Never Been To Me

by GiGi Gunn

Genres: African American; African American Urban; African American Romance

Synopsis

Persephone "Persi" Sinclair has always lived a principled and disciplined life—with one exception. She's in love with a married man. She can't help herself; she's had a crush on Brad Shelton since high school. When Brad finally dumps her to rekindle things with his wife, Persi gathers her shattered pride, dusts off her old dreams, and moves to Paris. Persi reconnects with Nick Betancourt, a former college classmate of Brad's who's playing saxophone at Bricktop's Jazz Club. Reluctantly, Persi begins to date the free-spirited Nick, and is slowly seduced by his charm. What begins as a carefree adventure through the French countryside with no past, no future, and no designs on permanence, turns into something much deeper. The couple gets married in Monte Carlo and returns to their Paris flat. Persi settles into the role of Mrs. Nick Betancourt and deems herself fulfilled, content, and happy—until Brad shows up at their front door one day, announcing that he's left his wife for good. The decision is Persi's. Does she return to her former lover, who is finally offering marriage, or does she remain with her husband and see where their newfound love leads?

Release date: September 1, 2010

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

Paradise Cove

Bora-Bora, South Pacific

Drenched in the tropical sun’s rays, she stood perched at the end of the wooden pier and scanned her tranquil surroundings. The solar heat warmed her body with delicious abandon so unlike the cold, gray winter days she’d left behind in D.C. The ocean, laid out in an aquamarine fantasy as far as the eye could see, lazily tumbled toward her, before slowing to lap, like bathwater, against the weathered post. Gentle trade winds swirled around her bikini-clad curves and carried a constant scent of hibiscus, plumeria, antriums and other exotic, undistinguishable fragrances. No sounds but those emanated and sustained by nature; the unspoiled earth at God’s best; at His purest. The universe as He had intended.

Persi let her eyes meander over her environment and thought how Paradise Cove personified its name. A string of plush grass huts punctuated a pier that jutted out into the Pacific Ocean, insuring privacy while hiding an interior elegance. On the horizon, four men fished in an open canoe, as their ancestors had done for thousands of years, catching their dinner for the night. As with all vacations, the ten days were going too fast and, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t convince time to slow down.

She dove into the welcoming wet, letting her copper-brown body part the water like the Red Sea, knowing she’d miss these early-morning dips once back in frigid, dreary D.C. She touched the pristine white sand of the Pacific’s bottom and looked up though the crystal-clear water where prisms of solar rays rippled on the surface, and beyond that, the cloudless blue sky. Paradise, she thought. Neon fish, brightly painted electric blue with yellow stripes or bright orange dotted with black spots, playfully engulfed, then darted around her. She smiled as she swam in the gigantic aquarium. She floated under the transparent bubble of their hut, which formed the dining room floor where they’d spent many of their nights eating and watching the psychedelic aquatic life frolic below for their amusement; the same view shared from the living room, bathroom, and bedroom. This hedonistic paradise, designed solely for pleasure and decadently catering to every whim, had no kitchen. Native men clad in white dinner jackets balanced trays of sumptuous treats supplying sustenance, day or night, to the mostly newlywed patrons. Paradise Cove lived up to its honeymooner’s haven reputation: no children, no scheduled activities, no pets, no tours or happy hours to destroy the lush peace and serenity.

Persi came up for air, flipped onto her back and invited the sun’s full blast to kiss her face. She lay there, buoyed by the water, absorbing all the perfection of the past few days.

She smiled and thought of how she and her man began and ended their twenty-four hours whenever they wanted or not. Staff cast no aspersions on the privacy sign hanging on a hut door for days in a row: KAPU, which translated to Forbidden—please do not disturb. Reclusiveness was encouraged by management who remained unobtrusively around and ready with a solicitous “Anything you wish, Mr. or Mrs. Shelton?”

Persi began treading water and in the distance saw Brad still on his cell phone; she hated that intrusive contraption. She’d left a capable staff to manage her assignments during her absence, but Brad couldn’t do that with his “girls.” Three daughters he talked with each morning here, before they went to bed there. If the true test of future behavior is past behavior, she expected the same paternal devotion when they had their children, hoping to give him a son. Each morning, she went for a swim to give them their privacy, soothing herself with the thought that she had “Daddy” all to herself the rest of the day, week and total ten day stay.

She looked at his tanned-brown form whittled against the backdrop of the powdery white sand; as magnificent and beautiful to her now as he’d been when she first laid eyes on him. As a ninth grader, she’d been transferred to Roosevelt High School’s science program where Brad Shelton was a senior. As she tried to find her chemistry class, her vision was stolen by six feet, two inches of all man, wrapped in an ROTC uniform as he strutted toward her. The sight of him stopped her heart. More than the dress blues and the scabbard diagonally projecting from his muscular body, he was a visual symphony in copper, his coloring so stunningly odd: light copper skin and blondish-brown hair peeking from under his hat. She fumbled and dropped her books and then glanced up into the most gorgeous, symmetrical face she’d ever seen, with light, piercing honey-sage eyes set below an explosion of thick lashes, balanced on high cheekbones. And his lips—full, wavery, and seductive; at fourteen years of age, she didn’t even know what that meant, but she knew she wanted to kiss them. Touch them to hers. She’d just stared up at him, gap-mouthed and awed, and watched him walk around her without a backward glance. Not only was their age difference and the fact that he was way out of her league problematic, but he was probably bored with girls reacting to him this way.

Persi chuckled thinking of it now. It was love at first sight for her—as he walked on by, she scrambled to collect her fallen books. He walked on by her his entire senior year. But she noticed him every chance she got.

She now looked over and saw that he was off the telephone. She began swimming toward him. Always pensive after getting off the phone from home, her job was to cajole him around to the vacation mentality—an assignment she savored.

“Everything all right?” she asked, emerging from the water like Botticelli’s Venus.

“Fine,” he said tersely and then smiled. “The little one lost her tooth.”

“Cute,” Persi answered in kind. “So what do you want to do today?” she asked, her body dripping wet as she climbed between his legs.

“Whatever you like.”

“You know what I like.” She licked, then nibbled on his lips, tugging them into a half smile, then a full kiss.

His dry hands slid over her drenched flesh and he found her skin moist and hot to the touch. His body reacted and any thoughts of home evaporated in the seductive, steamy heat. He gathered Persi in his arms and they disappeared into their hut.

After they made love, Mr. and Mrs. Shelton hired a jeep and toured the botanical garden, where she studied the native, indigenous plants, then bought souvenirs before they dined in town for the first time since they’d arrived. They preferred each other’s company until their ten days was up. As they packed, it was now Persi’s turn to be pensive. She detested that their vacations, which had begun as twice or more times a year, had been scaled down to once a year and always ended too soon. Although they’d been to exotic locales like the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, Barbados, and Curacao, she hated being restricted as to where they could go; no quick weekend getaways to closer and more accessible Bahamas, Jamaica or St. Thomas.

Brad noticed her usual expected, quiet, sullen behavior the night before they went home. He always thought that they should make the most of their last night together, but she’d always turned morose.

“How’s my girl?” he asked, stroking the side of her cheek, wanting to feel her nude body, exquisitely tanned to a deeper copper brown, beneath him on their last night.

“Hmm.”

“You’re still my girl? My number-one lady?” He offered his boyish smile and looked playfully into her eyes. His eyebrows arched and a smile split his striking face.

She ignored his charms and handsomeness and fanned away his searching hands. She unapologetically leveled her eyes at him and said, “Until we touchdown in D.C. and you go home to your wife and kiddies.”

The drone of the plane hummed in Persi’s ears despite the expensive headsets Brad gave her as a gift one year. Firmly ensconced in the front cabin, as far away from each other as possible and still in first class, this was the arrangement agreed upon early in the relationship. They’d landed after their vacation from the Maldives and, once lighting from the plane and heading down the ramp, he’d glimpsed his little girls with signs and balloons emblazoned with Welcome Home Daddy! Instinctively, Persi’d hung back as he proceeded out into the open arms of his wife and girls. There she was... the wife. The wife who didn’t understand him. The wife he no longer slept with. The wife he was staying with for the sake of the kids or at least “until the girls reach high school age.”

“Tsk,” Persi now scoffed. She’d believed him. On that particular day, she’d walked off the plane ignoring the happy family—all strangers to her. Later, Brad appeased her with a piece of jewelry—either the necklace or the earrings. The price of her pride should be higher.

Still awake and restless, Persi glanced over at his reclined, sleeping form. She rotated the small, personalized movie screen back into its place and saw him stir. He had it all: an excellent position, a sterling reputation in the community, a loving wife, three children, and a mistress of five years who was crazy about him. She hated him. She hated herself. Persi fooled herself during their rendezvous at her place or in posh hotels or quickies after hours in his office; it felt good during the tryst... damn good—but she always despised herself afterward. She was disappointed in the situation—in herself, but was hard-pressed to change it.

Like any relationship, it’d begun with an innocent hello. She’d officially met him at a Black Caucus event while still full-time at the National Institute of Health. After more than ten years, on that night, she’d seen him at a distance and couldn’t believe how unbelievably handsome he still was. When her friend Doxie came over with a “guess who I saw?” Persi already knew. “Brad Shelton,” Persi’d answered. Doxie looked disgusted and asked, “Don’t tell me you still have the hots for him?”

“Is he still fine?”

“I’m sure his wife thinks so.”

From a respectful distance, like in high school, Persi kept tabs on his movements all evening until suddenly they were face-to-face. Their eyes locked and he offered that old “you look familiar” line.

“And with that old, tired line, you must be so married,” she’d quipped.

“Married ain’t dead,” he’d said as his honey-sage eyes swept her body. “Does that mean I can’t speak to a pretty girl when I see one?” He’d flashed that famous Brad Shelton smile and she was back at Roosevelt High School, an awkward ninth grader standing in front of homeroom, and he a senior ROTC officer who, instead of walking by her, had stopped. History rewritten.

She’d been so restless and giddy that night that she couldn’t sleep. The usually aloof but brilliant chemist Jean-Luc Etienne noticed her the next day at work and asked about her distraction.

“I saw an old, ah, classmate over the weekend and he’s still beautiful.”

“Classmate? I think you wanted it to be more, eh?” Jean-Luc asked in his thick French accent. “Some feelings never change. They hibernate until chemically stimulated again. Then you are right back to where you were then. Eh?”

The fasten your seat belt light dinged and the pilot announced turbulence ahead. Persi glanced over at Brad as he’d turned over and pulled the blanket up and over his shoulders.

He’s lived a charmed life, she thought with a touch of resentment. As the first son and second child of Dr. Clayton Shelton, Brad never had to work too hard or do too much, but be the oldest son of the renowned Dr. Shelton. His older sister followed their father into medicine and the father’s established practice and Brad felt no compunction to do or be anything exceptional when mediocrity was all that was required. He’d squeaked by on DNA and privilege and his current success in the business world was directly attributed to his father’s and mother’s connections and standing in Washington, D.C. society. He’d taken his time earning his degrees, first at Howard University, majoring in charm and minoring in schmooze, until forced to grow up while earning his MBA at Columbia University. He’d married Patricia “Trish” Davenport, heir to the Davenport Insurance Company of South Carolina; deemed the wedding of the century—a prince marrying a princess. They lived an idyllic life. Persi had only formally met Trish Davenport Shelton a few times, though they shared mutual friends and connections. Persi had been privy to and obligated by the perfunctory, social Washington introduction done about three times and never taking; when unsuccessful at avoiding Mrs. Shelton, someone would say to Trish, “You know Persi Sinclair?” To which Trish would answer, “Why yes. Lovely to see you again,” when she really meant “Who? And how would I know her?” Persi was intimately familiar with these social niceties as she’d been guilty of the same pleasant, anonymous intros.

That was how Persi and Brad were reintroduced at a Multiple Sclerosis Society fund-raiser at his Potomac, Maryland home. Persi purchased tickets as a favor to Doxie, taking Rucker Jackman, the celebrity football wide receiver who left a sizable donation and a significant impression on the crowd.

As Brad served hot dogs from the backyard’s built-in grill, he said, “I remember you, from the Black Caucus event. You’re Bruce.”

“What?” Persi laughed as he laid the hot dog into her bun.

“Yeah. That real smart girl who got the full scholarship to MIT back in the day. Chemistry, right? You got a Master’s and Ph.D too.”

Persi’s face erupted into the widest, blushing, little-girl smile that even Doxie had seen from the tennis courts.

“I read my Alumni News. You’re more than a pretty face.”

Persi was speechless. Brad Shelton knew her. Not back then, but he knew her now.

“You got some big-time position at NIH,” he’d continued.

“Not really—it pays the bills.”

“Hey, got someone I want you to meet over here,” Doxie had interrupted as she rounded the pool. “Hey, Brad,” she said as she attempted to drag her friend away.

“See ya, Bruce,” he’d said with a flirtatious smile.

“Persi. Persephone. Persephone Sinclair.”

“Right. Percy. I knew it was a guy’s name. But you’re certainly no guy,” he’d said with a wink. “Anyone else call you Bruce?”

“No.”

“Then that’s what I’ll call you.”

And call he did. The following Tuesday he’d tracked her down at NIH.

She yanked up the phone and identified herself. “Dr. Sinclair.”

“Bruce?”

She almost wet herself as Jean-Luc looked at her suspiciously.

Persi now remembered it like yesterday. If she’d hung up on Brad, or had a polite conversation and then declined his invitation to lunch the following Saturday, things would be different. But he headed up a science group of Roosevelt students and wanted to meet about her speaking to them on careers in chemistry; especially for the girls to hear from a woman chemist. That was the hook, Persi now thought in retrospect. She should have known when she wouldn’t mention the conversation to Doxie she was careening toward trouble. She rationalized this was a respectable reason for her to accept a lunch invitation from a married man on a Saturday. She’d never dated a married man before; the best part of him already taken, and Persi wasn’t inclined to share or be part of a harem. Yet she heard herself accepting Brad’s invitation as they decided on a quaint café in old town Alexandria. What am I doing? she’d asked. She wasn’t raised to be the “other woman” and her parents would die if they knew. She and Brad met for lunch and, subsequently, she spoke with the students. In three months, Brad got Persi out of her designer clothes and into his bed. That was five years ago.

“Prepare for landing,” the pilot said as the flight attendant swapped the lukewarm towel from Persi’s tray and left a buttermint with the airline insignia.

As the plane taxied to a stop at a Dulles International Airport gate, Brad helped Persi get her carry-on bag full of bikinis and cover-ups from the overhead compartment.

“It’s late, ‘they’ won’t be meeting me. I can take you home,” he said into her ear.

They, she thought wryly. “We can never be too careful, can we?” she said with an edge to her voice.

“Let me see you home.”

“I have my car and you’re practically home.”

“Then tomorrow.”

Just as the flight attendant threw open the plane’s front door, Persi looked up into his mournful, honey-sage eyes and said, “Bye.”

She sauntered down the enclosed corridor into the open space. Then she saw them, the wife’s view obstructed by the head of the sleepy little girl she held, as the other two waited anxiously, looking past everyone not their father. Persi passed by them like she was on a Paris runway, making no eye contact. She couldn’t acknowledge them because then she’d have to acknowledge to herself what she was doing. She wasn’t ready for that.

Almost to the shuttle, she heard a loud chorus of “Daddy!”

Tears of regret and torment accompanied her as she walked to her car. Why was she doing this? It wasn’t worth it... not the toll it took on her and her sense of self.

She sat in the car, wiped away angry, cold tears and breathed a few times to relax before she fished for the ticket and money to get out of the lot. “Home,” she directed her sporty Audi as she cruised the beltway before venturing onto the streets of D.C. Quiet, somber, sober streets coated with a thin veil of either sleet or drizzle. “No matter where you roam, there is no place like home,” she thought of her mother’s words every time they pulled into the driveway when they were children. That stuck better than “home again, home again, jiggy jig.”

Persi chuckled. She hadn’t followed the predicable path to home ownership that four generations of native Washingtonians dictated. Her great-grandparents had begun on U Street N.W. Not the famed U Street of the Booker T. or Republic Theaters; not “historical U Street” of black celebrity where its regal members appeared on the silver screen for their segregated enjoyment. Not the U Street that halted at the Negro nexus of Northwest where four corners of 1940s black D.C., give or take a block, converged; north to south, Seventh Street became Georgia Avenue and, east to west, the infamous U Street turned into Florida Avenue. But the quiet, residential section of U Street reached by taking a sweet left off of Florida Avenue onto Second across Rhode Island Avenue then a right at St. George’s Episcopal Church and stretched up to North Capitol Street. Her great-grands had a row house on the left side and Persi recalled how she loved the high ceilings, fireplaces in every room, and the backstairs to the kitchen. She savored the Sunday meals after church there, and all the holidays; eavesdropping on all the antics of the folks who populated their family. Her grandparents, the second generation, moved from Shaw-LeDroit Park to upper northwest in the second alphabet and been “blockbusters” in the early fifties despite the clandestine and illegal covenants to initially keep Negroes out of the white neighborhoods. Two years before Brown vs. the Board of Education, prior to the Gold Coast across Sixteenth Street opening up—and when it did, her grandparents and a few other pioneers refused to move the few arbitrary blocks to the “other side.” Persi’s parents, then three, predictably moved into the third alphabet—the flowers and trees of Shepherd Park; geranium, holly, iris, and juniper where the Sinclairs lived with their three daughters. Persi’s oldest sister, Diana April, escaped to Oberlin College, never returned to D.C., and now lived in Boston with her partner. Her younger sister, Athena June, and her family upheld tradition and moved across Sixteenth to the Platinum Coast of North Portal Estates into more trees at Spruce and Sycamore. By then the black bourgeoise’s prosperity outgrew the confines of upper northwest and pushed right up against Maryland into the county of Montgomery. The acceptable excess of upper-crust D.C. flowed over the Maryland line into Silver Spring, Bethesda, and Potomac. Persi May was supposed to buy her house there and had a lovely, all brick, split foyer with a long driveway picked out until Doxie told her that “her house” was for sale.

Since she’d been a child, Persi had loved her house, an all-brick, Second Empire style, Romanesque revival on Logan Circle built in the 1880s. While Diana favored the Seth Phelps house on the corner of Thirteenth Street with the big magnolia for a front yard, Persi preferred the white, four-story Victorian with the mansard roof and Peter Pan dormers. After purchase the high Victorian Gothic stood uninhabitable, forcing Persi to replace the roof, close the fireplaces, install zone heating and air conditioning and address a drainage problem before she moved in. Living in one area, she painstakingly renovated her house, room by room; laying on her back, meticulously hand-painting the medallion around the dining room chandelier and refurbishing the gleam to the original hardwood floors. She’d spent her nights, weekends, and evenings and after sixteen months, like D.C. itself, it was a showpiece. But it was home to her.

Staunch neighborhood purists objected to her conversion of the side yard into a semicircular drive, but with no street parking and the issue of her personal safety, she remained undaunted. This successful modification inadvertently launched a landscape-design business while still a primary researcher at NIH. As the principal landscape company for four architectural firms and freelancing jobs around the metro area, she worked this second job only on weekends and summer evenings. After two years, her landscaping-design business eclipsed chemistry; she left the latter. During the slow winter months, driven more by need for activity than money, she consulted on research teams at NIH, wrote proposals, received grants, accepted speaking engagements in the field of stem cell research and testified at congressional hearings as an expert. She had two jobs; one brand new and the other she’d always felt she’d been in by default. Neither held a candle to her dream career: a perfumer. She’d always concocted her own perfumes in junior high and high school and even today, no matter where she traveled, always visited the botanical grounds expanding her repertoire of aromatic fragrances, preparing for a time when she hoped to use it. The words of George Eliot echoed in her ear, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”

Into this welcomed chaotic mix and convergence of all things possible entered Brad Shelton. At thirty years old, everything she ever wanted was coming to fruition; even a guy she had a crush on in high school who was once out of her league, was now eating out of the palm of her hand.

Persi pulled into her side-yard driveway, cut her engine, and climbed to her front door. Home, she thought. The perfect journey; glad to go and glad to come back. She cut off her alarm, unlocked and entered her tiled vestibule before opening her front door. Timers clicked on and off, illuminating various areas of her house and she glanced at the living room and the dining room as she walked her hallway to the kitchen.

A sign Welcome Home, Aunt Persi, was propped up on the black granite island in the middle of the kitchen against the basket of mail.

Persi chuckled and looked at the plants that Drew cared for in her absence. She is such a good kid, Persi thought, as she ignored the mound of mail, closed her pantry door, and headed up the backstairs to her bedroom. I suppose if I’m good, one day I’ll get a Drew or two, she thought, pulling off her blouse and turning up the thermostat. The phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hi.”

Persi closed her eyes against the sound of the familiar voice.

“I just called to see if you got home all right,” Brad inquired just above a whisper.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Bruce. We’ll figure all this out. You know I love you.”

“So you say.”

“I’ve got something really special planned for your birthday. We’ll eat at our little place in Alexandria, drive around the monuments—I know how you like them li. . .