This is a sneak peek from my novel, Living in His World of Lies 2, released May 2018.
"So, why are you so hesitant, then?" Terrance slid into the driver seat of his Ford F-150 and put the key in the ignition, but he didn't crank the truck. A week after their departure from Los Angeles, here he and Ebonii were on the phone having the same disagreement they had been having since they made it back to Memphis.
"You keep asking me why I'm hesitant. Let me ask you something. Why are you in such a rush?" Ebonii was saying on the other end of the line. I've been answering phones all day at the phone company, she thought. I get off and have to hear this mess again when I answer my own damn phone.
"What happened, Ebonii?" Terrance sighed in defeat as he lay back against the headrest. "When we were in L.A., you were really feeling me. We got back home, and now you won't give me the time of day."
"I don't know, Terry," she shook her head as she flipped through the channels on the 50" flat screen mounted to her living room wall. "I was feeling you when we were in L.A. We got back here, and I started feeling like what we were doing was wrong. I think we got caught up in the romance. Orlando and Trisha were getting married, and Dazz and Tonio were hooking up. We just got swept away in the emotions."
"You're wrong, E," Terrance frowned. "I did like you before we went to L.A., but we hardly ever saw each other. We don't live or work in the same neighborhood. We hardly ever cross paths unless it involves both Trisha and Orlando, and how often has that been since they moved to California?"
"Close to never," Ebonii mumbled.
"Exactly. Look, Ebonii," Terrance was watching the midtown traffic pass his truck as it remained parked on the street in front of his job. "Maybe we did get caught up in the moment, but I don't regret it. We should try this thing and see how it works."
"Terry," Ebonii rolled her eyes, "this thing you speak of will never work."
"What makes you say that?"
"I've got a couple of reasons. For starters, does the name Lakeisha ring a bell?"
Terrance's jaw dropped. Ebonii used his silence as confirmation of his acquaintance with the young woman who had started calling her phone two nights after they had arrived back in Memphis threatening to dismember Ebonii if she refused to stop seeing Terrance.
"Yeah, nigga. Your baby's mama called me, threatening me."
"She is not my baby's mama," Terrance fumed. "I don't have any kids with her. I don't have any kids at all."
"Oh, really? That's not what she said. According to her, she's seven months pregnant with your baby," Ebonii smirked.
"I don't care what she said," Terrance gritted his teeth. "I haven't touched Lakeisha's crazy ass in over a year, and that is exactly why. She's crazy. She was cheating on me, and I broke up with her. A few months later she called my phone talking about she's pregnant, and I told her it's not mine. She kept calling and every time she called her due date changed to further and further away, letting me know that there was no chance in hell that the baby she was pregnant with was fathered by me."
"So why is she doing this then?"
"I don't know. I started dating a woman three or four months after I broke up with her, and she ran her off too," Terrance shook his head as he admitted. "I hadn't seen or heard from her in a while, so I thought she had moved on and that there wasn't any reason to tell you about her, but I guess I was wrong."
"Yeah, you were seriously mistaken."
"What about you?" he asked her. "Why didn't you just say something instead of holding this information in and holding it against me?"
"I assumed you knew that you had someone pregnant. I actually assumed that you were still fucking her since she was calling my phone like some crazy psycho girlfriend. How did she get my number anyway?"
"Probably from my phone records."
"And how does she have access to your phone records?"
"Because the phone is in her name."
"Why the fuck do you have a phone that's in her name if you haven't been with her in over a year?"
"She got both of us cell phones for Valentine's Day last year, and I just kept the phone."
"Ugh," Ebonii was disgusted by his immature stupidity. "Good bye, Terrance."
"Wait! Why are you hanging up on me?"
"Terry, I really don't feel like dealing with this dumb ass shit right now. There is obviously something wrong with you if you can't see the problem with this situation. I'll talk to you later."
Ebonii hung up the phone and laid it on the table. She sat there staring at it for a few seconds in disbelief of what she had just heard. Did that really just happen? she asked herself before she shook her head with a giggle and picked up the remote to continue flipping through the channels on the TV.
