
It was obvious that everyone had forgotten they were in the house of the Lord. “It's not what you think, he drugged me.”
“I drugged you two times? I don't think so,” James taunted.
Bella took Ramsey's hand. “Ramsey, I did have a moment of weakness once, but that was before you came back into my life.”
James, fearing what was about to happen because of the look on Ramsey's face, moved toward the door but Ramsey stood in front of it.
Bella continued: “That night I met you at the restaurant in your hotel when I arrived home, he was waiting at my door. I let him in to tell him there could be nothing between us. I believe when you called me to make sure I was home and I stepped into the other room, he put something in my water and the next thing I know I woke up naked.”
“Don't believe that shit, don't believe that shit,” James was repeating over and over.
“Now he's stalking me and threatening to expose what happened.”
Ramsey looked into Bella's eyes and knew that she spoke the truth. He turned toward James, who was two seconds from running until he realized there was nowhere to run to. Ramsey grabbed him by his throat, lifted him in the air, and said, “You low-life motherfucker.” He threw James across the room and before James could get to his feet, Ramsey started to pummel him.
Bella ran over and begged, “Ramsey, stop! Please stop! We're in the church.”
Ramsey pulled him up by the neck and told him, “If I ever see you or hear anything about you again, I will personally see to it that your ass no longer exists.”
He looked at Bella and told her, “I'll be back.” Ramsey grabbed James by the collar. “Open the door,” he told Bella. “I have to throw out the trash.”
Bella did as he requested.
When she opened the door, Jasmine and Antonio were standing looking like,
what the hell is going on?
Jasmine looked at Bella, Ramsey, and the bloodied James. “Brother James?”
Antonio, who liked Bella and respected her, but knew all along there was something fishy about James, asked Ramsey if he needed any help.
He told him no.
As Ramsey was throwing James out the building, he could hear Antonio say under his breath, “I never liked him anyway.”
After Bella assured them that everything was okay, she told them they could both leave for the day. After they were gone, Bella and Ramsey were in her office.
“I don't know how much longer I can do this,” Bella said when Ramsey sat next to her.
He had no idea what she was talking about. “Do what?”
“Pastor a church,” she told him. “Look at what I've done, I think that I'm making a mockery of the church. I stand in front of people every day professing that I understand their struggles and I don't even understand my own. I feel like such a phony, such a hypocrite.”
Ramsey had learned over the years that sometimes a woman wants your opinion and sometimes she just wants you to listen. He knew that this was one of those times that she needed him to listen.
Bella continued to vent. “I teach forgiveness all the time, but more and more it just feels like words without meaning. Some days I wake up and I feel like if someone comes at me with another problem or another issue, I'm going to explode. That's not how a pastor is supposed to think.”
After she was quiet for a moment, Ramsey realized it was his turn to speak. “I once thought about becoming a minister.”
Bella didn't expect him to say that. “Really?”
“Yep, but it didn't take long for me to realize that I'm better one-on-one. I felt that the structure of the church was too restrictive. After speaking with a couple of pastors, I realized that there are other ways to minister and that's how I ended up doing what I'm doing. Maybe that's something you should think about, maybe running a church is too restrictive. Maybe it is time to do something else.”
“You might be right,” Bella told him.
“Bella, I have a suggestion.”
“What is it?”
“How about you take a leave of absence and come travel with me for a while. You can work with the women in the prisons and I'll work with the men.”
“Are you serious?” Bella asked him.
“It'll give us an opportunity for us to get to know one another again and to see if what I think we could have is possible.”
Bella opened her mouth to say something but Ramsey stopped her and continued. “It'll even give you an opportunity to decide if being a pastor is what you want to continue doing. Bella, I think we would be good together as a couple. I want to be your man.”
Bella looked at him. She admitted to herself that she wanted him to be her man, the day he walked in the church the first time.
“I need some time to think about this,” she told him.
“You need know I'll be leaving in two weeks,” he told her, “and I would like to be able to see you freely without feeling like we're sneaking around.”
Bella wanted to see him as well. She was ready to start being true to herself. Yes, she was living her life for God and she would continue to do so but that didn't mean she had to be without companionship. Bella knew what she wanted to do. Why was she putting off her own happiness?
“If I decide to go with you, I couldn't do it right away, there are things I have to do like, find someone to pastor the church andâ”
Ramsey didn't give Bella a chance to finish or talk her way out of the decision he knew she'd made. He stepped forward and kissed her with such a passion that all Bella could do was thank the Lord.
Bella thought about Harmony, the young lady she met at the center and how she already had a family. Yes, she wished she had started one many years ago, but life circumstances didn't permit it. Perhaps it wasn't too late.