Prestige, page 3
This couldn’t be real.
She slapped herself in the cheeks multiple times, and when that didn’t work, she clutched the skin of her arms, wincing when her manicured nails found purchase. At the same time, it was her only source of comfort. But it backfired when she thought of the times Artemis made her stop just from a simple touch or kind words.
“So long as you’re with me, I’ll make sure your skin stays as lovely as what’s inside.”
She dug her nails in deeper.
There were many times she thought about Artemis over the years. It’s hard to forget the person who changed your life, gave it new meaning, then ripped it all away. The last time they spoke, Artemis was promising forever. And then she left Bonnie behind in an attempt to start a new life without her, away from the place they mutually resented for separate reasons. However, she didn’t manage to get very far. The funny thing about karma was it could come at any time. For Artemis, it came in an instant.
Bonnie heard the bathroom door open, followed by footsteps. It was quiet, and the silence felt too familiar.
“Bonnie,” Artemis said.
Bonnie released a faint whimper. She never thought she would hear her name on Artemis’s lips again.
“You’re in here, aren’t you?” Artemis asked when Bonnie didn’t answer.
Bonnie thought about keeping quiet and waiting her out, but the idea of that being their only interaction after she spent so much time grieving Artemis—grieving them—didn’t sit right.
She opened the stall, and Artemis was standing right there. She’d grown taller, and her body filled out her standard black shirt and dark blue jeans. Her brown hair, once short behind her ears, grew long down her back. Artemis waited, and Bonnie realized then how long she’d been staring without saying anything.
“You’re taller,” she said. Out of all the things she wanted to say for so many years, that was not one of them.
Artemis looked just as taken aback. She rubbed the back of her neck. “Just a few inches.” She slowly raised her eyes, using Bonnie’s body as a focal point. Their eyes met again. “So are you.”
They were both tall individuals. Bonnie stood at a solid five-nine and Artemis just over six feet. But Artemis’s current muscular build fit her height so well. She looked better than ever.
Better without me, Bonnie thought bitterly.
Artemis opened her mouth. “How are—”
“When did you get out of prison?” Bonnie cut her off. The last thing she heard about her ex-girlfriend was that she got sent to Decatur Correctional Center with a max of ten years. Any other details she refused to hear.
Artemis sighed. “Fifteen months ago.”
That answer came as a kick to the gut, and all Bonnie could say was, “Wow.”
Artemis stepped forward. “Can we talk? I know you probably have a lot of questions.”
“I don’t, actually,” Bonnie said. She exited the bathroom stall, forcing Artemis to back up. “I think I know everything I need to.” She headed for the exit.
Artemis grabbed her by the arm and turned her back around. “You don’t.”
“So you didn’t leave me?” Bonnie questioned, ignoring the way Artemis’s touch sent sparks shooting up her arm. She sneered. “Or almost take me down with you because you got yourself into some fucked up shit you couldn’t handle?”
Artemis winced, her grip loosening. “I won’t make excuses…”
“Good.” Bonnie ripped her arm out of Artemis’s hold. “Because, as we both know, you’re full of crap.”
“B, you were better off anyway.”
“God!” Bonnie said, losing it at the former affectionate nickname that used to make her heart sing. Now it threatened to pierce her from the inside out. “Do you ever listen? I said I don’t want to hear it. Anything you say now is meaningless. And either way, it doesn’t matter anymore, because I’ve moved on.” With all the pettiness in the world, she lifted her left hand and flashed her ring. The same ring that suffocated her finger the second Marcus put it on her.
Artemis’s eyes darkened, her perfectly carved jaw tightening. Bonnie ignored the giant leap her stomach made to her chest. She jumped when she heard a knock on the entrance door and it opened by a crack.
“Babe?” Marcus called out. His head remained outside the door. “You in there?”
Bonnie’s eyes stayed on Artemis. “Yes! Be right out,” she said, setting her voice an octave higher.
The door closed.
“Bonnie, please,” Artemis whispered. She stepped closer, now towering over Bonnie. Her look intensified. “This is the only thing I’ll ever ask from you again. Let me explain. Please.”
The pleading from her took Bonnie back to when she would’ve done anything Artemis asked of her. But that came with trust, with love, and with time. None of those things they had anymore. The only thing Bonnie felt was hate.
“No,” she said and walked away.
“If you change your mind,” Artemis called out, and Bonnie paused despite herself, “meet me at our spot. I’ll be there every day at four o’clock until you show up.”
Bonnie shut her eyes and breathed out slowly. She looked over her shoulder. “Don’t count on it.”
She met Marcus and Mina at the front. They said their goodbyes, and Marcus led Bonnie out by the hand.
“What did you think? I liked it,” Marcus said.
Bonnie refused to look back. She stared out the window blankly as they drove away. “Let’s keep our options open.”
three
Standing in the window of Minako’s Kitchen and Catering, Artemis watched Bonnie and her fiancée drive away.
Fiancée . The word pinched Artemis’s nerves. Her heart hung in her chest like a heavy, obnoxious weight. Completely useless.
“I’ll be surprised if those two make it down the aisle.”
Artemis turned. Mina walked toward her, arms folded and looking in the direction the Porsche sped away.
“What makes you say that?” Artemis asked, keeping her tone nonchalant.
“The poor woman could barely get a word out.” Mina shook her head. “He did most of the talking, but I guess that makes sense given his future in politics.”
Despite catering a lot of weddings, Mina was a bit of a cynic. Every couple who came to her looking for her services would get silently judged, and once they left, Mina shared her candid thoughts. Artemis didn’t care much to hear about strangers’ relationships or their future marital problems, but under these circumstances she would’ve kissed Mina’s boots for more information.
“He’s a politician?” she asked.
“Soon to be. His family is basically royalty here. At least one person in every generation of the Spencer family has contributed to the Illinois government at some point. Marcus is already a shoo-in for governor, but I’m sure he wants to have a good voter-turnout, which makes this ‘engagement’ all the more convenient.”
“You don’t think the relationship is real?” Artemis asked, inching forward more.
Mina shrugged. “All I can say is that I didn’t see a lot of natural chemistry between them. She seemed awkward.”
“Hm.” Artemis’s mind spun with theories. This all sounded so familiar, and it had Bonnie’s wretched mother written all over it.
There was no logical explanation for Bonnie to be with that man aside from reaching the terms of conditions set for her a long time ago. Artemis never could hide her disgust about it. Even now, her fists clenched at her sides.
After everything Vivica put her through, how could Bonnie not break free from her after all these years?
“Artemis,” Mina said. Coming out of her daze, Artemis looked at her boss.
“Yeah?”
“I said if you could help load the car for this delivery then I’d let you out early,” Mina said.
“Oh… Okay, thanks.” Artemis followed Mina back to the kitchen.
While she was taking out trash and cleaning dirty dishes, Bonnie was driving down the road in a luxury car, wind in her hair and a man who could give her everything she wanted at her side. Artemis always feared this would happen, and yet any other scenario would’ve been way too much of a blessing considering she screwed them both out of what they deserved.
After the day she had, Artemis was grateful Mina let her go home early. She showered and then got into bed. Her apartment was a far cry from a prison cell, but sometimes she stared up at the ceiling and couldn’t tell the difference. Maybe it had something to do with having the same thoughts she did while incarcerated.
For ten years, Artemis never had anything she could call her own. Even the wool blanket and hard cot she slept on did not belong to her. At Decatur Corrections Center, it was every woman for herself. The food might have tasted like the grime found in sewers, but when left unattended another woman would take it. One of Artemis’s first fights in the prison involved someone stealing her toothbrush. She might have gotten her ass kicked, but she sure as hell learned how to fight after that. And there were a lot of fights. If they weren’t getting abused by prison guards, they were taking their anger out on each other. Artemis had to learn how to fight or else get beaten to death.
Most nights she would lie awake in her prison cell wondering if tomorrow was the day she finally went insane. The only thing that kept her from losing her mind on those cold and secluded nights were thoughts of a girl she once called hers.
Only at night did she allow herself to play that fantasy game of “what if.” What if she never got arrested? What if she grew up in a lovely home rather than being dicked around in the foster care system all her life? What if she never had to resort to selling drugs to make a livelihood? What if she just took Bonnie by the hand and fled far away where no one could find them?
Every night Artemis imagined a different scenario, but one core element never changed—the love she and Bonnie had for one another. Knowing something like that existed once upon a time got her through some hard days. She remembered Bonnie’s love and being in love with her. That existed, and she got to experience it. Even if it wasn’t meant to last forever.
She let those thoughts die when she got out fifteen months ago, knowing she ruined her chance at any of those possibilities due to—as Bonnie called it—fucked up shit she couldn’t handle.
Seeing Bonnie again made Artemis forget. It was like seeing color after years of her vision being in black and white. Those fantasies she created of them flashed in her mind before she had time to rationalize.
The thing with Bonnie was that she always made Artemis lose sight of the ground beneath her feet. Artemis only saw her. But this new version of Bonnie was so different from the one Artemis knew before or the one she conjured up in her dreams over the past ten years. Appearance wise, she looked more beautiful than anything Artemis’s mind could paint, which had always been the case. There was a lot more maturity in her facial structure, but also in her eyes. That came at the cost of that youthful, inquisitive look she always had of the world around her. Bonnie’s eyes no longer held questions, only a quiet but not at all content look with what the world had to offer. Where there was still a vibrancy around her, there were spots of darkness that should’ve never existed. Artemis knew she contributed to that.
It was selfish, cruel even, to ask anything of Bonnie after what she did. But her mouth moved faster than her brain. A part of her wanted to explain herself, but a larger part wanted to see Bonnie again, hear her voice, and take in her beauty that had doubled with each year that passed.
And more than anything, she needed to know that despite what happened in their past, Bonnie was living a better life than the two of them could have dreamed of together. That would’ve made it all worth it in Artemis’s eyes.
She would respect what Bonnie wanted or didn’t want. And if that stubbornness she knew all too well still existed inside of her ex, today might’ve been the only time their paths crossed again. And it would probably be for the best.
Hope still existed, though. Artemis would show up to their spot every day. And if Bonnie did give her the time, she told herself that was all she needed. One last time would be enough to say everything and let Bonnie go for good.
four
Being a Wilson meant paying your dues.
Vivica paid them by winning both Miss Illinois and Miss USA in 1984. Once she did that, Benjamin saw her worthy of marrying.
It was no secret how much Vivica wanted a family of boys. She needed strong men who could hold down the Wilson family fort for many years to come. But she only struck luck once with Tyson, and after a horrible, life-threatening pregnancy with Bonnie, her doctor informed her that she would no longer be able to carry any more children.
“A curse is what it is!” Vivica claimed one day. She had no idea six-year-old Bonnie was standing outside of her parents’ bedroom door listening in on their conversation. “I told you I never felt right about that pregnancy, and now all of our plans are ruined because of—”
“It’s fine, honey,” Benjamin told her, his face buried in a newspaper. His tone sounded less comforting and more bored with the conversation. “We have Tyson, and he’s all we need.”
It was one of Bonnie’s first core memories. Was she a curse? Did her birth lead to what would be the undoing of their family many years later?
After that, Bonnie was determined to prove her mother’s words wrong. But how could she make her family see that she wasn’t a failure or curse? Joining the pageant circuit was one idea.
When she brought it up one day at breakfast, her father looked bemused, Tyson confused, and Vivica unreadable. But if only to have something to do with her, Vivica agreed, having cautious optimism about making Bonnie a pageant queen like herself.
Unfortunately, Bonnie did not inherit the family genes of having a big personality. She wasn’t ugly, but her awkwardness and lack of confidence stuck out more than her looks. She never placed within the top ten because of that, and all the money spent enrolling her in pageants from age seven to fifteen went down the drain, putting them in more debt Vivica could not remain in denial about after Benjamin and Tyson passed. She also couldn’t sugarcoat things with Bonnie anymore.
“Listen, BonBon,” Vivica said to a sixteen-year-old Bonnie one day. She only used that dreadful nickname when she needed Bonnie to comply with whatever new plot she came up with. “With Tyson and your father gone, we need to find you a good man who will take over the company. Here’s how it will work…”
From how to wear her hair to what young men liked in a woman, Bonnie received a crash course from Vivica on how to get a guy in eight minutes. However, it needed to be the right guy. Vivica looked up family histories and backgrounds to determine if the guys Bonnie brought home were capable of assuming the role of head of the family, and none of them ever made the cut. Bonnie wasn’t exactly disappointed. In her pageant days, she realized that the only reason she tolerated it so much was because she loved being surrounded by so many other pretty girls. But Vivica wouldn’t learn until much later about her sexual preference.
The “right guy” did come along, though. Gary Richardson. Bonnie met him at a charity event during her sophomore year of high school. Vivica knew of the Richardson family and their connections. Gary’s father served as the global ambassador of Africa in the United States. When she found out about Gary’s attendance at the charity event, Vivica forced Bonnie to go.
Gary was eighteen, captain of the football team, and the recipient of a full-ride scholarship to Harvard, leaning toward a political future like his father. He ticked every one of Vivica’s boxes.
While most girls envied her for dating an older guy, Bonnie was uncomfortable. She could not understand why he wanted to court a sophomore in high school when he could be with mature, college-educated women. She thought they would break up when he left for college, but Gary was a persistent man. Owning an entire company right out of college didn’t bother him.
“Have you guys talked about the engagement yet?” Vivica asked one day at the breakfast table.
Bonnie barked out a laugh. When she caught Vivica’s serious expression, her eyes widened.
“Are you serious? I’m still in high school!”
“Only for another year. But once you’re eighteen—”
“I’ll still be a teenager,” Bonnie cut her off. She grabbed a protein bar out of the cabinet for her breakfast and ripped it open. “I don’t understand why marriage has to come so quickly.”
Vivica snatched the breakfast bar out of her hand and broke it in two. She gave one half to Bonnie and threw the other half in the trash.
“Your father and I got married at nineteen,” she said.
“Yeah, well… that was you guys.”
“Have you forgotten the point of this?”
“No, I think you’ve made it quite clear, Mother,” Bonnie said bitterly.
“Good.” Vivica sipped her coffee. “Besides, being the interim CEO is a lot of work that I didn’t sign up for. We need to have your guy prepped and primed to take over by twenty-two at the earliest.”
Bonnie chewed on her lip and thought about a scenario she had imagined a lot as of late.
“What if I want to go to college?” Bonnie asked.
Vivica scoffed over her mug. “And study what? Astronomy?”
Oftentimes, Bonnie listened to her mother blame other women who dared to be career-driven for being what’s wrong with society today. How she was registered as a Democrat was anyone’s guess.
“I don’t know… Business, maybe?”
Vivica lowered her mug. She watched Bonnie’s shifty gaze and narrowed her eyes. “Absolutely not.”
“But, Mom—”
“Your father made it clear that a man is to take over Wilson Bank. You would be way in over your head, like me.” Bonnie opened her mouth to respond but Vivica stopped her with the raise of her hand. “End of discussion. Now go on or you’ll be late for school.”
Bonnie skipped classes that day. With Vivica’s talk of future engagements and shutting down her query, she didn’t care much for faking pleasantries with classmates she wouldn’t remember in a few years.
