"Just can't seem to get over the way you hurt me...Don't know how you gave another who didn't mean a thing the very thing you gave to me"- Beyoncé, "Resentment"
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Taraji sat at the edge of the California King bed, her fists gripping the wine red-colored sheets for relief from her nerves so hard that her knuckles were turning white, as Fantasia paced the floor back and forth before her. The married couple appeared to be alone in their dark-themed bedroom, but a familiar third guest had made its arrival. That guest was called tension. It filled the limited space between them, suffocating the couple and causing Taraji's throat to go dry, making it difficult to speak, although the actress was sure there was nothing she could say to her wife to soothe her in that moment. The younger woman's face was covered in tears as she gripped Taraji's unlocked phone in her left hand. Their guest tension had brought a plus-one, an unwanted visitor known as betrayal. For a long time, deafening silence echoed through the bedroom walls. The singer stopped her mindless pacing and stood in front of Taraji. She wanted to see every emotion that passed through the older woman's piercing brown eyes as she spoke to her. It was the only way she could be sure that she wasn't lying, but how could she ever truly be sure of that ever again?
Fantasia: When did this start?
Taraji: Why does it matter?
Fantasia: Dammit Taraji, answer the question.
Her tone was even and eerily calm, but bubbling underneath her composed resolve was a vengeful rage fueled by unimaginable pain, fighting to rise to the surface and consume her broken spirit in darkness. The 42-year-old actress held the younger singer's fiery gaze, feeling emboldened by the unaddressed animosity she had been harboring towards her wife for months. Her pain didn't matter to Fantasia, so why should she have cared about hers?
Taraji: 9 months ago.
Fantasia's cold stone stare hardened even more, her eyebrow quipping and her jaw clenching in initial reaction to the candid admission from her wife. The timestamp of 9 months held a deep significance for the tumultuous couple, so knowing that the older woman had destroyed her trust during a period of their lives when trust was needed the most made the emotional wounds on her fractured heart open up and bleed again.
Fantasia: 9 months ago you were pregnant with Jasmine.
Taraji: Will you stop calling her that?! That wasn't her fucking name! She didn't have a name because she was fucking stillborn!
Fantasia flinched violently at the harsh rise in her wife's voice, gripping Taraji's phone tighter in her hand, the screen lit up with salacious text messages between the actress and another woman named Amber. She didn't even attempt to disguise her mistress's name as something less suspicious. That's how little she cared about protecting Fantasia's feelings.
