Quince exhaled, and touched her arm. “I don’t want to hurt you, Jenay,” he said.
Jenay snatched her arm away from him. “Then don’t hurt me! You don’t want to hurt me, then don’t do it!”
“That’s up to you. We can be adults about this, or you can show your ass. You show your ass, there will be pain.” He looked past her again, toward that sports car. “I’ve got to go,” he said with a frown.
Jenay knew where he had looked. She knew he had looked at that woman in that sports car again. “Who is she?” she asked. “You meet some skanky female, now you want a divorce? And how could you just turn our children over to her?”
“They’re not our children and you know it,” Quince quickly pointed out. “So don’t even go there, Nay. And she has nothing to do with this. I want a divorce. Me. This is all on me!”
“But why?” Jenay’s anger was turning into anguish now. She knew Quince. She knew when he meant it. “You can’t tell me why?”
It was obvious he didn’t want to go there. But, to Jenay’s shock, he wasn’t above going anywhere anymore. “Because you’re not on my level,” he said. “That’s why. All right? Satisfied?”
“Not on your level?” Jenay was frowning now. “What are you talking about? I’m working my ass off to help make ends meet while you finish law school. Then you’re going to put me through school. And then I’ll be on your level, if that’s the level you mean. Why are you acting like you don’t understand the plan, Quince?”
“That’s your plan,” Quince made clear. “That’s not my plan. My plan is for my girls and I to go our way, and for you to go yours. That’s the deal. That’s the plan.”
Jenay had been warned. Seven years ago, when she first met Quince, her mother, her father, everybody she knew and loved told her she was making a big mistake. Her mother was especially stern. She reminded her that she’d been in one bad relationship after another one even before she graduated high school. Now she was looking to marry this Quincy guy? She was far too young to saddle herself with a man with two babies, her mother told her, she didn’t care how nice he seemed. At twenty-two, she had too much life to live to marry him and become his babysitter, and maid in essence, while he pursued his dreams. Live a little, her mother had begged her. Go to college herself. Pursue her own dreams. Do you, her mother had said, before you don’t know you anymore!
But she ignored every warning. Because Quince was supposedly so different. He was a single father raising his two beautiful daughters alone. He was a special man. He wasn’t super-gorgeous and self-centered like those other guys that misused her. He was a nerd for crying out loud! A guy like him wouldn’t break her heart. A guy like him wouldn’t be so self-absorbed that he couldn’t see her wants and needs and desires. They would be a happy family together if people would only give them a chance. Quince, she convinced herself, was so different!
“I’ve already gotten our things out of the apartment,” Quince went on.
Even that infuriated Jenay. “You did what?”
“I already got our things,” Quince made clear. “I did it while you were at work and the kids were at school.”
“Oh. So you planned this shit. This wasn’t some random act of weakness. You’ve been planning this decision for what? Days? Weeks? Months?”
I’ll initiate the divorce right away,” Quince said, determined to keep his dignity intact, despite her anger. “Since we don’t have anything to contest, there won’t be any problems. It should be quite painless.”
Painless? No problems? Nothing to contest? “But what about the girls?” Jenay asked him. How could he say they had nothing between them? What about love? What about their vows? What about those precious children! She was so overwhelmed that her heart was racing. She couldn’t understand her own emotions.
But Quince understood his. “What about them?” he wanted to know. “It’s over. That means your relationship with my children is over too. They’re too attached to you anyway. I never liked that. You’re not their mother, and given seven years of marriage and you haven’t been able to get pregnant in any of that time, you’ll never be a mother. So forget about my kids, you hear me? I’m not going to let their attachment to you spoil a relationship they might have with anybody else.”
“Like that bitch in the car?” Jenay asked.
“Anybody else,” was all Quince would say. “It’s over, Jenay. I’m sorry, but it’s over. You have got to go on with your life, and accept that hard truth.”