Chapter 55: Smart Girls Fight With Drummer Boys

Marley

"Darius, get in the car!" I yell as I clamber down the stairs. "I'm taking you back to TJ's now!"

Darius is in the kitchen, his bags already by the door. His sandwich is dripping mustard as he stares at me. "But you're...you're not dressed."

Bodie is beating down the stairs, his phone still in hand. "Yes I'm fucking pissed!" he barks into the phone. "You had no fucking right to tell her like that—"

"She didn't have a right to tell me!?!?" I yell at him. "Are you fucking kidding me!?!?I don't have a fucking right to know that you—"

"Marley!" Bodie snaps at me, holding out a quelling hand and shooting me a warning look that slides to Darius. "That is not what I meant. And this is not the time. Let me take Darius over to TJ's and let's figure this out—"

"What the hell is going on?" Darius says, catching our anger and putting his sandwich down, looking...scared.

Only the look on his face causes me to master myself. I want to throw everything in this house at Bodie right now. I am so angry.

At him. At me. How could he do that? Bells is bad enough but he likes multiple women in his bed? Our first full night of sex and he was already acting out fantasies. Are the girl-on-girl fantasies what he's going to want next from me?

How the hell have I put myself into the position to get an STI from this...this...man whore? Why didn't he get tested when he came back from Thailand?

What the hell is wrong with me that I didn't make him get tested?

I can't fucking believe this. I am a clinical therapist with a phD and I specialize in abusive relationships and now the man I've professed my undying commitment to, no matter how right or wrong he is, no matter what he does, has probably given me a sexually transmitted infection right out of the gate.

And I let him.

Am I just...dumb? Am I deluded like so many of the patients I have counseled?

Bodie calls me Jasmine. I guess I still am—that stupid girl who will do anything for a man.

"Darius," I repeat through gritted teeth. "Please get in the car. We need to go to TJ's right now. This is nothing you need to worry about, okay?"

"What is going on?" he repeats.

"Nothing that can't be fixed," Bodie says calmly. "It's not a big deal."

That pisses me off all over again. "It's not a big deal?!?!"

Bodie sighs. "Again, not what I mean. I'm sorry, I'm very sorry, but...can we please talk about this in private?"

I can hear Arabella through the phone. She sounds like she's sobbing. I'm afraid she's going to forget all about our agreement and start spilling her guts about the police investigating Cain's disappearance. "OH MY GOD ARABELLA JUST SHUT UP!" I screech.

Bodie narrows his eyes at me. "Jesus, Marley. I'm really surprised at you. This is not the attitude I would think a clinical psychologist would take about this," he turns away from me slightly, speaking into the phone. "Listen, Bells, Imma have to call you back, okay? Don't worry, you'll be fine, I'll be fine, she'll be fine. It will be okay. I'll see you soon."

He turns back to me. "It's not her fault. You know that, Dr. Watkins..."

The way he defends her? The way he talks to her so much more sweetly than me? I lose my shit. I pick up the mustard bottle and throw it at him.

"NO! IT'S NOT HER FAULT! IT'S YOUR FAULT! You misled me about your...recent history! You should have...you should have said something! You should have thought about the possibility..."

Darius eyes go wide at my outburst. "What are you talking about? What's happening?"

"Marley!" Bodie growls at me as the mustard bottle goes wide. "Are you fucking kidding me right now? This is not okay!" He gestures to me and the mustard bottle and Darius. "Just...shut up! This is not how we need to handle—"

"Shut up?" I yell at him. "Shut up? Fine. I'll shut up!!! Because I'm going. To take Darius home."

"This is his home. This is your home. Our home. This is just a misunderstanding, that's all," he looks at me, then Darius.

"What in the hell—" Darius begins, but Bodie cuts him off.

"Look, do what your mama says. Just get in the car, okay? Please, Darius."

Tears of anger are streaming down my face now. Darius looks from me to Bodie. He picks up his bag and walks silently into the garage.

I grab the keys off the hook. Bodie grabs my upper arm.

"Let me take him. I'll talk to him, explain—"

"Take your goddamn hand off me!" I hiss.

Bodie releases me, but he looks wounded. "Baby, calm down, okay? This is nothing. This is a course of antibiotics—"

"You don't know that," I hiss at him. "If you have trich—if I have trich—we could both have anything, Bodie." Another horrifying thought grips me. "Oh my god...did you share needles with those girls, too?"

Bodie's face tightens into anger. "Jesus Fuck, Marley. Of course not."

"Did Arabella?"

The anger drains into a look of uncertainty. "No. No." He shakes his head, looking into the distance. "Bells and I shared needles, but the other girls were all before that started. Bells is clean...I mean...she was clean..."

"Yeah, she's real fucking pure," I spit at him.

"Hey, that's not necessary," he growls. "I get that you are angry—"

"I'm furious. I'm scared. And I feel like you lied to me. All those counseling sessions...you never told me about the other girls. You never told me you shared needles. Arabella could have shared needles with anyone, Bodie. She was shooting meth before she went to Thailand...you told me that..."

He rubs a nervous hand over his lip. "No, I would remember if she was shooting meth there with other people..."

I scrub tears away. "Would you? Are you sure?"

He sighs. "Not a hundred percent sure, no. I do have some missing time..."

"Right. You can't remember a lot of shit that happened in Thailand."

He growls in frustration. "It was god-awful. I try not to think about it—"

"You should have thought about it, Bodie!!!" I scream. "What if you have hepatitis? What if you have HIV? Those are not curable."

He puts a pleading hand out to me. "Baby, please. You are dooms-daying. You are overreacting. "

"I am not!" I yell. "This could affect our future!"

He slams a fist against the wall. "What fucking future, Marley? That place that is already a black fucking hole!?!?! This is just one more thing to throw in there!!!"

The anger and despair in his voice hurts too much. I have to get away from it. I try to open the door but he slams it shut with a fist that he keeps pressed against the door.

"Let me go," I say.

"No."

"Let.Me.Go."

"Please..."

"LET!ME!GO!"

"Goddammit! You are so fucking stubborn, do you know that?!?!" He yells, throwing open the door. "Go!" he yells. "Go!"

I'm backing out of the garage and Bodie is following me, yelling.

"What's he saying?" Darius asks.

"I'm done listening to him right now."

Darius turns down the radio and rolls his window down as I try to escape down the driveway.

Bodie's shouted words follow us. "You better come back when you fucking calm down, Jaz! Because I fucking love you and you fucking know you love me, too! And if you don't come back, I will come over to TJ's and bang the fucking door down to get to you and Darius. I will bang every goddamn door down and fight every fucking fight for you, do you hear me!?!?!"

"Mom—" Darius sighs.

"Darius! Please, please, I'm begging you, just be quiet right now. I will talk to you when I am calm," I plead. He shuts his mouth.

It's a very short drive to TJ's. When we get there, TJ is standing in the driveway, looking over a pile of building materials. When I step out of the car, robed and barefoot, he takes one look at my face and strides forward. "What's wrong?"

I put the heels of my hands in my eye sockets and shake my head mutely.

"Dad gave Mom an STI," Darius says tersely as he grabs his bag out of the car. "But I don't know if it's something stupid like crabs or something serious like HIV, because she won't fucking talk to me about it, she'll only yell at him."

He slams the car door furiously and stomps in the house.

TJ's watches him in disbelief and then turns to me for explanation. I lose it, sobbing.

"Jesus Christ, that kid, he's thirteen going on thirty," he mutters. He pulls my hands away from my face. "Is he right?"

I shake my head. "I don't know. Probably. I need to be tested."

He sighs, putting an arm around me and towing me up the porch steps. "Fuck. That goddamn rock star..."

At the front door, Pat takes one look at my face, throws her dish towel over shoulder and embraces me. "Baby, what in the world has that fool done? Get in this house."

After a quick change into some of Shay's clothes, and a  flurry of demanded explanation from Pat, an attempted evasion on my part ensues. Pat interrogates me while Shay sympathetically pours me a glass of wine. When I won't say why Bodie and I are fighting, and TJ remains mute too, Darius throws open his bedroom door and yells down to Pat and Shay the same sort of blunt account he gave to TJ in the driveway.

Shay and Pat descend into a flurry of indignation, at which point I have to elaborate before she calls up the church prayer chain and starts marshalling everyone to pray that I don't have AIDS or something. So I explain to them, and Pat actually calls Bodie and yells at him and he yells back and says he's coming over and she forbids him to step a foot in the yard and threatens that she's calling his mama right now, because somebody should knock some sense into his idiot brain.

At which point I remember that we were supposed to take Darius to meet Ronna this afternoon and I start crying again, telling that to Pat before I can even realize. Then I have to backpedal. "Bodie thought it would be nice, for his mom to meet Darius, since we are dating now, I mean..."

I escape upstairs where TJ is already sitting in Darius' room, talking to him. I gulp down the last of my wine, join them, and give Darius the briefest explanation I can...that one of Bodie's past partners has apparently been diagnosed with Trichomoniasis, which is a pretty common STI that hardly anyone talks about. TJ jumps in helpfully, reading an internet description. Apparently Bodie is right, it's highly curable with a short dose of antibiotics. Trust a rock star to be in the know on sexually transmitted infections, I guess.

I forgot that both Bodie and I indicated that Arabella was on the other end of his phone, but Darius has not forgotten. He cusses Arabella up a blue streak as the cause of this problem, and then I round out my shitty day by becoming a complete hypocrite and sternly lecturing him against shaming anyone for having an sexually transmitted infection when I did the same damn thing. I finish off with a healthy dose of "this is why talking about sexual history and practicing safe sex is so important" which obviously evident to  my thirteen year old his father and I didn't do that.

At least he has the decency not to call me out on it.

I walk right downstairs into Pat's arms and sob. "I am such a bad mother. Darius should not have to witness any of this."

She pats my back. "Child, you listen to me right now. You are not a bad mother. You have loved that child every day of his life. Worked hard for him. Sacrificed for him. Taught him right from wrong. Been there for every important thing you could. Life is hard and real...and you do the best you can. You've done a damn sight better than I did with his father..." she rocks me and I remember all the times she has done over the years. Sheltered me in her arms like her own daughter.

We don't always see eye to eye, and it's not always easy, between us, but she has never abandoned me when I needed her.

"I love you, Pat," I tell her.

"I love you too, baby," she tells me. "Shay, get her some more wine..."

The rest of the afternoon, Shay and Pat ply me with wine on the back porch and run down Bodie while I feel guilty about running to them for support. I wouldn't have shared this very personal information, but it is my fault nonetheless, because I lost my shit in front of Darius, and I forgot, as always, that he is very smart and very mature and he can read adult situations all too well.

TJ spends  time with Darius laying out the building materials for the shed, and I know he's finding some way to ease Daruis' worries, too. He always does.

"That absolute asshole," Shays says for the twentieth time. "I can't believe Bodie thinks this is okay."

"He wasn't thinking it was okay," I sob. "He was in denial about his behavior. He was ashamed of everything that happened in Thailand."

"And he should be. Damn junkie," Pat says.

"He's clean now," I protest. They both give me an exasperated look.

"You know what I mean," I grab the bottle and pour more wine.

"You know what I think you should do?" Pat says. "You and Darius should stay right here in this house while he goes to LA. That way, he understands, this is serious. That you aren't gonna put up with his rock star nonsense. The boy's a fool, leaving you open to this. Ain't got the sense God gave him."

"Trouble in Paradise City already, Jasmine?" a booming voice flows from the kitchen. I sigh, collecting myself as Daemon opens the refrigerator. I hear the clink of beer bottles as he acquires one. To my extreme displeasure, he collapses down on the rattan patio sofa beside me, throwing an arm around me casually.

Like he didn't try to have me killed not even a month ago.

For Pat's sake, I try not to cringe away, but I can't believe I have to pretend to be family him. His presence makes me feel far worse than Bodie's potentially transmitted sexual infection. I rise, casually, pretending to fill my glass again, and taking the seat beside Shay.

Daemon grins at TJ and Darius in the back yard. "I'll be out there to help y'all in a minute," he lies through the screen as he kicks his pristine tennis shoes up on the table.

TJ rolls his eyes as and Darius hold together some framing and he struggles to reach his drill. "Yeah, you look real eager."

"Dawg, I did enough manual labor in prison to last a lifetime," Daemon laughs back, tipping his beer to his stupid lips.

"Where's your fiancée?" I ask. I really wish she were here. He virtually ignores me, the couple of times I've been here when she is around. He stares at me with a wide grin, clearly enjoying my misery.

"At work. Why the puffy eyes, Babymama? What did my business partner do to you? Do I need to order him a beat down?"

"Why don't you mind your business?" Pat snaps at him, knocking his feet off the table. "Bodie ain't done nothing half as bad as you have, getting young girls pregnant before they are ready and ordering people beat-downs. Couples fight, is all. I expect he'll be over here soon to sort it out."

To my complete and utter shock, she gives me a firm nod, picks up her phone, and dials Bodie again. I hear him answer with a tense, "Whatchyou want now, Grandma?"

"I want you to get your butt over here and make yourself useful."

"Two hours ago you told me not to step foot in your yard!" he yells in exasperation.

"Well that was before I saw how long it's taking for TJ and Darius to put up this shed. I thought you were going to send somebody over to help."

"Shit. I forgot about that."

"Well, bring those burly security guards of yours and y'all get to work."

After a long moment, I hear him ask, "What does Marley say?"

I'm not ready to give up my anger, but there is no way I will refuse Bodie access if Pat is welcoming him, so I give her a shrug, and she says, "She says she don't want my son and grandson to have a heat stroke, neither. Get yourself over here."

"Alright."

"No it ain't, but you better make it alright," Pat snaps as he she hangs up.

"Get 'em, Mama." Daemon chuckles and strolls to get another beer. When he returns, TJ yells, "Dawg!" up at him and gestures indignantly to the material pile.

"Don't worry, Bodie's bringing you some muscle." He gestures at his bright white shirt. "Besides, I ain't dressed for that, and I got somewhere to be. I just came by to visit Mama for a minute."

It's a strange half hour we pass on the porch, Daemon and I playing with Jori now that he's awake from his nap and Shay flitting in and out with Kamila, while Pat roams her kitchen, refusing to let me come in and help with dinner prep as she talks with somebody else on the phone.

When Bodie arrives, already sweat drenched from taking his anger out on the punching bag, he glares up at me and Daemon on the porch.

"You gotta be kidding me," he says, more to me. I shrug.

"Hey," TJ tags Bodie on the shoulder. "Give her some space, man. She has a right to be angry, you know."

"I know," Bodie says and jerks his head at Dre, one of our security guys. They start laying out the framing for a sidewall and Bodie shoots me another angry look for sitting here with Daemon. I surprise myself by flipping him off.

Does he think this is my choice? Darius isn't the only one required to play the Babydaddy game.

Daemon chortles to see Bodie and I at such odds. "That's right. You just stay in your lane down there, Bodie. Don't you worry, I'll talk Jaz down for you. Besides, it's good for Darius to see his parents getting along for a change. Ain't that right, D?"

Darius finds that extremely funny, because his parents are doing anything but getting along right now. "You are so right," he says, with a big fake grin for Daemon. When Daemon's attention is distracted by Jori, Darius gives me an eye roll.

I sigh into my wine. I suppose, like his father, Darius thinks I'm somewhat overreacting.

But neither one of them understand the betrayal I feel. I think Bodie's former lifestyle is finally hitting me. I'm not like Ashlynn or Mac, who have their own pasts that counterbalance the complexity of their rock stars.

I have only ever been with four men, all of them I loved or cared deeply about, or at least I thought I did. Sharing sex means something to me.

I tried to be cool and unaffected by Bodie's past, but the truth is...I'm a very jealous person when it comes to him, and the idea of him sleeping with all those women makes me sick.

It's not just the idea of Bodie's past either. It's like I told him. It's the future, too.

What if trich is not all he has? Not all he transmitted to me last night? A serious diagnosis with an infectious disease could remove certain possibilities for our future.

Like having a baby.

I squeeze the idea of that firmly from my mind.

Instead, I stare at the man across from me who would likely try to kill me and Bodie if he knew the secrets we keep from him.

It is not time to think of the future. Or babies. Not while we are living the thug life.

"Shay, is there more wine?" I call into the kitchen.

"In the garage, just help yourself, I'm feeding Mila..."

I drain my glass and struggle to rise.

Daemon snickers and tips his beer. "You are drunk, Dr. Watkins. Way to support your sober lover."

"Shut-up, fucker," I mutter.

"Damn, you in a foul mood. Really, what did he do? Cheat on you already?"

TJ comes stomping up the porch steps. "Why don't you leave her alone, man? Marley, I'll show you where the wine is..."

I jump up eagerly, grateful to TJ for the escape. In the garage, TJ pulls a beer from the extra fridge and opens me a can of sparkling wine, filling my glass with white instead of red. He leans against the work bench.

"You okay?"

I gulp the wine. "No, I'm not okay. This whole thing going on right now is fucking crazy, you know that right?"

"This is our life now. Our family. At least for a while..."

"I can't do this, TJ...I feel like I'm losing my mind..."

"You can do this, Jaz. You're only losing your mind 'cause you are at odds with your man. You and Bodie need to get right, and the rest will fall in line."

"He probably gave me a disease. Do you know how...gross that feels? It's like I slept with Arabella and all those other girls they slept with..."

"You knew he slept with her and shit ton of other girls. Ya didn't think he was gross when he was sexing you, did ya?"

"No," I mutter resentfully into the wine.

"Then get over it. You're just...mad, is all. Having to deal with his ex about this is what made you so mad. You think I don't know what that feels like? All the times I had to go see Daemon in prison and tell him all about Darius and come home to you two?"

"That was totally different."

"Only for you. But not for me, because I was in love with you. You and I weren't having sex, but damn Jaz, we were a couple in every other way. We even slept in the same bed with Darius when he was little and scared. We were a family, and it pissed me off, that I wasn't his real daddy. I had to get over it."

"How? How did you get over it?"

He finishes the beer, pulls out another one, and takes another hefty swallow. He shrugs. "I just...did. I loved Darius and you more than I loved my own...ego or pride or whatever. Just like now. It ain't easy for me, getting replaced in Darius' life. But I'm working through it. For him. For you."

I feel my tears pool over, sudden and violent. "Darius loves you. You know that."

"I know. And I love him, so I am gonna swallow what I have to swallow. And you love Bodie, so you are gonna do the same."

"God, TJ...this is all so...messy and hard."

He gives me a one handed hug and a temple kiss. "I know, baby girl. Guess what?" he gestures out the open garage, toward the sound of a car that seems very close. Like, in the driveway close.

"What?" I say, turning toward the sound.

"It's about to get messier," he sighs.

"Guess who's else is coming to dinner," he whispers as he squeezes me and releases, stepping forward with open arms.

Ronna Jamison is stepping out of her Mercedes just as Bodie opens the garage door and growls, "Jasmine. You gonna talk about our business to everybody in this family but me?" He sees his mother's car in the driveway and his anger fades into complete exasperation. "Awww, fuck me."

TJ laughs. "No worries, I got this." He walks forward with open arms.

"Mama J! Welcome! You are just in time!"