Commitment (71 page)
Authors: Nia Forrester
“C’mere,” he said
impatiently
, when she
didn’t
move right away.
Riley
pu
t her bag down and went to him.
He met her half way and
wrap
ped
h
is arms about her.
He felt so good, so warm,
and so
familiar.
He
ran a hand across her
forehead
, as though brushing hair away,
and
pressed his lips there
.
A driver got out of the car and collected her bag, putting it in the
back
.
The entire ride to the hotel, she rested her head on his shou
lder but neither of them spoke.
Shawn stopped at the front desk to talk to a clerk and came back with a key, handing it to her and taking her bag.
“What’s this?”
Riley
looked at him. “I thought you were already staying here.”
“I am.
But
that’s the key to your suite.”
It took her a mome
nt to
understand what he’d said
.
Your
suite
.
“So we’re not . . .”
“I got you your own spot.”
She bit in her lower lip.
“Okay
.”
“It’s down the hall from min
e,”
he said, as though that made things better.
Riley
sighed.
“I said,
that’s
fine.”
On the elevator ride up, he gave her a run-down of the next day’s activities, in pretty much the same way she’d heard Brendan d
o for him on so many occasions.
She had a
nine
a.m.
appointment with a stylist who was going to take her shopping and help her with whatever the hell it was stylists helped peop
le with.
And at one she was sitting with h
im at a photo-op, no interview.
And then the rest of the afternoon was hers while he went to look over some storyboards for a music video and record
some radio station promotion spots
.
At
ten-thirty
p.m.
, a car would be downstairs to take her to the party where he would already be waiting.
T
he whole
production
felt like a business trip.
“Nine might be a little early for me,”
Riley
said dully.
“
It’s the only time she had available
,” Shawn said.
“
Sorry.
We can cancel if . .
.”
“
Nope.
I’ll do it
.”
No one
was going to
be able to say she di
dn’t perform her wifely duties.
If she had to meet the frigging stylist at
nine
, then so be it.
He left her bag on the floor of her suite and looked at her as impassively as if he were the bellboy waiting to fulfill a guest request.
“You
okay
?”
“Yeah.
I’ll see you
tomorrow
,” she said dully.
“G’night.”
He’d turned to walk away but she stopped him.
“I heard
about the lawsuit from Chris,” she said.
“That thing with Mike and Darryl
?
What’s going on with that?”
It was a cheap shot.
As she had hoped it would, his carefully crafted mask of hospitality cracked a little at
the
mention of Chris and the subtle
reference t
o time she’d spent with
him.
Shawn’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly and a slight tension
appeared
in his jaw.
At least she
could still make him jealous.
Small victory.
“They settled,” he said.
“Oh.
Good,”
Riley
said.
She hoisted her bag onto the bed and
pretended to be busy with it.
“S
o I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
She turned and showed him her back, hearing, rather t
han seeing him leave the room.
When he was gone, she sat on the edge of the bed, and covered her face with her hands,
sobbing
from exhaustion and disappointment until all she had energy to do was pull back the covers, kick off her shoes and go to sleep.
g
Shawn paced his suite, trying to get comfortable. He had a strange tension about his neck and shoulders that seemed to have come out of nowhere. Maybe he could call downstairs and have them find him a masseuse. Someone who could pound the kinks out of his muscles and leave him
begging for nothing more than a hot shower and his warm bed. But he already knew that nothing would make him relax, not with Riley just three doors down the hall.
He wondered whether she was sleeping. She looked tired at the airport and hadn’t even breathed a word of complaint when he told her about all the stuff Brendan had planned for her the next day
.
She even
agree
d
to take the morning appointment with Nadine.
Shawn undressed and turned on the shower. He would work out
the kinks in his neck this way, and try to
get out of his mind the look on her face at the airport. She just stood there, looking at him, like she was pleased to see him. But
that was all
;
‘
pleased.
’
It was a polite emotion; nothing like it used to be between them. He had to ask her to come to him, and she had. But when he hugged her, she was stiff.
As the water cascaded over his head, he thought about that night back home when he’d finally accepted that he should find someplace else to live, at least temporarily. After a screaming match that he’d hoped would exorcize Keisha from their relationship, he’d grabbed
Riley
and kissed her. At first she responded, but when he tried to undress her, she had turned to stone. Shawn had felt her hold her breath, like she was prepared to endure him touching her.
Endure
it. She didn’t want it, but she would have gone through with it if he’d persisted. But he couldn’t. He wanted her, but he needed her to want him too.
The very next day, he told Brendan that all those West Coast events he’d been holding off on
were a go
.
Arista wanted to talk to him and he could take some meeti
ngs in their office out there.
Shawn accepted the invitations.
He was prepared to stay in L.A. as long as necessary.
Within a couple weeks, he was right here in this hotel, installed in a perfectly nice suite, pretending his life hadn’t turned to shit. But he had to admit, for someone who had lost everything that mattered, he’d been remarkably productive. All day,
every day
, he worked on get
ting the deal with Arista done.
And every night, he went out to clubs
or parties,
and stayed out until he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer.
Sometimes he drank
too much, or smoked too much, and a couple times he’d slept eighteen hours straight from sheer exhaustion. But it was all welcome, because he disc
overed something very important—
if he kept moving at all times, always going somewhere, or doing something or talking to someone, he might not think about his wife. He could forget.
So that’s what he’d done; he kept moving.
And when the partying got old, he got a trainer and went to the gym instead. That produced the welcome feeling of exhaustion as well, but with collateral benefits. He stopped smoking bud. He even felt good a lot of the time.
It
all
worked just so long as he didn’t talk to her or see her. So what
he did was leave
voicemail messages. He could communicate with her without having to hear the distance and the withdrawal
in her voice
.
Shawn got out of the shower and toweled dry. But now she was here. Within reach, but feeling even further away.
He’d been hearing from Brendan that she was spending a lot of time with Chris, and so he called him to find out what the deal was. To Shawn’s surprise, Chris had
copped to it right away, admitting that they were hanging out sometimes.
I think you know me, Smooth. I wouldn’t move in on your woman,
Chris said.
I wouldn’t do you like that.
Gone were the days when he could have called her himself, or gotten all hotheaded and told Chris to back the hell off. So he had to approach the situation with a little more
levelheadedness.
She’s not just my woman, Chris,
he’d said.
She’s my wife. She’s everything. You need to respect that.
H
e’d lost his right to interfere directly with her friendships so instead he’d done it indirectly; getting Brendan to ask her to come out to L.A. for the launch of his label. It would get her away from Chris, and give him a chance to
see
whether they had a shot.
The separate suite was something he felt he needed. Because if she was in the same room, same bed it would be way too difficult to
lie
next to her and not touch. And if he did touch and she rejected him . . .
Still, as he pulled on his sweats and prepared to go to sleep himself, Shawn
felt equally tormented by the knowledge that she was only a few hundred feet away, and for all the good it did him, she may as well be back in New York.
g
“She’s going to leave me, B.”
Brendan looked up from his Blackberry and shook his head exasperated.
“You’ve been saying that for weeks. If she was leaving, she’d be gone. If she was leaving, she wouldn’t be here in L.A.”
Shawn shook his head. “You don’t know Riley. This is
exactly
what she w
ould do. She would come to L.A.
and analyze the situation,
see
how she feels about me, and then she would go back home and file for divorce and move back to Flushing like nothing ever happened.”
Brendan studied him for a moment and then put the Blackberry on the table, givi
ng Shawn his complete attention for a change.
“I think you’re the one who doesn’t know her,” Brendan said seriously. “You don’t see it, Shawn?”
“
What’re you talking ‘
bout?”
“This fucking circus life we live in this rap game, man. Not too many women worth having would sign on for some shit like this. But she did.
She tolerates the parties and the clubs and the drinking and the smoking.
“
A
nd you being gone for weeks
, and the women all over you and all that mess
.
She hates all that.
But
she rolls with it. Because for her, it’s
all
about you. Anybody with eyes can see that.”
Shawn said nothing.
“You’ve been hiding out in L.A. and
y’know what she’s doing? S
he’s waiting. That’s all. She’s
just
waiting for you to just come correct. And the minute you do, she’ll be all in again. And even this stuff with Chris that you’re trippin’ over? Even
that’s
about you, Shawn. Why you think she’s with
hanging out with
Chris
of all people
? Because he’s close to you.
“Now shut the hell up so I can finish sending these emails,” Brendan muttered under his breath. He picked up his Blackberry again.
g
At
nine
a.m. sharp, Riley got a call from the front desk telling her that a
woman named
Nadine Ford
was downstairs waiting for her. The stylist.
She was dreading it, but the truth was, she had no idea how to dress for a record label launch party and could probably
use all the help she could get.
As it was, she’d spent the morning trying to figure out what to wear just to go shopping with the stylist, finally settling on her old faithful faded jeans with a broad
belt, and tank top with boots.
The only things she brought along with her were her
Visa card and driver’s license.
No doubt stylists were expensive.