The Choir Director 2 (6 page)

I yanked my arm away from him. “Tia sent me a text and told me, and I quote, she's ‘not fucking interested.' Does that sound like there's a chance to you, Pippie?”

“Come on, man,” Ross said, trying a different approach. “Don't do something you'll regret.” He looked over at Jewel, who waved at me. “That chick's a cokehead, man. All she's going to do is spend your money on drugs and alcohol.”

“You forgot one thing,” I said. “She's also going to screw my brains out, and considering I haven't had any in over a year and a half, there ain't nothing you could say to change my mind.”

“Aaron.” Ross stood up to try to block my exit.

“If you don't get out my way, we really are going to have a PR nightmare,” I warned him. With a final exasperated sigh, he stepped aside and let me pass. I grabbed Jewel and headed for the door. “Oh, and for the record, the old Aaron Mackie is back and he's planning on making up for lost time.”

“Damn, I expected a lot of BS, but that?” Pippie served me a look as he opened the passenger door, shaking his head like he was trying to get the image of Jewel being freaky under the table out of his mind. Now, I'm not gonna pretend her body wasn't on point, from her porn star–size breasts bursting out of her blouse to the taut, whittled waist to the full-size sister girl cake being held up by incredibly long legs. Still, Aaron should have had the good sense to turn her ass down. Aaron was the kind of guy who'd always had a nonstop pussy parade in his honor, with women eighteen to eighty, married, blind, crippled, and crazy ready to give up the kitty cat. Frankly, though, I thought he had moved past sex as a contact sport, especially after he rejected that big-booty stripper at his bachelor party.

“I can't believe him!” This kind of behavior in public frustrated me as his manager, but it also had me scared for my friend. My boy had tripped over to the dark side. Over the years, I'd seen enough people on the precipice of success and then suddenly one bad decision sidelines their dreams for life. His out-of-control behavior threatened to ruin his saintly image. I could just see the headline on Bossip, the leading black gossip site:
Choir director has his knob slobbed in public
.

“Our boy is in trouble,” Pippie lamented, never afraid to overstate the obvious.

“It's not just him. He's the captain of the whole thing. He goes down, so does the choir, the bishop, and me. I have to figure out some way to get him back on track, and I don't care what it takes.”

“I don't know, man. You know how Aaron can be. He's stubborn as hell, and I'm telling you he ain't getting in that choir loft anytime soon.” His words tightened the knot in my stomach, because as painful as they were to hear, they were true.

“Not unless I give him something bigger than his pain.”

“Tia? How you gonna do that?” Pippie asked.

I shook my head. “No, I don't think I could pull that off. No one even knows where she is. I'm thinking that I should meet with that Johnson Morris agent, Jackson Young. Put our heads together and come up with a strategy to elevate his career to the next level.” As much as I despised this guy on sight, even more so after he opened his mouth, I was willing to make a deal with the devil if it meant saving us all.

I pulled up to Pippie's place. “Do what you gotta do,” he said, fist-bumping me before he got out of the car.

I really wished there were some other options, but no one else of Jackson's stature had come calling before. If I could get him a deal, I could refocus Aaron's attention on his work, the one area of his life where he actually had some control. As much as Jackson Young bugged me, I had to put Aaron's needs first and set up a meeting.

When I pulled into the driveway behind Selena's car, I was glad to be home, though I wasn't sure what awaited me behind the front door. Things had been a little intense lately, partly because my wife was pregnant and partly the normal stress of being married. I hadn't always been the most well-behaved husband. Even though we'd been to therapy and I'd turned over a new leaf, there were still days that Selena liked to remind me of the dog I used to be. Right now, I was seriously hoping for a reprieve.

I took a deep breath and got myself together before I approached the door. To my surprise, I entered to find my wife in a sexy lace negligee and high heels, just like I like it. Damn, she made pregnancy appear appetizing. She wore a huge smile as she lifted her dress to give me a flash of her sheer white thong.

“I made you oxtails and pineapple upside-down cake,” she purred.

“What? Why?” I couldn't hide my surprise. It had been a long time since Selena had initiated anything sexual between us. And throwing in a meal too? Man, she certainly knew how to keep a brother guessing.

“I kept thinking about Tia and Aaron,” she explained. “It made me realize how lucky I am, and how I haven't been such a good wife to you lately.”

I admit that it was nice not to hear her blaming everything on me for once, but I couldn't let her accept all the responsibility for our marital issues. “No. Honey, you're pregnant. It's got to be hard giving your body over to a little alien.”

“Having a baby is no reason to forget that I got a good man, and I need to make him feel appreciated. And that's exactly what I plan to do from now on. Women need compliments, and men need sex. I want us to make it, not just because we're married, but because we belong together.” She leaned in and gave me a kiss that let me know she meant business.

In a perfect world, my body would have responded immediately to her touch, but unfortunately, I was so stressed and exhausted from worrying about Aaron that things weren't working the way they should.

Selena looked down at my unresponsive member then looked up into my eyes. “What's wrong, baby?”

“I'm just worried about Aaron. I'm afraid he's going off the deep end.”

She led me to the couch and sat down next to me. Taking my hand, she said, “Baby, he'll be okay. He just needs some time to heal.”

“I don't know, Selena. If he keeps going in the direction he is now, his music career will be over. He'll be left with nothing—and so will we.”

Her eyes opened a little wider. She had given up her job to get ready for the baby, and if I lost my biggest client, we could be in a really bad situation.

“Babe, what are you going to do? You have to get Aaron back on track,” she said.

“I'm working on it,” I said, then told her about my idea to meet with Jackson Young.

“So, you really think this guy can take Aaron to the next level?”

“I do. He might be just what Aaron needs to take his mind off Tia.”

She gave me a hug. “I'm proud of you, honey. If anyone can get Aaron back to work, it's you. Everything is going to be fine. I just know it.”

Her confidence in me felt good. If things with work were a little crazy right now, at least my home life was improved. Slowly but surely, the tension was leaving my body.

Selena noticed it, and gave me a devilish smile. “Looks like you're feeling better. Let's see if I can help you relax some more,” she said as she slid to her knees and reached for my zipper.

Damn, I love this woman
, I thought, grateful as hell. Yep, despite how it had started, this turned out to be a great day for me.

“Thank God,” I said, standing up to wipe the sweat off my forehead.

I'd been picking up rocks in my brother Kareem's garden for almost ten minutes before I finally found the one that hid the key to his house. It was the same house we'd grown up in, and until a few years ago, we'd lived there together, big brother taking care of little sister. After he kicked his last girlfriend to the curb, he'd changed the locks. Luckily, he always left a key hidden in the garden just in case I needed to come home.

“Kareem!” I called out to him as I walked through the door. The silence that followed was welcome, letting me know that I had the entire place to myself.

I stood there in the foyer and looked around at this place that had always been my refuge, my safe haven; but not anymore, not since I saw
him
in the bar that night. Now, no place and no one felt safe—not this house, not Kareem, not even Aaron. I felt so raw inside, so violated. The image of his face invaded my thoughts almost constantly.

I forced thoughts of the rapist out of my head as I checked my watch and realized I only had two hours to do what I needed to do and get out of there. I wanted to be gone before Kareem got home. I loved my brother, but I really wasn't ready to play twenty questions with him about my whereabouts and my reasons for bolting from the wedding. He'd been nice enough to give me the benefit of the doubt when I told him I couldn't go in the church and go through with the wedding; however, he'd been blowing up my phone almost as much as Aaron. I just couldn't bring myself to face him, because I knew I'd be forced to lie, and I wanted to avoid that for as long as I could. My brother and I had always been close, and there was a good chance he'd see right through me.

I headed down the hall to my old bedroom and opened the bottom dresser drawer, which still held some old jeans I hadn't bothered to throw out when I left. I reached underneath the piles of pants expecting to find what I'd come for, but it wasn't there. I pulled everything out of the drawer and threw it on the ground, and still I came up empty-handed. A search of the other drawers had the same result.

What the fuck! Where the hell is it?

Trying to remain calm, I turned to the closet and started pulling shoe boxes off the shelves. Maybe I'd put it in the closet and forgotten. There was nothing in the boxes, though, except for shoes I no longer wore. Leaving everything in total disarray, I headed for Kareem's room, thinking that since he'd been the one to give it to me in the first place, maybe he'd taken it back.

Stepping over piles of dirty clothes on his floor, I made a mental note to suggest to Kareem that he should get a cleaning lady. The mess in his room was ridiculous. I'd told him once that I couldn't believe he had the nerve to bring women into this pit, but he just laughed. “Shit!” he'd said. “They ain't coming to see how clean my place is.” And sure enough, that boy kept a steady stream of women, and none of them seemed to care what a pigsty he lived in.

In spite of the mess, I was desperate to find what I'd come for, so I dove in and started digging through the clutter. I went through his dresser, searched under his bed, and pulled everything out of his closet. Nothing there.

I stood in the middle of his room, which was now in even worse shape than before, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do now. Kicking a pair of sneakers in frustration, I watched them land in the corner. That's when I remembered the loose floorboard.

I ran to the corner and dropped to my knees. Slipping my fingers along the edge, I was able to pry up the loose board. I was flooded with relief when I spotted the black box I'd been looking for hidden beneath the floor.

The metal box required a three-digit combination to open the lock, so I put in the code I'd used to set it the last time I locked the box.

“What the hell!” I shouted when the lock didn't budge. Not only had the box been moved, but the combination had been changed. I was about two seconds away from going to find a hammer and busting the damn thing open. The contents inside were way too important to me.

I leaned back against the wall, racking my brain to think of what Kareem could have changed the combination to. Taking a stab in the dark, I put in 317, and to my great relief, the box unlocked. “Of course he used Momma's birthday,” I said out loud with a laugh. My brother was a straight-up momma's boy. That was why he still hadn't moved out of the last place we'd lived with our mother.

For a second, I stared at the contents of the box—a .38 handgun my brother had given me a long time ago. Black Beauty. I picked it up and held it in my hand, feeling a sense of power and, even more important, a feeling of safety I hadn't had ever since the night I saw
him
. I shoved the gun in my purse then closed the box and put it back under the floor. It was time to put the house back together. The trick would be to leave it no cleaner than I had found it. That would be a dead giveaway.

I'd torn up the place so bad that cleaning it took longer than I expected. By the time I finished, it was too late to get out of there undetected. I heard keys in the door, and Kareem entered carrying a bag of groceries.

“Hey!” He sounded happy to see me. “Where the hell you been?” He set the bag on the counter and gave me a hug.

“I been around.”

“What? You don't know how to call?” he scolded. I hated it when he acted like my daddy instead of my brother.

“I just needed to get away from it all, Kareem.”

“And that included me.” I could tell by his tone that he was hurt. “I'm not those church people, Tia. I'm your family. Your only real family.”

As much as I wanted to reassure him, I just couldn't tell him anything. Not yet. There was nothing he could say or do to make things better for me, so there was no use telling him anything.

“Kareem, sometimes I have to deal with things by myself. You can't protect me from everything, you know.”

“Protect you? Did Aaron put his hands on you?” His eyes flashed with rage.

“No, of course not,” I said.

“Then what? He cheated on you?”

“No, it's nothing like that. Aaron didn't do anything. He's a good man. This is all about me.”

I could see he wasn't buying my excuse. “Little sister, what aren't you telling me?”

“A lot,” I said truthfully. “But you can't save me from it. I gotta save myself.”

He looked like he wanted to say more, and I knew he was frustrated with me, but thankfully he dropped the conversation. I gave him a quick kiss and hug then headed to the door before he could try to press further.

“If you need anything, you know where to find me,” he said with a look that told me my big brother was willing to do anything for me.

I squeezed my bag, felt the cold, hard steel of Black Beauty. “I got everything I need,” I said, and for the first time in days, I believed it was true.