COVET: Deceptive Desires by Amarie Avant

a baby. Calm down! Liam took her hand beneath the table, as if sensing her inability to breathe. She smiled and clutched his hand tighter, as the revelation smacked her in the face. I’ve played cards with my FATHER!
    Making a mental note of his features, she compared them against her mother’s tenth grade high school picture, which was embedded in her brain. Alvin’s skin was lighter than hers, which made sense, because her mother was a rich dark chocolate. A bubble nose, smack dab in the middle of his face, made her uncertain. Charlene’s nose was petite. His nose made his beady eyes look even smaller, and his lips were but two lines. Sipping on a can of Sprite, Raven had a rush of energy. How would she go about talking to her father–Alvin Jenkins?
    ~~~
    This night was becoming a mystery to Liam. First, there was Dad’s vague expression when he invited Raven to dinner. Then he thought about tackling the fact that Monica had to be the one to tell Chris about them seeing each other. How do I tell Raven about Monica ?
    To top it all off, on the way to his car, his father told him to come home for dinner on Sunday. Liam hadn’t been home since his mother had forced him to live in France.  He was practically the only consistent inhabitant of Chateau Delacroix, one of his grandparents’ palaces. There was a wealth of servants on rotation, and he never got to know any of them. Elise had come to visit, but they didn’t talk much, didn’t have that mother-son bond.
     “You’ve been quiet for a long time,” Liam mentioned as they sped down the highway toward Bellwood.
    “Alvin Jenkins!” Raven exclaimed. Other than the guy being funny-looking, Liam didn’t get what she was laughing about. “All this time…he comes over to get his car fixed all the time, the transmission, and then his brakes and…and he comes to Sunday dinner a lot! I can’t believe he’s AJ!”
     “AJ?” Liam cocked an eyebrow. He wanted to pull over and talk, but they would be cutting it too close to her curfew.
    “Remember in the attic, the Valentine teddy bear?”
    “Wait, wait, you think Alvin is your father?” The man looks like a blowfish.
    “He has to be. Granted, I haven't read Charlene’s entire journal. I skimmed and found that she always went to AJ’s football games. And your dad mentioned the ‘good times’ when they played for Bellwood High... He just has to be!”
    “So what? My dad was a football player at Bellwood High, they played together.”
    “But your dad’s name isn’t AJ, dummy.”
    “All I’m saying is you don’t look anything like him.”
    “Good thing, too!”
    Liam almost laughed. Intuition kicked in. “I don’t know, Re. Alvin is a…good guy. Is it logical for him to deny—?”
    “So you’re saying my father isn’t a good guy?”
    He took a deep breath and glanced at her. She’d only asked about her father once in her lifetime, well, as far as he was certain. The outcome wasn’t as expected, so he decided to take a measured approach. “All I’m saying is you’ve only asked Annette about your father once—”
    “Correct,” Raven replied tartly.
    “Do you remember that one day? Our thirteenth summer, where it seemed you’d inadvertently signed me up for a mega triathlon?”
    She bit her lip for a second in thought. “Liam we don’t have time to go jogging down memory lane.”
    “Oh, you don’t remember... Dirt bike riding,” he began to list off an arsenal of the activities Raven facilitated—in her defense, they started the day bright and early. “Just to further nudge your memory, it was that very afternoon we ended up in the gorge.”
    A half-smile warmed its way on her face. “Hey, hey, hey, you don’t seem to have suffered any mental problems. No harm, no foul, and most importantly, no concussion,” she joked. “But, I did show you the best day of your life.” She chuckled, using the line he always told her.
    Liam laughed. That day would forever be imbedded in his