Our First Love (21 page)

Nigel shrugged his shoulders. “I really don't know.”

“Come on, Nigel. Do more than breathe.”

“I need a minute to think about it.” Nigel walked in the den to change the time on the desk clock. He could have pressed the time button down, then pushed the hour button once, but he deliberately annulled the hour minute by minute. As he watched the red
digital numbers slowly morph into the next minute and then the next, he considered Caleb's question. Nigel really didn't need to think about his response. He already knew what he would do with the fading hour. He would spend it with Caleb and their mother and father. He would not want their parents to be as they were when they died. He wanted time to have passed for them and given them more years, more stories. They would tell their two sons about their upcoming retirement and reminisce about olden days. They would have no memory of that wintry night fourteen years ago. In this hour, that night never was. He would be the only one present who remembered, because to rid himself of the memory, even in a make-believe moment, could be fatal. He might not be able to return to this life.

“I would spend the hour making love to Karen,” Caleb announced to get Nigel's attention.

Nigel put the clock back on the desk, his attention on Caleb. “You would do what?”

“I would spend the hour making love to Karen.”

Nigel walked into the living room and sat on the sofa. “You would spend your so-called lost hour making love to my girlfriend?”

“Can the attitude, Nigel! We're speaking hypothetically. What if…”

“Yeah, but your ‘what if' is about having sex with my girlfriend. You shouldn't go around talking about having sex with your brother's girlfriend. Not even hypothetically.”

“You're right,” Caleb said. “My bad. But my advice to you is: if she's your girlfriend, then you need to act like her boyfriend.” His apology and advice sounded sincere, but the fire in his eyes betrayed him. If Caleb could do anything he wanted to do with the lost hour, he would do exactly what he said: make love to Karen. He'd fantasized about making love to her, but in this hour it
would be real. They'd be alone inside his office where they first consummated their love. He would stand in front of his desk and she'd walk up to him. The fire in their eyes would speak for them as they undressed each other. He'd let his fingers explore her body. He would tease every inch of her body, then kiss her navel and savor her desire. He would make love to her like no man has ever made love to her. Like no other man could.

Caleb tried to hide the mounting bulge in his pants. He fidgeted with a black ceramic ashtray on the stand next to the recliner, then inconspicuously placed the ashtray on his lap. Before Karen came into their lives, he didn't think about women and sex. He accepted the improbability of finding love in his world years ago. But now, all he thought about was making love to her. He'd been staying hard for so long—three, four times a day—that he'd started wearing briefs under his boxers to conceal his restive lusting.

“If I could do anything I wanted to,” Nigel said and looked directly at Caleb. “I'd spend the hour here.”

Nigel's reverent tone sent chills through Caleb.

“Here?” Caleb asked.

“With you, Mom and Dad,” Nigel answered.

“Here with me, Mom and Dad?”

For the first time in fourteen years, Nigel could not stop his heart from declaring, “I really miss Mom and Dad, Caleb. Oh God, I miss them!”

The deluge of tears engulfing him was a measure of Nigel's inconsolable grief and a proverb about the futility of asking, what if.

“So tell me, Caleb. Do I get to live my lost hour?”

“If I had one wish,” Caleb extended an olive branch, “you would.”

Eternity is our lives

before and after

each breath.

CHAPTER 22

K
aren wanted to be the woman Nigel loved. He was not her first love. She had been in love before. But loving Nigel was unlike loving any man before him. She loved him, the flesh and bone man, and not the beguiling passion of captured love. She wanted to be the woman who caressed Nigel. Possessed and protected him. In return, he would make her whole. She had already accomplished most of her career and personal goals. And she was beautiful. Intelligent. Single and independent. The only thing missing from her life—at least the only thing that mattered now—was someone to share it with. She wanted a man who needed her love and nothing else. A man whose pure touch left her yearning for all of him. A man who wanted to give her his all. And her heart had told Nigel was that man.

Nigel's scars made him even more attractive. His naïveté made him irresistible. And she got high off of his insatiable desire. The marvel in his eyes when he made love to her was euphoric. She was addicted to the virginal sensation of hearing, seeing, and touching him. She could not get enough of him.

Karen didn't stumble blindly into this. She knew Nigel was running from an extant past. That's why she didn't try to get too close too fast. She figured he would open the door when he felt it was safe to let her inside. While she waited for him to let her in, she nurtured her overwhelming need to know him with
information acquired by other means. The faculty personnel files provided his home phone number, address, and educational background, but it was a fourteen-year-old front-page article in the
Richmond Times'
online archives that gave her a real glimpse inside his world. The article provided details about a tragic past that he was still living but longing to forget. The article also told her who Caleb was. Even though the information in the news article was public information, she felt she was invading his and Caleb's privacy. But, eventually, she convinced herself that she had a right to know about Nigel's past since she was planning a future with him.

Karen knew who Caleb was when Nigel blurted out his name while she and Nigel were making love in Nigel's office. Blurting out Caleb's name and the confused look on Nigel's face when she thanked him for the tulips made her doubtful about who actually sent them. She tried to ignore the obvious and what it implied, but the truth kept shouting in her ears.
Caleb. Caleb. Caleb sent the tulips.

Nigel had mostly avoided her since that day. She hadn't seen him in weeks, and he no longer called or returned her calls. She felt she was losing him, but she knew she had to give him space. And he needed time. So today, she committed to giving him space and time.

She missed him already.

A black Lumina with a FAMU faculty decal was in the driveway of 207 Circle Drive. Karen had seen this car before. Her Pathfinder veered off the road, but she regained control and pulled into a parking space by the Myers Park tennis courts. She got out
and stared across the street at the black Lumina parked next to Nigel's white Lexus. She remembered seeing the Lumina at the turnpike gas station and parked down the street from her parents' house in Orlando. She recalled seeing the car pass her house; parked across from the gym; and a few vehicles back on the highway. All these sightings were after Barney's funeral but before she actually met Nigel. She started to put the pieces into place, but her heart stopped her. Despite her suspicions that their meeting in the faculty parking lot wasn't pure coincidence, she wasn't ready to know the details surrounding his pursuit of her, at least not while she was pursuing him.

Karen wished she didn't miss Nigel so much. If he didn't occupy every minute of each day, she might not have followed him when she saw him leaving campus. If she had not, then she wouldn't have had to turn a deaf ear to the alarming thoughts reverberating in her head. She decided to ignore the truth that everything about their relationship, beginning with the way they met in the faculty parking lot. Knowing that he stalked her and plotted to gain her affection was damning but not enough to quell her love for him. Instead, she chose to regard all of it as evidence, adjudging it as proof that she was the woman he loved.

CHAPTER 23
CALEB

N
igel and I shared everything, so why couldn't I remember loving Mom and Dad? Why couldn't I remember being with them? Nigel still loved and missed them, so languishing somewhere inside my abysmal memory, was an aggrieved heart.

What happened to Mom and Dad? To me? Those two questions monopolized my thoughts for the past couple of weeks. I could find the answers if I wanted to. They are only a few keystrokes away. However, my fear of the truth had overwhelmed my need to know. So, instead of spending twenty minutes on the Internet today, I flipped through our old photo albums and stared at the pictures on the walls hoping my curiosity could be pacified by the sudden recollection of one of these snared moments.

Nigel hadn't spent any time with Karen. When he's not at work, he's here moping around the house. He'd been trying to keep an eye on me since I started remembering bits and pieces of our former lives. I didn't know how to tell him that he's driving me crazy. Yesterday, I got so fed up with Nigel that I begged him to take a night off his self-imposed exile from life. “Why don't you call Karen so we can get out of this house for a little bit?” I suggested.

Nigel sat on the sofa with his eyes darting back and forth between me and
American Idol
.

“Did you hear me?” I asked.

“You know I usually don't like these type shows,” Nigel said, “but this group can really sing.”

“I didn't ask you anything about that.” I walked over and stood in front of the television. “I was telling you to call Karen and let's get out of this house. We've been stuck in here for the past…”

Nigel cut me off and snapped, “We went to work today and every day this week.”

“You're right. But, that's all we do.”

“What else is there to do?”

“We can call Karen and go over to her house. We can take her out to dinner or go to a movie, anything other than sitting around in this house every night.”

Nigel stood and said, “Karen is no longer part of our life.” He walked out of the living room and down the hallway to his bedroom.

When I heard his bedroom door close, I said to myself, “Thanks for telling me we've broken up.”

My daily routine changed. I didn't sit by the window all day staring outside at a barbarous and remote world. The world I was discovering inside myself was much more interesting. If I kept following the imbued footprints I left there, I might find me.

I was walking down the hallway toward the bathroom when I glimpsed the framed photo of Nigel being carried off the football field by his high school teammates after he caught a Hail Mary pass for the winning touchdown in the district championship game. Instantly, I was transported back.

I was in the crowded bleachers with Mom and Dad. I heard the crowd celebrating. Mom was yelling, “Nigel! Nigel!” And Dad was
leaning over the edge of the bleachers trying to get a good angle to shoot the picture that now hangs on the hallway wall.

Nigel waved to us as the team carried him past the bleachers. “Lil' Daddy! Catch!” Nigel yelled and threw me the winning football. I caught the spiral pass and the crowd cheered even louder. Gradually, their cheers faded with the memory.

I walked inside Nigel's bedroom. As usual, the blinds were closed. A roll of Scotch tape on the nightstand explained Nigel's picket eyebrows this morning. I opened the closet door, hit the light switch and walked inside. The birthday present Nigel couldn't give me because I wasn't speaking to him at the time was on the top shelf. We'd been straight for a couple of months now, so I guessed he's holding it until next year. I knelt and pushed the shoeboxes to the side. What I was looking for was still in the back corner. I picked up the football and wrapped my hands around the memory of that night eighteen years ago.

I was sitting in Dad's recliner tossing the football in the air when Nigel pulled in the driveway. I got up and went to my bedroom. When I heard the front door open and close, I walked into the hallway and yelled, “Lil' Daddy puts it in the air!”