The Reluctant Jump Off(An Erotic Tale) Read online

  The Reluctant Jump Off

  by

  Desiree Day

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Desiree Day

  The Reluctant Jump Off

  Copyright 2011 by Desiree Day

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Brooke Witherspoon frowned at the inch-high pile of bills stacked on her coffee table. The first of the month was quickly approaching and the bills were due. She mentally started two lists: The MUST be paid and the MIGHT be paid. She pulled out a small taupe colored envelope, the gas and electric and started the MUST be paid pile. The next to be moved over to the MUST be paid pile, was her car payment, the mortgage, cell phone, daycare and water bills. She left her cable bill, three credit card statements in the MIGHT get paid pile.

  She turned to her computer and logged into her checking account to view it, she studied her bank statement, it was horrible. Brooke was afraid to see how awful it really was this month. Sitting next to her stacks of bills was her calculator; she reached for it and began the nasty job of paying her bills.

  Her head began to pound as she meticulously reviewed each bill, calculated the amount from her balance, and if there was enough, she’d write the check. If not, it went into the MIGHT get paid pile, which; hopefully, would be paid on the fifteenth, when she got her second paycheck for the month.

  Suddenly her four-year-old son, Jaden, ambled into the room, giving her a respite from her bill paying. “Mommy, I want a drink of water.”

  All the fear and irritation that Brooke felt a second ago evaporated when she saw her son. Her heart melted, she set down her pen and picked up her baby. Even though he was too big to be held, she couldn’t resist. Jaden was the perfect age, where she could still smother him with kisses without him balking and swatting her face away. After kissing him, she carried him to the kitchen for a cup of water. He took the tiniest sip, which to her, looked like all it did was wet his lips.

  He looked just like his father; he had his gray eyes, curly black hair and caramel color. His father, a gorgeous Créole, had come to Atlanta looking for a new life after Hurricane Katrina had destroyed his home.

  By the time she carried Jaden upstairs to his room, he was already asleep. She tucked him into bed, kissed him on the forehead, and then marched back to her bill paying.

  Brooke meandered across the employee cafeteria to the cashier, occasionally nodding at her co-workers. She had been working for Lionel’s, an international home improvement corporation, as a programmer for ten years; she had made a number of good friends. Normally, she’d join them to catch up on the company gossip while drinking her coffee, but this morning she had a meeting with, Ruben, her manager. And she had some reports she wanted to clean up before meeting with him. She took a sip of her black coffee and grimaced when it stung her tongue. But she liked it hot and black, once it got lukewarm; she couldn’t stomach it and usually tossed it. I really need to cut this out. Her two-dollar-a-day treat really added up. She did the calculations the night before and decided that her coffee money could go toward paying a bill.

  After she paid for her coffee, she meandered to the elevators. She was sipping her drink when Malynda, one of her colleagues sidled up to her.

  She looked around before leaning toward Brooke. “I heard that there’s going to be some layoffs,” she whispered.

  “Really? Which department?” she asked, bored, she really didn’t care, the same layoff rumor floated around every couple of months and nothing ever happened, besides her mind was on getting those reports completed. She shot an impatient glance at the elevator.

  “I don’t know, but my contact in Human Resources, said that these are going to cut deep. A lot of people are going to be affected.”

  The elevator’s bell dinged and Brooke stepped forward, poised to step on when the doors slid open. “So when are they going to make the big announcement?” Brooke asked, before stepping on the elevator, with Malynda on her heels. She pushed her floor number, so did Malynda.

  “Sometime within the next couple of days,” Malynda announced excitedly. She loved gossip, and when it came to the goings on of the company, she was better than TMZ.com. “They’re going to do it in waves.”

  The elevator stopped on Brooke’s floor and she stepped out. “Thanks for the scoop. I’ll talk to you later.” She waved at Malynda then hurried to her cube. “I need to get those reports done before my meeting with Ruben,” she muttered.

  Brooke knocked on Ruben’s office door before entering. He pulled his gaze away from his laptop long enough to nod at her and motioned for her to close the door. Brooke did so and sat in one of his chairs across from his desk.

  He had been her manager for the last five years and she loved working for him. Out of all the managers in the company, not only was he the nicest one, but he was also the smartest. He could run rings around his colleagues. While his cohorts had a Master’s in Computer Science, he trumped it with a Doctorate in Computer Science.

  “How are you doing today?” he asked somberly, and a ribbon of fear cut through Brooke.

  “I’m fine,” she answered cautiously.

  Ruben sighed. “There’s no easy way to say this.”

  “I’m getting let go, aren’t I?” she asked, her voice quavering.

  Ruben nodded. “It’s not just you, it’s the whole department…including me. The head honchos decided that it would be more cost effective to relocate the entire I.T. department to India. I’m sorry,” he said, still reeling from the news himself. He only had a few hours to absorb it, he was told last night, during a late night meeting after most of the employees had left for the day.

  Brooke thought about her never ending bills and the possibility that she might not be able to pay her mortgage rattled her. She started crying. “What am I going to do?” she sobbed.

  Ruben pushed a box of tissues toward her, Brooke snatched out a few and dabbed at her eyes. “You’ll be fine,” Ruben answered. He opened a folder on his desk. “You’re getting four months of severance pay, you’ll have access to our resource center, they’ll help you write a resume—”

  Brooke whimpered and Ruben hesitated at the sound, he hated doing this, especially to Brooke, a single mom whose son’s father was an absentee dickhead. He knew because he served as her mentor and they occasionally lunched together where she updated him on her life.

  With a heavy heart Ruben continued, “Since the beginning of the month is quickly approaching the company will let you have health insurance until the end of the upcoming month, after that if you want insurance, you’ll have to sign up for COBRA. There’s information in the folder about rolling over your 401k or keeping it here. I know that this is a lot to absorb right now, I know that you’re in shock.”

  She fixed a tear stained gaze on Ruben. “I’m more than in shock, I’m in a shitload of trouble,” she croaked.

  Chapter 2

  It was Saturday afternoon when the chimes from Brooke’s doorbell pealed through her house. She peeped through the peephole, and her stomach clenched when she saw who it was, Savion, Jaden’s deadbeat father. She hadn’t seen or heard from him in six months. He rarely paid any child support; she could count on one hand the number of times he had given her money for their child. He constantly cried broke, even though he drove a new BMW, wore designer clothing and always had the latest tech gadgets. In many eyes, he was a poor excuse for a father and surely not the definition of a man. She leaned agai
nst the door. I can pretend not to be home, she thought.

  “Oh, hell, just get it over with,” she muttered. She took a deep breath before opening the door.

  Savion pushed his way into the house. “Hey,” he said curtly, barely looking in her direction. “Where’s my son?”

  Brooke gritted her teeth. Nothing had changed, he was still an asshole. She closed the door. “He’s upstairs.”

  “Hey Jaden!” he shouted. “Come see your daddy.”

  Moments later, Jaden raced into the living room, and propelled himself into his father’s arms. “Daddy!”

  Tears stung her eyes when she saw how happy Jaden was at seeing his dad. Damn you Savion, how can you keep letting your son down?

  “Hey son,” he said.

  Jaden pulled away and looked into his father’s eyes. “Where have you been Daddy?” he asked sadly.

  “Working.”

  ”I miss you.”

  “I’m sorry son.”

  Jaden wrapped his licorice thin arms around his father’s neck and hugged him tightly. “I love you Daddy.”

  The tears that had been lingering behind her lids now flowed freely at hearing her son’s announcement. She raced to the kitchen. “Damn you Savion. How can you not be a father to that little angel?”

  She grabbed a paper towel, dampened it with cool water and dabbed at her eyes. Savion wasn’t her regular choice for a boyfriend. She usually went for the bookworms, the geeks, which was very easy to do, especially in her profession. But just before meeting Savion, she and her boyfriend Mark had just ended their two-year relationship. They both cared for each other, but they had turned more into friends than lovers and had an amicable parting.

  While hanging out with her friends one Saturday night at a club, she had met Savion. He was everything Mark wasn’t: sexy, street smart and drop-dead gorgeous. Two weeks later they were sleeping together and six weeks after that she was pregnant. Savion called her every name under the sun and even accused her of trapping him. He went MIA and she didn’t hear anything from him until Jaden was four-months-old.

  While she wasn’t anti-abortion, she was strongly in the camp of making smart decisions. Abortions weren’t for everybody and she never judged anyone who had one, she had many friends in college who had one and went on to become phenomenal Mothers to the children they eventually had.

  After she calmed down, Brooke went into the living room, where Jaden and Savion were wrestling on the floor. Jaden was on his father’s back and Savion was pretending that he had him pinned down.

  “Look Mommy, I got Daddy locked down. He can’t beat me. I’m the winner,” he announced.

  “Good job, baby.”

  “Yeah, good job son.” He rolled over and pinned Jaden on his back. Jaden squealed loudly. “Now, I’m the winner,” Savion said.

  Brooke rolled her eyes. He couldn’t have just let Jaden win. “Okay J go wash up to eat.”

  “Oh, Mom, I want to stay with Daddy.”

  “Your father will be here when you get back.”

  “Mommy!”

  “Go on!” Savion roared and Jaden immediately scampered out the room and up the stairs. Savion turned to her. “You just need to be more forceful, add some bass to your voice,” he said smugly.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Brooke mumbled sarcastically.

  Savion sat down on the couch, pulled out his phone and began texting, totally ignoring her.

  She was about to check on Jaden when she got an idea. She cleared her throat then nervously swallowed several times before talking. “I really need some money,” she said carefully, broaching the touchy subject between them.

  Savion looked around her living room; his eyes roamed over her 42-inch HDTV, her extensive sound system and the iPad thrown carelessly on her expensive couch. He knew from previous visits that her kitchen was decorated with stainless steel appliances, granite countertops and cherry wood cabinets. “Maybe you shouldn’t have gotten this big ass house with all the upgrades. I told you it was too big. You should’ve listened to me, but the only reason you got it was to show off to your stuck up friends.”

  Brooke bit back a retort and spoke softly. “I lost my job Savion. It’ll help a lot if you contributed financially to your son.” Since she had never taken him to court for child support, he paid whenever and whatever he wanted, which was very rarely and hardly anything. But every Christmas and Father’s Day he was at her house demanding to take his son to visit his family. She knew that he only did it just to show everyone that he was spending time with his son, his family didn’t know that he didn’t see or talk to his son the other three hundred and sixty three days of the year.

  Savion chuckled, a small mean one. “So Miss Education lost her job. I guess your fancy MBA wasn’t what it was cracked up to be, huh?”

  “You know what, just forget it Savion. I’m done. If you don’t want to help your son out, then forget about it. Just leave.”

  Savion sighed as though she had asked him to give her a million dollars. “Hold on.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of money. He thumbed off a hundred dollar bill and tossed it at her.

  Brooke caught it before it fell to the ground. He returned the thick roll to his pocket. Just then Jaden returned to the room.

  Brooke stared at the bill. “Is this all?” she asked incredulously. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You have over a thousand dollars in your pocket and all you’re giving me is a hundred?”

  Savion sneered at her. “You should be happy that you’re getting that. Come on, let’s go.” He began walking toward the door holding Jaden’s hand.

  “Where are you going?” Brooke screamed.

  “I’m taking him to see my mother, his grandmother.”

  “Oh hell naw. You’re not going to show up whenever you want and then take him.”

  “He’s my son,” Savion argued.

  Jaden shrieked as Brooke tried to pull him from his father.

  “You do the same stuff all the time. You’re halfway a Father, then when the mood strikes you, you expect me to jump and ask how fucking high. No more Savion, I tried to accommodate you because of Jaden, I thought that he needed a Father in is life. But he needs a real Dad, not some petulant brat who wants to play with him when he feels like it.”

  Savion smirked at her as though she was crazy. “Whatever, we’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

  “If you take my son out the house, I’m calling the police,” she threatened.

  Savion paused. He knew that he didn’t have any legal rights to take his son; they didn’t have a court ordered visitation or custody arrangement in place. He never legitimized his son, a legal process in Georgia legally recognizing his son. And for other reasons, he didn’t want the police involved.

  He loosened his grip on his son allowing Brooke to safely extract him.

  “I want Daddy,” Jaden wailed.

  “Fuck you bitch!” He turned to leave then changed his mind. He faced her. “Give me my money back.”

  “But it’s for your son.”

  He smirked. “I can’t see him, so why should I give you money?”

  “It’s not for me it’s for your son,” she pleaded.

  “Give it back.”

  Brooke shook her head. “No.”

  He sneered at her. “Cool!” He slammed out of her house.

  Two days later after a trip to several stores, Brooke and Jaden walked into the kitchen from the garage. She froze at the threshold, her mouth agape as she slumped against the doorjamb. So shocked by what she saw, she didn’t register Jaden tugging at her hand, trying to get her attention.

  Someone had smeared food all over the kitchen floor and walls. They had thrown jars of jelly, mayonnaise and gravy at the walls, leaving behind a mess. She picked up Jaden and she trooped over glass, it crunched under her shoes, a couple of times she almost fell in the slippery mess.

  She slowly moved to the living room. Tears filled her eyes, the living room she had left this morning,
no longer existed. A jagged crack in her HDTV rendered it useless and dozens of deep gouges marred her beautiful hardwood floors. Her sofa and chairs had been knifed, leaving huge gashes where the stuffing spilled out. Brooke choked back a sob.

  “What’s wrong Mommy?” Jaden asked, while cupping his mother’s face with his hands.

  “Somebody did something very bad to our house.”

  “I’m scared Mommy,” Jaden said with a whimper.

  She looked her son in his eyes. “It’s okay honey, Mommy will not let anything happen to you. Always remember that.”

  She and Jaden somberly made their way upstairs to her bedroom. The door was closed, she peeked at it, someone had carved something in it. She inched closer to see it, she shook with fear, and her voice shook as she read it, “Now we’re even!” Savion did this. Suddenly it all made sense to her. Savion did this because she refused to let him take Jaden after he had given her the hundred dollars.

  “Um, it’s time for your nap.” She turned and headed toward Jaden’s room. If it was indeed Savion who did the damage, Jaden’s room should be untouched. She was right, his room was fine.

  “I want to stay up,” Jaden fussed.

  “No, you take a nap and when you get up we’ll take your bicycle out. Okay?”

  “Okay!” Jaden said happily. He loved any opportunity to play outside.

  After she made sure Jaden was comfortable, she retraced her steps to her bedroom. She pushed her bedroom door open and a stench hit her. She immediately looked for the source, her stomach rolled with revulsion when she located it. Right in the middle of her bed was a huge pile of shit; she clamped her hand over her mouth and raced to a guest bathroom. She dropped to the floor, clutched the toilet and vomited. Once she threw up her breakfast and lunch, she rinsed out her mouth and wiped her face with a damp washcloth.