Duke's Jazz

Chapter 11

Duke



After an hour of spending time with Avery, I realized my son was like me in every way, but smarter thanks to gaining both mine and Jazz’s brains. How did I not realize this before? This little boy was my ‘mine’. I am trying to figure out how to react to Jazz once I drop Avery off at her store. I admit I am overjoyed by the fact I have a son. Considering Eva didn’t want kids, so we never even tried or had s*x without protection. Hell in our eight years of marriage, I could still use my hands to count the number of times we f****d. Granted, that was probably due to all the d**k she had on her side, but it wasn’t for my lack of trying.

Thinking about all this s**t with Eva and now Jazz. Just make these feelings of betrayal stronger. It’s making me angrier at Jazz because of keeping the fact I have a son from me. Yeah, I am happy, but I am more angry than happy. Finally arriving at the store, I realize Jazz’s car isn’t there, which means she probably is going to the post office to mail her orders. So, I get out and walk Avery into the store where my brother is manning the counter.

“Hey Sam, I have to take off. So tell Jazz I will call her later.” I was trying to hide my rage, so Avery didn’t think he did something wrong.

“Okay, man, I’ll see you at home?” He questioned because he was sensing my anger.

“Dude, when you get home we have a lot to talk about because I know you know.” I could tell, he knew I was talking about Avery, considering just by looking at him you could tell he was mine.

After he nodded, I walked out and got into my car. While starting it, I noticed Jazz walking looking down a receipt which was probably from the post office from mailing out packages for her customers. When she finally looked up, she waved and my heart felt like it was being squeezed inside my chest. I decided to act like I hadn’t seen her, so I backed out and sped off towards home.

***

Jasmine

“That was weird, maybe he didn’t see me?” I muttered to myself before walking into my store.

Opening the door to the store, Avery runs up to me with excitement in his eyes as he gives me a hug. Then he started telling me about his ice cream outing with Duke. When he finished and went to the back room to do his homework, I was holding a saddened smile on my face regretting I hadn’t told Duke about Avery. Considering our son had only met him once, I knew Avery thought the world of him.

***

Week later

After the day Duke picked up Avery. He hasn’t said a word to me and I even texted him when I hate texting.

Me: Thank you, for getting Avery and hanging out with him.

Nothing

I didn’t even get a reply back and I tried calling him, but I always got his voice mail. We didn’t even celebrate my birthday, so I happily did what I have done for the past few years and that was spending it with my little guy. He gave me a handmade card he made in his free class and we ate cake and watched movies. Sitting at the breakfast bar in my kitchen looking at the card Avery made on the refrigerator. I realized I was starting to become more and more worried that something had happened to Duke. I even asked Sam daily how Duke was doing and all he would say was ‘fine’. I have kept wondering time and time again why wouldn’t he take my calls? My phone rang, pulling me back to reality from my state of confusion.

“Hello”

“Hey baby girl”

“Hey Grandma”

“How are you and my grandson?”

“Avery is good, how are you?” I was trying to avoid the ‘you’ part of her question.

“I don’t think so! I know something is wrong when you avoid the question.”

“I really don’t want to talk about it.” I was being honest, I didn’t want to talk about it.

“To damn bad!” Okay, so my grandmother had a way of scaring me into talking.

“Fine, do you want to know? Duke asked me on a date, then basically stood me up on my birthday. Then we hadn’t talked since the day he picked up Avery from school.” After stating this to my grandmother, it clicked I knew why…

Ding, Dong