“If you say so. I’m just trying to make sure that if Marty and I get married you won’t be all single and free-wheeling for long, that’s all. Who am I g
oing to complain to about my husband if you aren’t there to tell me what is wrong with your husband?”
“In the weird world in your head I know that makes sense.” Diamond said, crossing her eyes for a second.
“I guess…that is just my way of saying I don’t ever want to be without you.” I said, again feeling tears in my eyes. Diamond burst into tears, too.
“I don’t ever want to be without you, either!” she cried.
“Okay!” I sobbed and laughed. “I’m glad we got that cleared up.”
“Me, too.” Diamond wiped her eyes and blew her nose in a tissue. “See you at lunch time?”
I nodded my head, waved and walked out of Diamond’s hospital room and into mine that was directly next door. Climbing into bed, listening to the monitor that tracked my baby’s heartbeat, I smiled and fell asleep.
MARTY
“So, you’re sure she’s going to say yes?” Ray asked me as I was getting ready to go to the hospital to visit Natasha and Diamond. I had been going there since Natasha was admitted just forty-eight short hours ago. It felt like weeks.
She was expected to stay there for another two maybe three days just to make sure the baby and she was all right. I thought of the baby and felt my eyes burn with tears again for the hundredth time since I learned about the pregnancy.
“Do you think she’ll say no?” I asked Ray as he handed me a tie from a small waterfall of them hanging from the tie rack in my closet.
“Well, I don’t know. What I do know is that the brother of the man who loves her nearly killed her. That might give a girl pause.” He shrugged.
I knew that Ray was just being that voice of reason. He was making sure I was braced for the worst even though he, like me, was hoping for the best. Still, I didn’t pursue the topic. I wanted to enjoy the preparation, the thought of Natasha maybe saying yes to marriage to me and raising this baby together in a house full of love. The feelings swirling around inside me were all new, scary, but exhilarating.
“Diamond seems to be recuperating pretty well. When I stopped in to see her yesterday she had already fallen asleep for the night.” I said, changing the subject.
“Yeah, she’s tough. I like that in a girl.”
I snapped my head around from the mirror I was staring in while fussing with my tie and gave Ray a sideways glance.
“Really?”
Pursing his eyebrows together I saw a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
“I know what you’re thinking. That I’m too old for her.”
“Not at all.” I said shaking my head. Sure Ray was older than Diamond but she wasn’t just some damsel in distress who needed to be saved. She was a street smart, independent woman who got blindsided by a bad guy. Ray was probably the only guy who could match wits with a woman like her. Both of them were down to earth, call-it-as-they-see-it kind of people. And although Diamond was a beautiful brunette with manicured nails and stylish clothes, I could see her rolling up her sleeves to gut a fish if she had to. It was that grit that kept her alive long enough for Ray to get to her.
“Natasha said she isn’t answering her phone. Can you get to her place and see if anything is going on? I’ve got to get to Natasha.”
“Yes. Tell me where.” That was all Ray said. He didn’t waste any time. He didn’t ask a lot of questions. He just said yes. There weren’t too many men left whom you could rely on with one hundred percent certainty that they’d come through. I knew as soon as I hung up the phone that he was already running to his car to get to that address I had given him.
He called me from the hospital.
“I didn’t know what else to do, Marty.” He said nervously. “I was afraid she was going to die before I could get her to the emergency room.”
Speeding in his beat up pick-up truck Ray had gotten to Diamond’s apartment and tried ringing the buzzer. There was no answer. He could have just left, figuring she wasn’t home, had maybe stepped out and just didn’t bother to answer her phone or maybe forgot it, lost it, who knew? But Ray wasn’t like that. Without visual confirmation that she was not in her apartment he wasn’t leaving. He tried ringing all the buzzers for the other residents of the building. He knocked on the heavy glass door. Finally, a person came up to the door, producing a key.
It was a young fellow, Ray had said.
“He looked red-blooded enough that I figured the chances of him having noticed a single female in the building was pretty good.
“I’m sorry to bother you. Do you know Diamond Everett? She lives in this building and she’s not answering her phone.”
At first the guy looked at Ray as if he were some kind of pervert with a weird fetish of cornering men in vestibules and asking them about women who lived there.