Some Day One Day

37.0

What do you mean the wedding isn't going to be a small one anymore?" I asked my cousin over Shawn's house phone. Marissa had abruptly asked for my cell phone and I'd handed it to her absent-mindedly without question.
I was in Shawn's kitchen, wiping off his cream-toned Formica counter. Marissa and I had just come from cooking some dinner of wild rice and honey baked chicken and she was now in the living room watching TV waiting for Shawn to return so that we could all eat together.
It was the second week since I'd started making trips to Shawn's house. I'd been at their house every day of the week since. Shawn and I were cordial with one another. We didn't argue mainly because we didn't talk to one another about anything that would lead to any arguments. He didn't give me the cold shoulder but he didn't give me a warm one either. I was surprised by how hurt I was from the negligent, nonchalant attitude he threw my way. It was as though we'd never had a past to begin with but I told myself to swallow up all that hurt and move right along with my head held high.
I comforted myself by reasoning that I couldn't say I didn't try.
I'd learned the reason why he had so much free time to go out every afternoon was because he'd finished his first year of grad school a while ago. I still worried over why he would choose to go to grad school so hastily after finishing college in three staggering, heart-wrenching years. It's like he was rushing to go somewhere...but where? It's like he was running away from something...but what? He was already successful and most people weren't blessed with Shawn's magnitude of success when they came straight out of college. I didn't really know much about his real estate business or what field of work he did in that department but I knew enough to justify that he was a gem to Mr. Grandberry's firm and that they worshipped him.
Despite all of this success, there were times when I got the impression that he truly didn't want any of this. I don't know why but I just had those assumptions. Nonetheless I easily threw them to the back of my mind because I could be wrong.
I'd probably never find out anyway because he wasn't my business anymore and I wasn't his.
The only thing that linked us together right now was Marissa.
Strangely throughout it all, I still saw him everywhere that I went. It happened so much that it became something of a normalcy. I saw him with other women, and I saw him with friends from the hood who didn't wear ties and suits like his coworkers.
We saw each other all the time but...that's was all.
"I want it to be fun, not melancholy. I think the more the merrier you know?" Angie explained to me over the phone. Sighing heavily, I knotted the damp tablecloth in my hand and stared out the kitchen window into the backyard that could give a graveyard a run for its money.
Damn couldn't he just do something with it? It bothered me every time I looked at it.
Soft rain fell from the dark skies and I hoped it wouldn't greaten into a storm I left. I didn't know whether Marissa still feared storms as much as she used to.
"Well...okay Angie. Do whatever you want. How are the preparations coming along?" I asked her. The wedding was only two months away now. I'd been spending so much time with Marissa I'd almost neglected Angie and kicked her to the curb.
"They're okay. Your dresses just came in. Shawn and Ojay's tuxes came too. I'll need to get more dresses though for the other bridesmaids. Hey could you come over sometime this week? I need to talk to you." Angie asked and the abruptness of her question caught me off guard.
"Uh, sure," I answered regardless, "I'll be sure to come over."
"Oh yeah, make sure you bring Marissa. That's my bitch. Speaking of which she has to be one of my bridesmaids. Then again I don't want her to because she's so fucking pretty it hurts...she'll take the attention away from me but anywho, me and her need to go partying some day soon."
I shook my head at Angie's choice language. Angie loved the hell out of Marissa and Marissa enjoyed her company too. I think it was because they both shared the same intensity. They both had the same excitement level so in some ways they balanced each other out.
"How have you been though?" she asked me and I sighed. I told her about my troubles with my car, especially when I was coming over here. I'd tried to start my car to go to the store and get something quickly but it hadn't started-leaving Marissa and I helpless.
I was riding on luck hoping that it would work when it was time to life.
"Oh yeah girl what are you getting Shawn for his birthday?" she asked me after we'd talked for about me and my problems for a while and I grimaced at the question. His birthday was coming in a week and a half. I was fresh out of ideas of what to get him-did I really even have to get him anything? I'd been saving up all my money and placing it in my savings account because my car needed to be fixed as soon as possible. Although I drove it around, I knew it wasn't safe and if I didn't get it worked on soon enough, I would end up having an accident that I couldn't afford because sadly I didn't have insurance. The thought alone made my head hurt and the bitter lump rose to my throat again. I was running low on money and the only way I was truly getting by was by staying at Shawn's house. I was glad that he was too preoccupied with ignoring me to even give a care of me being here most of the time.
"I don't know. What are you getting him?"
"I don't know, but Ojay and I are thinking of throwing him a surprise birthday party." Angie said.
A smile brightened my face as I wiped down the sink, "Aw, that's really nice of you guys."
"Yeah. Ojay tried to convince him to go on vacation to Barbados but you know Shawn..." her voice tapered off.
"Yeah. Hardheaded. Hard working. But like he used to say, yuh does rust out before yuh wuck out."
"Um...what?"
"Oh," I laughed bashfully, "Sorry. That's a Barbadian proverb he used to tell me all the time I asked him to take a break."
"Oh," she chuckled, "Man, I remember how we always had to force him to take a break. It's such a shame. Remember the one we threw him in highschool? Nigga got crazy drunk."
Heat rose to my cheeks at the memory, "Yeah. Fun times."
"Hey what's good with you and Dreux?" she asked me next and I chuckled easily, relieved that she wasn't going to dig deeper into the past.
"Nothing. You won't believe who he's feeling though." I said as though this was the town's hottest gossip. Everytime I went to work Dreux would stealthily ask about Marissa during our conversations. He tried to appear casual but I definitely wasn't buying it. It was funny though because Marissa was so open and real with hers whenever she asked me about him.
"Oh god no. Oh hell...He's gay, just like Lee...these fucking pretty boys. Ugh! Damn Beyonce what is it about you that attracts these-"
"Angie just shut up with your dramatic ass. He's not gay. I think he likes Marissa...or at least Marissa likes him, a lot."
"Hell nah! You're kidding me."
"Nope. Every single day since the day she met him she's been asking about him. He's been doing the same but trying to be slick about it." I explained, at the same time hearing the front door open and close. My heart vaulted the way it always did when I heard him come home. The next thing that I heard was Marissa's excited squeal, giving me the loving mental image of her springing up into her brother's warms and welcoming him home.
"Aw that's so sweet. But um, does he know she's..."
"Yeah. I think he knew before I even told him. He's a real sweetheart to her though."
"What about you and him?"
"To be honest there was never really going to be a me and him."
"Why not?"
"Well, he kind of figured...you know...that I still had problems with Shawn."
Angie was quiet a moment.
"Do you?" she finally asked.
Her question caught me slightly off guard, "Huh?"
"Do you still have problems with Shawn?"
I remembered the last heated conversation we'd had.
"No. Not anymore." I said, my voice a bit too optimistic to sound realistic. Angie quieted down again, which was unnatural on her behalf.
"Did ya'll work it out or something?" she asked unsurely and that's when Marissa started calling out my name.
"Yep," I lied, "We settled it and everything is just peachy. But hey Marissa's calling me now. I'll talk to you later okay?"
"Alright hun'. Love you much."
"Right back at you."
By the time we hung up I turned around to find that both Shawn and Marissa had made their way into the kitchen. She was hanging on to his arm with a wide grin on her face. I felt my insides mush and soften when I looked at him. It seemed like he'd had contact with the rain because he was partially drenched, not overly so. His white shirt was dotted with marring rain drops and it was unbuttoned down at the front like I'd expected, showing off his just-as-white undershirt. The night black slacks he wore made me appreciate the long, lean and muscular legs that always made women weak-kneed.
When he strolled into the room with his arm looped around Marissa's shoulders and her tagging at his hand, I immediately noted that something was bothering him.
I could just read it in his eyes.
"Sup Beyonce?" he greeted as they walked in. He looked so good that my knees buckled. I had to lean against the counter for support. If there was anyone who was fine in this world it was Shawn Corey Carter and I didn't know whether that was a gift or a curse to us women.
Tucking some unruly hair behind my ear nervously, I tried to appear casual but failing miserably. There were times when I felt so disconsolate being in his realm, I felt undeserving to be under the richly built roof of this richly built house. Although Marissa was my initial reason for being here, something else kept me here but I didn't want to acknowledge what it was. I was taken back to the day when I'd come unannounced to check if he was okay or not, and how I hadn't had much time to brood over how many women had been in this house, or even worse, into the master bedroom, in that king-sized bed that belonged to him. There was even one afternoon when he'd showed up with Gerald only for a split second to pick something up before leaving. Seeing him holding the little boy like that brought about wistful thinking that tore my heart into little sad pieces.
Throughout all this time, he seemed so okay and nothing, nothing about me at least, seemed to bother him. It hurt to be here, yet, at the same time, I wouldn't rather be anywhere else in the world and that confused and scared the hell out of me.
No one would ever get me to feel two opposing emotions at once.
No one but him.
Just as I opened my mouth to answer him, Marissa sang out gleefully.
"Me and, and Beyonce made dinner Shawny," she announced as she dragged him further into the kitchen, "But I made sure to tell her how to cook right."
The corner of Shawn's lip curled attractively, "Really?"
"Mhmm. We've been waiting for you. Come and eat now." Marissa proposed, restlessly guiding him to the all white dinning set of the ktichen. He had another more lavishly extravagant one by the livingroom.
"Iight gimme a minute. Lemme go upstairs and-"
"No! We've been waiting. You said you'd be here by six but it's past eight. Why did you take so long?" she demanded.
"I came from the hospital." He explained and at the word hospital Marissa's entire body went rigid. Like Shawn, she wasn't too fond of hospitals.
"Why?"
"I went to see someone." He quibbled uneasily, giving in to Marissa's earlier pleas by sitting on one of the kitchen chairs.
"Who?" Marissa pressed and I knew the drained look on Shawn's face meant that he didn't want to elaborate.
"Marissa honey come and help me warm the food, please?" I asked her gently to avert her attention. Willingly, she flew to my side to assist me. Shawn gave me a brief thank you through his eyes and I returned it with a faint smile.
Before long the steaming rice, the warmed gravy and the reheated chicken were placed with a scrumptious display on the table. Marissa jauntily plopped down beside Shawn, who the entire time was detached and unresponsive as usual. I knew all of this must have been uncomfortable, me cooking him something after he came from his whereabouts. My reason for cooking for him wasn't only due to Marissa's insistent begging but also an innate desire of my own. I didn't mind at all.
When I never sat, Marissa darted her sparkling jade eyes at me.
"Beyonce sit." She suggested.
"I can't hun I have work tomorrow," I felt Shawn's confused gaze on me but didn't bother looking his way, "I should get going now."
In truth this was just a cop out because my car wasn't working. I really didn't know how I was going to get back home but sitting here with Shawn would be too discomforting for me to stay.
"But you promised." She mewled petulantly.
"I did?"
Sometimes Marissa's questions were so many that one would find themselves recklessly answering her and not knowing truly what they's answered to.
"Yes. Please sit. You said you'd have dinner with me."
I was wary and tired and without ability to argue, so reluctantly, I sat my exhausted body on the only place that would put me furthest from Shawn-across from him.
"Okay," Marissa spoke out next when the table had become uncomfortably quiet, "I'm gonna pray-"
"No!" Both Shawn and I said synonymously, our timing swinging our gaze to one another's. I knew the look in his eyes far too well. Last week Marissa had offered to pray before she ate and asked us to join her. That had to have been the longest prayer I'd ever gone through in my entire lifetime. It beat her record of all the times she used to do it four years prior.
"Okay then, you do it." She goaded him and he twisted his features at her as if she were asking an unnatural question. Wisely deciding that arguing was futile when it came to Marissa, Shawn conceded, focusing on the centerpiece of the table.
Grabbing my hand and taking Shawn's, Marissa obediently closed her eyes and bowed her head, awaiting the prayer to commence.
Something about all of this felt so strange...so familiar.
As if sensing it too, Shawn's eyes locked with my own. My heart skipped a beat.
Upon Marissa's request, we'd lit two candles, so Shawn's face glowed warmly and his eyes flickered with the candlelight's flame. My mouth watered and electrifying heat rushed to my womb at how good he looked.
"Ouch Beyonce you're squeezing my hand." Marissa complained, wriggling her hand uncomfortably.
"Oh I'm so sorry sweetheart." I apologized while bashfully loosening my fingers around her, thankful for the brown pigment of my skin or else my entire face would've been the color of bright scarlet.
"Okay. Let's get this over with." I continued, wishing Shawn wouldn't stare at me with that amusing glint in his eyes.
"Iight. Well...God, uh, we thank you for this food. Amen." Shawn murmured tersely and it was all I could do not to laugh at him. Why were men always so damn vague?
Marissa's shoulders sagged and she stared at her brother peevishly.
"What?" Shawn asked reproachfully after all she did was stare at him.
"That's what you call a prayer?"
When all Shawn did was stare at Marissa, she ranted on like this was a life and death situation.
"You're supposed to thank Him for putting a roof over our heads... And then you didn't tell Him thanks for bringing us all together...and, and, you're supposed to thank Beyonce for making the food."
"She knows I'm grateful..." he swung his gaze to mine and my heart vaulted again, "right Beyonce?"
"No she doesn't," Marissa riled before I could respond, "Not if you don't say it. How will she know something if you don't say it?"
Marissa's words made Shawn and I lock eyes a second for there was something so intimately confidential about those very words and as if noticing that at the same time, our eyes lowered synchronously.
"Marissa..."
"Hmmm?" she blinked sweetly at him.
Shawn sighed sharply and sliced his eyes in my direction, "Thank you Beyonce. I appreciate it," his gaze swung back to his sister with a small smile, "And thanks babygirl."
"You're welcome!" Marissa said gleefully and Shawn and I laughed.
Our eyes locked again and I felt myself blushing. Embarrassedly, I dropped my gaze and served myself some food.
The table grew increasingly quiet, and Marissa seemed to become increasingly restless.
"Why are you guys quiet? You never used to be this quiet."
"We're just real tired."
"Cause things aren't the way they used to be Marissa."
Shawn and I said at the same time. He was the one who said we were tired, and I was the one who told her that things weren't the way they used to be.
"Why not?" Marissa supplicated me pointedly. I turned to Shawn who offered no assistance when he lowered his eyes back to his plate.
"Because things change. Nothing ever stays the same." I explained tiresomely, raking through my plate of seasoned rice idly with my fork.
"Love stays the same," Marissa supplied candidly, "Mama used to tell me."
No one responded to that.
"Right?" Marissa pressed before stuffing a forkful of rice into her mouth.
"Not all the time." Shawn said and quickly asked her a question that diverted her attention from that delicate subject.
We all talked for a while, Marissa being the life of the party. Marissa commended my food, saying this was the first time my food had actually tasted good and we'd all laughed at her earnestness. The tension that loomed around us vaporized bit by bit until there was a comfortable air in the room.
"Beyonce?"
"Yes dear." I answered, sipping at a glass of chilled water.
"Dreux said hi."
I froze with my glass at the tip of my lips and reflexively looked at Shawn's just in time to see his doing the same.
"You talked to Dreux?" Shawn looked at his little sister, his brows knitting together.
"Yes." She answered before biting generously into the thick part of her drumstick.
"Beyonce I asked him to come with us to the park on Sunday." She muffled casually through a mouthful.
Flashing ireful my direction, Shawn's jaw bunched and he shifted sluggishly into his chair.
"Wait. Hold up a second," I wrested my eyes away from him to her, "How did you talk to Dreux?"
"I called him."
"How did you get his number?" he asked, almost stridently, but with the nonchalant way Marissa answered I knew she hadn't caught his discomfiture.
"From Beyonce." Marissa answered and my head jerked backwards in shock.
Clear irritation furled Shawn's lips and I knew then he'd swallowed some fermented words.
"I don't remember giving you his phone number." I told Marissa.
"It was in your phone. You gave me your phone. Did I give it back?" she asked, worried about something other than the real issue here.
"No. I'll get it from you later." I told Marissa with a sigh, feeling a pair of eyes boring a hole on my forehead.
The previous tension that had been bludgeoning us had returned in full swing and it was sure to dwell this go around. The only voice filling up this quiet kitchen was Marissa's, and Shawn and I directed any form of speech towards her, leaving each other exempt.
We'd already declared an unspoken truce that we would not fight in front of Marissa at all costs, but each time our eyes crossed paths I felt the burns of Shawn's heating irascibility.
"Beyonce, will you help me with what to wear? I wanna look pretty-"
"Iight hold up. First of all, Dreux isn't going with ya'll," Shawn interrupted curtly, leaning back in his chair again, "Second, you don't need to be looking pretty for anybody."
"Why not?" Marissa's delicate features contorted, "Beyonce always used to do it for you-"
"Marissa help me clear out the table okay?"
"Why can't Dreux come?" Marissa pressed, not giving in to my attempt to sway conversation.
"You don't know him Marissa." Shawn explained softly.
"Do you know all those, those, those...women you're always with-"
"Marissa. Stop," I put a halting hand over her tensed hand, "Don't talk to Shawn like that he's still your big brother and you still have to respect him."
"But he's not the same!" she erupted and surprised me further when a foundation of tears welled her eyes. It seemed like she'd been withholding some type of frustration for a while. I noticed Marissa's attitude towards Shawn throughout my stay here and though it wasn't surprising, it was around much more than usual. She was very emotional lately and I'd been wondering why.
Frowning deeply, I looked at Shawn. He was watching his sister with a deep, worried frown that I'm sure mirrored my own. She may have not been as bright as the next person but sometimes Marissa was so satirical to the smallest changes that occurred. I guess no matter how much Shawn tried to make things seem like they used to, she was smart enough to know that things weren't the same and it appeared to be breaking her heart.
"Okay how about I clear the dishes and you go upstairs to pick out whatever it is that you want to wear and I'll come help you out, okay?" I offered another option, hoping she'd take it.
"But Shawn said Dreux isn't coming. What's the point?" she asked sulkily, her head low and her shoulders slumped oppressively.
"He's coming," I assured her but when Marissa didn't budge, I turned to Shawn who was still frowning in shock at his sister's unexpected outburst, "Right Shawn?"
Snapping out of a trance-like state, Shawn looked at me with the frown plastered on his face. He stared at me quietly for a while before answering.
"Yeah...he can go as long as Beyonce is there." He relented begrudgingly. Marissa lifted her head slowly and asked him softly, "Really?"
Another muscle lugged in Shawn's jaw but he consented with a stiff, compulsory nod.
"Yay!" Marissa peeped and dove out of her chair into her brother, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck while he still looked as unpleasant as ever.
"Thanks Shawny." She pecked his cheek and turned to me, "I'm gonna go pick out some dresses now."
"Okay." I smiled faintly at her and watched her fly out of the kitchen blithely.
The kitchen took refuge to quiescence. It was then that I heard a distant rumble that I assumed was thunder and that's when the heavy plummeting of rain began to hit the house as if some trapdoors from the heavens had been opened wide.
I dreadfully waited to hear a scream from Marissa but nothing sounded except for the distinct rainfall.
I then waited for the belittling insults, the mordacious bellowing, the cloaked frustration to be absolved all in one hot ball of fire like the rain that pelted heavily around the man that sat across from me and I.
Alternatively, the dragging of Shawn's chair scraping tile floors of his kitchen reverberated in my ears. I then watched as he quietly stood up and began piling his plate with all the others.
"Thanks for dinner. I appreciate it." He murmured in de rigueur, not giving eye contact a name.
He appeared more bothersome than before and I wondered if it was because of Marissa's realization that he'd changed. The soft spot he had for her made it so easy for him to break and I knew he was heartbroken by the fact she thought he wasn't the same. He didn't have to say it but I just knew.
Even though I'd offered to clear things out, I knew by him doing it himself welded this as my queue to leave.
Before I left though, I asked him a question that had been pressing me the entire night.
"How's your mother?" I asked him quietly, referring to the person he'd been to see at the 'hospital'.
Looking up from the sink where he clunked the dishes, Shawn stared at me in not so much shock but that inscrutable color in his eyes whenever he was about to lie.
"She's fine." He prevaricated, like I'd expected.
She wasn't fine, I thought as I nodded and pinned a dishonest almost-smile on my face regardless.
The truth was that she was shacked in a mental institution, harrowing with bi-polar disorder.
The petered out look in Shawn's eyes was apt of what he knew that I knew before he turned away from me to stare at the storm raging in the window before him.
As I stared at his handsome profile, I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around him, assuring him that everything would be okay and that I was there for him, that I understood how painful it was to lose someone you loved with your very heart and soul.
Swiveling on my heels with a wistful, doleful sigh, I traipsed my tired body up to Marissa's room.