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“No phone calls, either? No flowers?”
“No, not while I’m still married.”
I sighed and decided maybe I needed to play this from a different angle. “Okay.”
“Okay?” She sounded surprised.
“Yeah, it’s cool. Um, I guess that means friendship is out altogether, so you can just call me whenever your situation changes.”
She held the phone.
“So, um…goodbye, Doc.”
“Goodbye,” she said softly.
My phone beeped as the call ended, and I closed the curtains on the window behind my desk and did something about my hard dick.
I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt when I ended the call. Well, that’s not entirely true. I felt like shit, for lack of a better word. Complete shit. As I sat on the side of my bed with my phone in my hand, all I could do was wonder what had just happened and why I was so utterly floored by it. I hadn’t known Lorenzo long at all, but I thought I had a bead on who he was as a man—considerate, fine, and persistent. Had I been wrong about him, because he’d just given up on me. He gave up so quickly it made my head spin.
I jumped a little when my mother appeared in my bedroom doorway, and said, “Nay, I’m heading down to cook breakfast if you want any.”
“Uh…okay. Thanks. Is it just you and me this morning?”
She nodded. “Yeah, haven’t seen Nicky in a couple of days. I think she’s been spending a lot of time with what’s his name…um, Travis?”
I shrugged. “I stopped trying to remember her boyfriends’ names when she was in high school.”
Mama chuckled. “Well, this one is a civil rights lawyer, and that impressed me enough to at least try to remember.”
“Really? Wow, and she’s actually been seeing him for a month or so now. Maybe she finally found the one.”
Mama sighed. “Maybe…”
“So, you don’t have any company this morning, Mama?” I asked, feeling completely awkward. I would never, ever get used to my mother dating men other than my father.
She leaned against the door facing. “No, I don’t.”
“Okay.”
Mama walked into my room and sat beside me on the bed. “My dating other men really bothers you, doesn’t it?”
I sighed. “I guess I just don’t understand how you can do it after all those years of being true to Daddy. I mean, I know you two are separated, but you’re still married. The guilt would eat me up.” The guilt is eating me up right now.
Mama stared at the floor and then fixed her eyes on me. “Renee, I love your daddy. I do, but I just got to a place where I had to figure out how to love myself again. I had to find some joy in this messed-up situation.”
“Why don’t you just divorce him, then?”
She shook her head and raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know, sweetie. I guess I don’t want to.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, we’re talking about love here. There’s nothing more complicated than love. For instance, you still love Robert, right?”
I grimaced a little. “I think I love what we had years ago when we first got together. But now, I can honestly say I don’t love him anymore. But…”
“What?”
“Mama…I met someone, but being with him, even just talking on the phone with him feels like cheating, even though I know my marriage has been over for a long time. Shoot, it was over long before I left Robert. I’m crazy for feeling this way, right?”
