You're the One I Want (19 page)

“Talk about what, huh? Talk about what, motherfucker?”

I wanted to kill him, rip his fucking head off.

“It just happened, bro. We weren't trying to hurt you.”

“You weren't
trying
to hurt me? Were you
trying
not to hurt me when you stuck your dick in my wife?”

Gasps of shock and awe filled the room. “Kashawn, stop that in this house,” Ma protested.

“Why don't you tell me… no, tell
all
of us how good my wife is in bed? Her pussy's real good, isn't it?”

“Kashawn, don't do this. Not here,” Tangela said, taking me softly by my arm.

I charged past my guests toward Deanthony. I was on his ass like white on rice, slamming his face into the wall. He pulled at me as I punched him continuously in the face with my hand tight at his throat. His lip was split. Blood trickled down his chin.

“ 'Shawn, stop. That's your brother!”

He deserved the ass-kicking he was getting.

“Fuck him. I don't have a brother!”

He slid to the floor. I kicked him in the stomach and ribs. I punched until I felt arms under me, yanking me off Deanthony's sorry ass.

“Get off me! Get the fuck off me!”

Uncle Ray-Ray pinned my arms behind me. He was bigger than me, strong as an ox.

“Just like old times, right, bro? I can't have shit because of you!
You've always wanted what I had.” I spat on Deanthony like he wasn't shit and, as far as I was concerned, he wasn't. “Are you happy now? You ruined my fucking marriage!”

Tyrique and Jayson helped him to his feet.

“Leave him there. Let his ass bleed,” Kashawn said.

Jayson gave Deanthony a handkerchief to wipe his lip.

“Get him out of here. We're not brothers. You're dead to me, bitch. Get the fuck out of my house.”

M
eet me in the garage. This calls for a celebration,
Tangela's text message read.

I made sure that no one saw me as I made my way to the garage where Tangela was waiting, exhaling smoke from a cigarette. The faint fumes of oil and gasoline permeated throughout.

“Bitch, are you crazy, smoking up in here? The whole place could go up.”

“Did you see that in there?” Tangela grinned.

“The whole fucking house saw it.”

“And we didn't have to lift a finger.”

“Did you see Bree's face?”

“Oh, please, she isn't doing nothing but putting on one of her performances so somebody can feel sorry for her, and it looks like it's working on you,” Tangela said, taking a drag from her cancer stick.

“This is my fucking family you playin' with.” I applied more pressure to my lip to stop the bleeding. A busted lip was what I deserved and a whole lot worse. If I were in Kashawn's shoes, I would have kicked my ass too.

“Fuck this. I'm done.”

“You can't throw the towel in now, not when we're this close. Kashawn and Bree are both vulnerable. All we got to do now is seal the deal.”

“I need to call her to see if she's okay.”

“Hell no, she's not okay. She just confessed to sleeping with you in front of all her family and friends. I wouldn't be surprised if she never showed her face here again. Nobody will say it, but Kashawn looked ridiculous walking around here with someone like Bree on his arm. I mean, damn, we're talking about somebody who used to shake her titties and ass up in men's faces for money.”

“Shut your fuckin' mouth.”

“Awww, what's the matter? Did I hurt your wittle feelings?”

“You don't give a fuck who you hurt. You don't care who you hurt to get what you want.”

“Nigga, whatever. Don't play that holier-than-thou shit with me. You want Bree for yourself and always have. All I'm doing is pushing things along so we'll both get what we want.”

“Not like this.”

“How else was it going to go down? What, you're just going to walk up to your brother and confess your love for his wife? You thought you were going to walk back into his life after three years and take what's yours without cracking a few heads?”

“I didn't want it to go down like this.”

“D, what difference does it make how it went down as long as the end result involves me getting Kashawn, and you and Bree get to ride y'all asses off into the sunset?”

Every word that came out of Tangela's mouth set my blood to boil when she talked about Bree and my brother. I couldn't stand the sight of her. “I could break your damn neck.”

“What the fuck is your problem?”

“You're my damn problem. Because of your scheming, my brother could have died.”

“I'm assuming you're talking about that shit with Kateisha. I didn't say nothing to that bitch about drugging Kashawn. I told her to get him in bed, that's—”

Before Tangela could say another word, I lunged at her, locking a hand around her throat. “You almost get my brother killed and you have the nerve to show your face here.”

“Nigga, get your hands off of me.”

“I could snap your neck like a glow stick and no one would miss you.”

Tangela reached inside her purse to pull something out, but I grabbed at her arm. It wasn't a fingernail file this time, but a .38.

“What the fuck you think you're going to do with this, huh?” I took the gun and pressed it to Tangela's temple. “Are you fucking mental, bringing a gun to my brother's house?”

“Go ahead, do it. Pull the fucking trigger.”

“I oughta put you out of your sad-ass misery.”

Tangela pressed her forehead hard against the barrel of the gun. “Do it. Kill me with all these people around. You can't. You know why? Because you don't have the fucking balls.”

“Bree has no idea who you are.” I took the gun off her head. “Bitch, you ain't worth the bullet.”

“That's what I thought. I never should have brought you in on this. I knew your punk ass would crumble like a cookie.”

“Everything you touch turns to shit.”

“I just thought of something. How about I kill Bree? I'll blast her ass right in her own driveway.”

“Don't you touch her.”

“Killing you would be too easy. Why waste a bullet on you when I have this?” Tangela took out her phone and showed the video of me fucking a man in a gay porno. “All I have to do is send this nasty shit to Mama Liz. What do you think she would think, seeing you butt-ass naked, giving it to some old white man up the ass?”

“Fuck you.”

“Maybe, but knowing where your dick has been, not fucking likely.
Looking at this shit. I'm going to have to go get tested for HIV. Who the hell knows what you gave me.”

When we heard a knock on the garage door, I tucked the gun in my jeans, under my shirt, while Tangela hauled her ass out of the side door of the garage.

I walked up the stairs that led back toward the house. Yvonne was sitting at the kitchen table, doing what she does best: eating. Her plate was so full with barbecue chicken, baked beans, and potato salad, it was literally running over.

“Why are you sweating?” she asked.

“Nothing. I saw that we were running out of cups and came out here to get some more.”

“Uh-huh,” she uttered.

I went over to the sink to wash my hands. She looked funny, sitting there chomping away at chicken like it was the last thing she would ever stuff her fat face with.

“How's the chicken?”

“Unc put his foot in them as always.”

“I thought you were on a diet?”

“I start it tomorrow.”

“Uh-huh. I've heard that before.”

“How's the lip?”

“I think I'll live,” I told her, drying my hands with paper towels.

“So, what were you and Tangela talking about? I saw you follow her out there in the garage.”

Yvonne's big ass don't miss a beat.
“We were just talking.”

“About what?”

I started laughing as I dried my hands. “You ask me that like I would actually give you an answer.”

“Why is it that everywhere you go, D, you leave behind a trail of shit? No matter what you do, trouble ends up finding you.”

“I would ask what your problem is, but I don't want you to think that I actually give a shit.”

“Why you can't leave Bree and Kashawn alone?”

“Why don't you get you some business instead of sticking your pig nose in everyone else's?”

“Everything has been fucked up since you came back in town.”

“Well, you will be happy to know that I'm not going anywhere, so you, Bree, Kashawn, and everybody else might as well get used to me being around.”

“It's obvious you're not over Bree.”

“Yvonne, you know what you need? Some dick. Capital D-i-c-k. If you got a little, you would be too busy getting fucked to be in other people's business.” I grinned at the sight of Yvonne's mouth stained with grease. “Get yourself an African man. They love big girls.”

“Is Tangela your next conquest?” Yvonne ignored my usual digs at her.

“You give me way too much credit, cousin.”

“You should leave and take Bree with you. Kashawn can do bad all by himself.”

I was about to curse my nosey cousin out when I heard mama screaming. We both ran out on the deck where people were clustered around Uncle Ray-Ray lying on the living room floor. I tore through the crowd like a hurricane through a crop of houses. Kashawn was hovered over him, giving him mouth to mouth and chest compressions. Uncle Ray-Ray's pie-shaped face was flushed and sweaty.

“He's having a heart attack,” Tyrique said. Ebonya held herself snug against his chest.

“Somebody call nine-one-one,” I yelled. Ma was wailing and screaming, hysterical. “Come on, Unc, stay with me. Why the fuck are y'all just standin' there? Call nine-one-one!”

Tyrique took out his phone and dialed. Uncle Ray-Ray's lips were dry. Beads of sweat peppered his face.

“The ambulance is on the way,” Tyrique said.

Tears pooled up in my eyes as I watched Kashawn struggle to breathe life back into the man who was like a father to me.

T
he day of my wedding my whole breakfast came up. Bacon, boiled egg, grits, English muffin. I was a hot mess of nerves. If it wasn't for Tangela, they would have had to scrape me off the ceiling with a spatula. I had turned into a raging bridezilla, the one thing I said I was never going to turn into. Kashawn went all out to make sure that I would have a wedding that would put Tallahassee on the map. I had never seen so many flowers in my life. Mama Liz and Tangela made sure that everything was perfect, that the wedding went off without a hitch. It didn't hit me until I stepped into my Vera Wang original. I struggled to hold back tears when I looked at myself in the full-length mirror.

Had someone told me that I would be marrying the man of my dreams, I would have said they were crazy. Girls like me don't get married, and girls like me sure as hell don't get married to doctors. If anything, I figured I would meet some loser, get knocked up, only to end up on welfare as a single mother, another statistic. Chicks like me don't fall in love. I thank the Lord every day for Kashawn. Let me stop. I've done enough crying today.

The colors I chose for the wedding were white and lavender. Light lavender dresses for my bridesmaids with a bouquet of white roses and lilacs. Lavender has always been my favorite color, ever since seeing the color scheme of lavender and yellow in one of my aunts' bedrooms. I even thought to dye my wedding dress lavender,
but, honey, you don't alter Vera Wang. Nakia, Josette, and even Latrice's big behind looked gorgeous in their Ronald Joyce dresses. The four of us wore white sling backs with matching Victoria Jane pearls. My hair was done up in pretty fishtail braids with lilacs placed perfectly throughout. I let this sister, Ava, do it. She has this shop in Governor Square Mall. Radiance, it's called. I wanted Tangela to hook me up, but she doesn't do wedding hair, so she recommended Ava. I had my reservations about her at first, but Tangela swore by her.

“Girl, if she messes it up, I'm gonna make sure she never twists another braid in this town again. Bree, trust me. I told Ava what you want, and she told me that it's no problem.”

After about two hours, home girl had me looking like a queen by the time she was done. She was officially my go-to for any hair catastrophes I had in the future, or just when I wasn't in the mood for one of my do-it-yourself jobs that consisted of twisting my hair up in a ponytail.

I wanted to have the wedding at our house, but Mama Liz insisted we get married at her church. I figured the house was perfect. It was big enough to hold all five hundred guests, and the backyard was damn near the size of a football field.

“Oh, my God, Bree. Girl, you look so beautiful,” Josette kept saying.

You would think the way Tangela, Nakia, and Latrice were fussing over me, that they were getting married, but I'm not going to lie, I loved every pampered minute. I looked at myself in the mirror and couldn't believe that I was in a wedding dress, a Vera Wang wedding dress no less. It was a complete and total transformation. There was a knock at the door.

“Latrice, will you see who that is?”

Latrice answered the door to find Uncle Ray-Ray standing there,
dressed to the nines in a gray tuxedo with a white shirt, a gray-and-white tie, and sterling silver cufflinks. It was the first time I had ever seen Uncle Ray-Ray look so clean and sharp outside of a T-shirt and jeans, wearing an apron that was always smudged with grease and barbecue sauce.

“Here y'all are. Mama Liz is wondering where the rest of the bridal party is.”

Tangela, Latrice, Nakia, and Josette started to scramble.

“Y'all better get down there before she throws a fit.”