Yasmin Sullivan - Return to Love

“Here.”

She handed him the case, and he opened it. It was his grandmother’s wedding ring.

“I’m sorry I didn’t have time to mail it.”

“It wasn’t just time. If it was that important, you would have mailed it. There’s a reason you didn’t make the time to do it.”

She considered his statement. Maybe it was true. Maybe she’d dawdled because part of her wanted to keep the past alive, to have a keepsake of it.

“Maybe I wasn’t ready to let it go. I am now.”

“I don’t want this back, Reggie. It was for you.”

“It belongs in your family, Nigel, not mine.”

Nigel shook his head. She knew he was fighting a losing battle over the past. Regina saw the disappointment in his face, but it had to be this way. She went back to the dining table and sat down, turning to look at him seriously.

“Now it really is over between us. There’s no reason we need to have contact again.”

“Reggie, this isn’t what I wanted to happen. I want us to have—”

He moved to touch her, but she pulled away. His touches made her stop thinking straight, and right now, she needed all of her faculties.

“I know this seems crazy after...last night.”

“Last night was something special. Don’t throw it away.”

“I...I’d just been holding so much in for so long. I guess it all came out. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I didn’t know it would happen. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

“It was meant to happen. It’s always been that way between us.”

She shook her head and picked up the check from last night, which was still on the table.

“And this.” She ripped it up like she had the other one. “I’m doing fine on my own, and there is no...child...that you need to care for.”

It was ending, really ending, and her heart had grown heavy with the reality of it, as heavy as the look on Nigel’s face.

She took a teddy bear out of one of the bags on the seat next to hers. It had on a baseball jersey and a cap and had a bat sewn to its hands. It brought tears to her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall.

“Reggie, we’re not meant to end.”

“We ended a long time ago. Over six years ago.”

She turned the teddy bear around in her hand and found a string to pull to make it talk. She fingered the string but didn’t pull it.

“Do you know anyone you can give these to?”

Nigel took a deep breath and looked at the bear in her hands, seeming to feel the same wistfulness she did.

“I have little cousins.”

“Good.”

She shook her head. There was one more thing that she wanted to say.

“Nigel, I’m sorry...it has to end this way.”

But that wasn’t what was on her mind. It wasn’t what was in her heart. She was thinking about having lost their child, but she had no way to speak her shame.

“It shouldn’t end this way. It doesn’t have to.”

“Yes, it does.”

* * *

Nigel carried his packages back down to his car with a heavy heart. He’d almost had it all back, but now he didn’t have any of it. He could have spent all day trying to convince her to give them a chance, but until she could forgive him, he knew that no effort on his part would make a difference.

He opened his trunk and put in the packages. There was no need to keep them now. There was no boy, no girl.

He would have taken the day off if she had been willing to spend it with him. Now he had an hour to get to his place, shower, shave, change clothes and get to the office. Fine.

He’d gone from ecstasy to despair in less than twenty-four hours, and now she had simply shut him down. But he wasn’t going out like that. He had worked too hard to get this far. He would have to bide his time until he could come up with a new point of entry, a new way to get her to soften her heart to him. It still wasn’t over, not yet.

Chapter 4

It had been two weeks since she had seen Nigel, and Regina’s spirits were finally picking up after the emotional turmoil. She had her focus back, and she had an on-site installation to keep her busy.

“Are you going to take off from your morning job tomorrow to get the installation done?”

Amelie was at a workstation in the back of the studio stringing an elaborate necklace—one with rows of turquoise and cowrie shells that tapered to a long V. They didn’t have any customers at the moment, so she and Regina could chat across the back of the shop.

“No, I’ll still need the money,” Regina said. “That’s the only reason I have that secretary job to begin with—steady income until our income here gets steady. Will you be able to stay late next week so that we don’t have to shut down too early?”

“Yeah, no problem. I’ve already covered all of my evening jewelry-making classes at the bead shop. We’ll only have to close early one day.”

Regina had a large order to install in a couple of weeks—a custom kitchen backsplash that she’d been working on for most of the last month. It would bring in some much-needed money, so she had to forgo her hours at the store. Half of the money that came in would be going to renovations, so it was worth losing some income at the store.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Regina said with a smile.

“No prob. You cover for me enough, and you’re here more hours than I am anyway.”

“Yes, but right now, your beadwork is bringing in more income than the mosaic pieces.”

It was true. Amelie was a talented bead artist and sold beadwork supplies as well as her own pieces—mostly jewelry but also hair accents, art objects and even some clothes.

“Oh, mostly the small stuff. My biggest pieces are still sitting here.”

“As are mine.”

Regina made more from her installations than from the studio, but she did mosaics of just about everything one could think of. She had her standing art pieces, but she also did tables, mirrors, planters, sculptures—anything strong enough to stand a layer of tile and grout. For installations, though, she did kitchens, pools, walks, stairs and fireplaces. She’d even done a patio once.

“You know what we need?” Amelie said. “A showing.”

“After we finish the renovations, we should have a real grand opening.”

“And we need to change the name.”

“Actually,” said Regina, “we need to do that now. I’ve been looking into getting our website back on track, and we should get all the updates done at the same time—save money.”

“Speaking of which, I got information about the seminars at the community center you mentioned—the ones I signed us up for.”

Regina looked up from the tiles she was laying out. “Excellent. I’ve been working on the paperwork, but it’s like figuring out tax forms. Why didn’t they teach us this business stuff in college?”

“At least you went to college.”

“Girl, you did, too. You just took your classes in different places one by one. Then you taught yourself. I admire you for that.”

Amelie looked up from her necklace and smiled. “Thank you, sweetie. About the name, we need to get something Black in there, let people know that there are some sisters up in here with some culture.”

“I agree with you there. I actually want to do some more African sculptures. When the front is redone, we can put them in the window with some of your work that has the cowrie beads. More than half of what we do has a Black flavor. We need to find a way to announce that.”

“And we need some incense.”

“No.” Regina groaned and waved her hand in front of her face. “We have enough smells in here with the paints and the clay and your soldering and the hot glue.”

“That’s why we need the incense.”

“No, our classes will pass out from all the fumes.”