"CrAzy LoVe"

"CrAzy LoVe"
By: Sugaree

Skyla watched as the man she loved dearly walked down her street at 2:30 a. m. to meet another woman. She couldn’t believe herself, let alone his nerves to even discuss his arrangements to let a woman he had an affair with in between the times they were not together, meet him.

She felt sick to her stomach as Lance reasoned with her that this woman he was meeting would give him the one-thousand dollars she needed to fix her SUV. Although it sounded appealing, the very thought of what he would have to do to get it from her made her weak.

“So, I am supposed to believe that you wont have to sleep with this woman, who, by the way, is supposedly pregnant by you?! Skyla asked in a calmed fury.

“Look, it’s not like you think. I was with some family members at the casino. She was there with them and diggin’ on me. I had lost all of my money already so she offered to let me try again. I lost hers too but she just kept giving more. I don’t know, I was a little tipsy and she was a little on the fatal attraction side…just wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone, so I just kept getting the money,” Lance rationalized, putting emphasis on the money.

“Yeah, I’ll bet. So, this woman, who you did not know at all, just kept giving you money till your ‘bill’ was $700. Right? C’mon now…who the fuck do you think you’re talkin’ to?” Skyla growled as she sat up from her comfortable position in the very spot he had just made passionate love to her in. Her body still trembled in the heat he’d just burned her mind, body and soul with.

“Yes, then we left and had more drinks. She was pissed and I was trying to calm her down about losing her money like that. She wanted me to go with her to get something to eat. When we got back to Tyrone’s house, everyone was sleep. She wanted something! Anything! She started kissing on my chest, going down, till she was down on her knees…hell, you wouldn’t even talk to me. What’s a man to do? Look, I told you that I was drunk. Stop trippin’ cause we whattin’ ta’gether anyway,” Lance said in a heave.

“Okay, so now you are telling me that you fucked a woman that did not know you, or you her, for money without a fuckin’ condom?” Skyla screamed at him, staring him directly into his eyes that were big with the heat of the argument.

“Yes, and I do know that was fucked up, but look…I was high!

“That is not an excuse if this woman you never told me about your naked sex with has some kinda disease, DeLance Trevell McGreggor! I am not so worried about the baby. That’s on you! By the way, if this bitch didn’t know you, and you don’t know her, how the fuck is it that you are soooo sure it’s yo baby, Baby? Skyla was hysterical at this point. I don’t fuckin’ believe what I am hearing here, Lance….give me a break!”

“Look, I don’t have any money to fix the damm truck and you don’t either, right? So, this is what I am gonna do.”

“I guess I don’t have a choice in this matter huh?” Skyla said as she grabbed his alcoholic beverage and took a huge gulp.

“Yeah, you got a better way?” He turned from the mirror where he was lining his mustache to look at Skyla for the answer.

“No. I don’t! she shouted.

“Well, here it is. Now you with me on this or not?” he asked, looking at Skyla as if he had some real love for her.

“Okay. But when will you be back?”

“I’ll be back in about three hours. I’m telling you. I don’t like this woman but if she wants to give her money up like that, fuck it …I’ll take it,” he continued to rationalize.

Skyla laid back down, but at the foot of the bed closer to where he was now putting some cologne on yet another woman had purchased out of her love for him on. She knew that he was going to do it with or without her consent. If not tonight, another day, if not at day break when he called one of his buddies to pick him up.

“Ok, I am going to make that call now. I need you to just chill, ok?” he looked at her, caressed the small of her back as she was laying on her stomach with her head propped in her hand. She could feel that uncomfortable roar she always felt during stressful moments and decided to try to calm down. She inhaled deeply, attempting to change her thoughts of kicking him in the face, or worse, cutting him with the razor she'd placed in her nightstand.

“Yeah. Do what you do! Skyla could hear a voice say, not wanting to believe it had come out of her own mouth. She had felt a quick headache that was probably her indication that she was changing into another person. Her rage was almost out of control, again. She was not sure. She took more deep breaths.

Lance dialed the woman’s number. He motioned her to move over so that he could sit next to her while he made the plans to meet her at a nearby gas station.

“Yeah, I will meet you at the Total Mart gas station on the corner of 60th and Hope road.
When you get off the highway, page me and I will be on my way,” he said the woman with too much familiarity in his voice for Skyla.

“What about yo’ woman,” the woman asked. Skyla was so close to Lance that she could feel his body heat and hear her through the receiver.
“Look, let me worry about that,” he said in an authoritative tone.

The call ended. Skyla was searing with anger when a voice she was all too familiar with spoke on her behalf in a maniacal yet smooth rage. She rose from her position placing her arms around his neck, staring at him with a sensuous yet conning smile through the dresser’s mirror reflection.

“This bitch sure does talk like she knows you much more than you claim. But, fuck her! She knows that you will be leaving my house to meet her and obviously she don’t give a dammm….so, hey. Get that money, Baby,” Skyla said in yet another calmed fury.

Lance looked at Skyla with a raised eyebrow. “See, now you tripping. What’s on yo’ mind? as he continued to dress in his velvet designer jogging suit some other unknown woman had purchased for him. He sensed the danger lurking inside of Skyla.

“Nothing, Baby. Do what you gotta do. But, I do have one more question. Why would you put cologne on for a bitch you claim you don’t have any feelings for?”

“Damm, stop trippin’ Sky. I will be back with the money. You wont be trippin’ when yo truck is running again, now will you.”

Skyla thought about it a quick second. “Hmmm, I guess you are right. At first I was tripping on the fact that you would do a woman like that. But, like I heard through the phone, she does not give a damm about steppin’ on my toes so fuck her too.”

Lance’s pager beeped insistently. He picked it up to view the number he was expecting to receive in the hour and a half it took for his victim to drive from her town to the gas station of their meeting.

He dialed the number without looking at Skyla as she sighed still in contempt of this scandalous plot to get money. “Yeah, I’m leaving out now…be about 10 minutes.”

Lance looked for his jacket that he had worn over just a few days earlier when the weather was not as cold and no snow on the ground. He desperately needed a coat in the single digit temperatures Milwaukee had to offer.

“Have you seen my jacket?” he asked looking in the pile of clothes they had stripped off in their last moment’s heat of passion.

“No. Didn’t you have it downstairs?” she asked calmly.

“Yeah, I looked down there already,” he explained looking at Skyla curiously.

“Why you looking at me like I hid the damm thing?” Skyla said with squinted eyes.

“I aint gonna trip. I will just throw one of the jackets in the closet on,” he said as he started down the stairs.

“Wait! You not even gonna kiss me goodbye?” Skyla asked in the sexiest voice that she could muster up during such a precarious time for her man.

Lance stopped half way down the stairs, turned around slowly, and looked up at Skyla that was purposely letting her silk robe fall open to bare the goods he had just ravished.

“Yeah, but why you trippin’ still. I wouldn’t do nothing to hurt you anymore.”

“Ok, yeah…I know,” Skyla said as she stepped down two stairs to meet him. She placed her arms around him as if that was the last time she would ever feel his body next to hers. She kissed him deeper than she had since they started dating again. She wanted to beg him not to go, but her inner voice that was telling her to kick him the rest of the way down the stairs would not let her. Her eyes fixed on a spot between his eyes is where the inner voice begged her to spit. She smiled to herself pushing the thought aside.

Lance turned to continue down the stairs without looking back up at Skyla upon finishing their heated kiss.

Skyla chuckled to herself as she thought about Evelyn Champagne King’s song, “Kisses Don’t Lie.” The tune played in her head until she went to her computer, found the song and played it since she knew that sleep would not be accompanying her this night.

She paced the floor for what seemed like hours. She decided to press the redial button to retrieve the cell phone number he had called. She wrote it down just in case she couldn’t take him being away from her too much longer.

Five o’clock a. m. came and Skyla was still seething in anger, replaying the scene that had gotten them to the point where he had the audacity to even ask her to be a part of the demise of another woman, not including how disrespectful it all was to her.

It was still too early in the morning to call her best friend, Tanisha, as well as too embarrassing to try to explain. She decided to get online and chat with a stranger, a person that she could just vent to without any repercussions of being the scandalous, conniving woman she had been to tolerate such a ‘pimpish’ mentality.

Before searching in Yahoo! for a fitting chat room, she found a collection of songs Lance had gathered on the computer for one of their late night love making sessions. She looked at the list, reminiscing happier moments. She did not find any of his collection suitable for her pensive mood and decided to search her sad song collection she had gathered another time when their love took its dive to the dumps.

She chose their special collection of favorite Teena Marie songs, “Yes Indeed.” Immediately as Teena’s sultry tunes graced her ears, tears started to fall. Since hours had passed without hearing from Lance, all she could do was sit and imagine what the pair was doing. Images of his deeply tanned naked skin, sweating in the heat of passion’s sweet dessert with another woman, tore through the fine membranes of her brain.

She pushed back from the computer, floated downstairs to where Lance kept a stash of his liquor, poured some into a tall glass, then returned to Teena Marie confessing her love to her detached lover. Never once did the tears stop falling as she partook in the act of self-medicating herself with an alcoholic beverage at five something in the morning.

Another song from the same collection followed keeping the flow of tears staining the unwashed makeup she had put on just for Lance’s delight earlier. Black mascara ran down her reddened cheeks and burned her saddened eyes. The Kleenex that sat on the desk stood out now if it knew its purpose. She had been there before with this same box.

She logged into the selected chat room typing in desperately, “Is there a real man on here that can explain something to me about men, please?”

A few replied soliciting cybersex until finally, one that appeared to be intelligent enough to read the posted message, replied. She explained her pain to this stranger, tears still flowing.

He replied: “No real man would treat a woman that he loves so disrespectfully. You should be happy that he did it and never let him back into your house. You are better off without him.”

Skyla replied: But I was a part of that plan. I allowed it.

He: Still, he would not have even had the nerves to mention, let alone, do it! Trust me. I am a man and I know that a real man would not hurt his woman like that.

Skyla leaned back in the office chair to let the words she knew to be true this stranger offered her sink in. She knew that he was right. She knew that she was not the type of woman to assist a man in the demise of another woman.

Skyla: But, she did not care about the fact that he had a woman. Why am I tripping on what our plans are with her?

He: Well, just what do you think they are doing? If he told you that he was not going to sleep with this woman for that amount of money, he is lying to you. More disrespect by insulting your intelligence.

Those images had already visited Skyla’s mind. Her tears poured out as if she sprang a leak. She grabbed the drink, frantically attempting to sip away the images of her man making love with this faceless woman that admired his loving so that she was willing to claim pregnancy as well as pay for more of him.

Skyla replied to her new cyber friend: You are right. I know this already. But, what do I do about my love for him? How will I get rid of this pain? I can agree now, but if he comes to my door right now, I will embrace him…probably not kiss his nasty lips, but all the same, I would welcome him back.

Skyla sat back again, awaiting her witty cyber friend’s response to such an ignorant love confession.

She collected herself a bit, just enough that if her sixteen year old daughter was to wake since it was now eight o’clock in the morning, that she would not see her sitting at a computer, typing and crying in the absence of her thug lover. She typed into the chat platform: I will be back. I have to use the washroom.

She went to the bathroom, turned the water on and stared into her puffed red eyes with disgust. She grabbed a clean face towel that rested next to the one Lance had last used. She pulled his from the towel rack, tossing it into the hamper. As she washed her face, another crying spell took over.

The phone rang. She rushed to it, looked at the caller ID noting that the number was the same one she had copied from the redial button earlier. She hoped that it was Lance disrespecting his prey the same way in which he had done her by calling another woman on her phone.

“Hello,” she said in a fake cheerful voice trying to hide her latest bout of cries.

“This is Shamika, Lance’s friend. I don’t mean to disrespect you by calling your house but I noticed you number on my phone. I had heard your name called before when I was at his mother’s house. I just wanted to ask you a few questions to see if Lance is on the up and up before I give him another dime,” she pleaded into the receiver.

“Oh, no problem. What do you want to know?”

“First of all, are you and Lance dating?”

Skyla hesitated to respond with such a huge lie, but decided that Lance would be pleased to know that she kept her cool and went along with their plans to get money from this woman.

“No, not anymore. We used to a while back. I have known him for years. We had a relationship, but decided that we were better off friends,” she asserted gracefully in the face of a woman that deceitfully picked her man up near her house.

“Oh, I see. I didn’t want him disrespecting you by calling me from your house like he did,” she said attempting to provoke Skyla into telling her more about their relationship.

“No…I was sitting right next to him when he called you.”

“Well, that’s what he said. I was just making sure cause you know how men are.”

“Is there anything else?” Skyla asked wanting to end this conversation before her mouth let the truth soar out through her enraged lips. She was angry that it had not been Lance on the phone letting her know that he cared and would be back soon.

“Lance said this but, well, you know….men can and will lie. He said that you have a boyfriend that is a cop?”

“Yes. I do,” Skyla lied again, shocked that Lance had told her business to this woman.

Earlier that week, Skyla was angry at Lance’s nonchalant behavior considering his financial condition. They both smoked and Skyla had been footing the bill for cigarettes the last few days. Her Jeep was not working so they had to walk to the store to purchase them. She was appalled by the fact that he wanted her to walk to the store. She decided to show him that if he didn’t do what she wanted someone else would.

As Skyla listened to Shamika go on and on about Lance and their plans with her unborn child Lance has fathered, she drifted back to that day when she decided to show him:

Skyla reached for the towel that was normally placed on the nightstand before going to bed when Lance was there. Since their torrid love affair was lust based, more than likely they would make love sometimes during the night and morning. The after affects of his loving usually had her in a twisted state of mind. She never knew which mood would be present afterwards.

Most of the time, it would be the “submissive to his every need” mood. That particular morning he made especially sweet love to her, leaving not one spot on her lust-ridden body untouched and thoroughly satisfied. This scared her. She had fallen prey to him before confusing the chemical infusion of the hormone he stirred in her with love.

After that sweltering rendezvous of blissful passion, her guards went up. She gasped for her breath after he released her from the clenches of his strong hold. Even though he was no longer inside of her, the very thought of his passion sent her into yet another convulsive fit of orgasmic bliss. Her defenses immediately provoked an evilness that shocked even her. She tried hard to suppress what was about to happen; to no avail

“You’re not going to get us any cigarettes?” she asked despite him telling her that it was her turn to walk to the gas station only one and a half blocks away.

“Nawl. I walked up there the last time.”

“Oh yeah…that’s how you see it? Well, fuck it then! Did you pay for them the last time is what you need to concentrate on you selfish bastard.”?

Lance watched as Skyla turned over to reach for the phone. Skyla watched with him. She too could not believe what she was witnessing. Her fingers dialed a former lover that had been trying to get with her recently. She knew that he would do anything just to see her.

“What the fuck is wrong with you! He shouted at Skyla, looking at her complete change in mannerisms, facial expression, mood and anything else that resembled the woman he had just ravenously fucked until she screamed out in an unidentified language.

“Nothing! She shouted, still dialing. "Hey sweetie.”

“What a surprise. I’m just getting ready to go to work. What are you doing? The man she called, Spare Tire, answered.

“Not much. Just over here in desperate need of a cigarette.”

“Well, you want me to bring you some on my way to work?”

“Sure, that would be so sweet of you.”

She hung the phone up, hastily jumped out of the bed and then got into a much-needed hot shower in the attempt to calm down. Her underlying rude mood still lingered as she snatched at each item of clothing she gathered to put on. She never looked Lance in his eyes, knowing that the heat from his eyes would melt her only defense; to toy with his unfounded male ego.

She stopped reminiscing when she heard the word ‘hotel’ come from the receiver of the phone. Shamika had been rambling on and on about herself about things Skyla was not interesting in knowing about her.

“Well, I just thought I would call you to ask you woman to woman if Lance was on the up and up since I was out and he stayed back at the hotel,” the voice of the woman stated.

“Hotel? Did you say hotel?” Skyla managed to ask without emotion.

“Yeah. You probably know already that Lance thinks he got it like that cause he got a big dick,” Shamika said to her in a matter of fact tone.

Skyla did not want any parts of responding to that question. She remained silent. She could feel the full-fledged rage of fire flaring in her background. Her eyes squinted, lips curled and heart rate skyrocketed. The inferno of another being within her was present and she had no control over it now. In the split second that it took her obvious alter to erupted; she was also able to diminish that flame with a breathing technique she had learned.

She was not able to conceal the voice that took over to speak with Shamika at that point.

“Lance is a great man. Don’t worry yourself about him. We had our differences, but that’s just a fling of the past. I can assure you that. You are having his child, right? Then do what you need to do. He is a very loving father to his children. You two really need to get it together for that baby,” she maniacally lied in that mysterious voice that took over her own.

Skyla listened to her own strange voice as it lied to this young woman. She wanted to tell her that this voice was lying but her mouth would not open when she attempted to speak. All she could do was listen as the voice piled the crap on and on and on about how good of a man Lance was.

Suddenly Skyla had a flash of what this voice had said to the clerk she had gotten to know at the gas station Lance was meeting Shamika at.

Skyla remembered the voice saying to the clerk, “Hello there, Carl. How have you been?”

“I've been good. Who is this?” Carl asked, not too sure, but kind of.

“This is Skyla, the voice lied. I need a quick favor from you, ok?”

“Yeeeesss? Anything for my dear estranged friend.”

“Do you see a car just sitting out in your parking lot? There should be a tall man in a Dickie work jacket walking towards it as we speak…?”

Yes. I do see a car, but no one walking—Wait, there is someone walking up. What’s going on?” he questioned with a bit of concern in his voice.

“Well, all I need for you to do is look at the license plate number, make and model. That’s it,” Skyla’s alter voice asked in an undeniably sexy flirtatious tone.

“No problem. Is there something I should know?”

“I’ll fill you in on the details later. Can you do that now?” she asked impatiently.

“Okay, but the one that was walking just came in to grab a pack of cigarettes.”

“Yes, that’s a good thing, “ she said, thinking Lance was true to his word that he would bring some cigarettes back before going.

“Hold on a minute.” Skyla heard Carl wait on Lance.

“Can I get a pack of Virginia Slims regular?” Lance asked.

“Nope. Fresh out of them. Can I get you something else,” Carl said in his regular kind customer servant’s voice.

“Well, let me get a pack of Newport 100’s,” Lance said in the absence of Skyla’s favored brand.

“Sure. Is there anything else?” Well that will be $3.79. Thank you and come again.”

“Ok. Skyla? I’m back. Now he is walking back to the truck leaning down on the passenger side."

“Well, don’t forget to get that info I asked for,” Skyla said, still using the foreign voice.

“Consider it done!”

“Ok. I will call you back for the info and to fill you in,” she said pretending to be in a rush to get off the phone.

Shamika was still rambling on about Lance on the phone when she finished that flashback.

“Well, I appreciate the info. Please don’t tell Lance that I called. I just needed to know.”

“Ok. No problem. Anything else you need to know. But, rest assured that the two of us are history. The last time we accidentally made love was in May…no, wait a minute….it was March. I remember now. It was on my birthday,” Skyla lied again.

It was actually on another woman’s birthday that Lance claimed meant nothing to him as a lover’s birthday. March 4th, 2003. She remembered this day since Lance had made the effort to remember it and had the nerves to vocalize it to her knowing how she felt about him and that particular woman and the situation surrounding it.

“Well, I am back at the hotel now. I wont mention this call. Please don’t you mention it either,” Shamika asked in a desperate tone.
`````````````````````````````````````````````````

Skyla assured her that she would not say a word. She hung the phone up, this time it was her talking for sure. No alter ego protecting her from this pain. She fell to the bathroom floor in love’s agony. She had not heard from Lance in seven whole days. Her heart was like pulverized liver. She tried each day to get out of bed. Her dreams were filled with images of Lance and this woman making passionate love, her love that she was supposed be getting.

She could feel that Lance was afraid to call her since he had been away so long…or maybe the woman had changed the story around….she just did not know. All she could do was think about how well things had been going before the day she so totally disrespected him by having another man there while he was. A cop.