TLWM: The Hate Experience

\XXXV/ The Disconnect

An hour after church service...

     Letty's parked car sat in Prince's circular driveway. In the driver's seat, she squeezed her hands on the steering wheel, waiting for her mind to make a choice. Go home or go in the house and knock Prince in his slick mouth. 

     Staring ahead through the windshield at the yellow mansion, she imagined it torn down to pieces. That's what Prince told the pastor he was going to do, leaving Letty completely caught off guard. She thought she and a pregnant belly would move in and renovate, not all at once but block by block, this corner first and next spring the opposite, slowly but surely until the house was unrecognizable with new floor plans and a bunch of babies. But Prince sounded eager to demolish every bit of the house that sat on 7141 Galpin Boulevard.

     Back in Pastor Dean's office, Letty bit her tongue, not wanting to prolong their visit. But once she and Prince got in the back of the car to be driven to his home, the home he didn't want, she spoke her mind which in return pissed Prince off.

     "Oh, now you wanna talk but when a mediator is in your face, you got nothing to say?"

     "It's a waste." Every reason Prince gave to shred his house to ruins, Letty kept reminding him how wasteful it was to tear down a perfectly good house just because he had some bad breakups. "When Melody came back in the picture, you were building her a house so you didn't have to move her in and could break the 'curse' but guess what? It still ended. It's not the house."

     "What you trying to say?"

     "That the problem is not the house."

     "And the house is not your problem so shut the hell up about it already."

     "Excuse me!?"

     Letty was sitting in the driveway getting all worked up again as the car ride played back in her mind.

     "Don't make me embarrass you in front of your brother," Letty said, frowning towards Prince's new smile as he tossed his head back on the seat. He apologized but Letty was still upset. "I am not the one."

     "Oh, but you are," he said, giving her chin a quick pinch. "Which is why I'm buying you a new house."

     "Yet, I don't want a new house," she said, slapping his touch away and moving closer towards the door behind the driver's seat. "Don't."

     Duane couldn't hide his chuckles. 

     Prince wouldn't take his eyes off her, even when Letty took hers away from him, she could feel him still unraveling her. "Lette?" And when she wouldn't acknowledge, he whistled for her attention. "You really want the house?"

     She only glanced at him, catching a playful smirk.

     Softly, he questioned her again. "You cool moving into the house that I bought for me and Susannah's forever? The house where Raven and I's exhaustive ways led to procreation?"

     Matching his casual tone, Letty spoke over him. "You are so lame."

     "Spend every morning in the same shower I always used to wash the honey off Kim's skin..."

     "How sad that this whole time I thought it was bad memories running you away."

     "...cook in the same kitchen that still smells like Sheila's lemon cake? Want me to keep going, baby?" he cruelly offered. "Wanna know how many women have touched down in that bed you wait for me in?"