Affairs of the Heart

  Copyright © 2018 by Urban Lifestyle Press

  P.O. Box 12714

  Charlotte, NC 28220

  http://www.kelliottonline.com/

  Copyright 2018 by http://www.kelliottonline.com/.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. For information, address Urban Lifestyle Press, P.O. Box 12714 Charlotte, NC 28220 http://www.kelliottonline.com/

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  June 2018

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 1

  Christian Walker was three years old and held up three fingers whenever anyone asked him his age. Christian was big for his size. Sometimes, he was mistaken for being five, and he possessed the ability to speak pretty damn good sentences for a toddler. Kendall, Christian’s mother, phone rang, and Christian yelled “Daddy!” He associated his father with fun. His daddy tickled him and tossed him high in the air before catching him. He would blow on his belly and make funny noises. Christian loved his mother too, but he wanted to be like his Daddy, like most little boys did.

  Kendall had been logged onto her Facebook page, scanning the profiles of her old high school classmates, and she was amazed at how many of them were too damn huge to be only thirty years old.

  Baby Christian sprinted toward Kendall and screamed “Daddy!”

  “Christian, it’s not Daddy.”

  Christian frowned in disappointment.

  Kendall tossed him a Spiderman figure and instructed, “Play with your toy, while I talk to Godmama Chrissy.”

  Chrissy Johnson and Kendall White had met at Sunday School at Weeping Willow Baptist Church as eighth graders. Chrissy’s family had relocated to Charlotte from Pittsburgh after her father’s job had transferred him. Kendall was the first girl that Chrissy had met, and they hit it off right away. They liked the same kind of music, and they were members of the Praise and Worship dance team in church. Each were the only girl in their families. Chrissy’s family was ecstatic that she’d been so fortunate to find a good friend, and sixteen years later they were still best friends, Kendall had even named her son after Chrissy.

  Though they had a lot of things in common, they contrasted in appearance. Kendall had a large Ethiopian forehead, sensuous lips, and long natural hair and minuscule waist and womanly figure. Kendall’s resembled East Africans so much, they’d often approached her yelling Selam. She would simply laugh and say that she was American. One cab driver had said she was denying her heritage and said that she was East African, and she would respond “My parents are from South Carolina.”

  “I want my Daddy,” Christian whined.

  “I don’t know where your daddy is. This is Godmama. Now go play.”

  “Godmama?” He repeated.

  “Yeah, Godmama. Play with Spiderman while I talk to Godmama.”

  He sat on the floor, pitting his figures against each other, while Kendall resumed her conversation.

  “My bad girl. My phone was in the other room when you called earlier.” She paused before continuing, “I was watching these dumb ass hoes on the reality shows.”

  Kendall knew and she knew this girl could talk forever about nothing. Before she could cut Chrissy off, she’d started talking again.

  “I mean every episode, I don’t care if its New York, LA, or Atlanta, it’s the same plot. Throw a fuckboy into a love triangle, with two desperate chicks and the ratings go through the roof.”

  “Hey, hey, hey!”

  “What’s wrong?” Chrissy asked.

  “I called to vent, not hear about these recycled reality TV chicks.”

  Chrissy laughed, “Yeah, I was the one returning the call. My bad.”

  Kendall sighed. “It’s all good.”

  “What’s on your mind, boo?”

  “Dre hasn’t been answering his phone.”

  “He’s a busy man. No man is going to stop to answer your calls every time you call. He has to pay for that house and Range Rover that you’re driving somehow. The man is working. He’s staying busy, that’s how. My mama always told me don’t bother a man while he is at work. I mean he could be not doing shit with his life—”

  Kendall sat the phone down then stared at the ceiling; Chrissy was on another tangent. Kendall strolled to the fridge, snatching a cranberry Snapple as a rubber ball whizzed past her face. Christian was laughing as he picked up the ball and was about to throw it again. She snatched the ball away from him and said, “We don’t throw balls in the house, okay?”

  He frowned and said, “I sorry Mommy!”

  She kissed his forehead, then said, “It’s okay, baby.”

  Kendall picked up the phone and pressed it to her ear. Chrissy was still yapping. “Will you shut the fuck up? I called to talk to you about something, and you keep making this about you and what you know and what you have heard. Can you please be a good best friend today and listen?”

  “I’m so sorry, girl. I’ll be quiet.” Even though Kendall couldn’t see her, she mimed zipping her lips together.

  “Dre has a girlfriend.”

  “Daddy?” Christian asked after hearing his father’s name.

  “No its not Daddy. It’s Godmama like I just told you. Go play.”

  “Dre is a married man!”

  “He’s cheating. He has a ho on the side. Someone that’s not me. Want me to spell it out for you?” Kendall snapped.

  “How do you know this?”

  “A couple of nights ago, he came home and he smelled of Classique by Jean Paul Gaultier. He doesn’t wear that, obviously.”

  “Did you ask him about it?”

  “Don’t need to. The signs are there.” Kendall paused. “He doesn’t answer my calls half the time, he comes home smelling like another woman, and when he doesn’t smell like another woman, he hops in the shower before getting in the bed. Sometimes he’ll come in at 3 am and he’ll go in the guest bedroom to shower, giving some lame excuse that he didn’t want to wake me up.”

  “But it is 3 am, Kendall,” Chrissy laughed. “Do you want to be woken up at 3 am?”

  “I’m up because I’m waiting on my man, and he knows I’m up because I’ve called him twenty eight times.”

  “I can’t say that I know the signs. I haven’t had a boyfriend in two years. I don’t even deal with niggas anymore. Slim, who comes by and gives me head then leaves in the middle of the night… I can’t keep holding out waiting on him to get his shit together and leave his mama house. The man is thirty-five—”

  “Listen, please.” Kendall was getting irritated.

  “So Dre’s cheating?”

  “I’m certain.”

  “But what are you prepared to do about it?”

  “What can I do? I don’t have a job; I can’t leave him. I have a baby, and I’m broke.”

  Chrissy had an idea. “Go back to school, you were always the smart one.”

  “I hate school. I hated everything about school.”

  “What about fashion? You can be a stylist.”

  “And what do I do while I pursue this stylist thing? You want me to just stay put while Dre just run around cheating on me?”

  Chrissy rolled her eyes. “They’re all going to cheat, like this meme on Instagram said, you might as well be crying in a mansion than be crying somewhere in the projects.”

  “You think all men cheat?”

  “Most do.” Chrissy nodded.

  “You think your daddy cheats?”

  “They don’t make them like my daddy no more,” Chrissy laughed. “Who says he didn’t cheat when he was younger?”

  “Did he?”

  “I don’t know, but I know when my Uncle Leroy died and we went back to Pittsburgh to go to the funeral, we discovered that I had two cousins that I didn’t know existed.”

  Kendall gasped, “He had another woman?”

  “Two women.”

  “Damn.”

  “But your daddy don’t seem like the cheating type, obviously Uncle Leroy was thotting around…”

  “Uncle Leroy didn’t seem like a cheater either. He was a deacon in the church and a track and field coach at the high school. Word was it that Uncle Leroy had gotten one of his ex-runners pregnant.”

  “Oh wow. Damn. Uncle Leroy was a savage. So she
had two kids by Uncle Leroy?”

  Chrissy laughed, “That’s just it. Uncle Leroy had two baby mamas.”

  “Who was the other baby mama?”

  “The girl’s sister.”

  “Stop it.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So your cousins are sisters.”

  “Yeah. Really nice girls. But my point is there are skeletons in everybody’s closet.”

  “So all men cheat?”

  “I think most people cheat,” Chrissy said matter-of-factly. “Or will cheat if the opportunity

  presents itself.”

  “Scandalous.”

  “Yeah, but I wouldn’t have ever thought that about him. But that made me realize if Uncle Leroy could cheat, then anyone is capable of cheating. But you have it made with Dre.”

  Kendall laughed; she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Since I got it made with Dre, I should just look over it. What’s a little cheating right?”

  “No, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I’d rather have real love than material things,” Kendall sighed.

  There was silence on the other end of the phone, then Chrissy stated, “You don’t think Dre loves you.”

  Kendall all but whispered, “I do.”

  “So do I.”

  “But why do I feel so alone?”

  “But you’re married.”

  “Marriage ain’t nothing but a piece of paper nowadays.”

  “You’re right.”

  Kendall looked at the 2.16 carat canary yellow diamond ring. She’d initially hated the ring; the damn thing costed too much—almost fifty thousand dollars—but then she’d grown to love what it represented: the union between her and the man of her life. She began to sob. “He’s cheating Chrissy. I think it’s just time for me to accept the fact that he’s a cheater, and I’m going to be alone.”

  Chrissy, who usually had a lot to say, could only say, “You’re not alone. I’m here for you.”

  Christian waddled up to her, and she looked in her son’s eyes as he said, “Don’t cry, Mommy.”

  She smiled at Christian and said, “Mommy is going to be okay, son. Don’t worry about Mommy.” She pinched his chubby jaws and then gathered him into her arms.

  Her iPhone charging on the nightstand read 4:12 am. She heard the water bustling from the shower of the guest bedroom. She’d guessed that Dre probably arrived about ten minutes ago, and it also told her that he had been with some woman and they had probably gone out to eat at some fancy steakhouse, perhaps Upstream or Flemings. One of the reasons she liked him is because he loved to eat. He’d teased her that he was going to get her fat so nobody else would want her. Even after they had eaten, he’d probably taken her to the Ritz Carlton or perhaps her place, but if her place wasn’t nice enough for him, she knew that they were in a five-star hotel. Though Dre was from the hood, he had become bougie. Money had a tendency to make hood niggas that way.

  When she met Dre, she had to teach him the difference between a salad fork and a dinner fork. She taught him how to hold a fork. She taught him a man was supposed to walk on the outside of a woman. Taught him not to place his elbows on the table. Taught him to look the waiter in the eye and acknowledge him and not to talk to service or professional people with slang or hood jargon. She had taught him that Gucci was not the best cologne. She bought him Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille and a small bottle of Creed Aventis with her waitress check. She’d taught him how to dress. She was more cultured than him—but not because she came from a higher social economic class.

  Kendall was a girl from the hood, but she had big ambitions. She spent hours watching YouTube videos about fashion, etiquette, and how to be a lady. She had dreamed of being a creative. A designer or a writer or a stylist for the stars, she’d style Beyonce and Rihanna, move to New York, and buy herself a Brownstone. She’d also have a place in Paris. When she first met Dre, she thought he was cute, but he was not her type. He was a nice boy, but he didn’t have dreams. Well, his dreams were not as big or ambitious as hers. He was a small-time hustler, and she hated hustlers, but Dre wouldn’t go away. He gave her attention and showered her with gifts. They weren’t expensive gifts, but he was the only one that ever bought her anything, and she appreciated him.

  A year after their first date, she’d given in and had sex with him. Two years later she had gotten pregnant with Christian, and now that Christian was here, those dreams had to be put on hold. She fought back the tears as she thought about how much of herself she had sacrificed for him, but was it his fault? She had become lazy, and she had gotten to the point where she didn’t want to work. Why get a job? Her man had so much money, he had taken her on so many vacations, and he had showed her so much that there was no point in working. Plus, she had been with him in the beginning.

  She was with him the first day he’d met the plug. Dre had gone from a street hustler getting a couple pounds of exotic weed to a kingpin, and she remembered the day a strange Mexican knocked on his door in their little run-down apartment in the hood. She remembered because she was scared as hell.

  The tattooed Mexican man had showed up at the door wearing a wife beater, Dickies, and a t-shirt and asking for Dre, who was in the bedroom asleep. Kendall had lied to the man that Dre wasn’t home and closed the door, then dashed into the bedroom to wake him.

  Dre sat up on the bed, as she asked, “Do you owe someone some money?”

  He cleaned his eyes. “Hell no… Why?”

  “A Mexican just knocked on the door and asked for you, and I told him that you wasn’t home.”

  “What? Asked for me?”

  “Yeah, he asked for Dre.”

  Dre dashed through the living room with his 9mm stuffed in his pocket, ran out into the parking lot, and stopped the man who had been driving a Red BMW X5. “Hey, amigo.”

  The man lowered the window.

  “You looking for Dre?” Dre asked, his hand inside his pocket, caressing his weapon.

  The man smiled and said, “Yeah.” He turned off the ignition. “Can we talk inside?”

  “What the fuck it is we need to talk about?”

  “I came to help.”

  “Help me do what?” Dre was furious now wondering who this strange motherfucker was.

  “Carlos got locked up a week ago, and he told me to call you.”

  Carlos had been Dre’s connect and his homeboy for a while. Carlos was big time, and he’d always consigned Dre small amounts of weed and coke, and Dre had always paid him.

  “He got locked up for what?”

  “The feds picked him up.”

  “And who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m Carlos’ connect, Juan.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Carlos is going to call you tonight.”

  “So what do you want from me?”

  “Can we go inside?” the Mexican asked again.

  Dre looked around before agreeing. “Yeah.”

  Dre and Juan disappeared inside his apartment and sat on opposite ends of the sofa. Juan Marco explained to him that he’d been working with Carlos for five years. He’d already known about him, and Carlos had explained that Dre was very trustworthy. After Carlos had gotten arrested, he’d asked for Dre’s information, but Carlos was hesitant at first, he didn’t want to be cut out; he wanted a piece of the proceeds. Juan would have to put aside ten percent of his profits for Carlos if Dre wanted the opportunity. Dre jumped at the opportunity to supply the Carolinas. Two years later, he was a millionaire.

  Kendall had counted so much money with him, that her hands ached. They would sometimes count money for hours. Dre was a young man, but he possessed an old soul and always mimicked the ways the ways of older people; his father had been a small-time hustler, too. He taught Dre that money counters were bad luck. His father had grown up in a small town called Rock Hill in South Carolina, and he was superstitious and believed in Root Workers. But Kendall had been so sick of counting so much money all they time, she convinced Dre to buy a money counter, and it had made their life that much easier.