I added a little steel to my voice. “I’m sorry, I don’t know proper etiquette for killing someone.”
“You didn’t kill him, not literally, anyway. But I am gonna start calling you the kitty slayer.” She laughed. I didn’t.
“Fran, would you stop playing around? This is serious. I just know Paula is going to call me any minute now and tell me the police have showed up at her house.”
She sighed like I was spoiling her fun. “Fine, and when that phone call comes, you need to fall down on the floor and scream, ‘Oh, Lawd, not Steven. Don’t tell me Steven is gone home to glory!’ ”
I knew my sister was being her usual silly self, but I was so not in the mood. Steven was dead. A man I’d loved without even realizing how much I loved him was gone. And I had no idea how I’d live with that. Or the guilt of bringing on whatever killed him.
“Bye, Fran. I’ll talk to you later,” I said.
“So what did Greg say?” she said, ignoring my good-bye.
I closed the laptop. “He’s apologizing for being such a jerk.”
“Oh, wow. I know that’s not helping your conscience.”
“You know it’s not. But look, I need to go. I’m fine, okay?”
If Fran kept trying to keep me on the phone, I was going to hang up on her. But luckily, she said, “Okay, sis. But seriously, relax. Everything is going to be all right.”
“Okay. Bye.”
I hung up the phone. Fran was dead wrong. Something told me it would be a long time before everything was ever all right again.
12
Felise
I FELT AWFUL, YET THE little voice in my head kept trying to convince me otherwise.
He was yours first.
I shook away that thought. I’d let Steven go, all but handed him to my best friend with my blessing. I’d denied that I had any feelings, and now I was paying the ultimate price. Fran joked about me killing him, but the more I thought about it, maybe she was right. I knew he had a heart condition. Paula had told me that years ago, but I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. Still, I knew it. Why didn’t I think about that?
That was not the only burden I had to carry. Now that I knew he had never stopped loving me either, I had to spend the rest of my life wondering what would’ve happened if I never had let him go.
As I sat alone in the empty bedroom, my mind drifted back to the time that I had made such a terrible mistake.
“Hey, you,” I said, racing into Steven’s arms as I picked up him from the baggage claim. I hadn’t seen him in six months, and I was surprised at how happy I was. “You got a beard and everything.” I rubbed his chin. “I send you to DC a boy, and you come back a man.”
He gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “What you talking about, girl? I was a man long before I set foot on DC soil.”
“You look good.” I squeezed his biceps. “Muscles and everything. I guess Paula and Ms. Jean feeding you good up there.”
“Yeah, they’re taking care of me.”
Yet the look on his face had me uneasy. I knew Steven well, and I could tell when he was hiding something.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.
He flashed a smile. “Naw, I’m cool. Just a long flight.”
“Well, all that hard work will be worth it soon because you’re going to blow up. You’re about to be a bona fide attorney.”
“Yeah, I hope so. Law school is kicking my butt, so I just hope that I can make it.”
Something unspoken was still wrong. “Boy, please. You graduated with a 3.7. You know you’re acing law school.”
“Nah.” He laughed. “Didn’t I tell you? I’m thinking of dropping out and going to barber school.”
I gave him a playful push. We laughed some more as he tossed his luggage in the back of my car. “You hungry?” I asked as we pulled off.
“Starving,” he replied.
“Cool, I figured we’d go to Beef N Bun,” I said, referring to our favorite eatery.
On the ride over, we fell back into our comfortable groove, laughing and talking about everything under the sun.
At the restaurant, we got our food, settled in, and I made more small talk. I didn’t know what had changed, but Steven once again didn’t seem himself.
“Okay, now that we’ve said our hellos and shot the breeze, tell me what’s really going on,” I said, looking him dead in the eye.
He shrugged. “Same ol’, same ol’. But what’s going on with you? You still dating Rain Man?”
I cracked up, laughing at his name for Greg. “He’s not Rain Man, he just has a few obsessive tendencies.”
“So when am I gonna meet Mr. Good Guy? Since you’re raving about him all the time.”