Chapter 5: I'm Lost, Confused, in Love

Jada:

Jada had gone from Bad Girl Riri’s ‘Good Girl Gone Bad’ to ‘What Now?’

She sat on the toilet seat and stared down at the pregnancy test in her hand. Two bold lines stared back at her daring her to deny their existence and Jada doing her best to convince herself it was all a bad dream.

Jada hadn’t seen Chris in over a month. It was clean break, something to be expected from a ‘no strings attached’ liaison. Chris had helped Jada liberate herself through her sexuality. She was bolder, more brazen and determined to stand out and apart from her mother and sister as much as she could. In that journey of self-discovery Chris had held her hand. It was like being taught how to ride a bike for the first time. Chris had held her up and let go when he finally felt like she could keep it steady and moving forward on her own.

When their days together were coming to an end, Jada could feel it even though Chris hadn’t expressed it. At first, she did go through a difficult time with her emotions at the thought of letting go. She had seen him as a crutch but later she realised that he was just her training wheels.

The thing is, Jada had fallen in love with her training wheels.

On their last night together she didn’t cry, she didn’t throw a fit and she most definitely did not try to hold on to him. Her dignity intact, naked, she rose from the messy bed that told stories of passionate love making, took a shower and shed all the tears she had, letting them camouflage with the water, rolling down her body and into the drain. She got out of the shower to find Chris sitting up on the bed staring at his phone.

She stood at the bathroom door for a while, waiting for him to notice her presence in the room. It took a while, but he finally looked up at her, spared her a smile and went back to his phone.

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. The words had taken a rhythm of their own in her head.

His nonchalance hurt her heart, his misplaced attention bruised her ego and his lack of emotion at their parting broke her spirit.

This is it, she said to herself.

No regrets.

It was beautiful while it lasted.

He was only meant to be in your life for a period.

You are stronger than you think.

Don’t cry, the melody of the sad song that was her life played in her head.

Jada had gathered her clothes from the floor and was quickly putting them on. She felt the back of Chris’ hand caress the length of her back, sending chills running up and down her spine. Jada pulled her t-shirt on, putting an end to Chris’ attentions.

“You’re not going to stay the night?” He asked.

I’m not a sucker for punishment. “No, I have to get up early tomorrow,” she looked over her shoulder and said. Jada couldn’t risk turning around and speaking to him, not when tears were threatening to spill out, giving her true emotions away. She only had enough strength for a brief goodbye, and she was going to save it for when she got to the door.

Clothes on, shoes on, purse and phone in hand, Jada still sat on the side of the bed. She wasn’t sure what she was waiting for, but that didn’t stop her from waiting. Silence hand in the room like a wet blanket over her face, slowly suffocating her.

“Jada,” something weighed the tone of his voice down. A flicker of hope, Jada thought it was sadness. Was their parting as hard for him as it was for her?

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he finished.

Deep breath.

Her lungs stretched painfully.

She let the air out her lips then said, “I know.”

“So, you realize-”

Jada cut him off, “I know.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Just don’t say goodbye,” Jada got up and left.

Now she regretted it, her false show of an independent woman doing her own thing, like roll out of the bed of the man she was falling in love with, with a nonchalant shrug that classified their intimacy as casual sex and not what it was. To her at least, it was making love. Now she was sitting on the toilet seat with a stranger’s baby nestled in her belly.

Now what?

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Jada swallowed her scream as she leapt off the toilet seat startled. She shoved the pregnancy test in her back pocket and pulled her shirt over it.

“Jada! Get out!” Nina yelled from the other side of the door.

Jada wondered why Nina and her husband hadn’t found their own place to live. She always suspected that Nina, was keeping Darrel close to her so that she could rub their marriage into Jada’s nose. Jada thought that to Nina, having Darrel live in the house that Jada has struggled to pay for was like salt to her wounds.

At first it did irritate Jada, she didn’t see why a fourth person had to be squeezed into their tiny home. But as usual no one cared what Jada thought. Darrel could afford a house, or they could have just moved into his apartment, but that would not satisfy Nina’s need for Jada to suffer. Unfortunately for Nina, Jada had spent most of her time with Luke. It annoyed Nina to death and now that Luke was gone, Nina was being a little extra with her cruelty.

But Jada didn’t care, she had a whole lot on her plate and there was no space for Nina’s antics.

“Jada!” Nina yelled out once more.

“Okay! Okay!” Jada yelled back. She took three quick deep breaths before opening the door.

As Jada attempted to leave, Nina took a step in front of her, blocking her path. Jada took a step to her right and Nina blocked her once more. A few more steps and they would have started a line dance.

“What?” Jada asked in the calmest tone she could master.

“Where’s your boyfriend?” Nina’s tone was heavy with mockery and satisfaction.

“Who?” Jada still her back and prepared herself for a battle of wit with her sister. Jada would obviously win, but Nina had a way of exhausting people.

“The white guy, Luke?” She chuckled. “Isn’t that why you were locked in the bathroom for so long? You were crying because he dumped you?”

The sing-song way Nina spoke when she thought she had someone trapped in a corner was annoying and very irritating to the ear. It was time for Jada to put on her thick face and thwart Nina’s efforts of making her even more depressed than she was.

“Luke? Why would I…Oh! Luke would go out of town and won’t be back for a while.” Jada tried to sound like she didn’t care. It was hard but she was doing great, according to her.

“He dumped you! The gleeful shriek Nina let out had Jada talking her fist out of punching her sister.

“Dumped, implies that we were in a relationship. We were not, we were just having fun. He made me realise that single guys are a bit too demanding,” Jada leaned back on the door frame, her arms crossed over her chest. She decided to put an end to this little game she and Nina were engaged in.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jada pushed her back off the door frame, stepped closer to her sister and leaned into her. At that moment Darrell appeared. Jada might not have started this game, but she was determined to end it with a K.O. “Married men have wives to go back home to, so more freedom for me. Plus, the danger of getting caught makes the sex even more exciting. Especially when the married man sleeps in the room across the hallway.”

Jada leaned back and took in the shocked look Nina had on her face. It was satisfying. Jada would proudly sow a scarlet letter on her chest and pain herself a harlot if it meant that occasionally, she could beat Nina at her own game.

Jada walked past her sister and up to Darrell. In the most seductive tone she could master, she stroked Darrell’s chin and said, “Hi.”

***

For the hundredth time, Jada re-arranged her peas and carrots around her mash potatoes. She had no appetite; it could be because of the pregnancy or the meltdown currently taking place in her brain. What the hell was she supposed to do now?

Should she track Luke down or should she carry on with her independent woman show, however this time she would have a co-star.

Jada let out a deep sigh, trying her best to keep as calm as she had been since seeing those two lines on that pregnancy test. She expected that soon enough she would spin out, but her pride would not let her do it in front of her so-called family. Jada looked up at the other three people on the dining table and wondered who she wronged in her past life to be punished so severely in her present.

One by one her gaze landed from her mother-whom she doubted gave birth at her at all-, at Jada – who was too evil to be anything but the reincarnation of the devil’s mistress-, and on Darrell –the biggest dummy she had ever met- and wondered.

It was Darrell who had her more shocked than the others. How a man who was could once be regarded intelligent in all aspects of life, above-average IQ, be rendered dumb by a set of boobs and ass. Credit to Nina, she was shaped like the perfect coke bottle, but that was where everything positive about her stopped. For three years Jada had vented to Darrell about her horrible family. She had made it very clear that she wanted to escape them at all costs that included marrying a man she didn’t love but liked enough to live with. Did Darrell think she was making up all those horror stories? Or did it not matter once he laid eyes on the physically perfect woman?

Jada couldn’t stop her lip from pulling to the side in a cheeky smile when she thought about Darrell. He had willingly entered himself into a hostage situation and soon enough he would be considered a POW.

Nina didn’t love him, she just wanted him because he was engaged to Jada. Soon Nina would go through thief’s remorse like she had so many times before and try and rid herself of Darrell. The poor dummy didn’t know what hell Nina had specially designed for him. If he knew what was good for him, he would keep her happy for as long as he could afford it.

“What are you smiling about?” Nina’s harsh tone cut into Jada’s thoughts.

“Nothing,” Jada shook her head and went back to her pea and carrot arrangements.

“Oh, I mortgaged the house by the way.”

Jada wasn’t sure if it was the nonchalant way she said it or if it was the action itself that angered her more. Nina’s calm, ‘I don’t care’ tone grated at Jada’s ears even more so. Keeping her eyes on her plate, her fingers fisting around her table knife, Jada felt her body shake in anger. Nina’s voice was like rusted nails in a pan as she repeated the phrase and seemed to savor the words or was it Jada’s reaction that seemed to give her satisfaction.

“I mortgaged the house, I’m going to open a beauty store,” she said.

“How did you… I don’t understand,” her anger made Jada’s words fall out of her mouth in stammers. “How did you manage to do that?”

“Mom gave me the title deed and your ex-fiancé, my husband works at the bank,” she gloated.

Nina was the queen of irrelevant information. She would add on things that didn’t need to be said just to show Jada that she had beaten her in something. In this case, the house that Jada had spent years helping her father pay off and Darrell. The former hurt her way worse than the latter. In fact, she didn’t care enough for Darrel to let that bother her. Instead, she focused on trying to hold back the memories of their toiling father as he worked hard to give them something that was theirs, and images of her own self working overtime to help fulfil her deceased father’s dream.

Now the girl who couldn’t even figure out how many loaves were in a baker’s dozen had mortgaged that dream to start a business. The only thing Nina knew about beauty was how to overload her face with products she didn’t really need. 

Jada already knew the answer to her question before she asked. But she was going to ask anyway, “Do you have a business plan?”

“My husband will figure it out.” Nina put emphasis on the word husband, and Jada ignored her.

“What happens if the beauty shop doesn’t work out? Nina, you don’t even have any work experience.” Jada pointed out.

“So, if it fails, you’ll figure something out,” Helena chimed in, and her solution to the inevitable was always the same. To her mother, Jada was only born to make Nina’s life on earth more convenient. 

Jada’s gaze shifted from her mother to her sister and lastly fell on her ex-fiancé. In her mind a Montag of their life together played like smut 1990s horror-thriller film. The realistic look of how one sane person was held captive by three selfish and crazy people, who hated her and treated her like the modern, nastier and harsher version of a Cinderella story. The author of this story was a sadist, how could they not be. She was flipping through a book where the author had no other way of saving her character other than a long fall off a cliff. That was where the story would end, but Jada couldn’t help but want a little more. There had to be a way out, salvation that did not end in the cold embrace of death.

But what.

***

No one writes a book about a love that comes easy. There is that slow dancing under the fairy lights, but eventually lightening will split the night sky in half before the thunders roar had the two lovers seeking shelter. Maybe they huddle under the same umbrella, maybe they don’t.

She wondered if she and Luke were ever meant to share an umbrella or was what they had as good as it would ever get. For Luke, the end of their relationship had already come, but for Jada, she was in part two of a novel that was never meant to be a romance story. She knew exactly what she and Luke were doing, she put aside the fact that he was her first and that she had slowly begun to fall in love with the independent woman he had pushed her to be and that resulted in her falling in love with him.

But Jada wasn’t the girl who got the happily ever after. Her only security had now been taken away. Knowing that she would be going back to zero when it came to having a home, had robbed her of the only surety she had when it came to raising her baby.

Now what?

Jada hadn’t even thought about her mother and sister’s reactions once they found out that there would be another dependant added to the house. If Nina didn’t need to relish in Jada’s disappointment, she would have taken Darrell away by now. But because she needed to see Jada suffer as she stole her happiness bit by bit, they now had four adults in a small three-bedroomed house. Jada’s baby would not be welcomed.

The sound of waves crashing against each other pierced through Jada’s thoughts and made her realize that in her stress-induced trace she had walked to the beach. She smiled as the tiny stars kissed and danced on the surface of the water.

How free they looked, how content they seemed, how happy they must be.

It was seductive. The raging waters seemed calmer than how she felt inside. She thought about how the water would roll onto the beach and how it would retreat into the wideness of it all. The part she found attractive was how it would leave. If only she was as brave to just go, somewhere, anywhere but here. She wondered what life would be like without the burden of being a daughter and a sister. Although she wasn’t sure of motherhood and how she was going to handle it on her own, the title of mother was the only one she was willing to embrace. She had long forgotten about being Jada, just Jada.

Somehow fate always made her responsible for another life. The wind howled around her calling to her in its loneliness, the eerie cry of a sad song of grief. There had to be another way.

Through the wind’s song, a voice called out to her, “What are you thinking about?”

Jada’s head snapped so fats towards the direction of the voice she thought she had whiplash. Jada winced as she massaged the back of her neck. Darrell was standing behind her, his jaw twitched a few times, his eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly as he studied her.

“What are you doing here at this time of the night?” he asked.

“I’m just standing here, obviously,” the steel tip of Jada’s tongue cut him as he visibly winced. Jada was not sorry for it. Darrell was one of her problems. “Why did you follow me? Where is your wife?”

“Wife, husband,” his tone was heavy with emotion she had never heard from him before. “Your sister seems obsessed with the word husband when you are around to hear it that is,” he sighed. “Unfortunately, she is not as obsessed with the husband himself.”

Jada laughed inwardly, rolled her eyes at Darrell’s avoidable problem. She gave a low chuckle and said, “And to think you almost married unproblematic me.”

“Unproblematic, yes, but in love, no,” Darrel pointed out.

Jada’s gaze snapped back at him at the accusation. The truth did sting a little. Jada wanted to use Darrell as her escape from her family, but she despised the comparison he made between her and Nina.

“Does Nina love you?” Jada cut into him once more.

Darrell winced theatrically, grabbing his chest and stumbled back. A slow smile claimed his lips warming up his troubled features and Jada couldn’t help but smile back.

“You were supposed to be my Superman. I thought you would take me away from them, but instead, you became a POW,” Jada said.

“A prisoner of war?” Darrell leaned his head to the left in curiosity.

“Nina isn’t going to let you go until she is sure she has beaten me. She just doesn’t realize that I’m not in competition with her,” Jada said almost to herself.

“When do you think the competition will end?” Without looking at him, Jada could feel that Darrell had moved even closer to him. His body warmed hers against the cold night air.

“She took out a mortgage, and you helped.” Jada laughed bitterly. “It will end when one of us is no longer here to fight.”

Jada’s body froze as she felt Darrell’s arms wrap around her body. The calm that had just started to settle within her disappeared. Jada tried to move away from the man but found herself deeper into his arms.

“What are you doing?” Jada asked in the firmest tone she could muster. She did her best to quieten the part of her that sighed with relief, the part of her that wanted to ease her burdens into this man’s arms and just live. Jada didn’t move, she just stood there and let emotion and rational battle it out.

Darrell lay his chin on her shoulder, his face turned into the cradle of her neck, and she felt the warmth of his breath against his skin, before the sound of him inhaling her scent tickled her ear.

“If we could go back in time, what decisions would you change?” his already deep baritone tone, took a seductive note as it echoed in her ear, and vibrated through her from his chest.

“Ifs and maybes are just words that fuel regret,” Jada turned to face him. “Regret is a waste of time.”

“And what if we had a chance of correcting our past mistakes?” Darrell’s shoulders slumped uncharacteristically, a muscle ticked beneath his eyes filled with earnest, as sincerity rang true in his voice.

Jada’s vision clouded and she immediately brushed away the one determined tear that rolled slowly over her cheek. “Some mistakes can’t be corrected if they lead us to the paths we are meant to take. “Nina is not the one for you, I’m not the one for you.”

“What if-,”

“What are you doing?” Nina’s shriek cut through the air and crashed into them.

Jada and Darrell took a step away from each other, both silently cursing the banshee that was stomping her way in their direction.

“Oh fuck!” Darrell hissed.