Chardonnay: A Novel (4 page)

“I—I was right there—but I couldn’t save you!”
 
Myron said leaving me lost.

“Save me from what?”

He looked up at me. His
nose now turned up and
anguish
rinsing his tears away. He stood from my feet and began talking
to himself.

Then he broke down again swinging in mid-air at nothing. Whatever
he was doing, I knew he was battling himself. Myron sat on a rock close to the
water. His deep curls and waves in his hair sparkled off the sun. I sat down
beside him.

“I’m sorry.” I said.

He didn’t respond. He just kept throwing rocks.

We sat there silent for twenty minutes before he spoke again,
suddenly asking,

“Who is he?”

I felt the second storm about to roll in as I closed my eyes and
slowly said,

“Slim.”

He looked at me, his eyes blinking repetitively. His face became
stone, his stare mirroring betrayal beyond belief.

“Slim?” he asked.

I nodded my head yes.

“Sky?
Nah, not my boy.” he
chuckled until he saw that I was serious.

“It—it just happened.”

“When?”

“I—I—”

“WHEN—DAMNIT?!
How could you do this...now I see
what this all is about.
Him.”

“No, I don’t want to marry you because of your scandalous ways.”

“I changed and I’ve told you this.”

I laughed at him making him sneer at me a hateful glance.

“You are full of it!”

He looked at me, his nose flared and eyes dilated.

“Tell me what happened?” his voice strained.

“I don’t know.
 
Time changed
us? It seemed you never really cared either.”

Although I could see the hurt in his face, I couldn’t hear it in
his voice. In fact his voice was now calm and in a state of tranquil it seemed.
I readjusted my attitude towards him, balancing the faults of his habituating
past with my now, as he was making it seem, “malleable promiscuity”. I simply
just wanted my freedom.

“I thought you loved me,” he began as his voice cracked.

“Was down for me!” his hand gripped my wrist tightly.

“Myron you’re hurting me. I do love you!”

“I told you I was sorry. Damn!”

Myron grabbed both of my arms tightly.

“Yeah, we gone get through this...we’ll handle it a’ight, ‘cause
we gettin’ fuckin’ married! I know what I got to do!”

He picked me up and tracked over to his truck, kicking the earth’s
rocks and dirt under his fuming

Tim’s.
One of my Jimmy Choo’s stiletto heels fell off
my foot, but Myron kept tracking towards the Escalade. He swung open the door
and placed me on the plush leather of his backseat.

“Put me down! Stop. What are you doing?” I shrieked.

“One of the things I cherished about you was that you were a
virgin. That’s why I didn’t want to tamper with you—but they made me . .
.made
...” Myron’s words faded into his aggression and he
began to hold back the tears forming in his eyes. He continued his ranting
while looking me in my face. I wanted to know who
they
were and why he
had hesitated with his words.

“What—what you are talking ab—”

“I loved knowing I wouldn’t run into
no
other dude who had had my wife before. And I fucked that up!” he said cutting
me off and seemingly bringing condemnable faults to himself for my actions.

Myron had tears strolling down his face and forcefully tried to kiss
me. He unzipped my khaki cargo short shorts, pulled them down, and hiked up my
legs.

“Oh God no, please Myron stop!
Stop!”
I
said as I hit him. At first I didn’t yell too loud. I loved him. I thought he
was just trying to scare me. But when he ripped my panties off, when he pushed
my shirt up and ripped my bra off, revealing my erect nipples—I knew he had
lost it. I screamed to the top of my lungs but he just covered my mouth.

“You don’t want to kiss me?”

Everything swarmed around me and began to go in slow motion.
Everything I knew was now void...sound, taste, sight, emotion. And then Deja vu’
held me in a crypt. Panic washed over my body and Myron began to cry harder as
he unbuckled his belt and pulled down his pants. I screamed through his palm
over my mouth and tried to bite his hand. Never thought he would go this far. I
thought he loved me. Then I thought maybe he was doing this because he loved
me. Then I stopped fighting.

Myron climbed on top of me and tried in go inside my walls. He
took his hand off my mouth and covered it with his mouth. I moved my face and
pulled my hips back.

“Myron, don’t do this.” I begged and then I fought, but he just
buckled down his chest on me. I couldn’t move to save my life.

That’s when I felt it.
Him in my womb searching
for a solution to my dishonor to him.
Ripping,
tearing, while my head was hitting the door handle while he was thrusted in me.
His panting squeezed stronger as he began pacifying my panic, whispering,

“It’s
okay,
I gotta do this for your own
good. Feel it, okay, take it baby.”

And I did. My nails stopped clawing at the back of his amber skin
and instead I felt a different throbbing in my womb I had never felt before.
Butterflies in a sense, rippling throughout my entire body.
This feeling I was experiencing contradicted to his primary actions and instead
I welcomed a fey euphoria I knew would change my innocence forever.

4

Fearfully
in Love

“She’s a
beautiful girl.”
his father began.

Myron looked up from his feet to his father’s face.

“But, you know if you touch her, things might not ever be the
same, son.”

“I—I know that pops but that’s the chan—”

“NO. You will not take that chance.
Under no
circumstances.
She’ll feen it if you let her understand the body’s
weakness of the flesh. And then you’ll regret it and have to take back what you
took...you know how to do that?”

Myron shook his head no. But he looked away as if he knew and didn’t
want to hear his father say it again.

“You’ll have to
rape
her.”

“What?”
said Myron in a tone that told his father what he was saying was
ridiculous.

“Rape—her.”

“And what does that do?”

“It makes her understand who belongs to
who
,
and what belongs to who.

It drawls back her submissive manners to what they were before you
touched her flesh.
 
If she’s ever to lead
astray... you take her against her own will and that will make her obey.”

I could hear those words in my mind still. It wasn’t too long ago
I had accepted them in my cerebrum. As a child I was taught to speak only when
spoken to and to question nothing. Had I done that, I may not of been laying
here now, my clothes ripped to shreds, hair in disrepair, and heart torn out my
chest. As my golden eyes stared to the cerulean sky, the only thing
I
 
could
see from me
being on the bare of my back, I thought of the first time I heard his father
say those words.

Myron and I were laying in his king sized bed that resided in his
childhood bedroom of his parent’s home during winter break on New Year’s Eve of
2005, and us being cuddled up together tight with no clothes on. This was the
farthest we had gone as far as sex went and somehow Myron had found his way to
the depths of my pleasure zone. He was so close to getting some of my, dripping
wet with juices, peach, sliding his chilled index finger down the opening of my
labia and sucking my sensitive spot on the side of my neck. Almost, until his
parents came home and found us with no sheets covering our naked bodies. We had
been so into each other that we didn’t even hear them enter the home or pull
into the drive way which we had always been keen to hearing. I was far beyond
embarrassed and ashamed, from hearing all the stories Mrs. Lim-Kent had told my
mother over many brunches of how girls just threw themselves at Myron, and of
how proud she was of me for holding onto my virginity and not being a
promiscuous girl dropping my panties for Myron. And as well with the arranged
marriage, there was an agreement during a ceremony when we were seventeen and
eighteen that there would be no sex before marriage.

After Myron
and I had been caught, we had quickly gotten dressed and Mrs. Lim-Kent took me
to the family room while Myron was taken to the huge garage with his father.
They talked to us both separately and then together. However, before Mrs. Lim-Kent
and I’s talk began, she let me go to the restroom to get myself together. The
rest room was off the kitchen in a small hallway leading from the family den,
and the garage door, which was creaked open and horizontal from it. I could see
Myron as I peeked through with his clothes halfway on right. His button down
Oxford shirt was lopped sided and his jeans were baggy from his belt being
displaced. His father’s voice was one that traveled far.

As he began
talking I could see how frigid Myron’s body language was, yet how relaxed his
face seemed, and how I couldn’t believe what my ears were hearing.

All I knew at that moment was that I was so scared I couldn’t
move. My body felt dead and my weight buried itself to my feet. Mr. Kent face
told me he was dead serious, and that shall anything disburse from my actions,
those were the doctor’s orders. Myron was however, rebellious to these actions.
He stepped back while saying,

“Pops, that—that’s not right.”

“You gotta teach your woman right. Ain’t saying you’ll have to do
it because Chardonnay seems like a nice home trained young woman...but I saw
her body at its
purest tonight. And she’ ripe and fresh as a baby born on a summer
day, son. You got you a sweet little pussy right there,”

I couldn’t see Myron after he had backed up, stepping out of
seeing view. But I could see Mr. Kent’s face. He was licking the edge of a
cigar while he pranced about how
ripe
my body was. He lit the cigar,
inhaled it and finished,

“...you pop that cherry now, before she takes her vowels, and its
seeds will sprout in other gardens.”
 

The shuffles of Myron’s feet headed towards the door. However,
they stopped when Mr. Kent’s gun cocked. I took a deep breath trying to figure
out why a gun was necessary for this occasion. Why would he pull a gun out on
his son?

“You listen when I talk to you boy. Don’t you ever turn you back
on a
man.
You’ll never know what he might put in it.
Man or woman.
Knife or bullet.
And I don’t want you
fuckin’ in my house with that girl in particular. You want to fuck her, get
your own shit. If you planning on marrying her anyway.

But you got some smut or a milf,”
Mr. Kent
chuckled.

“Fuck ‘em in your room here...they don’t deserve the decency and
privacy of a shack...they hoe’s. You hear me?”

I didn’t
hear Myron’s response. I just assumed he had nodded yes, especially when he had
gotten that penthouse that year in downtown Kansas City for 1.2 million
dollars. Whatever the case, I couldn’t hear anymore. I returned back to the den
were Mrs. Lim-Kent waited, never to go to the restroom to get myself together.
She didn’t ask me what had taken so long or why I had a look of despair on my
face. All she did was walk over to me, sit down beside me on the love seat, and
rubbed my back. During the talk where Myron and I were in the room together, I
was crying the whole time. My parents weren’t called and Mrs. Lim-Kent let me
stay at their home in the guest room, which I wasn’t sure I wanted to do. She
assured me that she wasn’t mad at me and that when the love is good, sometimes
two people can’t help but want to express it in the most intimate way. She didn’t
tell me that sometimes people couldn’t help but express it in the most
demoniacal way nevertheless.

Now he lay atop me gazing into my eyes, full of fear, lust, pain
and then
he.
. . stopped. He suddenly came to and
looked shocked, realizing his insanity and scooped my flaccid body into his
arms holding me tight as my tears fell through my eyes. Like nothing I’d ever
seen Myron attempt to do, he tried to pray to God. He wasn’t a God fearing man
and that’s when I saw it in his eyes—there was something he wanted to say.

“Oh Lord, what did I do? I—I don’t know what to do. Tell me—please
tell me.”

He let me go and sat quiet in the back seat staring off at
nothing. Suddenly he let go of a building outburst.

“Aaaahhh!
Damn I can’t believe you!” he screamed.

Myron looked over at me with so much anger and hurt.

“You don’t love me or sumthin’?” he whispered, through clinched
teeth.

“Do-you-know-what-you’ve-just-done to me?!
And you’re
asking
me
if I love
you
are not? How dare you!” I hollered
through my tears.

Myron retorted his hate written eyes out the window. A man could
not take defeat.

He could not take any form of defiance. His ego was hurt. His
heart was hurt. Although through unfortunate circumstance, I could finally tell
he truly loved me. If this is what you called love.
Young and
with the first.
I was his first love as well.
Hardest
fucking break-up in the history of mankind to get over.
He climbed to
the front seat and then asked,

“You coming up here?” he said

I got out the car, limping, and got in the passenger seat, but
Myron didn’t start the car.

“What was the good news you had to tell me?” I asked curiously
remembering what his mother asked before we went out the door.

“You really want to know?” his tone taut and frank.

“What is it?” I said in an annoyed high pitched tone.

“I’m in the NFL draft. First round pick.
Top
ten, number two.”

I inhaled and then exhaled his good news and looked straight ahead
on, my middle throbbing and burning.

“You don’t care.” he asked.

“No...
but
that’s good for you.”

“It ain’t if I don’t have you to share it all with.” he said as he
looked at me with his glassy, blood shot red eyes.

Tears rolled down his face again. As a young impressionable girl,
that sounded really tempting. But I had been accustomed to all the delicacies
Myron could provide me. For example: his world renowned trip to Italy we took
in his senior year of high school, his caviar dinner’s in the summer time at his
parents time share in Montego Bay. Or even this past Valentine’s day gift of a
red and silver
Coach
 
purse
with matching heels. When I opened the damned purse a week
later I found a platinum ring with a red crushed diamond forming a C on it.
Myron got a kick out of wondering how long it would take me to realize it was
in there.

Of course I
was a little taken aback that he hadn’t told me it was in there, yet I lost my
fudging mind once I found it and promised I would never let him go. Even
knowing he had flaws.
But...not this time.
I was
standing my ground.

“How do I know you truly mean that?” I said.

I
had heard it all before.

“You know how many girls would love to be in your shoes? I chose
you. And you go do dis shit to me?”

“You know how many girls
have
been in my shoes? And your
parents chose me, you didn’t”

“Man, I don’t need this.”

He hated the truth. But it was reality.

“And I don’t either.”

“Chardonnay, look.
I wasn’t supposed to say anything,
but my mother is having an engagement party for us and a rally party for the
first round pick tonight. It’s all in one. I
need
you to be there.”

I snapped my neck at him and a sheer look of disgust filled my
face. He looked me dead on. The look in his eyes said, “You’re going to this
fuckin’ engagement party.” But he never said the words. Instead I believed he
saw the entrapment in my eyes for the first time.

He bit his top lip while anguish and bitterness was becoming us.
The time speed of the people we were when we fell in love and the people we
were now-what a damn difference. The world even looked different. I hadn’t
noticed it until now. Stopped paying attention to how blue the sky was and how
green the grass grew nine years ago. I just looked straight ahead.
Neither up or
down, because he was my main focus. Now I’m in
a whole new world that I don’t recognize.

“Look, let’s just play this thing out until....”

“What? We break up?” A part of me regretted saying those words two
seconds before they flew out my mouth.

“I don’t know?” he said.

“I’m tired of you using me.”

“I’m not, but everyone knows we’re supposed to be getting married.
How crazy would that look, you not being there?”

“I don’t know. We’ll see tonight.”

The thought pissed him off even more as he started his ignition
and made a U-turn, pulling off fast onto the lonesome trail of rocks crunching
under his 22’s. As I sat there still shaking from Myron’s out of control
reaction, he stared straight ahead at the road, this time gripping the steering
wheel tight.

A lump of some sort was caught in my throat. I couldn’t speak and
in that moment I knew...what he and I had was through. Albeit I knew this, the
hard part would be getting him to realize it. There was no way I would be
showing up to the engagement party. I had to find a way out of it. Just then I
remembered having to meet with a friend of mine the next day. I looked at Myron
and touched his arm trying to play his defense. He stopped at a red light and
slowly looked at me.

“Baby...I—I have to meet with a friend of mine about my internship
at Vogue today. I just remembered. I have to go there before this party starts
and...I can’t go in these clothes.”

I forgot Myron’s type and how smart he was. His Escalade made a
left
 
and
headed
towards The Country Club Plaza to one of my favorite stores. Armani Exchange. I
closed my eyes and screamed inside. He pulled to the curb, fixed me up like I
was a child and he was the perfect domestic mother, touching my face gently and
then piercing my lips with his tongue lovingly. After doing so he handed me
three crisp hundred dollar bills.