S1Ep6: What Exactly Happened

Onyx

Deep laughter pulls me out of my slumber. My mind is fuzzy, and my stomach is upset.

I haven’t gone that hard since college.

A smile plays on my lips when I think of how much fun I had. I made girlfriends, of course, throughout college and after, but all of them were Alton’s friends. Those girls can party, sure, but it’s nothing like having fun with your best friend.

And then Nino…

Fine Shyt. How old is he?

Sachi doesn’t suffer any fools. So if she allowed him to get my number last night, then he passes the preliminary tests.

But my mind isn’t even on that, much to my chagrin. It’s nice to be deemed attractive by someone as fine as Nino, but I haven’t even begun to process my life imploding.

And that’s much more daunting as my mind wakes up, and tears gather in my eyes as I curl into the bed.

Instinctively, I pull my left hand into my line of vision. My lip wobbles; the tan is faint, but it’s there. I see it.

Where that god-awful ring once sat.

I hated it, but I won’t lie to myself and say I didn’t think I was happy. I truly felt happy. I thought I found the love of my life. That I was taking a step in the right direction to creating the family I crave so badly. Want so bad, I can still taste it. Even though it’s the furthest away from me that it’s ever been.

The front door opens and closes, and then there’s a knock on my door before that door opens.

The knock is customary. Obi knows I’m still in bed.

“Had fun last night?” he asks.

I shift my covers to meet his gaze. The smirk he has falls as the air changes in the room. 

Obi has never been good with my tears.

He glances at his ankle monitor, before dropping his shoulders and shuffling toward my bed.

“It’s nothing to get him touched, Onyx. Only reason he breathing now is ‘cause you ain’t said the word.”

I sit up in the bed and scoot back until I’m against the wall. Obi’s back is curved, but his fists are clenched tight at his sides.

“It’s not worth it,” I mutter.

“Bullshit,” he thunders, turning to face me completely. “That nigga don’t get to live his life happy like he ain’t pull some flaw shit. You crying, he need to be crying too.”

“How do you know I’m not sad about last night?”

“The way you and that hyena were cackling when she dropped you off, I know it’s that nigga. Just say the word–”

“No, Obi. You’re in enough trouble.” I gesture to his ankle monitor, but he waves me off, standing.

“This ain’t shit. It’s a plate for you in the microwave. Get out the bed, maybe go get a job.”

“Is there something you need to tell me?” I stumble out of bed and follow him out of my room. “You keep mentioning a job. Are you broke?”

Obi stops and turns to level me with a glare. “What’s the Taylor Gang motto?”

I grin. “Broke is a mindset.”

“‘Zactly. They froze my accounts, but you know we more than straight. Still, you ain’t no bum. Find a job in a week or you can take yo’ ass down to L’s shit. I’m serious, Onyx.”

He turns and ambles toward his room, and I can’t help it; I stick my tongue out at him and mock what he said.

Grandaddy instilled a work ethic in us that Obi clearly has not let go. Work or school; Taylor Gang did it and did it well. If you lived in this house, you had a job.

My job for the last six years had been propping Alton up. I doubt I can put that on a resumé.

But, I do have a bachelor’s degree. In Africana Studies… but surely I can find something.

Right?

---

After eating and getting dressed, I find myself at the Crestview Mall. It’s not as big as the Kenton Galleria, but it’s the closest mall to our neighborhood, and still has the basics; Millard’s Department Store, a movie theater I had my first kiss in, and a Big Cookie Store, that still sells my favorite cinnamon sugar cookies.

I grab two for me, and two macadamia nut cookies for Sachi, and make my way to Millard’s. The summer we were both sixteen, we both got hired there, but I got fired after an accusation of stealing. To this day, I think that weird bitch I refuse to name set me up so that she could take Sachi from me, but I didn’t wanna work at the mall anyway. I was happy right at the library volunteering.

Sachi stayed on, clearly. I walk into the store and head straight for the manager’s office, way in the back.

The door is closed, and I hear gospel music filtering from under the door. Knocking three times, I open the door and break into a grin.

Sachi sits behind her desk, long nails click-clacking on her keyboard. Her wig is different today; a curly unit that’s pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, the lace covered with a black scarf.

In her suit and name tag, she looks professional and serious.

Her eyes shift to me and she matches my grin.

“Busy?” I ask, even though I’m already closing the door behind me and walking toward the chairs that anchor her desk.

“I can take a lil’ break. Especially for some cookies!”

I sit down and hand her the nasty macadamia nut cookies, and then take a bite of one of mine.

When I notice the grainy printout of my face on a loose piece of paper with DON’T SERVICE THIS WOMAN on the bulletin board behind her, I snort. Of course she’d keep that when she was promoted to store manager.

“So you’re the big boss huh?”

Sachi’s grin turns prideful as she glances around her office. “Yup. Pays hella good, too. They love my black ass. I could be regional manager by thirty, and they start off at ninety. Right now I’m at like sixty-five, but I get a yearly raise. Last year, I was able to send Franco to Toronto.”

She opens her phone to scroll before handing it to me. My eyes get glassy, taking in a smiling Franco.

With his arms around a mini Lex.

They were both smiling, bundled up since it was snowing. Lex would have paid for Franco off GP, but I know Sachi paying her way for her son means everything to her.

“They’re close?” I whisper, wishing it doesn’t matter to me.

“Girl,” Sachi grunts, taking her phone back to go to another picture. “Best friends. If they not on the game together, then they’re in each other’s faces. They go to the same school, play on the same teams. It’s like a mini Black and L.”

She hands me her phone again, and I swipe through the photos. So much I missed, but I make myself sit through it. I make myself absorb all the different birthdays, events, games, and such. 

Sachi and I were pushed like this as babies, too. Our mothers were best friends. We did everything together, and always said our kids would be the same way. Much like Obi and Lex.

Lex’s baby’s mother is absent from every photo. Even the ones with another little girl; the only woman present is Sachi. 

I want to ask where she is. The wedge between Sachi and I. And I know Sachi knows, when she takes her phone back, leans back, and folds her arms.

She’s Lex’s babies’ mother. Sooner or later, I will have to see her. Franco and her son are best friends. 

She’s family, too.

That thought nearly takes me out.

“We can talk about our shit, or you can tell me what happened between you and that uppity nigga. To be honest, I’d rather know about that. You here for good; we got the rest of our lives to hash out our shit. But I need to know if I’m using my PTO or not.”

I groan, planting my forehead onto her desk.

“Fine. I’ll tell you.”

---

“Happy anniversary, beautiful.” Alton cups my hand on the table and squeezes gently.

“Our last year celebrating this one,” I blissfully reply. A gaudy ring sits heavy on my left ring finger, but I don’t show it. It was his mother’s, and though her taste is tacky at best, I’m happy she put her pride to the side to even let Alton propose to me with her ring.

Alton Avery III is old Black Gulf Coast money. Jack and Jill kid. High society. Trust funds. But he was also fine. The type of fine that had seventeen year-old me looking around when he approached me in the cafeteria, because he couldn’t have been talking to me.

Ten years later, we are set to be married in the wedding of the year in his hometown of Gossamer, Louisiana, before he begins his long road to a lucrative career in politics.

It’s why, after college, we moved to Virginia. It’s why I’ve confined myself into this box so that I could be the perfect political wife, so that I can be whatever Alton needs me to be. His dreams have become mine.

I love him.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says, his light brown eyes darkening with promise. I fight to keep the smile on my face. I haven’t had much sexual experience, but I do know things could be better.

Maybe after we’re married. Besides, it’s nothing to finish the job in the bathroom.

He pays the bill, and leads me out of the restaurant to the valet. His phone has been blowing up all day, but he does like he’s been doing, silencing it without answering.

“If it’s the office, you can answer, babe.”

He squeezes my thigh. “It’s not them,” he says, just as the dashboard on his car lights up.

Jeanie flashes on it, short for Jeanine. His mother’s best friend’s daughter. 

He ignores the call again, prompting me to look at him. Jeanie didn’t go to Magnolia University like we did, so I had a few blissful years before I met her and had to grin and bear her horrible attitude.

She’s in love with my fiancé. He swears he doesn’t see her that way.

“Why is she calling?” I fight to keep the bass out of my voice. It’s a good day. And I’m about to get some dick.

“I don’t know,” he sighs, as she calls again.

I shoot out my hand before he can ignore the call, and answer it.

“I’ve been calling and calling,” she huffs, before we can talk. “When are you coming back here? Your baby is craving–”

Alton ends the call, his eyes on the road.

But little Jeanie said everything she needed to.

“Baby?” I breathe out, my eyes boring into the side of his head. “Is that why she moved out here last month?”

“Onyx,” he says, exasperated. Like he’s tired of me. 

I take my seatbelt off and launch myself at him, not caring that he’s driving.

“You’re having a baby with that bitch like we’re not getting married in SIX WEEKS!?”

“Onyx! Ah! Stop!” 

But I don’t. Not until he gets us to the modest bungalow his parents bought him that I fucking hate.

I get out of the car, ready for round two, but he just speeds off.

Probably to that bitch.

I force myself into the house and lock myself in the bathroom.

Ten years. Down the drain.

It’s one thing to cheat. It’s another to get another woman pregnant.

When would he have told me? After the wedding?

Who else knew?

I try to cry myself to sleep in the tub, but I just pass out, waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night.

It’s well after two in the morning, and I have a notification.

It’s Jeanie.

I open it, and it’s a video of her and Alton.

He’s asleep, snoring his life away. A big, cafe au lait hand on her stomach. The camera pans to Jeanie’s face, a smug grin on her grill.

“Happy anniversary, Onyx,” she sings, blowing a kiss to the camera. “Hope you’re ready to be stepmommy.”

I exit out the video and save it on my phone.

These muthafuckas playing with me. They don’t know I’m a real clown.

Getting out of the tub, I take a short shower and put on an athletic set, and begin to pack every single piece of clothing I own. When I open the nightstand drawer, I see Alton’s weed that he claims is for insomnia, and take that, too.

When my car is packed, I knock over every ugly ass picture of his family in the living room. Then, I send the video to every Avery in my contact, before messaging it to the Magnolia Tea Instagram page.

Fuck them.

After the last Avery is blocked from my phone, I pull out of the driveway.

Leaving the last ten years in my wake.

---

Sachi’s quiet, slowly chewing on her cookie.

She blinks, and a smile breaks the lower half of her face.

“My muthafuckin’ bitch,” she hisses, dapping me up. “I can’t believe you did that shit! That’s why they was scrambling to say they was getting married!”

“I didn’t expect it to go viral,” I shrug. “I pawned the ring somewhere in the midwest for gas money.”

“Good riddance. I’m still getting him touched, Onnie. You can’t talk me outta that.”

I roll my eyes before mirroring her grin.