Four: Stories of Marriage Read online

  Four:

  Stories of Marriage

  Nia Forrester

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 Stiletto Press, LLC

  Philadelphia, PA

  All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in, or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without express permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  Contents

  A Note on Chronology

  Grace

  Balance

  Growth

  Renewal

  Also by Nia Forrester

  About the Author

  For all of you.

  A Note on Chronology

  When I first released ‘Commitment’ in 2012—yes, it was that long ago—I had no plans to make it a series, nor to revisit Shawn and Riley and their friends, and certainly not one of their parents, as I did in ‘The Fall’. But as often happens, the ‘what if?’ bug bites and you need to scratch the itch. Now, almost seven years later, I am finally closing the book on this generation of characters. And a caveat to those readers who haven’t read my work before now, ‘Four: Stories of Marriage’ is best enjoyed and understood if you first read at least some of the books referenced below, beginning with ‘Commitment’.

  The ‘Commitment’ series has spun off into the ‘Afterwards’ series and to the ‘Mistress, Wife, Mother Trilogy’ and so on. But because each book was entirely unplanned, this one may require some explanation. Some of the occurrences described in ‘Four’ happened somewhere along various parts of the continuum of previous stories.

  In ‘Balance’, Brendan and Tracy’s novella, you may notice that Deuce, Chris Scaife’s eldest son has not yet met Zora, whom he meets in ‘Young, Rich & Black’.You will also note that some of what happens with Jamal and Makayla in ‘The Come Up’ will be in the not too distant past by the time the first of these novellas begins.

  And finally, in ‘Renewal’ Jayson and Keisha of the ‘Mistress, Wife, Mother Trilogy’, have always lived their lives entirely separately, but inextricably influenced by the ‘Commitment’ crew. The timeline for them stands alone.

  In any event, rest assured, after this final chapter for the ‘Commitment’ couples, there is a tiny bit more to be written about Deuce and Zora, their extended friendship circle, and about Jamal and Makayla’s extended circle as well.

  But on behalf of this group: thank you. It’s been one hell of a ride.

  Love & Light,

  Nia

  Grace

  1

  Shawn extricated himself from the covers and maneuvered his way from beneath his son, careful not to disturb his daughter and wife as he got out of bed. Both kids had wandered into the master bedroom in the middle of the night and crawled between them. Cullen was lying horizontally, his feet resting on his mother’s stomach. His head had been on Shawn’s chest. Cassidy had wrapped herself around Riley like a little octopus—arms around her neck, both legs draped across Riley’s middle, and her torso twisted in a way that would have most adults waking up to excruciating back pain.

  Shaking his head, Shawn wondered how his wife could sleep that way, buffeted by their children’s hot little bodies. But she had probably been too tired to care, having gotten home well into the wee hours of the morning after an event downtown. He wasn’t sure precisely what event, because he had long lost track of her engagements and no longer paid much attention to the family calendar that Riley’s assistant, Sara, uploaded weekly onto their shared iCalendar app.

  On and off throughout the day, Shawn got notifications on his phone that let him know where his wife was, and where he was supposed to be. And as if by magic, cars and drivers appeared to shuttle him to appointments around the city.

  A few mornings a week, folders with background prep material arrived by messenger so that he would know precisely who he was meeting with, and what he was meeting about. The cars, and the folders arriving by messenger were Brendan’s handiwork. No longer his manager at least in name, but still terminally organized, Brendan continued to bring order to Shawn’s complicated life, and their even more complicated business interests.

  “Shawn …”

  He turned to see that Riley was awake as well, and slowly, carefully unwinding their daughter’s arms from around herself.

  “… where you headed?”

  “Nowhere yet. Just taking a shower.”

  “Oh.” Riley lay back again, pulling Cass against her once again. “I thought you might have something this morning.”

  “Nah. Later.”

  “Want to have breakfast?” she asked.

  Her eyes were puffy and rimmed in pink. Her dark curls were disheveled, and her cheeks bore creases from the sheets. She was wearing a dressy silk top that had probably been part of her outfit the night before. When she kicked aside the sheets, her legs were bare.

  Shawn’s eyes traveled their length.

  It had been a while since he’d run his hands along them, or had those legs wrapped around him. Long enough for him to have lost track. Three weeks? Four?

  “Yeah, let’s have breakfast. Want to shower with me first?” He inclined his head in the direction of the bathroom.

  They had a long history of shared showers, and most of the time, getting clean was only fifty percent of their mission.

  Riley smiled sleepily. “I would love to. But I’m going to get an extra fifteen minutes while you do that. I’m so freakin’ exhausted.”

  “Then forget about breakfast,” he suggested. “Get some rest. We can do lunch later.”

  “No. Breakfast, now,” Riley said, leaning in and brushing her cheek back and forth against Cassidy’s hair. “I have a few things going on today that I can’t miss, so this might be our only time together.”

  “Okay. Breakfast,” Shawn said, shrugging. “I’ll be out in a few.”

  While standing under the water he thought about the conversation he’d been planning to have with Riley for a while now, the one that there never seemed to be enough time to have. At least not in a meaningful way.

  He was itching to get back to the studio. Writing in his moleskin notebooks and calling it poetry wasn’t working for him any longer. He needed to hear some beats. Shawn hadn’t planned on becoming one of those dudes who fake-retired every five years, not wanting to admit that they reason they left the game was that they feared that they had no game.

  When he walked away, he meant it. His babies were young, and his wife had been in an uncharacteristic homebody phase, and so he wanted to be home, too. He couldn’t have imagined being anyplace other than home.

  Family life was an adventure he and Riley were embarking on together—marriage, pregnancies and parenthood—and he didn’t want to miss a second more of it than was absolutely necessary. Back then, his day could be made just by watching his little girl crawl in hesitant, jerking movements across the living room floor. And he could lose two hours lying in bed next to his son, watching him sleep, marveling at how much he looked like him, only to see a flash of his mother cross his features in the blink of an eye.

  Neither Shawn nor Riley had come from traditional, two-parent households, so it was cool that they were figuring it all out together. He thought they were solid before, but when they became jointly responsible for two little humans, their bond had become unbreakable.

  Lately though, they�
�d hit a different stride where home-life was concerned. The kids were no longer babies, his wife was no longer a homebody, and he needed to get back to work. Finally, after almost three years away, he felt like he had something to say again. Something he wanted to get out there and have people hear. Especially since hip hop was flooded with a lot of rapid-to-market garbage. Hell, even he and Brendan were responsible for putting a lot of crap out there.

  Mediocre music with no message; that was what proliferated these days. The good ones were fewer and farther between. The minute he realized he didn’t even want to listen to a lot of his own artists, Shawn knew it was time to get back to work.

  When he emerged from the bathroom and was toweling off, Riley was sitting up cross-legged in bed, and had changed out of her silky top and into one of his shirts, an old, ripped Nike one that he used to wear to play basketball. It gaped at the neck and hung to one side, exposing a single, smooth shoulder. That shit was sexy as hell. And if both of their kids weren’t also in bed and on either side of her, Shawn would’ve shown his appreciation for just how sexy she was.

  “Are you going to this tomorrow?”

  Riley was looking down at her iPad and had turned it around, so he could look at the screen. It was opened to that damned calendar app. Immediately, all carnal thoughts dissolved.

  “What’s that?” He leaned in to take a closer look at the appointment that was noted there.

  “It’s a bat mitzvah. For Marissa Lehman’s daughter.”

  “Nah,” Shawn said right away.

  “Well … I was hoping that since I’m not going …”

  “I barely know the Lehmans.”

  “That’s not true. We’ve been to their house a hundred times. And didn’t Meyer Lehman invest a lot of money in your company?”

  “Yeah. So what? I gotta pretend to care about his daughter’s birthday party?”

  “It’s not a birthday party, it’s a … Anyway, Shawn, one of us should go.”

  “Brendan’ll probably go. He’s always on top of this kind of thing.”

  “As much as we may love him, Brendan is not a part of this family. I thought we agreed that we would …”

  “Divide and conquer, yeah I know. But I’m rethinking that whole set-up. It’s not workin’ for me lately.”

  “What do you mean it’s …?” Riley glanced down at the kids and then lowered her voice. “Get dressed and meet me in the kitchen, okay? I don’t want to wake these two up if we’re planning to have breakfast alone.”

  She maneuvered her way over Cullen and reached for the iPad, leaving the room with it under her arm.

  Shawn watched her go, his eyes following her backside which had hitched up the rear of the shirt. Shaking his head, he looked away.

  This was what he had come to—sneaking peeks at his own wife’s almost-naked ass, because it had been a dog’s-age since she had exposed it to him of her own accord.

  Breakfast alone was never really breakfast alone.

  Because they had a chef. Tony.

  Handsome enough to have his own gig on the Food Network, Tony also had one other very important talent besides culinary expertise. He could make himself practically invisible. Moving around the kitchen while Shawn and Riley bickered about the Lehman bat mitzvah, he managed to convey the impression he wasn’t even aware that they were there, let alone that he had to be hearing every word they said.

  “… don’t think it has the same meaning if I go, Shawn. And I told you, I’m going to the fundraiser for that councilwoman.”

  “Skip it,” Shawn said. “And we’ll both go to the bat mitzvah. Together.”

  “What?”

  “Skip it,” he said again, this time more slowly. “And we’ll go together.”

  Riley’s shoulders sagged. She was still wearing his shirt but had somewhere along the way found and pulled on a pair of green leggings which Shawn appreciated since he didn’t like the idea of Tony getting a look at more of his wife than was absolutely necessary.

  Riley was sometimes too casual around the staff. She treated everyone like they were part of their extended family. He could handle it fine when it came to friendly conversation—inquiring about their kids and stuff like that—but what was not cool was letting a man who spent several hours every day in their home see too much of her body. It had only happened one time, but that had been plenty.

  Shawn had come home to find Riley sitting on a kitchen stool, yukking it up with Tony while wearing only a long tank that stopped a few inches above her knees. And, as was her habit, her feet were resting on the stool next to hers. Riley’s legs were long and smooth, well-toned and beautiful. So, it was hard not to notice them. They were what immediately caught Shawn’s eye when he walked in the room, and he refused to believe Tony hadn’t been checking them out as well.

  During the fight he and Riley had about it later, it was the same script as always: she didn’t see what the big deal was, and he did.

  “I just told you. I have to go to …”

  “‘Have to’ isn’t exactly true, though,” Shawn said. “You can always send someone else.”

  Riley pursed her lips. “I could …” she began.

  “Then do it. Come with me instead.”

  During the ride uptown, or while they were getting ready, he could tell her what he was thinking, about getting back in the studio. But that was only part of it. They hadn’t been out together in a long time. These days, the only things they did as a couple were family-oriented events with their friends and their kids. Otherwise, they were basically leading separate lives.

  The money Riley had invested years ago into starting a literary journal had paid off as a modestly successful, small publishing company consisting of two magazines—Literati and Polis. Literati was her first project, the quarterly journal publishing the short stories, and poetry—much of it experimental and cutting edge—of writers and poets who were largely ignored by other publications.

  Predictably, that didn’t exactly turn out to be a cash cow, so she developed the second one, Polis, which gave a platform to Black writers of social and political commentary, satire and exposés. His mother-in-law, Lorna had written a few pieces for that one, as had some of the more controversial and current Black voices. Polis made much more money and took up much more of Riley’s time.

  At least three nights a week, she was out late, attending fundraisers, symposia, book readings. And Shawn, who found that whole scene a little too self-consciously intellectual, rarely wanted to go with her. The same was true of her when it came to his events, which were launch parties, investor dinners, and award shows. Gradually, they had begun to let each other off the hook, comfortable enough in their coupledom to admit that they didn’t have to like all the same things or go to every event together.

  Riley seemed to be thinking about his request.

  “So … just skip it?” she asked, as though the thought was subversive.

  “Yeah,” Shawn said, just as Tony set two plates in front of them. “You know I don’t care about a bat mitzvah. I just miss my wife.”

  Riley’s shoulders sagged a little and her lower lip pouted, almost imperceptibly.

  And with that look, Shawn knew he had her.

  2

  How much did you put in there?”

  Riley sealed the envelope just as she and Shawn got into the backseat of the SUV that was chauffeuring them to the Lehman family celebration. She glanced at him as he asked the question and grimaced but didn’t answer. She had researched online appropriate amounts for bat mitzvah gifts, and it turned out there was no such thing, but apparently, parents weren’t above taking note of the sum given to their child and by whom.

  “That much, huh?” He laughed.

  “I feel a little sick to my stomach that we’re giving all this money to a thirteen-year-old to tell you the truth,” Riley said.

  “A thirteen-year-old whose parents are already rich.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Riley said. “Meanwhile across town
at Adrienne Laylor’s fundraiser they’re struggling to convince people that poor kids in the Bronx need to have cool air in their classrooms in the summer, and heat in the winter.”

  “This is gon’ be a really long night if you plan on lecturing everyone at the party about poor kids in the Bronx while they’re eating their lobster and prime rib.”

  Riley smacked him on his thigh. “I don’t plan to lecture anyone, Shawn.”

  “You’ll just quietly judge them.”

  “Exactly.”

  Shawn grinned, shaking his head. She leaned into him, her nostrils filling for a moment with the subtle musky scent that was his favorite cologne. Something about it always made her mind go almost immediately to some very risqué places. He seemed to know it, too, because he turned and looked at her, his eyes falling to her lips like he was thinking about kissing her.

  Leaning closer, hoping to encourage him to follow through on that idea, Riley felt the envelope slip from between her fingers and onto the floor at her feet. She and Shawn bent forward simultaneously to retrieve it, almost butting heads. With their faces close like that, it was inevitable that he would close the distance. She shut her eyes when his lips touched hers and his tongue teased the seam of hers.

  He licked his lower lip as he pulled back. “To be continued, Mrs. Gardner.”

  “Promise?”

  “If you can keep your kids out of our bed, yeah.”

  “Says the man who sometimes falls asleep in their beds with them.”

  “I’m bolting the door tonight though. Believe that.” He ran his fingertips along the length of her bare arm, before letting his hand fall and fingers interlace with hers, between them on the leather seat.

  Riley took a moment to look out the window at the city passing them by. Wealth had a way of erecting a glossy screen between a person and the rest of the world. Fame did that as well. She wasn’t famous, except as Shawn’s wife, and so most of the time she could do the things any other New Yorker did. She rode the subway, she slipped out of her office at lunchtime and ate at street-corner food trucks or took a laptop to work in Starbucks just because she felt like a change of scenery.