Before i let go, p.3
Before I Let Go, page 3
“I’ll have to, uh…check it out.” He glances at the door. “I need to get back to Granders.”
“Yeah.” I reach into the bottom of my suit bag to grab my green heels, bending to slip them on. “I gotta go too.”
He runs a thorough glance from my head to my shoes. “You look…nice.”
“Nice?” I scoop up the suit bag, now stuffed with my clothes, and speed to the door, grinning over my shoulder. “Pfftt. I look amazing.”
He shakes his head, allowing a small smile. “You look amazing. Have a good time.”
“I’ll try not to be out too late. And don’t let the kids stay up all night, Si. They have school tomorrow.”
“Like I’m the pushover parent.”
We both know he is, so I just stare at him until his smile broadens to that startling brightness that will snatch your breath if you let it.
“Get outta here,” he says. “I’ll see you at the house.”
The house.
Not home. Not the dream home we worked for and fantasized about for years. Now it’s just the house where the kids and I live. Josiah’s in the same neighborhood, but two streets over. I’m not sure why my thoughts keep revisiting the past tonight when my reflection, my mindset, everything has “future” written all over it.
“Shake it off,” I tell myself, climbing into the car and pulling out of the Grits parking lot. “It’s time to party.”
Chapter Two
Yasmen
It’s Soledad’s birthday,” Hendrix mutters into her Moscow Mule. “You think she’d be eager for some grown-girl time, and yet she’s late.”
“She’s on her way.” I reread the text Soledad sent. “As of twenty minutes ago. She said Lupe’s cheering practice went over, Inez is working on a science project, and Lottie had dance lessons.”
I study Hendrix over the rim of my drink. She has a face as bold as her name, punctuated by sloping cheekbones and an audacious nose, nostrils flared to scent adventure and bullshit. Her dark, arched brows are as quick to pull into a frown as the wide bow of her mouth is to stretch into a smile. She gets shit done and is as driven to help people as she is to succeed. Helping people is, at least in part, how she defines success.
“How are your housewives?” I ask, sipping my French 75, the gin and the twang sloughing the edge off my frayed nerves.
“Girl, a whole-ass handful. The producer had the nerve to call and ask me to keep my clients in check. Bitch, you check ’em. My job was to get them there. Your job is to make sure they don’t kill each other before the season ends.”
“Seems like the more drama, the better the ratings, so what’s her problem?”
“Yeah, there’s drama and then there’s…” Hendrix lifts her brows meaningfully. “Their shit. Fistfights, weaves yanked out, tires slashed.”
“Sounds like high school.”
“Or day care, and my degree is in PR, not babysitting. Though, for real, that feels like my job half the time.”
She aims a smile over my shoulder. “Speaking of babies, here comes Mommy-in-Chief now.”
I glance around and spot Soledad climbing the stairs to Sky-Hi’s rooftop. She wears her usual slightly harried expression, but tonight it’s paired with a butt-hugging red dress that screams Work it, girl; it’s your birthday. Her dark eyes search the crowd until she finds us. A blinding smile lights up her pretty face. She’s short and curvy, and springy sable curls bounce around her shoulders, reflecting the energy packed into her petite frame. She waves and crosses quickly over to our table.
“Sorry I’m late.” She collapses into the empty seat, snatches the drink from my hand, and takes a long sip.
“For your own birthday celebration.” Hendrix tsks. “Just glad you made it at all. Did you have to tie Edward to the refrigerator for him to stay home with the girls?”
Soledad’s husband is notoriously absent from pretty much everything lately. Pink filters into the gold-brown of her cheeks. “He, um, had to work late unexpectedly and—”
“So who’s with the kids?” I cut in.
“I called Mrs. Lassiter’s daughter.” Soledad fixes her gaze on the menu, avoiding the exasperation I’m sure is apparent in Hendrix’s eyes and mine. “She’s that ninth grader who lives around the corner. Lottie and Inez love her. Lupe’s old enough to stay home and they’d be fine, but her cheering practice went late, so…” She shrugs philosophically.
“One night,” Hendrix mutters. “He couldn’t give you one night?”
I shoot Hendrix a quelling glance, silently urging her to lay off, but she’s more likely to bite your tongue than she is to bite hers.
“Guys, come on.” Soledad drops the menu and all pretense that it actually interests her. “Can’t we just have a good time and not focus on Edward? He’s in the middle of a huge project at the firm. It’s a lot and he’s doing the best he can.”
I bet even she doesn’t believe that, but I won’t argue the point and spoil her birthday any more than her inconsiderate sperm donor already has.
“You’re right!” I slam my empty glass on the table and signal for the server. “Let’s get lit like we’re not class mom in the morning!”
“One of us isn’t class mom,” Hendrix reminds, her laugh throaty and grateful. “And my apartment is literally around the corner. I’m walking, so I’ll drink for us all.”
Soledad and I are driving, albeit only around the corner, so we can’t drink much, but getting lit sounds amazing. Our little trio is composed of disparate pieces that somehow work together. Hendrix, blissfully single and childless, is completely focused on her career and her ailing mother in Charlotte, splitting her time between the Queen City and Atlanta. Soledad doesn’t work outside the home, but runs her household like a kingdom, leaving everyone awestruck by levels of organization and domesticity seemingly unachievable by mere mortals. She’s a dash of Joanna Gaines, a sprinkle of Marie Kondo, and a big ol’ scoop of Tabitha Brown, a dish served at a farm table on the finest china.
And then there’s me.
Wrapped in all the trappings of a suburban housewife, except I’m no longer anybody’s wife, and I run a thriving business with the man I always assumed I’d love forever.
“How are your kids, Yasmen?” Soledad asks, sipping the cosmopolitan the server set down after taking our orders. “Deja and Kassim okay tonight?”
“They’re good. Grabbing dinner at Grits. Josiah’s taking them to the house for homework once they’re done.”
“You two manage your…” Soledad closes one eye and twists her lips, apparently searching for the right word. “Your dynamic so well.”
“Dynamic?” Hendrix casts me a look I’ve fondly dubbed sly-slutty. “Is that what you call it when your fine as hell ex-husband is there 24/7 for the screwing and you do nothing about it?”
There was a time when Hendrix’s brashness would have left me sputtering and spewing my drink, but I’m used to her now. She spent all her shock value on me months ago.
“It’s called co-parenting,” I say. “And running a business together. If we want to do both of those well, it’s best to keep things simple and platonic.”
“You don’t even want the occasional dip into that yummy honeypot?” Hendrix asks, a knowing smile gracing her full lips. “Josiah is—”
“Fine as hell.” I smile at the approaching server carrying our food. “I’m aware. I was married to him.”
“I bet Josiah put it down,” Hendrix says. “You can look at him and tell he can fuck.”
“All right. Enough.” I try to play it off with a laugh, but talking about our former sex life is not what I want to do. “Don’t creep on my ex.”
“I mean no harm.” Hendrix lifts both hands. “I come in peace and with the purest admiration for a man in his prime and a prime piece of man. I was just saying it seems like you probably got some good dick out of that marriage. Amirite?”
I did, but that was the last thing on my mind at the end. Our animosity and grief doused the passion we’d always taken for granted. Those last few months, we rarely even slept in the same room. My bed has been cold and empty for a very long time.
“I obviously don’t know everything that went down with you two,” Hendrix says. “But that’s the kind of man I’d miss.”
“Like you said,” I tell her, staring into my drink. “You don’t know everything that went down.”
They never knew Josiah and me as a set, as the couple everyone envied. When I was going through my dark season, I lost touch with most friends I was closest to. Not their fault. I shut many of them out. I met Hendrix and Soledad through the yoga class my therapist recommended to help reduce anxiety and improve my mood at my lowest point. Soledad lives a couple of streets over, so I knew of her, but it wasn’t until yoga that we really connected. The three of us hid on the back row watching everyone do their dog, cat, and cobra poses while we struggled to contort our out-of-shape bodies into the most basic positions. Maybe because I was so in need of reconnection, and they seemed to be, too, we grew close quickly. They don’t look at me with that careful sympathy I see in the eyes of everyone who knew me before.
“I know you guys went through a lot all at once,” Soledad says.
“Yeah, we, um…It was a lot.” I take a fortifying gulp of my drink. “You know Josiah’s aunt Byrd passed away soon after we opened in Skyland.”
Pushing down the emotion that tries to break through the surface, I force myself to continue. “Business tanked. In that state, we couldn’t hold our own in Skyland. Not with the quality of restaurants around here. Maybe we would have fared better if we’d stayed where we were. Stayed who we were.”
But Josiah had always seen us turning the restaurant into an upscale destination spot. And it would have gone off without a hitch had life not hitched every which way but loose.
“You don’t talk about it much, the divorce I mean,” Soledad says. “Did you guys try therapy?”
“Josiah’s allergic,” I say wryly. “He doesn’t do therapy. I wanted to, but…”
“At the church where I grew up,” Hendrix says, “they always said you ain’t got a problem God can’t fix. What can a therapist do that God can’t? That mindset kept a lot of folks from getting help.”
“Josiah’s reasons had nothing to do with faith,” I say with a twist of my lips. “He just thinks it’s a load of bullshit. Deja and Kassim talked some to a grief counselor at school, but aside from a rough patch or two, they bounced back okay. Couples therapy? Josiah didn’t think it could help, and by the end, neither did I.”
Things had gotten so bad, I felt like I was suffocating in that house, in that marriage, and I had to get out. It felt like the whole world was resting on my chest every morning, and it was all I could do to get out of bed.
And everything hurt.
That’s the part of depression people don’t consider, that at times it physically hurts. My therapist helped me understand that the back pain and the headaches I developed were most likely related to stress, and stress hormones like cortisol and noradrenaline contributed to my apathy and exhaustion. Which exacerbated my depression. It was an inescapable cycle that left me looking up at my life from the bottom of a well, the walls slippery, and seeing no way out.
And it all hurt, including being with the man I’d loved more than everything. After how we’d loved each other, the way we hurt each other was destroying us.
I’ve made a little bubble for my friends and me, one that protects my fragile joy and wards off the hurt of the past. I know I’ll have to tell Hendrix and Soledad everything soon. If therapy has taught me anything, it’s that you run from your pain in a circle. You end up exhausted, but never really gaining ground. I have to stop running, have to share with them all the ways life popped the seams on a world perfectly sewn together. For now I share a little at a time, and for tonight, I’ve shared enough.
I clear my throat and push out a laugh. “Is this a celebration or what? Let’s eat before Sol ages another year.”
The night turns out to be just what I needed, and I hope what Soledad deserves. She’s the hardest-working woman I know and sees her life’s mission as raising three beautiful humans to be confident women who make the world a better place. Some might judge that, say a woman as smart as Soledad could do so much more. I see the power in choosing your own more.
“So we doing this or nah?” Hendrix asks hopefully once we’ve settled the bill. “I got a roll of ones burning a hole in my Louis. Strip club?”
The answer is written in Soledad’s eyes, sketched in the rueful tug of her lips. “Rain check? I actually am class mom in the morning, and I need to get home and check Inez’s science project. I bet I’ll have to help her because Edward…”
Edward is about as likely to help with that science project as Garth Brooks is to perform at the Apollo.
“Well, Edward had a long day,” Soledad finishes with a smile as natural as my lashes. “And may have overlooked a few things.”
“Hmmmmm,” Hendrix grunts.
She really should patent that hmmmm. It’s the most accomplished monosyllable I’ve ever met.
“Well, I have the care and feeding of my housewives tomorrow,” Hendrix says and sighs. “The producers want me on-set to ensure no butt implants are harmed in the making of this next episode.”
We share a cackle, and I relish the simple ease of authentic friendship where I didn’t expect it and the evening breeze on my face. Georgia clings to summer as long as possible. August’s bright green leaves still trim the trees lining Skyland’s streets, but soon they’ll be varicolored, the wind propelling them from the branches like a confetti cannon. In just a few weeks, they’ll blanket the cobblestones under our feet.
I fish the keys from my purse and click the remote to unlock my car as we walk to the parking lot.
“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” I say, reaching for Soledad.
Hendrix’s arms enclose us both, and our little triumvirate huddles together, our perfumes and spirits mingling under the warm glow of the town’s gas lamp streetlights.
“I love you guys,” Soledad whispers, eyes bright. “There’s nowhere I would have rather been than with you on my birthday. Thank you for making it special.”
“I love you crazy broads too,” Hendrix jokes, giving us an extra squeeze before releasing us. “Next year we are hitting up a strip club. This is Atlanta. How you gonna not go to a strip club?”
“I’m open.” I grin.
“Yassss!” Hendrix high-fives me.
“Maybe next year,” Soledad’s mouth says, while the wide-eyed look she sends me says neverrrrr.
I climb into my car, chuckling as I picture staid Soledad and up-for-anything Hendrix in Magic City, tossing ones. I’d be in the middle enjoying the show onstage and off.
“Y’all still coming to Food Truck Friday tomorrow?” I ask through my rolled-down window.
“For sure,” Hendrix says. “I’ll be wrapped on set by then.”
“Can’t wait.” Soledad opens her door and climbs up into a Suburban. She looks so small behind the wheel of that mammoth machine, but with three girls and their gaggle of friends, she can never have enough passenger space. “See you then.”
The drive home is short, barely enough time to reflect on the day’s events. A year ago, I could not have envisioned feeling this way. Feeling this good. A night out with new friends who feel like the sisters of my heart. Our business, not long ago on the brink of failure, restored, thriving, booming.
And then there’s Josiah.
A shiver skims my spine, the memory of his fingers whispering across my bare skin when he zipped me up, coaxing to life parts of me long dormant and neglected. I’ll probably always be attracted to him. Like I told Hendrix, he’s fine as hell, but I can’t let my body’s natural response to a beautiful man with whom I have a complicated past, and offspring, fool me into thinking things should have turned out differently.
We were good together. Very good, in fact. Then shit happened. So much life-altering, earth-shattering shit, and not only were we not good together, but I couldn’t imagine things ever being good again. It’s time for us both to move on.
When Josiah and I dreamed of our restaurant over cartons of cheap Chinese, late at night while he was finishing his MBA, we didn’t talk about living in an affluent neighborhood like Skyland, but as I drive past all the custom-built houses and three-car garages, I realize we got it. The garage door to the house we renovated together lifts. In the last gasping breaths of our marriage, it became unbearable to be in this house with him. How many nights did our arguments echo through the halls? But after the divorce, I couldn’t bear to be here without him. It felt wrong and empty. To be fair, at that point, no place felt right. Not even in my own skin.
I rid the house of all our wedding pictures, but Josiah is indelibly stamped on every square inch, from the freestanding tub in our bathroom, to the large open kitchen, and the high-ceilinged family room. Every light fixture, paint color, down to the smallest detail, we carefully chose together. The only thing we never anticipated was losing each other in the process of gaining everything else. We executed every phase of our dreams right on schedule.
Graduation. Check!
Marriage. Check!
Start a business. Check!
Baby one. Check!
Baby two. Check!
Baby three…
I shake off the thoughts like shackles and pull into the garage. I made the right decision for us all when I asked for the divorce. I have to believe that. Anything is better than the volatile pressure cooker our lives became at the end.
Laughter reaches my ears when I walk into the kitchen and close the door behind me. I knew he would let them stay up late. I easily pick out the kids’ giggles, mixed in with the low timbre of Josiah’s chuckle, but I can’t quite place the other melodic laugh. When I enter the family room I realize why.
I’ve never heard Vashti laugh like this before.
It lights up her face, an inner glow that spills into her eyes and over her cheeks. She wears a lovely dress the color of buttercups that discreetly outlines her slim, feminine shape. Her hand rests on Josiah’s knee casually, at ease like she’s touched him that way a hundred times.
