Let's Get It On (26 page)

Kenya and her mother decided to take a walk after stuffing themselves with fried eggs, bacon, and homemade biscuits. “That was a really nice thing you did in there,” Kenya said after they'd walked a few blocks in silence.

“I meant it, in case you were wondering,” Angela replied.

“I know.”

“Have you two set a date?”

“We're going to get married soon, before training camp starts.”

“That's not too far away. How are you going to plan a wedding in that short amount of time?”

Kenya smiled. “With your help. I can't do this without you and Daddy.”

“Your father stands behind you, too. He came around a lot quicker than I had expected. That's probably because he doesn't know about the baby, and I'm not going to tell him.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“I guess you and Maurice have the right idea, starting over and letting the past go. People talk about doing that all the time, but you're living it. Maybe I can learn from you,” Angela said.

“Learn what?”

“How to be a better person. I've never been a very forgiving person. Your father and I split up when I was pregnant with you because I thought that he was cheating on me.”

Kenya's eyes stretched to the size of quarters. “What?”

“He wasn't, but I thought he was. That's what men do, or at least that's what I thought.”

“Do I really need to hear this?” Kenya said. The last thing she wanted to know was that her parents were human and had dealt with some of the same issues that she'd faced.

“Just listen. I went home to my parents for a few months, and your grandmother was too happy. She was ready to pay for my divorce, and she was introducing me to men that she thought were socially acceptable, and I hadn't even decided that I was done with my marriage. She made my life a living hell, so I had to face my problems on my own and save my family. It took a lot for me to go back to my husband and forgive him. But in the end, I had to ask him for forgiveness, because I'd been wrong, not him. All the time I thought Henry was cheating on me, you know what he was doing?”

Kenya shook her head.

“Planning a baby shower for me with the help of one of the secretaries who worked with him,” Angela said. “That's why he'd hang up the phone when I'd come in the room. That's why he'd go out to lunch with her and not tell me about it. I'd ruined my own surprise because I got in my own way. You would think that I had learned my lesson. But here I am, doing it again, passing judgment and not knowing all the facts.”

“Mom,” Kenya said, fumbling for the right words to say.

“I'm sorry,” Angela said. “I shouldn't have been so adamant about your relationship with Maurice. This is your business, and there's no reason for me to stand between you and true love. But I'll be watching him, and if he hurts you again, there'll be hell to pay.”

“You won't have to worry about that. Maurice loves me, and he wouldn't do anything to hurt me again.”

Angela smiled. “He'd better not.”

 

 

Maurice was stunned at how well breakfast had gone with Angela and Kenya. As he sat in his condo, he wondered if Angela was telling the truth, and if she'd really give him a chance.

The phone rang, breaking into his thoughts. “Hello?” he said.

“Maurice, it's Lauryn.”

He hung up the phone. Seconds later it rang again.

“What the hell do you want?” he demanded.

“I want to say I'm sorry,” Lauryn said. “Listen, I know that I've done a lot of things that I shouldn't have, and the first thing I should've done before we planned our wedding was told you that I was having a relationship with Mya.”

“So. What do you want now? And don't tell me that it's a second chance, because that's not going to happen.”

“I know that you and Kenya are getting married. I guess I just need some help. You know I haven't worked in a while, and I want to start over, outside of Charlotte. So, if you could find it in your heart to—”

“You're calling me to ask for money? I can't believe you have the gall.”

“I'm trying to do this the nice way, but if I have to go to the tabloids about you, then I will.”

“Do what you have to do, but no one will believe anything you have to say. You've already proven yourself to be a liar. So, why don't you find a buck and buy a clue?” Maurice slammed the phone down and threw the handset across the room. The last thing he needed was for Lauryn to rear her head again when everything was going so well. She reminded him of a fungus: every time you thought you'd killed it, it came back.

He stood and paced back and forth. If he gave Lauryn money, he'd be opening a Pandora's box that he might never be able to close. But he didn't want Kenya to pick up a newspaper and read Lauryn's lies, or whatever she was going to say to reporters.
I'm not going to worry about her,
Maurice thought.

He decided that he needed to cut Lauryn off at the pass, and he didn't need to hide it from Kenya, either. But going to Kenya right now, when everything was going so well between them, just didn't seem like a good idea. He knew she still had doubts, and he didn't want to add to them. However, giving in to Lauryn was not an option.

Sitting down and stretching his legs across the coffee table, Maurice thought,
Lauryn isn't crazy, and this is going to blow over, and I hope it's sooner rather than later.

The phone rang again, and Maurice ignored it at first, figuring it was Lauryn. But he answered it when the ringing became annoying. “Yeah?”

“Mo, check out the E! channel,” James said. “Lauryn is on there.”

“You've got to be kidding me. She just called me, trying to extort money. I guess this was part of her plan,” he said as he flipped on the television.

“The ex-fiancée of Super Bowl MVP Maurice Goings said she's going to write a book about her experiences with the superstar and disclose the real reason why they didn't make it to the altar,” said E! News host Ryan Seacrest. The camera cut to Lauryn, sitting in a studio. A female interviewer was sitting with her. “We're here with Lauryn Michaels, who has inked a six-figure deal with a New York publisher to write her tell-all memoirs about her life as an almost NFL wife and why she walked away.”

“Hi,” Lauryn said, then smiled as she looked into the camera. Maurice felt as if her eyes were boring into his soul. Silently, he prayed that Kenya was nowhere near a television.

“A few months ago you were living a dream, with fancy clothes, trips, and money. Not to mention you were engaged to one of the hottest football players out there,” said the interviewer. “You gave it all up. Why did you do it?”

“Well, not every pretty picture is what it seems,” Lauryn said. “My relationship with Maurice Goings was just that, a one-dimensional picture.”

The interviewer leaned in. “How so?”

Lauryn crossed her long legs, exposing a sliver of her thigh. “Maurice may be the man on the field, but he certainly isn't off it. I'm not saying that he's gay, because he's never come out to me. But he didn't have a problem with my relationship with another woman. Mo would drive me to her house and finance our weekends away. And while I was gone, he was always surrounded by other men.”

“You mean his teammates?” asked the interviewer.

Lauryn shook her head and looked into the camera. “Nope. That I could understand, but he spent a lot of time at a local gay and lesbian club, and I never understood why a straight man would hang around so many gay people.”

“Are you gay?” the interviewer asked.

Lauryn shook her head and laughed. “No, I'm not. I was confused and experimenting. I love men,” she said.

“That lying . . .” Maurice shut the television off. “Do you believe her?”

“You should sue her,” James said. Maurice could still hear the interview in the background.

Maurice's phone gave a call-waiting beep. “Hold on,” he said. “Hello.”

“Maurice,” Kenya said. “What the hell is Lauryn talking about? What can we do to stop her?”

“She called me and asked for money. Then James called to inform me about her interview.”

“You know what? We're going to have to put a stop to this,” Kenya said, her voice filled with fire and rage. “I'm not going to have her sullying your reputation or casting her dark cloud over our wedding. Talisha, close the door, and I need you to bring me all that you have on slander and libel.”

“Baby, calm down,” Maurice said.

“Did she think that she could just go on television and spread these lies and not deal with any repercussions? Did she even think about what this could do to your career?” Maurice heard a loud thud in the background, and he assumed that it was a law book landing in the middle of Kenya's desk. “And I'm going after that publisher if they publish that trash. She's a lying little—”

“You know what?” Maurice said, smiling despite himself. “You haven't asked me once if what she said was true.”

“I don't need to ask you if it's true or not. I trust you, and I don't believe a word coming out of that lying tramp's mouth.” He could hear the flames in Kenya's voice, and that frightened him. She was more than angry; she was furious. “I'm sick of Lauryn and her mess, and I'm not going to take it anymore. I have to go.”

After she slammed the phone down in his ear, Maurice grabbed his jacket and headed for Kenya's office. He had a bad feeling about what was going to happen next.

“Talisha, stay here, and keep looking up libel and slander law. I have to take care of something,” Kenya said as she printed Lauryn's address from the Internet. She didn't care how long she was going to have to wait for Lauryn; this was ending today. Kenya blew out of the office and headed down to the parking lot. She wasn't surprised that Lauryn had been living in a poorer part of Charlotte since the breakup with Maurice. Kenya knew that this was about money and revenge. If Lauryn thought that she was going to lord it over them and pop up with lies and trouble anytime she felt like it, she had another thing coming.

Kenya pulled up to the Royal Orleans apartment complex and waited. She didn't know if Lauryn's interview had been pretaped or if it was live. All she knew was it didn't matter how long she had to wait to see that evil witch; she was going to sit right there. Her cell phone rang, and she saw that it was Maurice. Kenya decided not to answer it, because she didn't need to hear the voice of reason. This thing between her and Lauryn wasn't just about him: it was about Kenya facing the demon that had plagued her for nearly a decade.

The phone continued to ring. Just as Kenya reached for it, she saw Lauryn exiting a cab. “Sorry, Mo, but you're going to have to wait.” Kenya pulled her jacket off and hopped out of the car. “Lauryn!”

Lauryn turned around and glared at Kenya. “What the hell do you want?”

Quickly, Kenya closed the space between them, standing toe to toe with her nemesis. Looking at Lauryn, Kenya could easily admit that she was a beautiful woman, but she had no soul, no substance, and that was why things hadn't worked between her and Maurice. He might have fallen for her face and her body when they were in college, but Kenya knew that Maurice wanted more than that, and that was why they'd found their way back to each other.

“You need to stop this little vendetta of yours, because Maurice and I are going to be together. Learn to live with it,” Kenya snarled.

Lauryn laughed and pointed her finger in Kenya's face. “You think this is about you? I don't give a damn about you. Never have. You were the one who let me inside your head. You let me run you out of town. This has always been about Maurice, and he had a chance to squash all of this. I could've called E! News and had them kill the story if he had just given me what I asked for. He brought this on himself. You're nothing but the one thing that he knew he could fall back on. If you want to call it love, then go ahead, but you were a contingency plan and nothing more. So what if you two fucked in high school. The moment I smiled at him and flashed him a little skin, you were an afterthought.”

Propelled by nine years of aggression, anger, and frustration, Kenya slapped Lauryn and pushed her down to the ground. “I'm sick of you,” she hissed as she stood over Lauryn, who was holding her cheek. “You think Maurice is a prize that can be won and lost. But he's a man with a heart and a soul, things you don't have.”

Lauryn rose to her feet and pushed Kenya, causing her to stumble backward. She didn't lose her footing, though, and grabbed Lauryn's collar. “You're the one who thinks that she's won something. So what if he's in your life again,” Lauryn said. “How long do you think this is going to last? When he goes on the road and sees all of those other women, do you think he's going to care about how much you two love each other?”