Before I Let Go Read online

  Darren Coleman

  BEFORE I LET GO

  A Novel

  In Memory of

  Ella Ridley, Sara Carroll, and Meg Chaney

  Dedication,

  The skills, the creativity, and the drive are all gifts from my creator. All thanks are directed to Him. It has been my mother, Doris, however, who has nurtured, taught, and encouraged me from day one. For your support, love, and unyielding devotion, I dedicate this book to you. You are the wind beneath my wings.

  Special Thank You,

  Chiquita Martin, though we are no longer together you must know that you will forever be a part of me. It would take too many words to describe the impact that our relationship had on me writing this novel. Do you remember the song that the deejay played on 12-23-93 as we danced the night away?

  CONTENTS

  1 SURVIVING THE GAME

  2 WHAT YOU WON’T DO FOR LOVE

  3 FRIENDS TILL THE END

  4 SATURDAY NITE LIVE

  5 PLAYER EXTRAORDINAIRE

  6 OFF THE HOOK

  7 THE WAY LOVE GOES

  8 HANDLIN’ YOUR BUSINESS

  9 TRINA-FREE

  10 GOT ’EM OPEN

  11 WEIGHTLESS

  12 THANKSGIVING

  13 ALL I WANTED FOR CHRISTMAS

  14 THINKING OF YOU

  15 RUDE AWAKENINGS

  16 CHOKING ON IT

  17 NO ANGEL IN DISGUISE

  18 IF THE SHOE FITS

  19 “THE TALK”

  20 ONE MONKEY DON’T STOP NO SHOW

  21 DO YOU EVER REALLY LOVE?

  22 CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR

  23 8 MILLION STORIES

  24 A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

  25 A KISS AND A SLIP

  26 FIREWORKS

  27 TRUE TO THY OWN HEART

  28 DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

  29 BOMBS AWAY

  30 LOVE OVERBOARD

  31 IN TOO DEEP

  32 ALL IS FAIR IN LOVE

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  Chapter 1

  SURVIVING THE GAME

  My whole life changed when Shelly said those three little words to me: “Cory, it’s over.”

  We were in the throes of a discussion about how to keep our soon-to-be long-distance relationship alive and well when I left home to go to Atlanta for graduate school. At the time, getting a good job and making plenty of cash were my main concerns. I’d never been rich, but I wasn’t prepared to struggle due to bad decisions either. I believed wholeheartedly that an MBA from Georgia Tech in project management was sure to open a few doors for me in the future.

  I’d done well in undergrad, but it wasn’t as if schools were beating down the doors to get me to choose them. I had attended Morgan State University, a small black school thirty miles from my home in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. It was no secret that the prominent graduate schools held that against you. Their unspoken mantra seemed to shout “Sure, you may have performed well against your peers, but that doesn’t mean that you can make it here with the privileged.” That’s why when I was accepted to grad school at Tech, I chose to go there instead of even thinking about applying to Temple, where Shelly was headed to work on her master’s.

  The fact that I was leaving the D.C. area and heading down south meant that we wouldn’t be within driving distance, but I was convinced we could make it work. I knew it would be difficult missing her. Through my years at Morgan State it had always been easy to find me. If I wasn’t hanging out downtown in the clubs with Brendan and Nate, then it had been a safe bet that Shelly and I were together. Adjustments would have to be made. I’d assured her there would be long weekends and holidays for us to see one another. Hard as it is to believe now, I had had no idea that I was tearing Shelly’s heart apart in ways that I couldn’t have figured out at the time.

  After she’d rocked my world with her statement, Shelly didn’t look me in the eyes. I was speechless, trying to figure out where she was coming from. She went on to say, “A boyfriend 750 miles away can’t meet my needs, Cory.”

  Her words and attitude made her seem like a different person. During the three years we had been together she had never given me any drama other than an occasional lovers’ quarrel, and at first I expected this spat to be no different. But somehow Shelly had turned as cold as ice. I’d thought that I’d picked up on her fears, and maybe she was just feeling unsure of our being able to maintain the relationship over the long distance. When I questioned her about it she told me that she definitely had concerns, but not just about me remaining faithful. When I asked her what she’d meant by that, she flatly said, “When the cat is away the mouse will play.”

  “So what are you saying?” I asked her apprehensively.

  “C’mon, Cory. Do I need to spell it out for you? Be realistic. I…I…just don’t think we can expect to make it. There’ll be so many women down there.”

  “And there’ll be so many men up in Philly.”

  She’d stood up from the couch and said, “Yeah, that too.”

  I lost my temper at that point. I remember saying some nasty things and hearing her cursing me back in a combination of English and Spanish. Shelly was Puerto Rican and always spoke in Spanish, her native tongue, when she got mad or emotional. She didn’t stop until I walked out her front door. Like any young couple we’d had a few major fights, but somehow we’d managed to make up each time. The only difference was that this time, in two days, she’d be leaving for Philly, and I was heading to Atlanta.

  She didn’t ring my phone during those two days, and when I finally called her to apologize, her younger sister Nina made it a point to tell me that Shelly had gone out on a movie date to see He Got Game. If she was trying to make me jealous, it had worked.

  It worked so well, in fact, that my mind began to race with doubts about whether or not I should have ever trusted her.

  At that moment I cut her off from my love and me as far as I was concerned. I hung up and began packing for my trip and my life in Atlanta. I was leaving early. I knew she would probably be calling back later, but I wanted to make sure that it was too late. I called my boys, Brendan and Nate, to see if either of them wanted to ride with me on the ten-hour drive to Atlanta. They both were willing to roll down to keep me company but neither was ready, and my anger wouldn’t let me wait around.

  It turned out to be better that I was alone. I’m not ashamed to admit that I shed a few tears on my ride down 85. I don’t know why I tortured myself by listening to all of that damned slow music. K-Ci and JoJo’s “All My Life,” Brian McKnight’s Anytime, and don’t get me started on R. Kelly. By the time I reached Charlotte my rage had given way to paranoia. I had envisioned R. Kelly going half on a baby with my girl simply because she reminded him of his jeep.

  My shattered ego coupled with my confusion and suddenly everything was all starting to make sense. I reasoned that Shelly must have been cheating all along. That was why she hadn’t made a fuss about my decision to not go to school up North with her.

  “That bitch.” I said that to myself over and over again with each stretch of passing highway. I made up my mind somewhere on that interstate that when I got to Atlanta I was going to be the one keeping it on the down low with someone else’s lady. Nate had always beaten the chicks to the punch with the trickery, and he had never endured half the problems with his women that most men faced in relationships. Instead of dealing with drama, he did dirty then cut things off before the women could do dirty back to him.

  He’d told me that all women are capable of cheating, but not every woman is capable of loving you right. Which meant
that you’re more likely to get a cheater than a good woman. With that in mind a brother had to look out for himself first. And I knew that if anyone knew women, it was Nate. He said that you had to think crazy like a woman if you wanted to survive the game. He did more than survive the game; he seemed to have mastered it. Brendan, on the other hand, had had major problems not getting steamrolled by every woman he dealt with. I was determined not to be like him.

  As far as I was concerned, from that point on, Shelly had ruined it for the women crossing my path in the future. I hadn’t planned to become an all-out dog or anything, but I definitely wasn’t taking any more shit off women. Above all, I was looking out for number one.

  Though it was hard getting over Shelly, the distance helped. The next two years went by quickly, and I barely remember everything or everyone that I did. Atlanta was the bomb. I finished school and landed a job in the sales and acquisitions department of Pavillion Satellite Corporation that started me off with $86,000 a year. I also made a few good friends in Atlanta, mostly buddies I played ball with at Run and Shoot and occasionally hit the clubs with. However, they could never replace my right and left arms. Nate and Brendan were an impossible act to follow. They kept my spirits up through any rough times. I never told them that thoughts of Shelly still haunted me, but I think they knew. It seemed as though they always knew just when to call or set up a trip down.

  They came down to visit almost every other month, and when they did it was always a wild weekend. Nate would tell me that with all the honeys in Atlanta I should have been screwing more. Brendan was always letting me know that I had changed a lot. He would say that, although I seemed more mature, I didn’t seem to be as righteous as I once was. On one trip he stated that he couldn’t believe I hadn’t gotten into a serious relationship since Shelly and I had broken up.

  What I had neglected to explain to him was that I was in a serious relationship. The only thing was that my girlfriend was married. She also happened to be one of my former professors at Georgia Tech and about ten years older than me. I kept that one to myself for a while.

  Chapter 2

  WHAT YOU WON’T DO FOR LOVE

  I had never imagined that I would get involved with another man’s wife. It wasn’t as though I didn’t have any single women to choose from while I was in Atlanta. The ratio had to be somewhere around 10 to 1. I think that getting involved with Paula stemmed from the emptiness that I felt after Shelly and I had broken up. I was trying to fill a hole in my heart that was more like a bottomless pit. Even with all of the lovely sisters in Atlanta, Paula was the first woman I met who had truly fascinated me by stimulating my mind as well as my body.

  On top of that, it didn’t hurt that Paula was fine. I had even fantasized about her many times while I was taking her course, International Business 405, but I had just chalked it up as a crush. That was, until one night when a couple of my coworkers and I met up with one another at a club in downtown Atlanta called Churchill Grounds.

  Churchill Grounds was located on Peachtree Street near the Fox Theatre. Thankfully, it was less than twenty minutes from the job. At six o’clock, when we arrived, the place was just starting to become packed. I was glad that we wouldn’t have to wait for a table, or worse, stand in line to get into the place, like those who arrived after seven.

  We enjoyed the atmosphere that the Grounds was famous for during its Friday night happy hour. We all gobbled down appetizers while we listened to a local jazz band play in the background.

  I made my way through the club and found a comfortable seat at the bar. I could see the stage clearly from where I was sitting. The band was grooving. They were featuring a female vocalist, who was dressed in a shiny, snake-skinned dress. She was doing a rendition of “The Sweetest Taboo” and was belting out the notes just like Sade herself. I was slowly bobbing my head to the beat, almost in a trance from the music and the Remy Martin I had been sipping, when I felt a soft hand gently grab my shoulder. And in the same motion, before I could turn to see who had this delicate touch, she brought her lips close enough to my ears to whisper, “Young man, are you sure that you’re old enough to be in this club?”

  I turned around to see the object of my biggest crush since leaving elementary school. She was standing there smiling, wearing a tight-fitting dress that made me do a double take. I felt as though I was the star in the opening scene of a jazzy urban love story. The ambience, atmosphere, and chemistry were almost too perfect for a love scene. She was as beautiful as I remembered, if not more.

  Luckily, I was enjoying a nice buzz from the two hours of drinking. It helped keep me calm and cool, because even though it was out of character for me, I had to admit I felt a little intimidated by Paula. I know I shouldn’t have, because things were different now. I was no longer a student sneaking glances at her. I had graduated from Tech and was probably making as much money as she was. I was confident in my appearance, because I was sure that with one look at the four-buttoned Armani suit and Prada loafers I was wearing, it would be clear to her that I had arrived.

  With dredged-up confidence and a cool summoned from within, I returned her comment, “Well, fancy meeting my favorite professor and dream girl here.” I shot her a smile that let her know how happy I was to have run into her.

  She placed her hands on her hips. “Dream girl, come on now,” she said. she rolled her eyes up into her pretty head. “Cory, you’re not in school anymore. There’s no need for you to be trying to butter me up, sweetheart. You already got the A from me and long since graduated, I presume.” She broke into a quick laughter and showed her pearly white teeth. Then she looked over her shoulder as if she was looking for someone.

  “Actually, I just graduated last year,” I corrected her, then in an unsolicited response to her action, I asked, “Are you looking for your husband?”

  “Oh no, I’m here with some girlfriends of mine. I thought that one of them was standing behind me. She must’ve walked off.”

  When she turned back around to face me I looked into her beautiful face, smiled again, and asked, “So, can I buy you a drink, Dr. Cooke?”

  She replied sternly, “Didn’t I just remind you that you are not in school anymore? Call me Paula, please. And while you’re getting used to the idea of that, you can get me an apple martini, thanks.”

  We talked for a few moments while I ordered her drink. She then informed me that she and her girlfriends had a table on the other side of the bar, near the pool tables. I was all too pleased when she invited me back to her table to sit with them. I introduced her to my coworkers then I told them I was going with Paula and would be back. I doubted I would but I had to at least say so.

  I was in heaven as I followed her around the bar and past the pool tables. It was hard to believe how great her body looked at thirty-something. She was unbelievable, and as we walked toward the table where she was seated, my mind filled with lustful thoughts as I watched her hips sway back and forth in front of me. I couldn’t see any panty lines, and I imagined her wearing nothing underneath her dress. By the time I reached the table there was a shameful bulge in my pants. I was thankful that my jacket was buttoned.

  “Here, sit next to me, Cory.” Paula pointed toward an empty chair with a blazer draped over it. She then introduced me to the two women seated at the table.

  I was thrilled to be joining the group. I sat down and inched my chair a little closer to Paula’s so she could hear me talking over the band’s funky rendition of “Love No Limit” by Mary J. We talked like two old friends. She even laughed at all of my jokes as time flew by. When the last call for alcohol came, her girlfriends announced that they were ready to go.

  As the ladies gathered their jackets and purses, Paula told me how much she’d enjoyed talking to me and that she hoped to run into me again. That was all the invitation I needed to give her my phone number.

  I, of course, gave her a business card, and then came across a little anxious I’m sure when I wrote my home and cellphone numb
ers on the back of it. I didn’t even care. It had all happened so fast. I wasn’t even thinking that she had been my teacher or that she was a married woman probably ten years my senior. All I could think about was that beautiful face and lovely ass. I wanted her so badly but doubted that anything would materialize from our chance encounter. That was until my phone rang at 3:00 A.M.

  I had been asleep for only about an hour or so. “Hello,” I whispered in a groggy voice.

  “Cory?” the voice on the other end asked.

  “This is Cory.”

  “Hi, handsome man,” came the sexy voice on the other end.

  “Who is…”

  She cut me off. “This is Paula. I’m really sorry for calling you so late. I was just having trouble getting off to sleep.”

  “Paula”, I replied. “Oh no, it’s fine. I’m up.” There was a break in the conversation, and as my consciousness came rushing back to me I continued with, “Aren’t you married? Where’s your husband?” I asked only because I was curious how she could call me at this hour.

  She retorted in a matter-of-fact tone, “My husband is out of town at a conference in Houston…. Look, I’m sorry for disturbing you.” It sounded as though I had blown it. “I didn’t want to give you the wrong impression. I just wanted to talk. I’ll talk to you some other time, okay?”

  I sat straight up in the bed and wiped the corners of my mouth as I spoke. “No, no. I want to talk to you now. I was just a little surprised that you called. That’s all. There is no wrong impression taken.” I began to realize that this was my chance, no matter how tired I was. I went on. “Let’s talk. Shit, let’s go get some breakfast or coffee. Let’s go watch the sunrise.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Extremely! Are you game?”

  “I’ve got a better idea.” Paula paused. “Why don’t I come over there and fix you breakfast?”

  At that moment I believed that the gods were working overtime for me. I quickly accepted her offer. As soon as I had given her directions and hung up the phone, I jumped out of bed to do the quick cleanup job that men do in situations like these. I changed the sheets, put pictures of a girl I’d been dating away, and hid the toothbrush she’d purposely left behind. I thought about trashing all her odds and ends as I removed her shower cap, hairpins, and contact lens cases, emptied the trash cans, and ran the vacuum cleaner. By the time Paula arrived at my place at a little after four in the morning, with a grocery bag filled with eggs, bacon, croissants, and orange juice, my apartment looked like it hadn’t had a woman inside of it in months.