Better for Us Page 3

  “Do you want to pray, Noel?” Donald finally asked.

  “I’m not sure what I want right now, Donald. I just know that I’m starting to feel that same hurt that drove me to the bottle in the first place.”

  * * *

  “Mommy, Mommy, do I smell French toast?” Jaylen asked as she ran into the kitchen with her grandmother trailing behind.

  Jaylen’s favorite breakfast was French toast, and considering the news that Ryla had to deliver this morning, she figured that she’d better step her game up from the Cap’n Crunch, cereal she let Jaylen eat on Saturday morning. “And check it out,” Ryla boasted. “I got you some strawberry syrup, powdered sugar and whipped cream.”

  Jaylen jumped for joy. “Just like we put on the waffles. Is this a special day or something?”

  Okay, maybe she went a bit overboard, but it wasn’t every day that a little girl met her father for the first time. Noel had been so angry last night that he hadn’t told her what time he would be back today. But she wasn’t concerned about that, because if she knew nothing else, she knew that Noel Carter would be ringing her doorbell at his earliest convenience today. “It’s not a special day, honey. But let’s hurry up and eat, because there is something I’d like to talk to you about.” Ryla turned and looked at her mom with imploring eyes. “Do you think you can hang out with us for a little while this morning?”

  Juanita Evans-Berkley gave her daughter a big Texas smile as she sat her Coach purse down on the counter. “Are you kidding? For French toast with strawberry syrup, I’ll hang out with y’all all day.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” Ryla said, grateful that she would have a shoulder to lean on today. “Well, ladies, help me set the table so we can eat.”

  Ryla went to the refrigerator and took out the apple juice and orange juice, while Juanita took the plates out of the cabinet. Jaylen grabbed the napkins and forks. As Ryla put three glasses on the table her hand was shaking a bit.

  Juanita glanced at Ryla. “Is everything okay?”

  Ryla poured apple juice for Jaylen and then picked up the orange juice to pour herself and her mother a glass. “Sure, everything’s okay,” she said. But then the doorbell rang and Ryla almost dropped the juice. She gripped the orange juice bottle with a firmer hand and poured the juice in the glasses. She then put both juices back in the refrigerator and started chewing on her index finger.

  “What’s wrong?” her mother asked.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Ryla hurriedly said. “Why do you think something’s wrong?”

  “Well, for one thing, you’re chewing on your finger. You only do that when you’re trying to figure out how to get out of something. The doorbell has rung twice so far, but you haven’t yet moved an inch to answer it.”

  Ryla took her finger out of her mouth and stepped away from the stove. “Can you fix Jaylen’s plate while I go and see who’s at the door?”

  “Sure thing, hon,” her mother said with a lifted brow.

  Ryla took baby steps all the way to the front door. She fully expected Noel to show up again today, but not at ten in the morning. She had hoped he would at least give her until noon to break the news to their daughter. But as she looked out the peephole at the double-fudge fine black man standing on her porch, her suspicions were confirmed. She had to take a moment to study his face before opening the door. From his short fade to the well-manicured goatee, to his Hershey’s Kiss chocolate skin, everything on Noel was perfection.

  Well, everything but the scowl on his face as he pushed the buzzer several times in a row. Ryla swung the door open. “My goodness, do you really need to wake the neighborhood?”

  “I’ve been standing here for five minutes. And I know it doesn’t take that long to get to the front door in your house.”

  Was that supposed to be some sort of crack about the size of her house? She put her hand on her hip and protested, “I was busy. And you did come over here without calling first.”

  “Do I have your number?” Noel rhetorically asked.

  Noel’s voice was rising, so Ryla stepped out on the porch and closed the door behind her. “You might want to keep it down a bit.”

  With nostrils flaring, Noel said, “I didn’t come over here to play games with you, Ryla. Is Jaylen home this morning or not?”

  Nodding, she said, “She and my mother just arrived. But I haven’t had time to tell her about you yet.”

  “When do you suppose you’ll get around to that?” he asked, in a sarcasm-infused tone.

  “She’s eating breakfast right now. I was going to tell her as soon as she finished.” She tried to shoo him off the porch. “So, can you just come back in about an hour or two?”

  Noel’s feet were firmly planted. “I’m not leaving until I meet Jaylen, so I hope you’ve fixed enough breakfast for me.”

  “Why do you have to be such a bully? Can’t you understand that I need to break this to Jaylen gently?” Ryla knew that denying Jaylen the access to her father was wrong, even though her reason for doing so was to save her daughter from heartache later down the line. Ryla needed to clean up her own mess. She needed to make sure she didn’t do any further harm to her daughter.

  “I thought you said that she’s been asking to meet me for a year now.” He looked at her as if they were having a “duh” moment. “The simplest thing to do would be for both of us to go in there, sit down with Jaylen and tell her how you kept her from me all these years.”

  Ryla’s mouth fell open. “You wouldn’t dare do something like that.”

  “You don’t think so...? Watch me.” Noel stepped away from Ryla and put his hand on the doorknob.

  Ryla grabbed his arm. “Okay, okay, you win.”

  He turned back around. “And what exactly have I won, Ryla?”

  “You don’t have to leave. I’ll go inside and talk to Jaylen right now, just go back to your car for a minute.”

  With a raised eyebrow he asked, “How long?”

  “Give me ten minutes.” As he got ready to step off the porch, Ryla grabbed his arm again. “You won’t say anything bad about me to Jaylen, will you?”

  “That depends,” Noel said with a devilish grin. “Have you been saying anything bad about me in all these years that you’ve had her to yourself?”

  Shaking her head at the notion, Ryla said, “That’s ridiculous, Noel. I’ve never said a bad word about you to Jaylen!”

  “Oh, you haven’t said anything bad about me to Jaylen, so just who have you been running me down to?”

  Before Ryla could think of a way to avoid telling Noel that she had indeed been talking about him to her two closest friends, Danetta and Surry, the front door opened. Ryla swung around and, as if in slow motion, she watched Jaylen look up at Noel and make the connection.

  Ryla panicked. “Go back in the house for a minute, Jaylen. Mommy is talking to someone right now,” Ryla said breathlessly.

  But Jaylen swung open the screen door and jumped into Noel’s arms and kissed his face. “Daddy! I’m so glad you came. I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet you.” She kissed him again as she said, “Now I know why Mommy fixed my favorite breakfast. This is a special day.”

  Chapter 4

  Noel had experienced a lot of things in his thirty years on earth. He’d been a superstar on the basketball court since grade school, graduated college with honors, was a first-round draft pick, had earned a championship ring his second year in the NBA and had become a millionaire several times over. But he’d never experienced anything like the joy he was now feeling as Jaylen hugged and kissed him. He gave her a tight never-want-to-let-you-go kind of hug. And then Noel put her down and stepped back. He had to be mindful that the DNA test had yet to be done, and as far as he knew, Jaylen could belong to another man. It could’ve been Ryla’s sick, twisted mind that decided it would be a g
ood thing to give another man’s child his middle name. Not knowing what else to do, Noel stuck his hand out and said, “Hi, I’m Noel Carter.”

  Jaylen giggled as she shook her father’s hand. “Silly. I know who you are.”

  That’s right, Noel reminded himself, Ryla did tell him that Jaylen kept an old photo of him and Ryla on her nightstand. “I wasn’t sure that you would recognize me from an old photo. I have aged a bit since then,” Noel said in a deeper, older man’s tone.

  Jaylen laughed again as she told him, “I saw you on the TV, too. You look the same.”

  Noel turned to Ryla for clarification on this. Had Jaylen been watching one of his old basketball games? Had Ryla taped his games and watched them as a way of having him around her...why hadn’t she just picked up the phone and called him?

  “Jaylen and my mom went to Dallas for the weekend and she saw one of your ads for Congress. Congratulations, by the way. I guess you finally found a way to help your community.” Ryla was biting her finger again.

  “Yeah, I’m finally pulling it all together,” he told her as he racked his brain, trying to remember when he’d shared this particular dream with Ryla.

  The front door opened again, and with that same big Texas grin, Juanita Evans said, “Well, hello, Noel. It’s about time you showed up around here.” She opened the door wide. “Y’all might as well get off the porch and come on in the house. We can all sit down and catch up over breakfast.”

  Jaylen grabbed Noel’s hand and began pulling him toward the door. “Come on, Daddy, we’ve got the bestest breakfast ever this morning.”

  “French toast,” Juanita said.

  Noel rubbed his stomach. “It’s one of my favorite breakfast meals also. So, I’ll gladly join you.”

  Jaylen stopped walking and looked up at Noel in awe. “We have a favorite thing together?”

  Noel smiled. Jaylen was speaking in seven-year-old language, but he knew exactly what she meant. “Yes, little one, you and I like the same kind of breakfast.”

  Noel followed Juanita and Jaylen in the house, and the smile left his face as he glanced back at Ryla. The look he gave her simply said, you’ve got some explaining to do.

  * * *

  Sitting at the breakfast table stuffing her face with more starch than she had put in her body in over a week, Ryla noticed that she was not receiving the you’ve-got-some-explaining-to-do looks from just Noel, but from her mother also. The beautiful and sophisticated Juanita had never fathomed that a woman would walk away from a man who could provide for her in ways she couldn’t provide for herself. But Ryla was looking for more than a checkbook kind of man. She wanted love, respect and faithfulness. Noel had proven himself to be unfaithful, so Ryla had had no choice but to leave him or end up like her mother.

  After breakfast, Jaylen turned to Noel and said, “Wanna see my room?”

  Noel Stood. “Sure thing. Lead the way.”

  Jaylen stepped back as she looked up at her father. “Whoa. You know, you’re a lot taller than I expected. I hope I’m not going to be so tall.”

  “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. My mom and my sister are both about five-seven.”

  “Good,” was all Jaylen said before turning to march off to her room. Noel followed close behind, smiling but also appearing to be suppressing a giggle.

  When they were alone in the kitchen, Juanita turned to Ryla and said in an accusatory manner, “Well, he certainly doesn’t look like a man who wants nothing to do with his child.”

  Ryla picked up the plates off the table and took them over to the sink.

  “Don’t try to ignore me, Ryla Evans, because I can tell you right now that I am fighting mad.”

  Ryla turned around and leaned against the sink. She had asked her mother to stay for breakfast because she wanted to tell her and Jaylen about Noel coming for a visit, and then she had intended to explain the lie she’d told her mother when she’d come home pregnant with no husband. “I know I owe you an explanation.”

  Juanita’s hands went to her hips in outrage. “I want to know what you did and I want to know it right now.”

  “Okay, Mom, calm down.”

  Running a hand through her honey-blond bob, Juanita said, “I’m confused, Ryla. I really don’t understand what is going on, so please enlighten me.”

  Ryla lifted a hand, trying to bring her mother’s volume down a notch. “I know I told you that Noel wanted nothing to do with Jaylen...but the truth is that I—I never told him that I was pregnant.”

  Juanita shook her head in disbelief. “Ryla, now, why would you do something like that to Jaylen?”

  “I wasn’t trying to do anything to Jaylen but protect her from heartache,” Ryla said, trying to defend her actions.

  “What are you talking about? How could not allowing your child to have a relationship with her father protect her from heartache?” Juanita’s voice was just above a whisper now.

  “Well, for one thing, she wouldn’t have to go through what I went through.”

  “Your father was with you throughout your adolescent years, Ryla. You were a daddy’s girl and loved every minute of it.”

  Ryla sat back down at the kitchen table. “Yeah, but when he left you, he left me, too. He started a whole new family and just forgot all about me.” She looked her mom square in the face as she declared, “I’ve never gotten over how he treated me. And I could never put Jaylen through that.”

  Juanita walked over to her daughter, putting an arm around her, and said, “Not every man is like your father, sweetheart. Jaylen has missed the opportunity of having a father in her life for all these years, so please don’t stand in their way any longer. You fear things that may never happen.”

  But Ryla knew that her fears were founded by facts. Because she’d already seen how unfaithful Noel could be with her own eyes, and she didn’t know if she could ever get over that. “Okay, Mom, I’ll try.”

  However, before she could fix her mind around working out a solution so that Noel could be just as much a part of Jaylen’s life as she was, he came back into the kitchen and asked to speak with her in private. Ryla got up from her seat and followed Noel outside to his Escalade.

  Once they were by the side of the truck, Noel turned to her and said with pride in his voice, “She’s a pretty amazing kid.”

  Thinking this was their time to share, Ryla perked up and said, “And she’s smart, too, Noel. Her teachers are constantly telling me how quickly she learns and moves on to the next subject with ease and understanding.”

  “My mother used to tell me that the teachers said I was so smart that they couldn’t keep up with me when I was in elementary school.” Then his eyes clouded over with sadness as he said, “I’ve missed a lot of her life.”

  “I know,” Ryla admitted. And then as if she had thought of something that would help him look on the bright side, she said, “But, Noel, you were running around living the single life and doing all sorts of crazy things the first five years of Jaylen’s life—you wouldn’t have had time for her anyway.”

  Anger replaced sadness as he ripped into her. “Don’t tell me what I didn’t have time for. You never gave me the chance. And maybe I wouldn’t have gotten myself in so much trouble if I had known that I had a daughter to take care of. Did you ever think about that?”

  “I know you’re not trying to blame me for all the womanizing and drinking you did while in the NBA?”

  “I see that you know how to read the tabloids. It’s a shame that you couldn’t figure out how to pick up a phone and use it.”

  “I didn’t have your number,” she protested.

  “You had my mom’s home number, and you knew her address. So, you have no excuse for what you did—you’re just selfish.” He shook his head. “I had no idea that you could be so heartless.”

/>   “Heartless!” she exploded. “That’s rich, coming from a cheat.”

  His eyebrows furrowed as he questioned her. “What are you talking about? I never needed to cheat.... I won or lost all of my games fair and square.”

  “I’m not talking about basketball,” Ryla said with a roll of her eyes. “Everything doesn’t start and end with a basketball.”

  “Then what are you talking about?”

  Ryla hugged her arms around her chest and changed the subject. “I’m not going to even go there with you. All we need to talk about is Jaylen and that’s it.”

  “Whatever.” Noel was frustrated and knew he needed to get out of there before he said some things he’d end up regretting. “So, when can we schedule the DNA test?”

  Ryla uncrossed her arms as she swung around to face off with Noel. “You just met Jaylen. Can you honestly tell me that you don’t see the resemblance between the two of you?”

  He nodded. “She has my complexion, my nose and my eyes, but the rest is all you.” He waved a hand in the air as he said, “Don’t get me wrong. After spending time with Jaylen, I do believe that she’s mine, but you’ve already wronged me once on this. So, I’m going to make sure that I’m not being put in a trick bag by you.” He then repeated for emphasis, “So, what date is convenient for you to do the DNA test?”

  Chapter 5

  Two Weeks Later

  “Are you happy now?” Ryla asked Noel as they held the results of the DNA test in their hands. Noel was indeed the father and although it took two weeks to confirm that fact, Noel had traveled to Houston both weekends and spent time with Jaylen.

  “Actually, no, I’m not happy,” Noel responded.

  Ryla’s jaw hung low, as she thought Noel was saying that he wasn’t happy to be Jaylen’s father.

  He continued, “I’ve only been able to spend a couple of weekends with my seven-year-old daughter and now I have a campaign to focus on, so I can’t keep coming to Houston on the weekends.”