Leftovers With Benefits: An Interracial Contemporary Romance Read online

  Cecil furrowed his brow to an absurd degree and Kenya laughed.

  “You tryin’ to get stroked out in the kitchen this mornin’?”

  She only shrugged in response. Kenya felt the smallest stir in her loins. It’d been longer than usual since they had sex. Lately he’d been crushing her libido with his nonsense, so she took whatever arousal she could get.

  Cecil looked at her a moment before he shook his head. “If I wasn’t running late…” he eluded as he headed for the door. Kenya watched him walk out of the kitchen and down the stairs.

  “See if you can get out of it tonight, okay?” Kenya requested as she leaned over the banister. Cecil opened the front door and then hesitated before he walked out.

  “Aight,” he said with resignation, the door slowly closing behind him.

  Say ‘I love you,’ she advised herself in her head. But the words stuck in her throat.

  She had a bad habit of only saying it if she was really feeling it. Nothing seemed to uproot this stubborn conviction, not even when he’d told her over and over how much he needed to hear it from her.

  In counseling, she learned she’d been swallowing her deep resentment of his unwillingness to see her love in her actions. The idea was, after all that came uncorked, then the loving words would again freely flow.

  But alas, the cork remained. Even when she remembered to say it on a morning like this, her lips couldn’t unseal.

  The door shut in silence and Kenya sighed, feeling the failure already before the day could properly start.

  2

  Chapter 2

  “One more pitcher.”

  “Scott, I fuckin’ hate beer, you know that.”

  “You’re not ordering wine at a bar, Kev.”

  “Is a margarita masculine enough?”

  “No,” his brother replied, pouring Kevin a beer against his will. They had happy hour on Mondays and Wednesdays, sometimes Tuesdays if it was that kind of week.

  Scott and his wife Shelly used to fight terribly over how much time he spent “at the office,” but the real source of the problem was Scott and Kevin’s close relationship, which tended to overshadow Scott’s marriage.

  They were 18 months apart and it was a phenomenon relatively unknown to his wife since Kevin was on active duty those first years of their relationship. But once he went into the Reserves, Scott instantly got him a job. Now they worked together and spent all their free time together, the four of them.

  That is, before he and Lindsey separated.

  When Kevin got deployed a couple years back, not only had he come home a bit of a different person, but his wife had cheated on him.

  Life, love and time slowly sucked away their previously innate closeness. He was a bit of an unpredictable sad sack now, one that Scott had trouble relating to and vice versa. Didn’t like to be touched hardly anymore. If he was that way with Lindsey, then no wonder they had problems.

  Scott wasn’t her biggest fan, so his sympathies were hard to come by. But he was loyal to Kevin, of whom he’d always felt protective since he was his younger brother and relatively harmless—before he’d become a killing machine, and whatnot.

  Unfortunately, they don’t tell you in the brochure how the killing machine turns the man into something like a shrunken potato. Now their downtime had become more of a therapeutic intervention that Scott regularly committed to. The less time Kevin had alone, the better.

  “So you think you’re gonna finally get laid again tomorrow night?”

  “It’s a distinct possibility,” Kevin sighed. “She brought it up.”

  “Think you can… handle it?” Scott eluded. They talked a bit about how their sex life had been affected by his PTSD.

  Kevin shrugged. “I think so. I mean… talking about it helped a lot. Complete and total deprivation seems to do wonders too,” he said. The guys laughed.

  “Well, I’m happy it’s working out little bro, but…” Scott shook his head. “Frankly, I don’t know how you put up with it.”

  “Put up with what?”

  “With Lindsey, that’s what,” Scott scoffed.

  “It’s hard to explain,” Kevin said with a bony hand under his chin, his pale brown eyes watching his untouched beer. “It’s hard, but it’s easy. I love her, man.”

  “She cheated on you! Since you’ve been home! And probably before,” Scott debated, refusing to pull punches.

  “I’m not saying she wasn’t wrong,” Kevin replied unoffended, “I’m saying it’s worth the work.”

  “She actually said you were a terrible husband.”

  “No, she said she was ‘unbearably miserable.’”

  “How? She doesn’t have to work, she doesn’t cook. You got that huge house for next to nothing, that huge backyard—”

  “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  Scott paused for dramatic effect.

  “You can’t trust a woman that has everything and still doesn’t want kids.”

  Kevin laughed. “I’m calling Shelly right now to tell her what you said.”

  “Go ahead! She’s been doing the mom thing awhile now. Guarantee you, she agrees with me.”

  Kevin picked up his phone and started to dial.

  “Seriously though, don’t call her, she’s gonna make me pick something up.”

  “Yeah right,” Kevin smiled wryly, laugh lines along his the corners of his mouth and eyes.

  “Let’s get outta here anyway,” Scott said between a burp. “If we’re still going to the range this weekend, I better be home at a decent hour.”

  * * *

  Meanwhile, Kenya was at home reclining on the couch, watching a movie, but not. One of her floral head scarves covered her thick cornrowed hair, a slender hand propping up her head by her temple.

  The longer and longer time ticked away, the angrier she got.

  She was now to the point that she didn’t know how much more disappointment she could take.

  She sat up for the hundredth time that night, hallucinating the sound of a car pulling into the gravel driveway.

  This time it was real.

  The anxiety subsided, that of simply not knowing where he was. The nagging fear that perhaps something may have happened to him.

  Why did he always have to do this? she thought, breaking the cardinal rule by using the term “always.”

  On days like this, she couldn’t help it. It seemed like no matter how much leeway she gave him, he could always find some reason to make her worry. How many talks did they have to have? How many counseling sessions about his mother’s suffocating behaviors?

  The lack of communication was brutal, tortured her mind until he could come home and put it to rest. She ranted, she raved, she later wrote letters and cried. But he wouldn’t stop.

  A few times, she tried to do it back to him, so he could know how it felt. But it never worked. Not only did he not appreciate it, but he punished her much more severely for it.

  Never mind that it did nothing in the way of him seeing the error of his ways. The whole situation made her feel hopelessly stuck. Some days she’d prefer him to just smack her in the face rather than do this to her.

  The door slammed and she waited to hear his footsteps make their way up the half flight of stairs. The footsteps never came.

  She knew that as his wife, she’d have better luck with honey than she would with vinegar. That the war for her marriage was won with daily battles, one at a time.

  Well today, she was just gonna have to take an ‘L’.

  Kenya jumped off the couch and headed downstairs to their bedroom.

  “You didn’t see me blowin’ you up?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “No?” she quickly gave her head a slight shake. “You blind? And deaf?”

  “I left my phone in the car.”

  Kenya just stared at him, a move that always infuriated him for some reason, and the reason was most likely guilt.

  “Look, I told you I had to work l
ate.”

  “Cecil, I just wanted a confirmation, you know that,” Kenya begged. “A text. Email. Anything. You can’t make it? Fine. You’d rather do anything else but that? Fine. Just say that.”

  “Just say it?” he challenged.

  “Yes!!” she exclaimed.

  “Okay, fine. Then there’s something I need to tell you. Right now.”

  “…Alright.”

  “Just remember, you asked for it.”

  Kenya just looked at him puzzled.

  “This marriage. I’m done.”

  Silence hung in the air.

  “The fuck are you talkin’ about?” Kenya blinked.

  Cecil sighed, exasperated.

  “I know you’ve had to have been feeling this for a while. You and I, it’s just… I don’t know. What is it? It’s not love, it’s not even ‘like.’”

  Kenya’s heart went into overdrive as she listened to his words.

  She felt cold shakes in her soul, the adrenaline of a life shift. Though she didn’t welcome it fully, something about it felt good.

  Let this negro walk, her inner-self consoled her.

  Her inner-self was entirely disgusted.

  Did he expect a fuckin’ parade every day? She was never the one for that.

  That’s what he said he liked about her— or did he forget? That everyone just wanted a piece of him, wanted him to perform, but she wasn’t impressed with all that? Or was that just more performing too?

  In a way he did get a parade every day: it was called the “Kenya has committed herself to your bitch ass” Parade. No, he wasn’t perfect, but neither was she. She got that. It grounded her. It made her patient, made her gracious. But apparently all this time he’d just been holding his breath.

  Did he even know what love was? Is that why he was so shit at giving it?

  “So… what do you wanna do, Cecil?”

  “I want out. I wanna leave.”

  “Okay…” Kenya breathed. “But once you leave… that’s it. I mean, that’s fuckin’ it. You know that, right?”

  “Yes, I happen to know you pretty well Kenya.”

  Kenya just looked at him in disbelief.

  Did he? Is that why he was always disappointing her? Because he knew her so well?

  “This is what you wanna do,” she nodded emphatically as she furrowed her brow, making sure he understood the barren land that was the permanent loss of her good opinion.

  Cecil abruptly began moving around the room, as if his patience was running out.

  “I’m leaving. Tonight.”

  Kenya jerked her neck back incredulously.

  “To where, mothafucker?”

  “What do you care?”

  Kenya was dumbstruck, her pulse on the rise yet again as he walked out of the bedroom and up the stairs. Not only was he playing the victim, but the reality was also starting to sink in.

  He was leaving her.

  Eight years of her life was about to be up in smoke.

  The holding back she’d been doing out of marital respect, out of muscle memory, started unraveling. He was handing her a bag of emotions and walking out the door. Just like she always knew, on some level, he would. All that couples counseling, yet she’d been right the whole time.

  An inhuman force lifted her up off the bed and followed him upstairs. When she came around the corner he was retrieving a suitcase out of the closet. Without a word, he returned to their bedroom to start packing things.

  Kenya watched wordlessly as she followed him from room to room, feeling a little out-of-body. Her rage grew and grew.

  “Hurry the fuck up, I want you outta this house before I fuckin’ kill you.”

  Cecil just scoffed and shook his head. He slowed his pace at her threat, confident in his considerable strength and not in her ability to follow through.

  She fought off a blind rage, fought off murderous images. One of many over their time together and, thankfully now, probably her last.

  The murderous rage died down and the sadness enveloped her, and a shame that she wasn’t strong enough to fight for her own honor without going to jail for life. Like a deflated balloon she stood there hunched over, punched in the guts as emotion overtook her. She turned and fled the room in tears.

  Kenya retreated to the bathroom. She sat nonsensically in the empty bathtub and sobbed, her emotions frayed. From that moment she never wanted to have to lay eyes on him again.

  She got up to lock the door to make sure that didn’t happen, then returned back to the bathtub, waiting to hear the sound of footsteps retreating downstairs, the sound of a slammed door.

  Instead, she heard the sound of him talking on the phone.

  “Hey….yeah, I told her…you sure?… then I’m on my way.”

  REALLY MOTHERF*&#@R????!?!?!?!?

  Kenya’s mood turned to sheer amusement as she sat in the bathtub with her head cocked to hear Cecil’s very clear and poorly disguised conversation. She couldn’t help but look around the bathroom for hidden cameras or listening devices.

  This had to be a joke. She was being punked right now.

  All emotions temporarily left her as her motivation now became following this dumb jackass to the equally dumb hussy’s house that he was about to lead her to. She wasn’t even the “woman scorned” type, but it was a hell of a way to find out that not only was her marriage over, but she was being cheated on again and probably for quite some time.

  My word, he must be giddy as all hell to meet up with this bitch if he wasn’t even taking the precaution to wait until he was completely out of the house to talk to her.

  She just had to see what all the fuss was about.

  Kenya gave him about a thirty-second head start before she followed him out the door, got in her car, and drove out of their subdivision to find Cecil two cars ahead in his white 4Runner, patiently waiting at the lengthy two-way stop at the end of the street.

  He, of course, had no idea she was tailing him. She started to think she’d make a pretty good P.I.

  He’d stopped at the drugstore on the way to wherever he was going. Likely to get protection. Kenya shook her head in the stone quiet of her own car, chuckling as she rested her arm on the steering wheel, a thumbnail between her teeth.

  That motherfucker. So of all the lectures she gave him, it’s the “be prepared” one that stuck.

  After he pulled into the mysterious driveway, exited the car and went inside, Kenya pulled up to the curb of the large white traditional style house with the black shutters and black front door. It was one of the smaller houses along a beautiful wide street with impossibly tall trees. Lakewood, a nice quiet neighborhood across town.

  She had no way of verifying, but she was pretty sure this chick was white.

  It felt like that was the case, not just because of the neighborhood, but because of the way her life was going.

  Not all women could do such damage to large chunks of your life in seconds, but the ones that could, well, they were usually white. They were like Nagasaki.

  Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure what she wanted.

  Revenge? Maybe. An explanation? Definitely not. Double homicide? Tempting.

  As she entertained the dark, outlandish thought, she found that she wasn’t all that angry.

  Emotionally she was hurt, hobbling, but it wasn’t as though her world was crumbling.

  Though in her current state she wouldn’t mind seeing two horrible people die.

  Nah. She had a hunch this woman was horrible, but not enough to go to prison over.

  She could wait until they fell asleep, break in and smash his head with a bat while they were in bed. Then she could go on the run. She had relatives in North Carolina. Bitch, he is a Marine and you don’t know the first thing about breaking into a house!

  “Just key the bitch’s car,” she counseled herself aloud.

  Kenya got out and walked along the curb and up to the driveway, her heart rising from her chest to her throat intermittently.


  She’d never keyed a car either, but it couldn’t be that hard, she reasoned.

  Her lips drew way in, and she let her tongue rest between her teeth as the grating sensation of her keys against the navy blue Camry bore through her brain.

  She made a long crooked line along the side, exposing the white marrow of the car. When she got to the hood she got creative.

  “I’M A WHORE,” she carved. She beefed up the letters like a four-year-old with a crayon.

  Suddenly she saw a light go on in her peripheral, a commotion inside. In fact, more than one light came on along the neighborhood street. All of her insides shook as she prepared herself for confrontation. Or would it be flight?

  “What the fuck?!?” she heard a female voice shriek.

  “Kenya!” Cecil screamed with passionate anger. It sent a shiver through her. With fresh tears welling up she kept writing at a furious pace.

  “I’m calling the police,” she heard the slut say in an urgent tone. A neighbor’s light went on, then they peeked through their living room curtains. Yep, this was definitely not her part of town.

  Time to go, Kenya thought.

  “That’s okay, I’m almost done,” Kenya shouted out.

  She wrote “Bitch” along the driver side in a thin cursive, then ran a rough skid across Cecil’s 4Runner parked behind her.

  “That’s the best you got, Kenya? Jesus,” Cecil goaded her as he looked on at the sight of her handiwork from the open front door. Apparently, she wasn’t even worth the effort to try and stop.

  “The best got put in your gas tank, n*gga,” Kenya sent over her shoulder as walked back to her car. Which was a bluff.

  “Bitter, ass, bitch,” she heard him say through her closed door.

  Damn, she thought, the thorny insult lodged in her brain. It took no effort to fight him on it because it was true.

  What are you even doing here, girl? Go home.

  It was good advice. Sure her marriage was over, sure he’d up and torched eight years of her life. But life went on. The sun was on its way up again. More patients would be created who needed care, while others needed to pass peacefully, and others still to be born. She should be enjoying her night off. Not subjecting herself to more abuse.