Read the Warning Label First Read online

  Hurt.

  If this is the heartache and pain that Mama felt as a result of what my father had done to her, I now see why she’d gone crazy.

  **********

  Chapter Eight

  Leaving the bank, I was relieved that Tristan hadn’t gotten ahold of anything that he wasn’t supposed to.

  I switched all of my bank accounts and I’d even tried to stop the payment on the $60,000 check that I’d written Tristan for the laundromats, but it had already been cashed.

  He’d made it clear that he’d lied about everything, so there weren’t going to be any laundromats, I’m sure. He must have needed the money, and more to pay back whoever it was that he owed money to.

  But I wasn’t going to sweat it.

  In my book, it was chump change compared to what I still had, so I simply counted it as a loss.

  And as far as the marriage goes, I’d found the certificate on top of the refrigerator.

  I’d forgotten to turn it in.

  Tristan was supposed to do it but said something about a run that day and instead asked me to drop it off. Only I’d started eating and completely forgot about it.

  So guess what that means….that's right, we were never legally married.

  I was never legally married to that bastard.

  Though my mother had performed the ceremony, it wasn’t legal without the turning in of the certificate and that certificate was long gone.

  I’d torn it to pieces.

  I didn’t have to go through a divorce.

  I didn’t have to go through an annulment.

  I didn’t have to do anything.

  Tristan didn’t have any rights, to anything that belonged to me. I wasn’t his wife and all was completely well in that category.

  Screw whatever piece of paper he thought that he had.

  That piece of good news had even managed to make me smile though it had only been days since everything had happened and my heart was still completely shattered.

  I’d spent all of three days, locked inside of the house, sitting in the dark.

  I couldn’t do anything.

  I couldn’t eat.

  I couldn’t sleep.

  I hadn’t even bothered to bathe for those three days.

  I just sat there, all day and all night, thinking about what had happened to me.

  The one thing that I had managed to do was mess up all of Tristan’s things.

  I’d bleached, ripped, cut, or burned everything of Tristan’s that was in my house and placed it in trash bags on the side of the street.

  I’d cried until I couldn’t cry anymore.

  I was lower than I’d ever been in my entire life.

  I even went without getting a new phone for those three days. I didn’t want to talk to anyone because no one could help me.

  No one could heal me.

  And then on day number four, something told me to stop crying, to stop feeling sorry for myself and to get up and do what needed to be done.

  So, that’s what I had done.

  The only thing left to handle now was the baby…the abortion.

  It was against every belief that I had but I didn’t have a choice.

  There was no way that I was going to be able to have this baby.

  I wouldn’t be able to look at it without thinking of Tristan and what he’d done to me.

  I wouldn’t want it to have to pay for its father’s mistakes like I’d just had to pay for mine.

  After finally getting a new phone, I decided that I needed to talk to someone about the abortion subject so I asked my mother and my sister Cheyanne to meet me for lunch.

  “Where have you been? And why do you look so bad? Are you still sick? I’ve been calling you for days,” my sister Cheyanne asked all at once.

  My mother just sat looking at me.

  With all eyes on me, right in front of the waiter, I started to cry uncontrollably.

  I hadn’t cried in a whole day but it all just hit me all over again as I tried to explain the situation to them through my tears.

  My sister tried to comfort me, but my mother just sat there looking at me as if I was a stranger.

  “It’s not so easy to see the signs when you’re the one in the midst of the storm…is it?” Mama asked.

  What?

  I looked at her confused.

  “You used to ask me all the time, how couldn’t I tell and how didn’t I know what your father was doing behind my back. You would often say that you didn’t know how I missed it but it’s not so easy to see the truth when you’re the one in the dummy slot is it Tori?”

  I almost became upset by her comments, but she was right.

  Though I didn’t want to hear it, she was right.

  I had been blinded by love and because he was doing and saying all of the right things, I’d forgotten to see the signs that were clearly there.

  I was blinded by love for the first and the last time.

  The other times I’d ended up in situations didn’t count since I hadn’t really loved them in the first place.

  “You’ve lived your whole life by rules and standards and the moment you tried to adjust yourself, you hurt yourself. You thought you were missing out and instead of waiting you thought that if you changed who you were and dropped some of your requirements, that you would have what everyone else has. But the truth is you had so much more. You had your pride, your dignity and your self-respect. Tori, you were fine just the way that you were,” my mother said.

  I smiled at her and I knew that yet again she was right.

  “People talked about me and called me crazy for years. It was the way that I chose to deal with the hurt. I let it beat me but you won’t. You won’t be me. You will get through this. You will get over this. Get your morals and your standards back and you will be just fine. You have to do the one thing that you’ve always told everyone else to do. You have to always, no matter what, pay attention to those signs.”

  To be honest, I didn’t want to pay attention to anything.

  After this, I don’t think that I ever want to even think about being in love again.

  Before, I had done just fine without it.

  I wasn’t the happiest but I was happy.

  I was going back to my old self.

  And my old self says:

  Love was for suckers!

  We chatted a little while longer and then my mother spoke again.

  “Something you said seemed off. You didn’t know the whole time that he was the Deacon’s and your daddy’s mistress’s son?”

  I looked at mama confused.

  Hell no I didn’t know!

  First of all, that would have been too close to home for me. I mean that would have made him almost like, I mean technically, my step brother.

  Of course I didn’t know!

  “Of course I didn’t know that. Wait a minute, are you saying that you did?”

  “Yes, he’s older but he’s still the young man from the church back then.”

  I looked at Mama in disbelief.

  “Why didn’t you say something Mama?”

  “He told me that you knew,” she said and took a sip of her tea.

  He was going straight to hell!

  ***

  As I laid still, on the abortion table, I thought about my mother.

  I still couldn’t believe that she’d known who Tristan was and hadn’t mentioned it.

  Even if he’d told her that we’d had the conversation, she still could have mentioned to me.

  Though I hadn’t asked, I could help but wonder how I’d missed the topic.

  Where had I been when the conversation had taken place?

  Then it hit me.

  It had to be the first time that I took Tristan to meet her and I’d had to leave to make a quick run to the office.

  Yes, that must have been when the conversation happened.

  Still, mama said that she had no idea that I hadn’t remembered him and that she’d known who he was
the very first time that she’d saw him.

  She’d said that he told her that we’d talked through it and decided to pursue the relationship anyway.

  Not to mention that mama said that she hadn’t seen a problem with it because his mother was dead.

  So the whole step-brother mess was out the window.

  I asked her how she knew that Tristan’s mama had died and she said it was because she’d reached out to my father.

  She’d said in order to be completely free, she’d needed to talk to him so she’d asked for his information from Tristan a few days before the surprise wedding.

  After calling numerous of times, she was finally able to reach my father two days after the ceremony and he’d told her that Tristan’s mother had been dead for over two years.

  She’d assumed that Tristan had known this, but I was sure that he didn’t.

  And then again, maybe he did which would have been an even bigger reason to come at me and take me through what he’d done to me.

  The truth is, no one knew all of the details and since I was sure that Tristan and Delilah were long gone, I probably never would.

  All I knew was what he’d told me and said to me that day. I would never forget any of his words and I would never forget what he’d done to me.

  But mama had been right.

  I still had time.

  I still had my whole life to live and I was going to beat this.

  I was going to win.

  So, the first step to getting on with my life was getting rid of this baby.

  I’d thought about it long and hard and this was the best thing for me to do.

  With my sister Cheyanne by my side, the doctor that my sister Lauren suggested, entered and we were ready to get the process done and over with.

  “I can’t find a heartbeat. Let’s have a look shall we,” the doctor said as the nurse got me ready for an ultrasound.

  He rubbed the cool jelly on my stomach and soon the tiny little fetus showed up on the screen.

  The doctor was silent for just a second and then he spoke.

  “Well, the fetus is already dead. I’m surprised you haven’t started the miscarriage process. We can go ahead and clean it out for you or you can let your body and the miscarriage naturally run its course.”

  It seemed as though no sooner than he’d said the words, I got a sharp pain in the side of my belly.

  I got up from the table slowly, thanking God that he’d already worked it out before I’d had to do something that I probably would’ve regretted later.

  He was always on time.

  ***

  My office looked like a flower shop.

  It seemed as though folks were still bringing in flowers every day.

  The long stem red roses were still piling up on my desk.

  And the first thing I did was throw each and every one of them in the trash.

  As far as I was concerned they were from Tristan and I didn’t need anything reminding me of him.

  “Glad to have you back. Now can we get some work done? You know that you’re my best gal. Things aren’t the same when you’re not running the show,” my boss Hunter said.

  I smiled at him and nodded.

  I was back to my regular old life and my regular routine.

  And to be honest, it wasn’t all that bad.

  Actually, it wasn’t bad at all.

  Things were going to be normal again; my kind of normal, although it wasn’t exactly normal to everyone else.

  And I was going to be okay.

  The work day went by swiftly and so did the rest of the week. Before I knew it, it was Friday and the end of the work week.

  I’d kept myself busy and I’d only been home pretty much to shower and to sleep.

  My house just didn’t feel the same and I was currently looking for something new.

  It was around seven in the evening and I prepared myself to go.

  Though it wasn’t exactly too late, I still waited for the janitor to finish doing what he was doing before going out the door.

  When he noticed me, I headed out the door and he made his way to the window.

  I got into the car and he turned away.

  Just as I started to drive off, there was a knock on my window.

  It was the woman that had been following me.

  The first thought that went through my mind was to get out and give her a piece of my mind, and maybe even whoop her ass for following folks like she didn’t have any home training, but then I thought what if this was some kind of set up or something.

  What if she was really connected to Tristan?

  I was sure that by now he had tried to pursue whatever legal action that he was up to from the singed paper but had found out that I wasn’t even his wife, so there was no telling what he could have been trying to plan to get even with me.

  He knew that I knew all of them but since I’d never mention the woman following me, maybe he was trying to send in a new face.

  No one could be trusted these days and it had already been established that she was a stalker, which clearly said that the bitch had issues, so I wasn’t going to take any chances.

  It wasn’t that I was scared or anything but I wasn’t going to be stupid.

  Not again.

  I didn’t even attempt to ask her what she wanted, I simply drove off.

  I glanced behind me to see if she was following me. I didn’t see her, but I was positive that she knew where I lived, so I headed to Cheyanne’s instead.

  I stayed at her house with her, while her husband went to my place to retrieve some of my things.

  “So, you’re going to move?”

  “Yes, I’m not going back there. With everything thing that happened with Tristan, and with this strange woman following me, I just don’t know what’s going to happen next. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with him but I don’t care what it is. I just want to be left alone. I just want to forget about it all and move on.”

  “Well, you can stay here as long as you need to. It’ll be nice having you around,” Cheyanne said.

  I grinned as she headed to pour us both a drink.

  Her phone started to vibrate and her husband’s picture showed up.

  I answered it just in case he needed help finding something for me.

  “Hello?”

  “Cheyanne? Why have you been ignoring me? I still want the money that you owe me.”

  I knew that voice.

  It was Tristan.

  I moved the phone away from my ear and looked at the number.

  It was a number that I didn’t recognize but it was definitely Tristan.

  She must’ve saved his new number under her husband’s contact information as a way of trying to keep it hidden.

  “Cheyanne?”

  I didn’t respond.

  I simply hung up.

  What did he mean when he said that he wanted his money?

  Cheyanne returned with a smile on her face and two wine glasses filled to the rim.

  “Okay, now, if this doesn’t make you feel better, I don’t know what will,” she teased.

  Her phone started to vibrate again.

  She looked at it and saw that it was her husband’s face on the screen, but we both knew that it wasn’t her husband.

  She waved it off as if to say that he didn’t want anything but she wasn’t getting off that easy.

  “It’s probably Tristan again. You should answer it.”

  She looked at me as though I was a talking about a person that had come back from the dead.

  She sat down her drink and scooted closer to me but I stood up.

  “Pay him? He said you still had to pay him what you owed him. Pay him for what Cheyanne?”

  She looked at me as though she was going to cry as she started shaking her head.

  “Pay him for what?”

  “I swear, I didn’t know about all of the other stuff,” she said.

  “Pay him for what?” I asked her aga
in.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  I didn’t say a word.

  I waited for her to speak.

  “I met him a while before you did. He approached me, and with what he told you, I’m assuming it was to see if I was married and I was. I had no idea who he was or what his real intentions were.”

  I still didn’t say a word.

  “So, although I was married, we---,”she paused.

  Please don’t tell me that they had sex!

  Lord you wouldn’t put that much on me.

  “It was only once.”

  Unbelievable!

  What was the world coming to?

  I’d always known that my sister had a few tendencies. She was more than flirtatious and I wouldn’t doubt if at least one of her kids weren’t her husbands, but to have screwed a man, that I ended up dating, screwing, half-way marrying and getting pregnant by, and not say anything, was a bit much.

  The tears were burning my eyes but I dared not let them fall.

  “I was so angry with you. It all happened so fast. Do you remember that day a long time ago that you asked me to go over to your house and bring you a different pair of shoes to your job because the heel broke on the ones that you were wearing? Well, that day I went over and I was just messing around in your closet. You have a thousand pairs of shoes, so at first I was just trying on a few.”

  She stopped for only a second because she thought she heard her husband’s car outside. When she didn’t hear a car door close, she continued.

  “I was just messing like I always do when you are there. But I came across a bag full of pictures. I looked at a few and then I noticed that there was a journal. I wasn’t going to read it but I figured that I probably knew everything in it anyway. Except I didn’t. I found the page where you talked about our sister, Lauren, screwing around with my ex-fiancé Rodney, right under my nose. Yes I know you told me to drop him, but you hadn’t told me the whole truth and I was angry. I was so angry at you and at her. I was just angry.”

  I shook my head at the amount of stupidity that surrounded me.

  I saved her from an awful marriage.

  Did it really matter who he had been sticking his piece of meat in?

  The important part was that I’d warned her and I’d saved her from making a huge mistake.

  Whatever happened to just being thankful?

  “Anyway, that same day, I ran into Tristan, again, at the store on my way home. I wanted you to be wrong. You were always right when it came to men. You thought you knew every little thing and I just wanted you to be wrong for once. So, I made him a little proposition. I told him about you and that I wanted him to make you fall in love with him and then dump you. I already knew he was the bad boy type so I’d warned him to clean up. We talked regularly for a week or so and I gave him as much information on you as I could. He was supposed to accidently run into at a store, but the whole interviewing for a job thing, I had nothing to do with that. I swear I didn’t. It was supposed to be short lived; a few months at the most just to prove you wrong. I wasn’t even sure if you would fall for him. He’d said that he would do it but of course for a price. I’d also been having an affair with my married gynecologist for the last few years, so I have a decent stash of mad money. He pays me for my services just like my insurance pays him for his. Anyway, five thousand dollars is what we’d agreed on. I’d only given him half up front. I thought he was just going to fool you and be done with the whole thing but things just went way too far. He’d convinced me that he’d really fallen for you and I believed him. So at the time, he told me I didn’t owe him the rest of the money and I never paid him. The deal was off the table because he told me that he’d really fallen in love with you. I felt bad but I thought that you guys really hit it off and you were so happy, so we never spoke of it again. And then when everything blew up and his truths came out, he called me wanting the other half of money. He’d said he needed it to go with the rest of his money to start his new life. And then he’d said that if I didn’t double it, he was going to tell my husband about us.”