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What did he say? "Huh?"
"Come home with me tonight," he repeated huskily, gripping her hands tighter. "I... I need you."
She was almost afraid to speak. Her mind was screaming a staunch refusal, yet that same mind also knew that her body wanted so badly to go with him. She mentally raced through the pros and cons of succumbing to Justin, of going with him as if they had not been absent from each other's lives for the past three years, and then she came to a decision.
"Justin, I can't." It was the right choice, she knew, but it was almost rescinded when she saw dark disappointment immediately cloud the passion in his eyes. After tugging her hands away, Yancey continued, "I just don't think it would be wise. I can't leave my child to go off and--" her voice lowered to a whisper--"have sex. I am an adult and I have to think like an adult. Anything else would be wrong."
He understood her reasoning, but still, Justin was extremely disappointed as well as hurt by her rejection. Why couldn't she see that all he wanted was to love her again? How could he make her see that? "Giving yourself to me can never be wrong, if the love is true," he stated simply, half-joking, half-serious. If she laughed, maybe she would spare him the embarrassment he was feeling from being turned down. There weren't that many women in the world who hadn't clamored to be one of Justin Timberlake's women. As a result of that adoration, Justin had to admit to himself that he'd allowed his ego to swell more than it should have.
Yancey pursed her lips tightly to keep from laughing at his line; she was unsuccessful and burst out laughing. "You know what? If you really wanted me to do something with you, Marvin Gaye isn't a bad place to start."
He deepened his voice, trying to sound sexy again. "So if I use some more of his lines, you'll come with me?"
She was exasperated and she hoped her narrowing eyes conveyed her feelings. "Justin, we're not teenagers anymore. We're adults; we have to act like adults. And anyway, as far as I'm concerned, we've got unresolved issues from three years ago to talk about."
Justin leaned back against the swing, releasing a heavy sigh. "Issues like what?"
"Oh, we don't have to talk about this if you don't want to. I know what that blowing your breath out shit means." Yancey jumped up to walk the length of the porch.
He was very close to grabbing her and kissing her just to make her shut up, but he resisted temptation by holding on tightly to the swing's arms. "My God, Yancey! You know exactly how to bring a man down, don't you? I'm amazed at the time it took for you to get me up and put me down again. I think this is a record; we really should call Guinness."
"I'm not responsible for your libido, Timberlake," she responded, placing her hands on her hips. Despite her best effort not to, she gave Justin her patented neck-and-eye roll combination.
Justin left the swing and went to stand close to her. She could feel his breath sweeping over her hair as he spoke, the chills she experienced because of it running sprints up and down her spine. She could feel the heat rising from her neck into her face and refrained from squirming in pleasuring discomfort. "You're the one woman I've thought about constantly, the woman I want more than any other woman in this world... and you do things to me I can't begin to describe, even if it's just by giving a look. I hold you completely accountable for the way my body reacts from wanting to be with you, Yancey."
For a few seconds it was quiet, then she said, trying to lighten the mood again. "I'm so flattered, I really am, but we still need to talk about why we broke up."
"Man, not this shit again," he mumbled, looking out onto the street for what seemed like the umpteenth time that day. He thought it strange that a feeling of complete peace was coming off a street in a residential neighborhood; however, that was indeed the vibe he was getting. Perhaps his subconscious was telling him that lying in the street waiting for the next car to come and run him over would be less nerve-wracking than standing on the Jacobs' porch trying to communicate with this impossible woman. "I don't want to talk about the past and all those mistakes we made. I would rather we talked about our future, the two of us together, with our son--"
"And that's why I think you need to know more about why I broke up with you."
Just then the front door opened and Lynn stuck out her head. "Justin, it's getting kind of late. We've been here for a while and I want to hurry up and get back home. I think the TLC Behind the Music is coming on again tonight."
"You can take the car, Mama. Yancey said she'd give me a ride home," he replied while staring Yancey in her eyes, daring her to say anything different.
"Oh... okay. Well, I'll just make my excuses then." She disappeared back into the house.
The two waited, without talking, for Lynn to come back out and leave. When she did, after hugs for both of them, Justin turned to Yancey. "So what's the deal? And why are you making such a fuss about it?"
"You know, I've decided that my parents' porch isn't the best place to talk about this."
"You like to stall, don't y--"
"We should go back to my apartment."
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She led Justin into the apartment, flipping on the light switch nearest the door before she tossed her keys onto the coffee table. "Don't think that just because my mother took it upon herself to keep EJ for tonight because she thought we needed 'alone time' to talk that we're going to do anything."
"Well, that was the one thing standing in our way, wasn't it? You not wanting to leave him?" Justin crossed his arms and grinned a slow, lazy grin that made her insides do flips.
"What?" she replied distractedly. He still had the sexiest smile...
"I mean, you just said you couldn't leave him to go have sex. But you never said you didn't want me."
Yancey was so preoccupied with the burdening acurracy of what he was saying that she didn't notice that the distance between them was decreasing until he was right in front of her. His hands reached to grab her by the waist. She was startled. "Justin--"
"You never said you didn't want me," he reminded her, bringing his lips down to hers. He groaned in annoyance when she turned away from him. "Why do you have to make this so hard?!"
"Sit down," Yancey ordered, pointing to one end of the couch. "I'll sit down here, and you'll sit over there." She paused. "And maybe... Listen, after I tell you what I have to tell you, you probably won't even want anything to do with me."
He relaxed against his corner of the couch, folded his hands together in his lap and looked up at her expectantly. "Talk."
The thoughts she'd had on the ride home raced through her mind as she sank slowly into the cushions on the opposite end of the couch. Which one first? "I broke up with you because I panicked," she said finally, after another long period of silence.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean I panicked," she repeated. "We had that young type of love, you know? And I think you know that I got to be kind of insecure when you started talking about trying to get your recording contract. That's all you talked about for months once it became a real possibility. I didn't hear you say, not once, where our relationship would be once you had this contract. Not once, Justin. Do you know--do you have any idea--how much that hurt? I started to call you up so many times after I found I was pregnant to tell you. I figured that since you were going to be a big star--I never doubted that you would, let me say that--I also figured that you wouldn't want me around and especially not with a baby."
He didn't respond, only stared at her with unreadable eyes, so she hurriedly plowed forward. "I mean, you never said, 'Yeah, I'll be Justin Timberlake the famous singer and you'll be Yancey Timberlake, my lawyer wife.' Nothing like that, nothing even close. I admit it sounds a little juvenile, but what can I say, I was sixteen."
Her short laugh was biting and harsh, and his only expression thus far came in the form of a wince when he heard the pain it suggested. By this time her tears were coming down her round cheeks one at a time but Yancey had long ago mastered managing to keep her voice steady even when her emotions were running amuck. "All I wanted from you was a sign, and I never got it. Then after I found out I was pregnant, things really started to cloud my thoughts. Like, as much as I wanted to pretend it wasn't an issue, the baby I was carrying was going to be a biracial child. I can take anybody saying anything about me. I'm a lot stronger than I appear sometimes."
"I know," he murmured quietly, never taking his eyes off her face. Knowing he had contributed to this pain within her, the same pain she'd beared alone for years, was slowly beginning to eat away at him. How could she have carried the burden alone all this time?
"I didn't care what they would say about me, because I was going to college and I'm going to law school. I'm doing something with my life. I didn't care that they would talk about me having a child when I was still at an age where I had to ask my parents for permission to stay out a little longer past my curfew. That didn't matter to me. Talk about me all you want, because I know who I am, what my goals are and what I'm capable of. But, Justin, I couldn't have anyone talking about my baby. The circumstances surrounding his birth weren't his fault; he had two strikes against him before he was even born. His mother was a black teenager and his father was white. I don't care how far people in this country think we've come, children with mixed heritage, especially if they have that so-called "biracial" look, can get stares. I didn't want to keep the two of you apart forever, but all I could think about was people looking at us when we would take our baby out in public. Sometimes I still get a little paranoid when somebody looks at him too long. I want to shield him from everything and it hurts me to know that I can't. Because if something bad gets to him and he's hurt by it, I don't know if I'll be able to explain it to him.
"I called your house that day and broke up with you because I didn't know if I and our child would have a place in your life once you became famous. I had an idea that you would be like a young sex symbol for your girl fans and I knew that a pregnant girlfriend and later a baby wouldn't fit into the plan. I did it for you," she finished as she ran a hand over her face, under her eyes, trying to remove the physical evidence of the distress she was experiencing.
"And because you didn't believe in me, or in us," he realized aloud. He moved towards her on the couch until they were only inches apart. "All those plans I was making? Those plans to become rich and famous off my music? I was doing that for us. You knew I wanted us to be together. It was you who didn't want to be with me."
His rejection sent shockwaves through her brain and she felt her body losing some of its warmth. "You didn't listen to anything I said!" she cried. Why was he making this so hard? "I loved you! I loved you so much I let you go so you could fulfill your dreams!"
"Oh, how noble of you," he voiced sarcastically. His voice occasionally cracked with his own impending tears when he continued. "How come I feel like you really broke up with me because you didn't like that people would look at us with our baby and they might talk? How come I feel like you lied to me when you said at the very beginning of our relationship that you thought it could go through anything and survive? How come I feel like I might die inside because I know now that you really didn't love me enough to trust that I would stay by you and make my own, right decisions about things that concerned me too?"
He stood, straightened his clothes, and retrieved his cell phone from his pocket. She wanted to disappear into the couch when he fixed her with the coldest look she'd ever seen. "Excuse me. I need to go call a taxi."
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