My Married Boyfriend (17 page)

“Ajalon, that was then. I have a whole new life now.”

As if on cue, Eminence began to cry. Her little whimpers tugged at Nicole's heart.

Was she wet, hungry, or hurting?

Nicole ordered her ex, “Wait right here.”

She quickly disappeared down the hall. She walked over to Emmy's crib and peered lovingly down at her. Her baby girl's mouth was wide open as she fussed and twisted in her bed.

“You sure are loud. I wonder where you get that from?”

Nicole reached down and lifted up the big girl into her arms. Emmy was now almost nine weeks old.

“She gets her mouth from her pretty mother.” Ajalon was standing and looking over Nicole's shoulder. She could feel the heat of his body as it pressed against her.

“Oh, you scared me,” she said and moved away. “Please don't do that. I told you to wait for me.”

“I have been waiting too long. I can't wait anymore, Nicole. I am serious. I came here to apologize and tell you to your face that I messed up. I was young. I was dumb. But now I'm a man. I know what I want.”

“Ajalon, please.”

Emmy squealed even louder.

“I gotta take care of my daughter.”

“I'll help you.”

“What are you talking about?” She felt annoyed. He always was skilled at getting his own way with her.

“Nicole, you don't seem to understand. I wanted to show you, not tell you. But . . .
ti amo
.”

“Ohh. Hmmm.” Her knees felt weak at his confession. In all the years she knew him he'd never told her specifically that he loved her. But he was excellent at showing her and she admired that. While they were together, she would tell Ajalon that she loved him; he'd play it off like it was cool and then change the subject.

And right then Nicole didn't know how she felt about him expressing his love. She thought about her life. Thought of Rashad. And their child who needed them.

“Did you hear me?” he asked. “Do you understand? Let me say it in English. I love you, Nicole Kelly Greene.” She adored the way he pronounced her name.

Ajalon stared into Nicole's eyes; she felt herself getting drunkenly lost, like her blood alcohol level was dangerously high. She wanted to collapse. “I feel like I could use some water.”

“I'll get it for you.”

Ajalon went straight into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and twisted off the cap of an ice cold bottle. He brought it to her and lifted the container to her lips.

“Drink.”

She did.

“More.”

She drank more.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yes. Thanks.”

He drank the rest of the water and wiped his mouth with his hand.

“I can't believe this,” she said when he was done.

“Why can't you? Did you not believe you would see me again?”

Emmy let out a piercing wail. Nicole immediately went to grab her daughter.

“Follow me,” she told Ajalon.

They returned to the living room and she sat down in a comfortable chair. Feeling shy, she placed Emmy face-down on her chest. She hesitated then she pulled out her breast. Emmy hungrily sucked on her mom's nipple. Nicole thought about how much love she had for her baby. The baby was a great distraction because it felt too bizarre to have her former lover sitting in the room staring at her while her breast was partially exposed. She found a towel and covered as much of herself as possible and continued.

“Look, Ajalon, when I decided to leave Birmingham, I honestly didn't know if I would ever see you again. And pretty much a year ago, I really didn't care—”

“Don't say that. Please—”

“I'm just telling you how I felt . . . back then. I wanted out of that place. I felt like life had stopped for me. You were locked up. My family kept coming down on me and pressuring me about my decisions. Everything was making me crazy. I didn't want to keep going through that. And even though it was very hard, I could no longer picture us with a future together. I wasn't willing to stick around to see what happened. So I-I ended up applying for a lot of jobs out of state. Georgia, Florida, and Arizona. But I got a gig in Houston. That's why I'm here.”

“Okay. You didn't want to wait on me. That's a man's greatest fear when he's locked up.”

“Oh, I thought his fear was turning into a batty boy.”

“It's called making tortillas in prison. I never made a single tortilla. You feel me?”

Ajalon stared straight into Nicole's eyes. She knew he meant that.

The first time they had sex was a little clumsy yet amazing. Ajalon had a tinier frame back then. And she was big boned. So she had to ride him. It was his first time allowing a woman to take over in bed. By the time Nicole was done with him, she had Ajalon screaming for his mama. She aroused sensations that they both had never felt before. They were sweaty, exhausted, and sore. And after they took a break, they did it again. Nicole and Ajalon used to go at it three times a day all over their apartment. These days she and Rashad got it in about once every two to three days.

Nicole continued to breastfeed Emmy and was lost in thought. She never noticed Ajalon lean over. He licked his moist lips and tried to press them against hers. As soon as he made contact, she jerked back. His lips felt dangerously hot and smooth. His breath smelled like mint. A shiver ran through her.

“No,” she said and wiped her mouth. “You can't do that. Not anymore.”

“You got a Sancho while I was gone?” She knew “Sancho” meant a man.

“How you think I got this baby?”

“So you're serious? This is not my baby?” He pulled back the blanket that partially covered the little child's face.

“Stop it. You know she's not yours. You know what happened to our child.” She shot him a daggered look. The pain of the memories weighed on her.

When Ajalon went into prison, she came to see him every day. And when she found out she was pregnant, she arrived at the prison as soon as visitors were allowed. She wanted to spend every available moment with her man so she could break the news that she was having his baby. At first Nicole felt elated. But as the long days stretched into endless weeks, the more despondent she became. Her future looked bleak. She had to make a decision. And when she finally came to see her man after terminating the pregnancy, it was the first time Nicole saw him enraged. He shouted Italian profanities. The guard had to come out to see what was wrong with him. She walked out while he was talking. And that's when she decided she'd had enough. Her love for her man just wasn't enough.

“I'm sorry, Bella,” Ajalon said referring to the pet name he called her at times. “If I hadn't been so stupid, I could have stepped up to the plate and been there for you and our child. Put it all it on me.” Water filled his eyes. She knew prison hadn't made him as hard as he liked to pretend it did. Her Ajalon still had a heart that could feel and mourn and react.

Nicole covered her mouth with her hands and tried to control the achy lump that expanded in her throat. She didn't want to disturb Emmy, who had, magically and mercifully, fallen asleep.

“I'm sorry,” she apologized. “I'm having a moment.”

“You don't have to apologize to me. I know you. We were almost like a married couple. But I was too young to handle you. I'm older now.”

“Ajalon, everyone is older now.”

He laughed. She wanted to laugh, too. To Nicole he still sounded young. He was nothing like Rashad, a man that didn't mind going out and working hard every day. In fact, she felt he worked too much. She felt concerned that Rashad's job took him away from her as if his work meant more to her than she did. But he assured her that he was working hard for her and his seed. She felt Rashad didn't need to put in all those hours now that she had thousands of dollars remaining in her GoFundMe account. Something did not feel right, but when she first got with him she ignored her gut and reasoned that Rashad was a businessman and a workaholic.

“Okay, Ajalon. You saw me on TV, you said you're sorry. I accept your apology. But now you need to go back from where you came.”

“What?”

“I said you can't be here.”

“It's a free country,” he sputtered, sounding frustrated. “I can relocate to Texas just like you.”

“You're right. It is a free country. But you might lose more than your freedom if you stay here. Texas is nothing like Alabama. These law men will shoot you down in the streets like a dog if you get out of line. If you resist arrest, you're giving the state an excuse to fire at you. All they gotta do is say that they feared for their life and another black man gets a new sign made with his name emblazoned, his own crowd of protestors, and another mother grieving for her son. The cop will get off. And they'll put it behind them and get ready for their next shootout.”

“Nicole, thank you for my ‘Don't Mess With Texas' speech, but I paid my debt. I was a model prisoner. I hated that place. And I don't plan to go back.”

“It doesn't matter. That part of you that got you there in the first place is still inside of you, Ajalon.”

She hoped her words weren't hurting him but she knew they could be.

“Are you trying to say once a criminal always a criminal? Are you saying you stopped believing in me because of one careless mistake? Ha! Drugs should be legalized anyway.”

“I am saying—”

“You're saying that
you've
changed, Nicole. That you've forgotten where you came from. Or that you were a liar all along and I just didn't know it.”

He jumped to his feet and angrily paced the floor, his voice loud with passion.

“You were the one who made me believe in myself at one time. You told me that I had it in me to be a great man, and that I could do good things with my life. And when I come to tell you that in spite of what I just went through, that I believe in myself for the first time in my life, you don't welcome it but you coldly turn me down? You tell me that I am nothing but a criminal who doesn't deserve a second chance at life. Even though you got a second chance you're saying that I cannot have one? Is that what you're trying to tell me, Nicole?”

“I-I don't know—”

“It sounds like that's what you're doing. You forgot about me and moved on with your life. You had a dream like Martin Luther King and you are living it now and you don't want me to mess it up.” He paused. “Why do you deny me the right to dream when it's probably because of me that you can even live your dream?”

She had no words. This grown-up Ajalon wasn't going to back down. She stared at him as he pointedly stared at her.

“Bella, what type of job do you have? Where do you work?”

“Ajalon—”

“Where?”

“I-I work at a college. I do a lot of PR activities for our unit and handle a lot of journalism type duties. It's cool because I'm working in my field.”

His eyes lit up. “That sounds very professional and much better than that job at Taco Bell.”

She laughed and nodded. Taco Bell was where they first laid eyes on each other. Nicole was a spirited UAB student carrying twelve hours a semester and working part-time. And one evening Ajalon Cantu bounced into the restaurant with a friend of hers. Ajalon joked with Nicole, took up a lot of time in her line asking for ridiculous things that weren't even on the menu, and made a nuisance of himself. She couldn't resist his youthful charm and after a lot of relentless persuasion, she gave him her phone number. She was curious. Ajalon seemed different. He called her the very night that they met. They chatted on the phone for three hours, and he had spent his time chasing Nicole ever since.

“I like my job a lot. It's given me everything I need at this point in my life.”

“Everything?”

“Just about,” she replied, thinking of Rashad and her plans of being his wife.

“And this is where you met the . . . the mysterious Jody and father of your child?”

Nicole lowered her eyes. When Ajalon first got locked up and she went to visit him, he warned her not to let a “Jody” into her life. So she knew he was referring to a man who steals the ladies of inmates. And she resented his implication. “You have no right to ask me that.”

“Why not?”

“I just don't want to discuss that with you.”

“You don't? Are you ashamed of your Jody?”

“His name ain't no Jody!”

“Then what is it?”

“I ain't telling you.”

“Don't matter. I can still find out. I picked up a lot of new skills while I did my bid. Remember, I'm just a criminal.”

“Why would you say some young-sounding shit like that? You're crazy.”

Ajalon felt he needed to scale back. He didn't want to anger Nicole. So he calmed down.

“If I am crazy, I'm crazy for you. You make me crazy. So tell me about him. What does he do for a living? Riding around in that white van? What is Eason and Son? He's a junk dealer?”

“That's ridiculous. You have no idea what you're talking about,” she said, feeling nervous that he had noticed all those details about Rashad. “And I-I just don't think it's right for you to be questioning me, okay?”

Her eyes clouded with anger. His being in her presence was unexpected. Why did he come by bus and why now? She was afraid the happy police had come to snatch away her joy. She'd been through hell and deserved better. Her mother always warned Nicole about karma, but Nicole refused to listen.

Ajalon studied the woman who had turned him into a man. She was deliciously hot to him. She was so unlike the type of women his family pushed him to date. Nice Catholic girls who were seemingly perfect on the outside but crazy as fuck on the inside.