Commitment (59 page)

“
Okay,” she said
, finally.

But still he didn’t hang up.

“Riley?” he said after a moment.

“Yes?”
she said, unable to keep the tears out of her voice.

“I’m glad you called me.”

And then he hung up.

g

Shawn was still holding the phone when Brendan came looking for him. He’d walked out on a business lunch without a word of explanation when he saw the number flas
h across the face of his phone.
He hadn’t even considered how the conversation might go, why Riley might be calling, but knowing he would hear her voice was like seeing water after a drought. If she wanted to yell and curse
and scream
at him, he was prepared to take it.

“Are you crazy?” Brendan hissed at him, trying to keep his voice down. “You think those guys in there give a shit about talking to me? They want to talk to you! Why’d you walk out like that for?”

“It was Riley,” Shawn explained. He put his phone back into his pocket.

Brendan said nothing for a moment then shrugged, indicating the main dining room of the restaurant. Shawn knew better than to expect Brendan’s sympathy. He’d been warned, and chose not to heed it, and now he had to face the consequences of what he’d done.

To say he’d made a mistake with Keisha d
idn’t even begin to capture it.
All of a sudden it seemed like he couldn’t get rid of her.  But it wasn’t sudden
—
it had been a slow progression of stupid and reckless behavior
which, had he been honest with himself
,
he should have foreseen would lead up to t
hat night after the party. 

It had been one of those encounters where everything seemed to pass in a blu
r of legs, thigh and naked ass.
He didn’t
even
look at her face while he fucked her, but at a spot on the
wall just above the headboard.
She didn’t seem to notice, moving through multiple positions almos
t as though she was performing. And she probably was.

Afterwards, he did look at her face and she had this expression; a self-satisfied look, like she’d won something. It took Shawn a moment to realize that she
had
won.
He’d been outplayed by a group
ie.
All this time he’d told himself he was the one playing her
—
that he was using her to pass the time until he worked things out with R
iley—
but in reality she wa
s strumming him like a guitar.

She want
ed to bag a rapper and she had.
She wanted to be a professional dancer for h
ip-hop artists and now she was.
And all he’d gotten out of it was a mediocre sexual performance and lump of guilt, s
itting like a stone in his gut.

He’d neve
r felt guilty after sex before.
He’d never owed anyone anything befor
e now.
But sitting there at the foot of the bed, seeing Keisha’s reflection in the mirror all he could think about was Riley and the way she gave herself him to so completely.
The way she loved him physically was th
e way she loved him emotionally
—
openly
, freely and without
fear or
inhibition. It had taken his encounter with Keisha for him to realize in an instant that what he never believed was possible for him had ac
tually happened. He didn’t want
or need any other
woman
than his wife.

Great fucking time to make that discovery.

After he was done with Keisha, t
he next thing he knew, he was literally sick to his stomach, crouched in front of the toi
let bowl and hugging porcelain.
The nausea was so strong, he kept waiting for the vomiting, but it didn’t come, just waves and waves of a sick feeling, roi
ling in the pit of his stomach.
Whether it was all the alcohol or the self
-loathing, he wasn’t sure.

Keisha stood over him, naked with a towel in her hand, wiping the perspiration from his for
ehead and he shrugged her off.
When she left him alone in the bathroom, he brushed his teeth and showered, now thoroughly sober, hoping she would be gone when
he got out. But she wasn’t.
She was under the covers, looking like she planned to stay for the duration, smiling at him. 

“You okay?” she asked.

He didn’t answer, but asked her a question of his own. “You on the pill?”

She smirked and shook her head slowly, looking down at her long, scarlet nails.

“No?” Shawn asked, incredulous.

She laughed lightly. “I was shakin’ my head ‘cause I don’t believe yo
u asked me something like that.
After.”

“You think this shit is funny?” he said.
“I asked if you on the fuckin’ pill. Now
is
you?”
Something about her made him slip into what Riley liked to call his “street vernacular.”

She nodded
slowly. “I don’t want no
kids,” she
said quietly.

“Yeah?”
He pulled on his boxers.
“Well good
.”

She didn’t say anything, so he looked up at her. “You need to leave,” he said
bluntly
. “Tomorrow’s gon’ be a long day.”

“Go ahead, call your wife,
”
she said, her voice hard.
“I’ll keep quiet.”

Shawn grabbed her arm. “I told you don’t talk about her.”

Keisha wrenched free and reached for her clothes. “Talk about her?” she sneered. “I did one better than that.
I just fucked her man.
And good.”

When she was gone he reached for the phone and called New York for the first time in what seemed like forever. The phone rang many more times than usual; so many times, he expected voicemail to pick up. Then he heard her voice, thick with sleep, or crying? Had she been on the other line with someone else?

“Hello?”

Shawn tried to make himself say something, but he couldn’t think what. Even after his shower, he coul
d smell Keisha’s scent on him.
On the other end of the line, Riley
was still holding the phone.
He hung up. And then he sat there until he could see the salmon-colored sky that told him it was dawn.

g

T
he mailbox was full
. Shawn stood staring at it for a moment, not comprehending, and then tugg
ed
out all the mail, which took some doing. It looked like no one had checked for at least a week.
Riley was always good about stuff like that
. He opened his duffle and stuffed the mail inside and dragged it upstairs with the rest of his luggage.
As he pushed the door open and kicked his
bags
across the threshold,
Shawn felt the weight of the last few weeks dissolve as though he’d shed a heavy coat.

Chicago
was
going to be
rough
,
so
he was glad to be home,
even though
he had just one night. T
he thought of what he’d done to Riley and what he would have to do to keep it away from her made him sick
but he needed to see her face, even if just for a little while
.

The apartment was dark and silent. He turned on lights, walking through every room, but he already knew she wasn’t there.
When h
e checked the closets
he
was relieved to see that all or most of her clothes were where they were supposed to be. Then he felt foolish.
They were going through something right now, but it wasn’t as though she was about to leave him
.

He had to keep reminding himself of that. Riley did not know anything about Keisha and she need never know because it wasn’t going to happen again. Nothing like that was ever going to happen again.
Her
weekend bag was missing.
That was the one thing. Shawn checked her dressing room to confirm his suspicion. Yes, the weekend bag and her favorite boots weren’t there.
He
sat on the edge of the bed, trying to figure out what to do, where
she might be
. Finally, he called Brendan and got Tracy’s number. 

Tracy’s voice changed
as soon as
she realized it was him.

“You know where she’s at?”
he asked her.

“Yes.
I do.”

“You think you might want to tell me?” he asked, controlling his tone. If he pissed her off, she wouldn’t give up jack. And clearly she’d already gotten the rundown about
. . . something. The Sony party would be Shawn’s guess
.

“No.
But what I
am
thinking is that if she wanted you to know, you already would.”

“Tracy,”
he said, his voice measured and calm. “This is not your
business.
I just need to know where my wife is.”

“Like I said, I don’t know that your wife wants you to know where she is.” 

The way she said ‘wife’—
h
er voice dripping with sarcasm
—
made him want to reach through the phone and smack the
tar
out of her.

“If you’re that concerned,”
she continued, “why don’t you just call her? You do remember the number don’t you?”

“Look. I’m in the city only till tomorrow night, okay? I’m going to Chicago. I’ll be there three
nights then I’m coming back. When you see . . .”

“How nice for you,” Tracy said frostily.

“Tracy, cut me fucking break, okay?”

“Who
the hell
do you think you’re speaking to? I am
not
Riley.”

The line went dead. 

Shawn held the receiver in his hand for a moment then walked through the apartment one last time, looking for a note. Anything.  But she’d left no clues to where she might be. Tracy was probably right. If Riley wanted him to know where she was, she would have told him. And she knew he was due home today, so clearly she didn’t want to see him.

Not calling her for this long had been the wrong move.
And not opening up to her when she called him
had been
even worse. But he just hadn’t been able to stand it, listening to her tell him how much she loved him, and that he was the only one she needed, all the while knowing that just 48 hours before he’d been
pounding
Keisha
into the mattress
.

He played the
ir
voicemail and at first there was nothing helpful there. A message from her job, one from building maintenance about window washers, and another about a book she had ordered at Barnes & Noble coming in, and finally one from Chris. Only he was ca
lling for Riley, not for Shawn.

He played it twice:
Yo Riley, this is Chris. I got your message . . . yeah, that’s cool. Maybe it’ll work out next time. Call me, so we could get t
ogether for drinks or whatever.
Peace.

Get together for drinks? And
what
might work out next time?  Shawn bit into his lower lip and grabbed the phone, punching out Chris’ phone number. He got no answer at his
house, so he called the mobile.
Chris answered right away.

“Yo playa, whassup?” Chris said. “I hear you tearin’ shit up coast to coast.”

“Yeah?” Shawn asked. “How ‘bout you?
Holding down the
home front
?”

Chris laughed, obviously not detecting the te
nsion in his voice.
“You know.
Doing my thing.”

“So what’s up with you calling my house?”

Chris said nothing for what seemed to Shawn like a suspiciously long time. “What you talk
ing ‘bout?
I ain’t called you. I knew you were in . . . oh! You mean when I called Riley
about . .
.”

“Yeah, what the fuck you calling her for?”

There was silence on the other end.

“What you got to say?” Shawn pressed.

“You need to calm down, fir
st of all,”
Chris said, all the mirth gone from his voice. “And then second, try to remember who the hell you talkin’ to.”