Men and women test the limits of love and devotion in this sexy and suspenseful first novel that evokes the familiar emotional honesty and moral complexity of real life.
Newcomer Shonda Cheekes makes her contemporary debut in a hip, wonderfully wise story about letting go and moving on.
When Yaniece Fenton married Jarrin Miller, she thought it would last forever. But five years ago, her husband of fifteen years walked out on his family without a backward glance. Since then, Yani and her two children have played a waiting game, certain that he was coming back. Now, with the help of her friends and her sister Asia, Yani is finally over her "love hangover" and ready to get on with her life. At a party, she meets Alex Chance, a prominent New York businessman who's looking for a relationship with a woman who isn't out for everything she can get. Their powerful attraction leads to a whirlwind courtship and a fairy-tale-like wedding. But their happy ending is threatened by Jarrin's sudden reappearance, which forces Yani to face the truth about her marriage--and the life-altering choice she will have to make as another man's wife.
With generous helpings of affection, humor and romantic suspense, Shonda Cheekes has created a story that crackles with wit and the riffs and rhythms of modern life. Alternating between the first-person outlooks of Yani and Alex, Another Man's Wife captivates readers with this sassy tale of brothers and sisters on the move and searching for love and fulfillment. Imbued with this author's fresh, unique voice, it is a provocative and seductive look at relationships in the twenty-first century.
Shonda Cheekes is the author of Lessons Learned, which was published in Blackgentlemen.com, a short story anthology. She lives in Pembroke Pines, Florida, where she is at work on her next novel.
Chapter one
My grandmother used to always say, "One man’s trash is another man’s treasure."
"Well, maybe someone will find some treasure in all of this trash that I’m putting out," I thought as I taped closed the last box that contained Jarrin’s things.
I’d been all I could be in this relationship. In the past five years, I’d kept the bills paid, the kids well taken care of… Hell, I know I promised for better or worse, but this has got to be the ultimate.
Five years ago today, my husband of fifteen years, decided to take an indefinite vacation from us. One thing though, he forget to let us know. Gone without a trace. No calls, no letters, not even an email. Just gone.
Me, being the devoted wife and mother that I am - or rather was, I knew he was going to come back, and so I waited. Waited through the birthdays, the anniversaries, and every other holiday that came and went for five years. Just waited.
Turned a deaf ear when other people commented among themselves how crazy I was for wasting my time beyond the second month. How they would’ve had him declared dead after six months and lived fat off the insurance money I stood to gain from that act.
Jarrin had been a part of my life for so long that I didn’t know how to let him go even after he’d let go of me.
But there was always that possibility that he was in some kind of danger. I kept having this reoccurring dream of him being held in a dark room, tied to a chair. And there’s the other one where he’s lying in a desolate field, bound and gagged, as vultures eat away at his rotting flesh.
No matter how gruesome the dreams, I realized after the third year, I had to draw the line somewhere. How long was I willing to sit around waiting? I’d wasted the better half of my thirties waiting on him. If I was ever going to have a shot at finding happiness, it was time for me to start the healing process. Especially after an older woman reassured me that women reach their sexual peak in their thirties.
I pushed the box out of the walk-in closet into the bedroom.
"That it?"
"That’s it," I said to my best friend Carmen, as I straightened up from the stooping position I was in.
"I don’t know why you don’t have one of those yard sales like your girl did in Waiting To Exhale? You’d easily make a few months’ mortgage payments with this." Carmen and I bent down and lifted the box to carry it in the living room.
"You mean the "Love Hangover" sale? The main reason she had that sale was to hurt him like he’d hurt her and besides, she knew he was coming back for it. Now I, on the other hand, doubt if Jarrin can remember half of this shit if he was to come back."
"If you’re not suffering from a love hangover, I don’t know who is." We dropped the box near the front door.
"I’m not hung over, I’m just over it."
"You’d still be over it, but with a few more dollars in your bank account."
"I’d rather give this stuff to the people at Camillus
House and let a needy person have it than deal with trying to sell it. Besides, throwing it in the boxes was much easier than going through each piece trying to figure out what its worth.""If you say so."
"I say so." We added the box to the other fifteen that were stacked and waiting near the door.
"Bryce should be here any minute. He had to run to the airport to pick up a friend of his."
"You mean the frat brother you’ve been talking about non-stop? What’s his name? Ummm…"
"Yes, Alex."
"How could I forget? You’ve only said his name what – a hundred times within the last hour and we’ve been at this for how long now? About four?"
"All I can say is, when you see him, you’ll know why."
"Know why what?"
"Well…"
"Carmen, not already. I just made the decision to put one man out of my life and you’ve already got me hooked up with another one. I don’t know if I’m ready…"
"Ready? Woman please. Your ass should be in that oversized room you call a closet picking out something to wear tonight so you can make up for lost time. You don’t know if you’re ready to date," she said as she rolled her eyes and sucked her teeth for added emphasis. "Hell, my God-children have been without a male figure in their lives long enough."
"They have male figures in their lives. What do you call Bryce?"
"Not their daddy."
"But he’s their God-daddy."
"But he’s not in an intimate relationship with their mother. It’s a wonder that they don’t have a problem with intimacy when they get older."
"So what am I supposed to do, bring home the first man I meet?"
"Look crazy girl, you need to get over your fears and get up running. If you’re going to be truly over Jarrin you’ve got to get back into the dating game."
"But I’m scared that I won’t know what to do on a date. Think about it, I haven’t dated anyone but Jarrin. I’ve been with him since I was fourteen and I’m damn near thirty-six now."
"So what? The only way you’ll ever know is if you try it."
"You have no idea what the dating scene is like today…"
"And neither do you. But if Bryce were to pull the shit Jarrin did - girl my ass would be hanging out Monday through Saturday."
"What would Sunday be? Your day to repent for being a ho?"
"Naw, it would be the day I would have to recuperate from the mind blowing sex I’d had the night before with the fine ass man I’d met that week." We both laughed.
"Come on crazy. Let’s finish before your husband, who I might add is madly in love with you, gets here."
"Mommy, what do you want me to do with these?" Jay stood in the doorway clutching three large photo albums.
"Bring them to Goddy, baby." Carmen held out her hands to him.
"I was thumbing through them last night," I said as I took a seat on the sofa.
"While you were waiting for that call that never came?"
"Yeah." The melancholy feeling that I’d felt the night before started to slowly creep up on me.
Those books held a documented photo tribute to my life with Jarrin. From the first date, to the first kiss, to the first house we shared together. Everything that had ever happened was captured in time on a photo in those book.
"Oh, this is the apartment y’all lived in when you were in Atlanta."
"Umm hmm."
"Remember how your mama went ballistic when you told her?"
"Do I? I remember that conversation I had with mama like it was yesterday."
"Yaniece Fenton. I did not raise you to be shacking up with no man!" By the tone of her voice and the fact that she had called me by my first and last name, I knew she was fuming. I could just picture her eyes bulging out of her head and a slight waft of smoke smoldering from the center of her auburn dye job.
"Ma, we’re not shacking up. We’re doing what you would call…" I paused trying to find just the right words. Delivery was everything in this one shot deal. "A trial run marriage." Hey, it sounded good to me. Too bad she didn’t agree.
"A TRIAL RUN MARRIAGE??!! What the hell kinda’ shit is that?" She was an octave away from shattering glass.
At that very moment, I was glad that I’d decided to have this talk with her by way of Ma Bell. A face-to-face would’ve had me enduring some type of bodily harm.
"Put it this way," still trying my best to sell her on the idea. "When you go to the shoe store to purchase a pair of shoes, don’t you at least try them on to make sure they fit?" Not giving her a chance to respond, I quickly added, "Well Ma, I want to try on marriage before I buy it, get it home and find out that it just doesn’t fit."
I’d overheard this chick on campus, who was trying to explain why she slept with every guy she went out with, tell this to her friend. I smiled as I reminded myself to store that one away for a rainy day, and this was close to becoming a category five storm.
After a few minutes of pure silence, mama sighed, "You know, it’s your choice, Yani, but I’ll let you know right now, I’ll never agree with it. I know you’ve got to make your own mistakes in life though. I just thought you were smarter than this." Smarter? Why this was better than smart - it was brilliant. At least that’s what I was thinking at the time.
Mama’s voice resounded that of defeat, which made me feel a little bad, but not bad enough to change my mind. I was determined to be with Jarrin, and no one was going to prevent that. Not even mama.
"I remember when you called me. You were so excited."
"Yeah." I smiled. "It took some getting use to, but things worked out fine."
"Of course they did. You basically turned the man into everything that you thought he was supposed to be."
"I did not."
"Girl, please. Did you not have to teach his ass how to make a bed?"
"Well, yeah."
"And did you not have to teach him how to wash dishes?"
"Yes."
"Did you not teach him how to cook?"
"Okay, okay. So I did have to do a lil’ retouching here and there."
"Retouching? Hmm, you built a new model." Carmen flipped through a few more pages of the book.
"Oh, look… this is when I came down to visit you."
"Look at you showing off your engagement ring." I smiled as we stared at the picture of Carmen with her hands splayed out in front of her.
"Bryce really surprised me."
"Surprised you? I knew you were going to marry Bryce from the first moment I met him. You talked about me with Jarrin, but you were just as stuck on Bryce. At least he still stuck on you though."
"Okay then. I’ll put these in the closet in the spare bedroom." Carmen closed the books and walked off through the kitchen and down the short hall that led to the guest bedroom.
I grabbed the back of my neck and gently began to massage it.
"Can I interest you in a chocolate shake?" Carmen said.
"Mmm, that sounds good, but what about Bryce? If he comes and we’re not here…"
"I’ll call him from the car. I know he’d much rather be playing catch up with Alex without me in the way."
"Then just let me grab my purse."
Carmen walked over and grabbed her purse from the counter as I made my way through the living room to the other side of the house. I peaked into the office where Natalia and Jay were tapping away at their computers.
"Hey guys, me and Goddy are going to get shakes from Checkers. We’ll be back in a few."
"Okay," they both called out in unison, never taking their eyes from the screens.
"Mommy, am I still going over to Travis’ house?" Jay looked up long enough for me to answer him.
"Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. Go get your stuff now and we can drop you off while we’re out."
"All right!" he shouted as he quickly sprang up and ran down the hall to his room.
"So what are you going to do, Ms. Lady?" I asked Natalia.
"I guess I’ll be here. If something comes up I’ll call you on your cell," she nonchalantly said without moving her hands away from the keyboard.
"No, you call me to make sure it’s okay with me for you to do anything. If something comes up? I keep telling you that I’m the mother and you’re the child."
"Yes, mommy." Every since she’d turned fourteen, I found myself having to remind her of our roles every now and then. I’ve already told her that it’s not in the plans for us to do the talk show circuit. I will not sit on stage crying that I can’t control a child that I have to clothe, feed, and give shelter to. Hmph, she’ll find herself on the porch. I walked out the office and continued on to my room. I decided to change clothes. I’d never been comfortable going out in public looking any kind of way.
When I returned to the kitchen, Carmen sat at the bar patiently waiting. I’d changed into a pair of jeans with a red pullover.
"I thought we were just going for shakes?"
"We are."
"You done went and got all spiffy on me. Got me looking like a ragamuffin. Girl, if Jarrin could see you now, he’d literally be eating his heart out."
"You know, I used to question if that was the reason that he left."
"Why? ‘cause you put on a few pounds after giving birth to his children? If that’s the case…"
"Operative word being "used to". I thought your thoughts exactly. But I lost the weight for me. More of a preventive healthcare program than anything else."
"I know. Especially after your cousin past away and then the other one got sick."
"Yep. Diabetes, cancer, and high blood pressure run on both sides of my family."
"Well, you look damn good regardless of why you did it."
"Thanks, girl. Now, let’s get a move on. We’ve got to drop Jay off to his little friend’s house and then make a trek to Miami to drop this stuff off." I grabbed my keys from the rack on the wall.
"I still say you should sell some of this stuff."
"Carmen, if you see something you want to sell, go right ahead and take it, but think about the good it will do somebody that’s in need." I looked at her solemnly.
"Damn, you sure know how to make a sistah feel bad. Let’s go before I make you take me to my house and give away some of Bryce’s things." We both laughed.
Bryce was known for being a pack rat. Carmen had been plotting for years on how to get rid of some of his insignificant crap, as she called it. He still had his uniform from when he worked at Burger King while in high school. The burgundy sort of brown colored ones that looked more like a clown suit than anything else. I couldn’t think of anyone who would want it.
"Girl, you should reconsider throwing that uniform away. Maybe one day it’ll be a collector’s item and be worth some good money," I said to her.
"Ya think?" I knew that would get her off his back for a little while at least.
Bryce is a good guy. He’s everything most women claim they’re looking for. He was kind and gentle, tall and extremely handsome, and top it off, he worships Carmen and loves their three kids more than anything else in the world. Plus he’s very supportive of his wife. They have one of those relationships that, if you were in a bad relationship, you’d want to choke them. The kissing in public, always touching and feeling. It’s enough to make a love deprived person sick. But then there are those of us who use them as a pattern. If I were to ever get into another relationship, I would want what they have. Or something close to it.
"Are you going to open the door?" Carmen said as she stood behind me with her arms wrapped around a box. I shook off the daydream and looked at her.
"Yeah. Sorry about that."
"Another visit to La-la land?"
"Just thinking. Jay!" I yelled.
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