We Take this Man
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Candice Dow and Daaimah S. Poole
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Grand Central Publishing
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First eBook Edition: January 2009
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ISBN-13: 978-0-446-54358-3
Contents
I DON’T KNOW WHAT CAME OVER ME, BUT MAYBE I NEEDED DWIGHT AS MUCH AS HE NEEDED ME.
He looked at me, questioning, wondering if this was wrong. And my eyes condoned what we both felt. I kissed him again to assure him that it was okay for two needy people to seek comfort from each other. We’d both sacrificed relationships for the sake of work, and who could understand either of us more than us?
“Are you scared of this?” I asked.
He took a deep breath. “Not anymore. Are you?”
“Dwight, it is what it is.”
“I’ve never even considered cheating on my wife, Alicia, I swear. I don’t want to hurt you or tell you that I’m not trying to work on my marriage with Tracey, because I am.”
“I know, Dwight, but I don’t believe in fighting what’s natural. I realize that everything ain’t forever, but right now I think I want to experience whatever we’re supposed to experience together . . . ”
There were no more words needed to describe this feeling. Dwight was Mr. Right Now. Here and now, his touch felt right even if it was wrong . . .
I would like to thank God for blessing me in every way possible and being faithful to His promises. Thanks to my readers for giving me a reason to write! Thanks to my parents, Morris Dow, Beverly Corporal, and Randolph Corporal for loving me unconditionally. Thanks to my sister and good girlfriend, Lisa, for understanding me and growing with me. Thanks to all of my nieces; your existence inspires me. Special thanks to my niece Candice for being such a good girl while Auntie worked on this book. Thanks to my auntie, Oria Sewell, for being the best employee ever. My best friend, Anika, for always being just who I need you to be. Thanks to all my girls in the circle of trust. Special thanks to my good friend Sencera for always coming up with a new good idea and encouraging me to do the same; and to my soul mate for being able to deal with me even when my personality transforms into the character I’m writing and for having my back emotionally, spiritually, and creatively. My agent and friend, Audra Barrett. My editor, Karen Thomas, and her assistant, Latoya Smith. Thanks to all the book clubs and reviewers that have read and reviewed my work. You are appreciated!
C
ANDICE
D
OW
Thank you, Allah, for my talent and blessing me with great family and friends. I have to thank my mother, father, children, extended family, and friends. I love you all without naming names, but you know who you are.
Special thanks to all my readers, who continue to support me. Also, much love to Karen E. Quinones Miller and Liza Dawson, my agents, and to my editor, Karen Thomas.
D
AAIMAH
S. P
OOLE
This novel started out as a hypothetical question between the two of us. We were hanging out one weekend, and one of us ran into an old friend who actually had two wives. He claimed that his situation was not about getting over on anyone; it was more about loving two women and wanting to live together as a family. We were thinking, are you serious? Who would really agree to that? But for some reason we were intrigued and couldn’t stop talking about it.
Later, we went to a friend’s house to watch a football game. As we sat around with a group of men, we began asking them what they thought about having two wives. We received mixed responses. Some of them realized the responsibility associated with mutually satisfying two women and said they would pass. Others looked at it as a solution to infidelity. Needless to say, the topic spawned so much attention and various perspectives from men and women, we knew this discussion was one we wanted to share with our readers. Initially, we considered writing an article. Somehow, as the discussion evolved, it only made sense to write a novel about a man married to two women.
We had opposing views on this topic. One of us thought it could possibly work, while the other said absolutely not! Still, within days, we began mapping out the story. In about a week, we had come up with the concept and title for
We Take This Man
. As we were writing this book, we experienced the same emotional struggles with each other as the characters in the book. So, we hope you enjoy reading it. Although we wrote it primarily for entertainment purposes, we hope it will enlighten you and make you ponder this question: Can two women be happily married to one man?
Thank you,
Candice Dow and Daaimah S. Poole
Alicia
M
y vision blurred as my brain did somersaults. I scratched my wavy roots. How could this be? As I backtracked in my mind, I held my BlackBerry in my hand and scrolled through my calendar just to be sure. Ever since I was twenty years old, I marked the days I’d taken my birth-control pills. And just as I thought, I hadn’t missed a day in the entire two months Dwight and I had been seeing each other. This is impossible. My nerves percolated and my purple lace panties draped around my ankles when I stood up from the toilet. The Ocean Water scented–Yankee candle sitting on top of the bathroom sink flickered behind me, back and forth in the same motion that my knees rocked. I shook the hell out of that little indicator stick and still it told me the same thing. Here I was, thirty-two, in love with a married man, and pregnant with his child.
My head pounded as I staggered onto the side of my garden-style tub, pushing my wicker storage boxes to the side. How was I going to explain this to Dwight? Shit! Why do they make it such a hassle to tie your tubes when you’ve never had a baby? More than that, why didn’t he use a damn condom like most married men?
The two things I swore I didn’t want to experience were here in front of me, demanding my attention. Love and life were both inside of me and I didn’t know how to proceed. I vowed to myself a long time ago never to fall in love again or to have a baby. It seemed like having a man’s child granted a woman the freedom to be as stupid as she wanted to be for him. And I would never be anyone’s fool. I watched my mother cry for twenty years over my father, a married man who denied her and me.
As I sat there, grasping my hair, twirling my two-strand twists, tears would not come. I was angry at myself—angry at my heart. Me and love just don’t mix. That shit always lands my dumb ass in the wrong place at the wrong time, facing a life with a monkey on my back. Finally, when tears began streaming down my face, I thought about my last experience with love. Nearly ten years ago to the day, I stepped out of the shower to find federal police raiding my off-campus apartment at the University of Maryland. My then boyfriend, Deshaun Francis, was one of the biggest hustlers in the DC area
and
my fellow classmate. He was an upstanding student on a full scholarship, which is why I was able to turn a blind eye to his illegal dealings.
Love has a weird way of making you pay for its existence in your life. I attempted to argue with the police. “Let him go. He didn’t do anything,” I yelled at the top of my lungs, thinking they would somehow listen. And damn if they didn’t tell me to shut the hell up and put some clothes on. Not only were they locking my man up, I was going, too. My life flashed before my eyes. I was in my senior year, steps away from the real world and a well-paying job waiting for me. But instead of that, I was headed to jail in the name of love. No one ever told me that if you pillow-talk with a criminal, bitch, you’re a criminal, too. If I planned to stay out of jail, I had to enter a plea. It killed me to go free and leave Deshaun to suffer, but I knew that’s what he wanted me to do. For the rest of the semester, I had Erykah Badu’s “Otherside of the Game” on repeat and began letting my hair grow natural. I prayed that my holistic, sacrificial, spiritualistic ways would convince the universe’s cipher to evolve and mystically drop all the charges against Deshaun. Obviously, I was out of my natural damn mind and the love of my life got twenty years on kingpin charges. Once I snapped out of it, I swore I’d never fall into a situation that I wasn’t in control of again.
So please tell me why the hell I’m sitting here, banging the back of my head against beige ceramic tile, staring into the shower glass doors with a distorted, stupid me staring back. If I don’t abort this baby, I’ll have to carry this illegitimate, unexpected child for the next nine months.
That’s some bullshit.
Suddenly, I had the answer to this dilemma. Just get up and run this baby out of me. I sprang up and rushed into my bedroom. My mind was delirious. Where were my gym clothes? My heart crashed against my chest. Sweat beaded on my forehead. I panted. Then I paused, trying to catch my breath and remember what I was doing. The black wall I’d painted in the name of being fashion-forward stared back at me. It defined my destiny, a damn black hole.
I flung each piece of my workout set from my dresser drawer and tossed it on my sleigh bed, the place where my adulterous acts occurred. Regis and Kelly giggled loudly in my ear. I glared at the television inside my mahogany armoire. What the hell was so funny?
Just as I stepped out of my underwear, my home phone rang. Then my cell phone rang. I knew it was Dwight. I just couldn’t talk. I really didn’t know what to say. I turned up the black iHome speaker beside the phone on my nightstand to drown out the constant ringing. During the past few months, I’d be playing Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic,” just because of the one line:
Isn’t it ironic that you meet the man of your dreams and then meet his beautiful wife?
How fucking ironic is it that I’m pregnant? Initially, that song blasted out and I rushed back to my iPod to change it. I scrolled forward to “You Oughta Know.” The rapid rhythm rushed through me, fueling my confusion. After I put on my workout clothes, I was armed to fend off all of my wrongdoings.
I pulled my iPod from the speaker base and plugged my earphones into it. I jogged out of my bedroom, through the living/dining room, to my front door, and down the stairs of the condominium building. Hoping the shock from pounding on concrete would make this all disappear, I stomped harder with each step. I wanted this to go away. I had to sweat this thing out. The brisk air crashed into my face. Yesterday, it felt like springtime, but Maryland temperature fluctuates like a seesaw and the sun outside my window deceived me. I considered turning around to get a hat, but I kept going.