I’ve Got You

Chapter 5

“Do you know any other good estate agents?” Aleshia waited for her sister to reply. She’d been up since seven in the morning, deliberating on her next course of action.

Although Cameron insisted to her he would help search for a place, Aleshia didn’t want to see him again. She hated replaying the frozen disapproval of last night, of being hit with the reality that she couldn’t flirt or admire attention to such a degree, without due consequence. She had responsibilities. It didn’t matter if they were unwanted. She should have kept things purely professional, and never even hinted of her interest. Hell, she probably should have confessed instantly she was looking for a place because she was pregnant. It would have restricted their interactions to a more professional air, and less of a friendly, hopeful tease.

“I know of other estate agents, yes,” Vaneese said slowly, registering the implications of what her sister said. “What brings this on?”

Aleshia played with her bowl of cornflakes, long since soggy from exposure to milk. Her laptop was open on one of her editing tasks, with excel track-sheets of her marketing projects on a separate tab. “I think I need to see more options, is all. I didn’t like the properties I saw when I went with Cameron to them.”

“Girl, you wouldn’t know a good property if it slapped you in the face,” Vaneese countered. “This is nothing to do with the property. It’s to do with Cameron himself, right? Did the drinks not go so well?”

“No,” Aleshia admitted. “They didn’t.”

“Tell me more. Unless you’d rather say it in person.”

The spoon dripped milk as Aleshia raised another wet pile of cornflakes to her mouth. She wiped grit from her eyes with the other hand, congealed at the corners from her crying session last night. “After we talked about, you know, properties, because the bar we went to was real nice, and I was thinking I wouldn’t mind a place like that as well – he started asking if I was single. He was intending to ask me out on a date, Vaneese. I liked the idea a lot, but, you know…”

“I think I can see where this is heading. Go on.”

“Yeah. I spent too long dodging the elephant in the room. The pregnancy and the recently estranged ex. So when I did drop them into the conversation, it was like the Berlin wall had suddenly sprung up between us. Our evening ended very shortly after that.”

“Bas*ard,” Vaneese hissed, in defense of her sister. “I don’t care if he’s Dijon’s friend, when I find him, I’m gonna strangle the living daylight out of him.”

“Oh, come on, Vaneese. What would you expect? I mean, if I found out my potential date was pregnant and still had the number of their ex on their phone, I’d be running out the door screaming.”

“You told him about having the number? For fu*ks sake, you idiot, you shouldn’t have mentioned that. Like, there’s some things that need to be said. That isn’t one of them. Also, why haven’t you deleted it already?”

“Stop. I know. I can’t. Okay? I just can’t. Stop bugging me about it.”

Vaneese drew in a sharp breath. Aleshia pictured her grabbing painkillers from the tabletop, ripping them open to swallow and calm herself down. Whenever Vaneese reached a high stress threshold, she resorted to pills. Sure enough, Aleshia caught the distinctive rustle of material, and the thud of glass touching a solid surface.

“Fine,” Vaneese eventually said. “Part of me hoped maybe you could talk to someone nice, and not a complete controlling asshole like that scumbag Peter. Dijon was telling me that his friend was having some difficulties in his life, with commitment, and so on. Said he was likely to go through the rest of his life perpetually and depressingly single. But perhaps pushing him on someone who has some commitments of their own to sort out isn’t the wisest option.”

“You can say that again.” Aleshia felt sour resentment at her sister, and a small stab of jealously. Vaneese took things for granted at times. She was just so supremely confident that her plans could never go wrong, that nothing she ever said or did had any faulty logic or reasoning behind it, that it galled Aleshia. What made matters worse, was Vaneese usually turned out to be right as well, so if you didn’t believe her on something the first time, she would then gloat about the fact she was right for days. Weeks.

“However, he will find you a good property. And that is the reason why we sent him your way in the first place. Just stick with him. Alright?”

“No. I don’t want to look at him. Can you just – forward me to a good agency?”

Vaneese remained silent a moment. “I think you’re being rash.”

“What is hard to understand about this? We went out, it was fu*ked up. I know he liked me, but once he found out about my condition, things went south. He might be a professional, but I’m not gonna enjoy the Mount Everest atmosphere when speaking and visiting properties with him. Just get me someone else. Or I’ll do it myself.”

Her sister snorted disdain. “You don’t need me to do the legwork. Just contact the agency he works for and request a different agent if it’s such a bother for you. Agency is Miami Summers Properties. I won’t give you the number because you can Google it in about a second. Good luck. And come see me later. I expect it. And I’ll be harassing you over the phone all afternoon if you don’t. Bye.”

 There was a click – Vaneese had hung up. Aleshia scowled at her phone. She considered turning it off for the afternoon, just so she wouldn’t have to worry about being stalked by her sister. Then, a beep sounded – a new text message appeared. Cold dread snaked through Aleshia when she saw the message was from Peter.

Like a driver stopping morbidly to observe a car crash, she tapped on Peter’s name. The message thread showed.

Missing you baby. Can we talk?

Oh, that message was so innocent, so artfully placed – directly counteracting the previous one, which was a hate-spew of volatile emotions. Wh*re was one of the nicer words there. If she bothered contacting him directly, it would allow him to use that manipulative, guilt-lashing tongue to grind her down into a tiny pebble. She stared at his name for a while, then made herself feel a thousand times worse by scrolling through the message thread, before she grew a thick shell over her heart, and analyzed the words objectively, from an author’s point of view.

Peter stuck to the same patterns, she observed. Anger, insults, accusations, followed by wheedling, cringing messages that showed how sorry he was, he didn’t mean what he said, and that he missed her. His habit of skipping or changing subjects entirely when she mentioned the idea that he was welcome to be a father to his child, but she didn’t want to be in a relationship with him anymore, glared out. It was as if his ego simply couldn’t handle the fact that she didn’t want to be with him. He assumed that she had to be with him now, because of the child. So, when she refused him, over and over, he kept resorting to the blackmail over the unborn child, that he would only be a father if she came back.