Up to No Good (12 page)

“Let me ask you a question,” she said. “Do you want to die alone?”

“Where did that question come from?”

“Just answer me.”

“I never really gave it much thought,” I replied honestly.

“You should. It’s not something I recommend. I watched my father go through it, and I can tell you that men aren’t meant to die alone.”

“Well, I’m not planning on going anytime soon,” I joked, this whole conversation making me very uncomfortable. I wasn’t used to having such a serious conversation with a woman.

“You know what?” Crystal said with a sigh. “Never mind. I can see you’re not ready for this conversation. But trust me—one day you’re gonna feel your age, and you’re gonna need me. I just can’t promise I’ll still be waiting around for you.”

With that, she stood up and finished getting dressed, then left without another word. I wondered if she was serious and if that might possibly have been the last time we would ever have sex. But the more I thought about it, the more I came up with one answer: Crystal and I would always end up sleeping together.

I ran my hand down her back and along the smooth curves of her round buttocks as she slept next to me. I ’d done it, I thought. I ’d finally slept with a woman other than Keisha. Less than thirty minutes ago, I had been making love to Whitney Johnson, the one woman Keisha hated most in the entire world. I know my sister thought I ’d end up sleeping with her friend Sandra, but as nice as she was, I just didn’t feel any chemistry, not to mention the fact that I hated being forced into anything. I still planned on watching the game with Sandra, but there was no chance that Jamie’s matchmaking attempt would work out. Whitney, on the other hand, I did have chemistry with, if only because Keisha hated her.

Whitney and Keisha had quite a history. We had all gone to college together aTVCU, and Keisha had hated Whitney from the first time she caught her checking me out in line at the dining hall during our freshman year. Whitney tried a few times to get my attention, but it hadn’t worked. Even as fine as Whitney was, I never had any interest in her that way. I was just too wrapped
up in Keisha. You know, all that one-woman-man crap I ’d been preaching the last ten years.

Keisha didn’t care how faithful I was, though. The only thing that mattered to her was that Whitney was disrespecting her by trying to get with me.

Whitney thought the whole thing was funny and even got some of her sorority sisters in on the act, spreading rumors that Whitney and I had hooked up one weekend when Keisha went home for a cousin’s birthday party. After quite a bit of work on my part, I was able to convince Keisha that it had never happened, but from that point on, it was war between her and Whitney.

Things finally came to a head when Whitney forced Keisha to drop pledge line for the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. That was quite embarrassing for Keisha, considering she was a double legacy, with both her mother and grandmother being Deltas. Keisha and Whitney ended up in a fistfight at a frat party one night, and the way Keisha walked away with a handful of Whitney’s weave became a campus legend.

There was an uneasy truce between them after that, and they managed to keep away from each other until Whitney’s graduation the year before ours. But every once in a while, Whitney’s name would come up in a conversation, and it was obvious that Keisha still hated her passionately. I hadn’t seen or spoken to Whitney since graduation, nor had I ever felt the need. But when I saw her walk into a bar in Queens where I was once again trying to drown my sorrows, it felt like fate.

Keisha and I had been arguing on and off on the phone ever since the night I had gone to her place, then left her in tears. Every time I spoke to her, it was like ripping the scab off an old wound. Hearing her voice
made me feel like crap, because any time she said something cute or endearing, I would wonder, Did she say those same types of things to Omar once? I couldn’t stop the pain in my heart, no matter how much alcohol I consumed. This particular night, I almost went over to her place again, knowing that if I did, we’d end up screwing. But somehow, fate made me stop off at the bar for a drink first.

I knew that even though I still loved her, cutting Keisha loose would be the best thing for me. That’s why the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. If I could get with Whitney, it might take my mind off Keisha and help me move on. The thought of some closure put a smile on my face as Whitney approached me.

It turned out that Whitney was just as happy to see me, having just ended a long-term relationship herself a few months ago. This was one of those “right place at the right time” meetings, and it took only a few martinis before Whitney was bare-ass naked, riding me in the queen-sized bed in her apartment.

This was the kind of behavior that would make my father proud, I thought as I rewound the entire thirty-five-minute sexual act through my mind. We’d done everything under the sun, but, unfortunately, I still didn’t know what the hype was all about, sexing someone you didn’t care about. Pussy was pussy to me, I ’d decided. It was warm and wet, and the more you moved your dick in it, the sooner you’d come. I could have masturbated to do that. Whitney could have been Halle Berry, Mariah Carey, or Beyoncé, and it wouldn’t have mattered. To me, she didn’t feel like anything more than a sperm receptacle, because she didn’t mean anything to me.

I never just came when I was with Keisha. Every
single orgasm was like a new high for me, and that included the time I tried to knock her head through the wall. She just did things to me.

All of a sudden, I felt dirtier than the last time I ’d slept with Keisha, and I hurt. I hurt bad, and it was all Keisha’s fault. We should have been happily married by now, and I never would have been in the bar in the first place to end up having meaningless sex with a woman I didn’t give a crap about. If only Keisha had kept her damn legs closed …

I wanted the pain in my heart to go away, but more than that, I wanted Keisha to feel what I did. I doubted she had any idea how badly she had wounded me, but I decided I would try to make her understand.

Trying not to wake Whitney, I slipped out from under the covers and picked up my pants off the floor. I slid on my pants, found my cell phone in the pocket, and dialed Keisha’s number as I headed into the living room. Keisha answered on the first ring, like she’d been waiting for me to call.

“Hey, baby, I’m so glad you called. I miss you so much.” The cheerfulness in her voice was so contrary to my own anger that it felt like a slap in my face.

“What are you doing?” I asked her, refusing to acknowledge that I missed her too.

“Why? What are you doing? You want to come over? You want some of this?”

“Not in this lifetime.”

There was a beat of silence before she asked cautiously, “Uh … what’s wrong, Darnel?”

“You want to know what I been doing?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah, I guess so …,” she said, drawing out her words to emphasize her confusion.

I delivered my news with malicious satisfaction. “I just fucked Whitney.”

Again, there was silence on the other end as she processed my words.

“Did you just say what I think you did?”

“I sure did.”

“No, you didn’t, because I thought you said—”

“Yeah, I did. I said I fucked Whitney Johnson. I fucked her, and it was daaaaaaamn good.”

In my fantasy of this moment, I imagined her bursting into tears right about now, so I was completely caught off guard when she laughed. “Okay, Darnel. You had me going there for a minute. Look, I know you’re hurt about what I—” She stopped herself. I guess she figured it would be wise if she didn’t speak about her act of betrayal. So I spoke it for her.

“Yeah, I’m still hurt about how you
fucked my best friend
! But that’s why I was all up in Whitney’s pussy tonight. Trust me—she made me feel much better.”

“Darnel, come on. You’re lying. You wouldn’t do that just to hurt me, would you?” she asked, as if I didn’t have every right to seek some revenge for what she’d done.

“Uh, yeah, I would do that, and I did. You want me to wake her up and put her on the phone to prove it to you?”

This time, there was no hesitation before she answered. “Yeah, put her ass on the phone, ’cause I will kill that bitch! Do you hear me? I will kill her ass!” From the level of her rage, I knew there was no reason to wake Whitney. Keisha believed that I ’d fucked Whitney, and it was like a knife in her heart.

I laughed. “I know the feeling. I felt the same way when I saw Omar’s dick up your ass.”

“I can’t believe you would fuck that bitch! She’s been trying to get with you ever since we were in college.”

“Well, now she got me,” I said with some satisfaction. “And now you know how it feels.”

She slowed her roll a little as my reason for sleeping with Whitney sunk in. She sighed and then said, “So, now we’re even. Does that make you feel better?”

“No,” I said, though I hated to admit it. My true feelings came pouring out. “I thought it would, but it didn’t. I just wish this whole thing had never happened. I just wish you had loved me the way I loved you.” I was starting to get choked up. “We’re supposed to be man and wife right now, Keisha. All I ever wanted to do was love you. Why couldn’t you love me?”

“I do love you, Darnel,” she said, her voice sounding full of genuine regret. “I don’t care if you’re screwin’ a hundred women; I’m still going to love you. I’m always going to love you.”

“What do you know about love, Keisha?” I spit the words at her, wanting them to hurt her as much as she’d hurt me. But I think I finally understood that they never would. She could never truly know what she’d done to me, any more than we could ever go back and undo the past.

“I know I messed up, and if you give me another chance, I won’t ever do it again.”

“But why did you do it in the first place?” I asked. “How do I know you won’t do it again if I don’t even understand why it happened the first time?”

“I already told you I don’t know.”

“That’s not good enough this time. We’re on the phone, Keisha, and you can’t kiss me and fuck me and avoid talking about it. So either you tell me why it happened, or I’m hanging up this phone and I swear you will never hear from me again.”

“You sure you want to know?” she asked.

“Yes. Stop stalling and just tell me why you broke my heart, ’cause I really can’t take this anymore.”

“Okay …” It took her a while to speak again, and then she finally gave me an explanation for the events that changed my life. “I was drunk, and I was down at the bar with my girls. Omar came in talking about how I was making a mistake getting married without sleeping with at least one other man.”

Omar had used the same argument to try to convince me to sleep with the stripper that night. I just wasn’t that stupid. Shit, was it possible he had been planning the whole thing? Maybe he wanted me to sleep with the stripper so I ’d be occupied while he went to seduce my fiancée. It was possible, I decided, but he still couldn’t have succeeded without a willing participant, so Keisha was not innocent by any stretch of the imagination.

“But why him?” I asked.

“Darnel, please, I just want to forget that night.”

“Bye, Keisha.”

“No, wait!” she yelled. “Don’t hang up.”

“Why not? You don’t want to tell me the truth. I told you what I need, and if you can’t give it to me, then we ain’t got nothin’ to talk about.”

“Promise you won’t get mad.”

It was not a promise I wanted to make, but I needed to hear the explanation if I had any hope of ever getting past this, with or without Keisha. “I won’t get mad.”

“Okay, he was flirting with me. I was drunk. My girl was whispering to me about how big the bulge in his pants was.”

This was killing me to hear, but I let her keep talking.

“It was all just drunken flirting until he told me you were screwing some stripper whore upstairs.”

“He what?”

Her voice was quiet, almost apologetic. “He said you were getting laid upstairs.” “And you believed him? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You promised you wouldn’t get mad,” she said, crying now.

“Fuck what I promised! Why didn’t you just come up to my room and find out? Shit, Keisha, it wouldn’t have taken that much to find out the truth.”

“I don’t know, Darnel. I was drunk, I was pissed off, and when I said I was going up there to kick your ass, Omar calmed me down and convinced me to stay in the bar. Told me you had to get it out of your system and that I needed to do the same.”

I could picture the scenario. It was starting to sound like Omar really had set this whole thing up. I was still furious with Keisha for falling for it as easily as she did, but, I thought hopefully, maybe she’d learned her lesson and something like this would never happen again.

“Was that the only time?”

“I swear, Darnel. You can give me a lie-detector test.”

She sounded sincere, and I wanted desperately to believe her, but in the back of my mind, there was this nagging feeling that I couldn’t take her word for it. I would definitely have to do some investigating of my own before I was satisfied that I knew the whole truth. But in the end, I had to admit to myself that I loved her enough to give this a try. Maybe if I found out that their affair was deeper, I could still learn to forgive, even if I would never totally forget.

“I just want to marry you and spend my life making you happy. You will never have to worry about this happening again,” she said.

She still wanted to marry me. My heart leapt a little at the thought, because I sure as hell still had feelings for her.

“Keisha, I don’t know …”

“What don’t you know? You love me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I answered without hesitation. “Yes, I love you.”

“So, do you want to marry me or not?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why not? We love each other. What else matters?”

“You hurt me.”

“I know, baby, and I promise I’ll never do it again.”

“And then there’s my family.”

“What about them?”

“My family hates you, Keisha. They’re not going to accept this. You didn’t just hurt me. They got hurt too.”