Never Keeping Secrets (10 page)

“Watching me do what?” she asked herself. “Please. What the fuck ever.”

Shrugging she turned to head back into the bedroom but stopped at the threshold. She made her way toward one of the guest bedrooms instead, locking the door securely behind her before she lay across the fully made bed and pressed her face into one of the pillows. She didn't care that her makeup and her tears would run together and stain the five-hundred-dollar sheets.

GIRL TALK

 

K
eesha rolled over onto her back and opened her eyes. She allowed herself a long stretch, enjoying the feel of the crisp cotton against her body. She glanced at the time displayed on the digital cable box. It was almost two in the afternoon. Her days of getting up at seven to mess with a nine-to-five were over two years ago.
The good life.

She cleared her throat and reached over onto the nightstand for the remote, turning on the TV before she finally rolled up out of bed. Her feet got tangled up in the clothing littering the floor. “Shit,” she swore, kicking a platform sandal out of her path to the bathroom.

Keesha looked over her shoulder at the bedroom door and Corey walked into the room. “You off early?” she said.

Corey made a face. “I was off today.”

“And you let me lay up in bed all alone?” she asked, continuing on to the bathroom to run the shower. She pulled the oversized T-shirt she wore over her head, careful not to disrupt the satin scarf holding her hair in place.

He mumbled something.

She stuck her head out the door. “Huh?”

Corey paused in searching through his wallet to look up at her. “Hell, you ain't fucking. Why would I lay up in bed next to pussy I got to beg to sniff?”

Keesha made sure her facial expression didn't change and her eyes didn't shift, revealing her guilt. “Whatever, Corey,” she said, turning away from him. “And we need to hire a maid.”

“No the hell we don't.”

Keesha stepped back out of the bathroom, the steam from the shower swirling out around her naked body. “Yes we do. I don't have time to keep the house up.”

“It's a townhouse, Keesha, not a mini-mansion,” Corey said, turning to leave.

“It's five times bigger than that roach trap your ass was living in,” she snapped.

Corey turned. “And before you
thought
you became the next Terry McMillan that roach trap was all your ass was used to, too.”

Keesha waved her hand at him dismissively. “So I ain't supposed to want better?”

“Yeah but don't forget where you came from.”

Keesha sucked her teeth. “We're getting the maid,” she told him, turning to walk back into the bathroom.

Corey appeared in the doorway. “We can't afford that.”

She glanced at him over her shoulder. “No,
you
can't,” she said before she stepped inside the shower and closed the glass door in his face.

He slammed the bathroom door on his way out.

Money—or rather
her
money—was the biggest cause of arguments between them. And Keesha couldn't understand what his problem was. She grew up in the projects, stripped to raise her child, and fought back from a drug addiction. Now was the time to live and live well. Why not spend it and enjoy?

Corey had been fully behind Keesha's dreams of writing her book. He purchased her a computer, encouraged her to finish the book, and even kicked ideas around with her. It was Corey who made her take getting her book published seriously. He made her believe in herself. And that made her hustle harder. For herself, her daughter, and for him.

All of the happiness they shared the day she got a call from a New York agent offering to represent her disappeared a long time ago.
Happy don't live in this bitch anymore.

Keesha finished her shower and dressed in yoga pants and a tank, prepared to finally start her day. She grabbed the wallet she kept her cigarettes in. As she left their bedroom she eyed the closed door to her office. She really needed to get in at least twenty pages that day if she was going to meet her new extended deadline. “After I eat something,” she said, continuing on down the stairs and into the kitchen.

At the sound of girlish giggles she looked out the window. Kimani and a couple of the girls from the neighborhood were playing in the inground pool.

Keesha made herself a sandwich and took it with her outside to lie on one of the patio chairs. She waved at her daughter and her friends, hoping they stayed in the pool. She was not in the mood to hear nary nothing about whatever little boys they were crushing on.

Not when she needed to figure out the big fight scene at the end of her book. Keesha felt like she wanted to do something with her lead character, Lick Me. She wanted to give her readers an ending that left them with their mouths opened. Something that would shock them.

“Hey, Keesha.”

She leaned up and looked over her shoulder. She smiled as their neighbor Jeremiah came down the steps of the deck to sit down in the patio chaise beside her. He moved into the townhouse four or five months ago and Keesha had instantly clicked with the man. “How'd you get in?” she asked, sitting up to pull a cigarette and her rhinestone-covered lighter from its case.

“Corey let me in on his way out,” he said, reaching over to take half of her sandwich.

Keesha frowned.
Where the fuck he going?

“When did you get back?” she asked him even as she reached over to where Kimani had the cordless phone sitting. She dialed Corey's cell phone number so quickly that the beeps seemed to run together.

“I just got in yesterday. I would have come over but I had to get over that long flight from Hawaii,” Jeremiah said.

Corey never answered. The call went to his voice mail and Keesha hung up at the sound of the automated message. “Next time you and your boo take me with you,” she said, sounding as distracted as her thoughts.

She tried calling Corey's number twice more and neither time did he answer.

“Marcus won't mind,” Jeremiah said, leaning over to lightly tap and free the ashes from her forgotten cigarette.

“Huh?” Keesha asked, turning her head to look at him.

“I said Marcus won't mind,” Jeremiah repeated. “He loves your books.”

Keesha smiled even though her nerves were shot. “You'll have to bring him over to meet me one day,” she said.

She blinked to remove an image of Corey's dark and naked body sweating as he grinded between the legs of some faceless whore.

“I will. He still isn't willing to admit to anyone he's gay.” Jeremiah looked over at the girls in the pool.

“So he's manly like you?” Keesha asked, putting out her cigarette butt on the concrete and reaching for another one.

Jeremiah eyed her.

Keesha waved her hand dismissively. “I mean none of that finger-snapping, lip-smacking, honey boo-boo shit,” she said.

Jeremiah still eyed her and cocked his head to the side.

“Hell, you don't look gay.” She threw her hands up in the air. “You're not flaming—”

“You're going to need a ladder and a prayer to get out the hole you're digging,” he said, before finally smiling.

Keesha realized he had been joking with her. “Ooh fuck you,” she said.

“No thank you.”

Keesha snatched up the cordless phone, thinking it was Corey calling her back. “Where you at?” she asked.

“So you finally answering your phone?”

Keesha held the phone away from her head and gave herself a five count at the sound of her mother's voice.

“Something wrong, Keesha?” Jeremiah asked.

Taking a deep breath she looked down at the phone with her thumb poised above the button to send Diane back out of her life. After the way her mother acted a complete fool at the cookout, Keesha had decided that she had enough of her. Diane was on the no-call/no-answer list at the Lands-Miller household.

She heard Jeremiah's concern but didn't answer him as she finally pressed the phone to her ear. “What do you want, Diane?”

“So you just forgot you got a mama again?”

“What do you want, Diane?” she repeated.

The line went quiet.

Keesha knew what was coming next.

“I'm on the list to be evicted and I need to borrow money to catch up my rent.”

“They gonna put my shit on the curb next week, Keesha.”

She pulled her knees to her chest. “Diane, I don't have—”

“Or I could just put my shit in storage and move in with you.”

“Fuck no!” She knocked her hand against the armrest, causing the fiery end of her ashes to break off and drop onto her thigh. She yelped as it burned a hole into her pants and then singed her skin.

“Ain't this 'bout a bitch,” she snapped, wetting her thumb and pressing it to the burn.

“Did you call me a bitch, bitch?” Diane asked.

“What's wrong, Keesha?” Kimani called from the pool.

“You call your mama by her first name?” one of the kids asked.

“Your mother's fine,” Jeremiah called over to Kimani.

“Look, Diane, I can't keep bailing you out. I got my own bills,” Keesha said into the phone.

The line stayed quiet.

Keesha dropped her head into her hands.
I'm so tired of her shit.

They both knew she would catch up on the rent because they both knew that Keesha had no plans of moving her mother into her home. She would never inflict Diane's ratchetness on the neighborhood. Never.

“How much?”

“Eight hundred and eighty.”

Keesha's eyes got big. “Your rent is under a hundred. When the last time you paid your shit?”

“And you're talking to your mother?” Jeremiah asked.

Keesha waved her hand at him.

“I kicked Doc to the curb, lost my job at the Dollar Store, and my unemployment ran out,” Diane explained.

Keesha squeezed one eye shut and arched the brow over the other as she fought not to lose it. “I'll take the money straight to the office tomorrow. I have to go.”

And Diane was gone. No thank you. Nothing.

Keesha dropped the phone. “Crazy bitch,” she mumbled.

“That was . . . different,” Jeremiah said.

Keesha lit yet another cigarette as she laughed a little. “That's one word for it,” she said. “So are dysfunctional, debilitating, and damaged.”

Jeremiah remained quiet.

“I think my mother is crazy. Like seriously, needs-to-beon-a-pill type crazy,” Keesha admitted, looking off into the trees and garden surrounding the edges of the backyard.

“I remember the scene at the cookout,” Jeremiah said. “You should get her some help.”

“Been there, done that,” she said, her voice sad and tired. “I used to get high and I, uh . . . overdosed. I had to go to therapy and my mama issues came up.”

Again Jeremiah stayed quiet.

“My mama taught me how to smoke weed and how men were only good for money. When I told her I wanted to strip she gave me that bullshit line from
The Player's Club.”

“ ‘Make the money, don't let it make you.' ”

Keesha nodded as she took a deep inhale of her cigarette, enjoying the feel of the smoke against her tongue. She went on to tell him she started therapy while in rehab. Her therapist had suggested inviting Diane to a session. In the beginning their relationship had improved. Diane started acting less like a friend and more like a mother. Her mouth had become less reckless and she had seemed genuine in asking Keesha to forgive her for playing Russian roulette with the choice of her father.

“That shit lasted all of two or three months,” Keesha said with another release of a long stream of smoke. “Diane told the therapist to lick every bit of black off her ass before she left the session and never returned.”

Jeremiah looked apologetic. “That's . . .”

“Different,” they said in unison.

Keesha picked up the phone but this time she checked the caller ID. “Where are you?” she asked Corey, standing up to walk out of earshot. “How you just gone up and leave without saying anything?”

“Let you tell it, you don't need me around there.”

Something in his tone filled her with guilt. “When will you be back?” she asked.

“Whenever I get the fuck back.”

Keesha raised her brows in surprise.
Humph.

Jeremiah stood up. “You cool? I have to get to work.”

He worked nights as a security guard.

“I'm good. Be sure to bring the photos of your trip next time you come over,” she said.

He waved to the girls in the pool and disappeared through the opening in the wooden fence separating their properties.

She tapped the phone against her chin as that image of Corey and another woman sexing each other flashed again. Turning the phone over she dialed Shawn's cell number.

“Whaddup.”

“You,” she said, feeling some of her stress release. A side dick was a welcome distraction.