For the Sake of Love (6 page)

Bria didn't get many opportunities to see her parents dress up, so when they did she marveled in it. Her mom looked stunning too with her hair loosely pulled up into a bun, a perfect fit for the gold suit accentuated by rhinestone buttons on the jacket. Bria thought her mother looked sophisticated and classy. She represented women of a certain age well.

“Where's Spade?” her mom asked, looking around the room.

Bria's heart sank. She wanted to slink into the corner and disappear into the wall. Clearing her throat, she responded, “He, um, had a conflict, but he sent some gorgeous flowers.”

“Oh.” She sounded surprised and disappointed. “I guess this is what you'll have to look forward to being married to a musician.”

Her mother's words felt like a stingray stabbing her in the chest and piercing her heart. Bria checked her dressy designer watch that her parents had given her for her twenty-first birthday. They told her that every woman should have some good pieces of jewelry, especially her timepiece.

“Time to meet the public,” she said.

Bria and Nya stepped outside. As the invited guests started arriving, they greeted everyone with handshakes. The guests seemed excited and eager to enter. And Bria noticed a crowd was beginning to form.

“Are you ready?” Nya whispered in Bria's ear.

She drew a deep breath and slowly released it. “As ready as I'll ever be.” Bria stood in front of the door and thought about how special this moment was for her. People showed up to support her vision. That meant a lot to her.

“Welcome to The Spa Factory!” Her voice projected confidence and enthusiasm. Thank goodness she didn't look like what she was going through. “I want to thank you all for coming out tonight to join us in celebrating our grand opening. I hope the traffic wasn't too bad.”

There were some chuckles and rumblings before the crowd applauded. Bria flashed a warm smile. Next, she introduced the mayor who made a brief speech before assisting Bria with cutting the red ribbon in front of the spa.

“The doors are officially open,” Bria announced. “Come on in and tour the facilities. We have food and drinks for everyone.”

The stampeding crowd passed her like a herd of nimble gazelle. The dimly lit room smelled like vanilla as Bruno Mars's song “Treasure” played in the background. For the moment, Bria was out of her funk and felt like socializing. She mingled with the guests and made sure they were comfortable. The waitstaff walked around offering champagne and hors d'oeuvres. She was glad that the staff was attentive to the guests, and everyone appeared to be having a good time.

Mini massages were available. A robust lady had her eyes closed and appeared to be a head nod away from falling asleep as the massage therapist kneaded her shoulders like dough, Bria noticed.

“I've been looking for you all evening,” a man whispered in Bria's ear, startling her.

She turned around and said, “Oh? Do I know you?”

“I'm Kerryngton. Kerryngton Kruse.”

Bria guessed he was older than she was. Not because he looked old, just that he conducted himself like a more mature man. If she had to guess his age, she'd say somewhere around thirty.

Extending a hand to him, she said, “Nice to meet you.”

He took her hand and gazed into her eyes. His stare sent a chill through her body. She almost shivered. Although she had never met him before in her life there was something oddly familiar about him, but what? She couldn't quite figure it out. She released his hand and said, “Are you having a nice time?”

“Better now that I've had an opportunity to speak with you.”

She tried to figure out his game because she thought he was cooler than the actor Morris Chestnut in the movie
The Best Man,
or her mother's all-time favorite Denzel Washington in
Mo' Better Blues.
Regardless, he had swagger with a capital “s.” He acted like he knew her, and that caught her off guard. At this point, she was not sure whether she should be suspicious or intrigued.

He smiled, revealing beautiful white teeth and congratulated her.

She thanked him and politely said, “It was a pleasure, Kerryngton.”

Grabbing her hand he asked, “Will I see you again, Ms. Murray?”

His attention was like sunshine, and she basked in the delicious warmth of it. He had totally disarmed her. She was at a loss for words. Even though she was brokenhearted from her breakup with Spade, she wasn't blind and thought that Kerryngton was very good looking. She was tempted to give him a business card, but felt as though she was being unfaithful to Spade, so she did not. She pried her hand away from his, and before she could walk away, he handed her his card instead. She studied the black card with gold lettering and when she looked up, he was gone.

That was smooth, she thought, grinning from ear to ear. Her father had often schooled her on the ways of young men. If a guy had a way of making a woman eat out of the palm of his hands, her dad would say, “That joker's a smooth operator.” From what little she could tell about Kerryngton, he certainly qualified. Now she was the one standing there thinking about him. She momentarily left the crowd and placed his card in her contemporary-styled office on top of her desk. Then it dawned on her. How did he know her last name? She hadn't told him that. She had a feeling that she would be seeing him again.

Spade needed to work to get his mind off of his cancer and Bria. He booked some studio time to work on his CD. He had a hard time focusing on work even though he spent most of his time in the studio hoping to get inspired. With everything going on he hadn't been able to eat, sleep, or concentrate. Bria had been on his mind even more than his condition. He tried to throw himself into his work, but he couldn't get into it. When he tried to write a song, everything sounded the same . . . like a country love song. He had it bad and couldn't stop pining away for Bria. Even when he tried to do freestyle raps he noticed that his timing wasn't right. His heart just wasn't in it.

“Man, what's up with you tonight?” his sound engineer asked.

Spade took off his headset and sulked. He thought going into the recording studio would help get his mind off Bria, but he was wrong. He kept wondering how the grand opening was going. Tempted to call Bria just to let her know he was thinking of her, he mentally reprimanded himself for being so selfish. Hearing her voice would make him feel better, but he knew hearing his would upset her. He didn't want to confuse the situation any more than he had already done. Tonight was a big deal for Bria, and he made the difficult decision to stay away. He just hoped and prayed she would be able to forgive him someday.

“I don't know. I'm just not feeling it,” he finally admitted.

“I thought tonight was your girl's grand opening. Why are you here instead of there?”

Spade didn't think he could feel any worse than he already did, but this line of questioning made him sink to a lower level of low. At the time when he made the spur-of-the-moment decision to break up with Bria he had forgotten all about the opening of her spa. He thought he was making the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of love. He wanted to spare her, even if it meant breaking both their hearts. Instead, he realized that not only had he deeply hurt the woman he loved, he quite possibly ruined one of the most important nights of her life. He felt like a complete and utter jerk.

Although he wasn't surprised that Bria hadn't called him to acknowledge the flowers he had sent her, he still felt disappointed. He had ordered those flowers weeks ago just to make sure they'd arrive on time for Bria's big event the second weekend in May. At the time, he hadn't wanted to risk the chance of him forgetting or getting too busy to place the order. He wondered if he had made matters worse.
Since when did being thoughtful turn out to be a bad thing?
he thought. Right about now, Spade felt like if it wasn't for bad luck he wouldn't have any luck at all.

He shook his head and his muscular shoulders slumped just a bit. “Man, we broke up,” he blurted out.

The sound engineer turned down the music. “What happened?” His New York accent was more evident than ever.

Spade could tell that what he was really asking was, “What did you do to mess this up, man? How did you blow it with one of the finest women in the A?”

Anyone who had ever seen Spade with Bria knew she was the best thing that ever happened to him. By nature, Spade could come off as straight to the point and hard core. Bria helped him to find the good out of life. She exposed him to art museums, plays, walks in the park, and sushi. She had him literally smelling flowers.

Before he could give a response, a big-name producer assigned to work on Spade's CD came into the studio with his entourage. They wore hoodies with baggy, saggy jeans, the latest kicks, and talked loudly. At first glance, they looked like a bunch of thugs ready to snatch and run. But in reality, they were rich and accomplished in the music industry.

The sound engineer gave him a look that let him know he didn't have to give an answer right then, but the conversation wasn't over.

The entourage had hot wings, french fries, sodas, bottles of booze, bags of the best marijuana money could buy, and the nefarious drug Molly.

As soon as Spade saw the weed he tensed up. Back in the day he used to be a bona fide “weed head.” He smoked weed every day from the time he was fifteen to eighteen years old. Most of his teen years were spent in a haze. Like a lot of people he didn't see anything wrong with getting high. Nearly every guy he knew got high.

His grandmother had told him, “Smoking marijuana is just a momentary escape from life and doesn't solve your problems. Getting high only compounds your problems. Satan wants to keep you in bondage to marijuana; God wants to set you free.”

He had justified it because it was a plant, grown from the earth. “How bad could it be?” he had told her.

“Baby, yes, God did create the plant marijuana comes from. However, God never ever intended for you to dry the plant out, go buy a pack of plastic Ziploc bags, crumble the dried plant in the rolling paper, roll it up, and smoke it. That's a perverted use of God's creation.”

He wanted to laugh because he wondered how his grandmother knew so much about it. He knew she would've slapped the sound straight out of his mouth if he dared disrespect her by asking. Instead, he defended, “It's safer than cigarettes and alcohol.”

“First of all, it's illegal. The only reason you smoke marijuana is to get that ‘high' feeling. God wants us to have a sound mind, not an altered mind! When you're high you're not able to think clearly.”

Spade still wasn't convinced.

“Listen to me, Spade. I'm not going to keep lecturing you. I'm going to pray for you, because what you do in your early years will have an effect on your later years. You may not care now, but one day when your short-term memory is gone you can think back to these times.”

His grandmother's concerns weren't enough to stop him, though. It wasn't until he met Bria and she told him that she didn't date guys who smoked weed that he stopped. She meant so much to him that he willingly cleaned up his act. He hadn't lit up since. And then he realized that everything his grandmother tried to tell him was true. Whenever he had difficulty remembering something, he wondered if it was a side effect of his years of getting high.

“Hey, I'm not trying to be funny,” Spade told the guys in the studio, “but I don't feel comfortable with y'all having drugs in here. If the cops roll up in here, I'm not trying to catch a case.” The look on his face let everyone know that he was serious. He didn't have a criminal record, and he wasn't trying to get one. Plus, the police department seemed to have a special task force dedicated to busting rappers. He didn't want to give them any reason to bust him.

There were four things Spade didn't play with and that was his relationship with God, his freedom, his money, and his love for his woman.

The producer nodded in his direction and instructed the guy with the ganja to get it out of there.

One thing Spade hated about the industry was the acceptability and accessibility of drugs. Temptation was everywhere, and he refused to entertain her.

Spade spoke to everybody who spoke to him. The producer offered him some wings and the smell of hot sauce made his empty stomach growl. He accepted the wings and an individual basket full of crinkled fries with lots of ketchup. He didn't realize how hungry he was until he devoured the food.

While licking his fingers he noticed a female walking into the studio. He didn't like women in the studio because they were a distraction.

Dressed in provocative attire, she said, “Hey, I'm Kola. I'm supposed to be singing some of your hooks.” Judging by her Coke-bottle shape, Spade figured that's how she must've gotten her name.

“Oh, okay.”

Some of the guys made catcalls and nearly all of them were eyeing her big boobs and fatty.

Spade turned his attention to the producer and told him his vision for his CD and let him hear some of the new tracks he had already laid down. He knew he was fortunate to be able to give his creative input on his first CD. So many artists complained that the record labels created their sounds and crafted their images with little to no regard for who the artist really was or what the artist really wanted.

Spade knew that he needed to get his head in the game. He was a professional, and he needed to place his personal problems on the back burner and handle the business at hand. If he didn't, he risked losing everything he had worked so hard for. Asking the question, “What would Jesus do?” had become a mainstream slogan, more like a cliché, but his personal mantra when it came to business was, “What would Jay-Z do?” He figured Jay-Z would put his emotions in check and hustle harder, and that's what he was determined to do.