Better [AVAILABLE ON AMAZON]

To love someone deeply could be uplifting, but it could be the very thing that weighs a person down. Love gives the will to fight even when a person knows the one that they love either wasn’t deserving of it or they were, but the person to give it didn’t know how. Thus, it could become a cycle of pain, toxicity, and everything bad. Some learned to be better, some wallowed to be worst. That was simply it.

Bernice never thought she could find herself on the more negative side and she sure as hell wasn’t expecting her older brother to be the one to bring her world crashing down, especially when she just found out after all of eleven years, she found the courage to bring herself back to pregnancy.

The double pink lines stared back at her, once with a bright beautiful hope of another addition to their family, but now it derided with ridicule. It was like the universe was laughing at her—playing a practical joke. She could only imagine her mother’s face if her brother told her the news.

Niecy supposed her brother had pure intentions, but this felt like an I-told-you-so moment. He sent the video without a word as if he knew it would have given the effect he wanted.

The video too stared back at Bernice, bright as day on her phone screen. The explicit, uncensored sounds of pleasure that came from her husband’s mouth as well as the redhead he had beneath him in positions he never had his own wife in, or maybe she never allowed such. It didn’t matter. He was cheating on her and with someone she knew—someone she grew up with.

The pain ripped her in two, her heartbeat too fast yet felt as if there was none. Her eyes burned a fire, but released rain; her body trembled as if covered with a thousand aching cuts, but she could feel nothing all over. She was numb.

Suddenly, she began sobbing and could barely find the strength to hold the objects in her hands. Both things—heavy and light—fell to the tiles of her office floor. Like her heart, her phone screen shattered.

“Why, Giovanni?” she whispered brokenly to herself, her head tossed back with a hand to her forehead as she felt the salty tears stream along the sides of her face. “Why?”

Tap! Tap! The light sounds echoed off her office door, but she had no interest to take anyone. So, she never answered, she only continued with her expression of pain though she ached to do something else, break something else like Giovanni did her heart. But maybe she should’ve answered back by saying that she didn’t want any guests since the door flew open anyway.

“Mamma! School ended early today.” Her eleven-year-old son announced cheerily on his entrance and as he slammed the door shut behind him, he finally turned to take notice of his mother’s state. Concern instantly filled him, and his bag fell to the floor just as he ran off to her. “Mamma, why are you crying?” he asked sweetly, but as he reached behind her desk, he felt what his foot stepped on, instantly taking it up. It was the pregnancy stick, and being the intelligent child prodigy who read whatever his eyes landed on, he immediately knew what the two pink lines meant. “You’re pregnant?”

Bernice blew out a breath as she sat up to look at him and smiled whilst she wiped the tears away from her eyes. “Yeah, baby.”

“That’s why you’ve been getting fat!” he exclaimed then shot his hands over his mouth when he realized what he called his mother. When she laughed, he joined with a snort and allowed her to tug him onto her lap. “How far are you? Is that why you’re crying?”

Arms wrapping around her son, Bernice forced herself to nod and kissed his cheek. “Tears of joy… and I don’t know how far yet, probably the second month in. I’ll check with our doctor soon.”

Another round of knocking came from the door. Bernice sighed, trying to wipe her face again, but Aiden stopped her by taking the end of the white shirt he wore and began to dab under his mother’s eyes to make sure she never missed a spot. Smiling at that, Niecy leaned back and asked, “Better?”

“Slightly red, but yeah. Better,” he confirmed, then they both gave each other a simultaneous nod before facing the door. “Come in.”

A tall black man came strolling in at that. His skin was dark and smooth, hair neat and waved with his built lean but strong. The man panted as he entered the room and closed the door behind him. “Mrs. Russi, Aiden is going to have my whole head silver by the time I turn forty.”

“Sorry, he can’t sit still if he doesn’t have his games. Are you okay, Mr. Cole?” she laughed, looking at him as he neared her desk and sat in the guest chair across from her. “Aiden dizzy body just like I was at his age. I take full responsibility.”

Mr. Cole smiled, his dimples deep as his dark eyes twinkled looking at her—he was their latest driver. “That’s fine. My nieces and nephews are the same.”

“When am I going to meet them? Will they come to my birthday party?” Aiden asked with excitement and hope evident in his tone. “You promised me I’d meet the one who knows a lot of languages. I want to learn something other than Italian and Spanish.”

A slightly uneasy look crossed Mr. Cole’s face, “I don’t remember promising that.”

“You probably didn’t. Aiden is just Aiden.” Niecy smiled, hugging her son and sighing as she looked at the handsome man, “but it would be nice to have him start home lessons instead of the after-school ones. You know he doesn’t do so well with the other children at his school.”

Mr. Cole blew out a sigh of his own at that and nodded, “The moment we talk about it, I’ll have you know the answer.” Out of wander, his eyes met with the pregnancy stick in Aiden’s hand, and they widened, “congratulations, by the way.”

“Huh?” they both went, but then they remembered the test. Bernice faked a smile that could be seen through as she responded, “Yeah, thanks.”