Secrets of a Side Bitch
By Jessica N. Watkins
Copyright © 2013, Jessica N. Watkins
Synopsis
He’s beautiful with gray eyes, tall, chocolate … and he’s worth fighting for.
Meet Omari– a gorgeous, hard working, twenty-eight year old man from the Southside of Chicago. No matter how hard he works at his job at UPS, it is never enough to take care of himself and his long-term girlfriend. After continuous pressure from his older cousin, Ching, Omari finally traded in busting his ass for working under Ching hustling three major blocks on the Westside. All is good as Omari juggles work and the drug game. That is, until Ching involves him in the murder of, who ends up being, the Governor’s nephew. As he dodges homicide detectives, Omari is also trying to dodge getting caught between two loves. He’s been committed to Aeysha for seven years, but is falling each day for Simone, an older more established woman who is at his every beck and call. After years of playing the side chick, Simone finally finds love that she thinks is all her own. Just as she settles into loving Omari, she finds out about Aeysha and her desperate mind begins to plot on how to finally win her man. Simone’s best friend, Tammy, thinks Simone is crazy as she herself is running from an obsessed ex-boyfriend who is persistent in trying to kill her. Tammy lives in hiding for months as she asks herself this burning question; how can a man love a woman with the same hands that he is willing to kill her with?
As the murder investigation leads to arrests, the walls come down on these lovers. Murder, sex, and indictments lead to unforeseen tragedy and unexpected love.
ONE
MONDAY, JUNE 17TH, 2013
Tammy
It was Monday, June 17th. The thought that persistently ran through my mind was how I would never forget this day; if I lived to see another one.
“Jimmy, put the gun down.”
I was pleading with him as tears ran marathons down my face. I could feel the Mac Studio Fix as it dripped down my cheeks and onto my neck. My heart was beating so fast with horror that I became short of breath. My head spun in aggressive loops, causing the room to twist and spin like a rollercoaster before my tear soaked eyes.
I wanted to run for my life, but I dared not move. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. I was paralyzed as I stared down the barrel of Jimmy’s nine millimeter.
I stared at him in the same way that I would have stared with fright at the angel of death himself. Jimmy ignored my fear and continued to bark manically. “Bitch, I’mma put a bullet in yo’ head! I told yo’ ass don’t play wit’ me!”
He had. For days, Jimmy told me that if he couldn’t have me, no one else could. For days, he called my cell phone hundreds of times a day. My text message inbox was filled with messages of him threatening my life and of him loving me so much that he couldn’t live without me.
Through gritted teeth and a clenched jaw, he told me, “All I wanted to do was love you.”
Jimmy’s black skin was perspiring so much that it glowed in the darkness of the living room. I was still wrapped in the blanket that I cuddled up with an hour prior as I prepared to watch the newest episode of Love and Hip Hop Atlanta. I was all too prepared to watch the ratchetness and entertaining foolery until I fell asleep. I was exhausted. The last couple of days spent arguing with Jimmy had completely worn me out.
After five years of Jimmy’s possessiveness, I was done. I was twenty-seven with no children. I had a wonderful teaching career. I drove a fairly new Avenger. I didn’t have the most expensive labels in my closet, but I dressed decently. I wasn’t the prettiest girl in the world, but I was cute, with measurements that any woman would pay money to get injected with. I ensured that I kept a nice shape by hitting the gym at least four days a week. Plus, I was mixed, so my hair was long, full, and rich. I’m not bragging, but these were all reasons why I didn’t have to put up with this nigga who was thirty-three with no job and four kids by three different women telling me what to do, where to go, and what time to be back.
I had spent the last five years literally catering to this man out of fear that if I didn’t, he would leave me. I spent five years being scared; scared of being alone and scared of his anger that sent him into tantrums that often ended with me having a sore neck, busted lip, or black eye.
Four days ago, I realized that being alone was better than having his sorry ass company making me miserable every fucking day.
Four days ago, I realized that being alone was better than living every day lonely with him.
“I can’t believe you left me!”
Amidst the reflections of Stevie J. and Joseline, Jimmy continued to cruelly aim the nine millimeter at my head. He held that gun so tight that I could see veins bursting out of his hand and forearm.
I was use to Jimmy’s violence and abuse. Yet, that day, I was more scared than I had ever been. His eyes looked erratic. They bounced around uncontrollably. They looked diluted and possessed.
“I’m sorry,” I said through sobs that were out of control and begged for my life. “We can talk about it, I promise. Just please put the gun down, Jimmy.”
It was like he didn’t even hear me. I could see in his eyes that his mind was somewhere else. “I was gone get back right…”
“Jimmy…”
“I was gone find me a job. I was getting myself together.”
With every word, he walked closer towards the couch. With every word, his eyes bounced more erratically. With every word, he unsteadily pointed the gun at the birthmark on my forehead shaped like a lopsided heart.
I tried to reason with his deliriousness. “It’s not about that…”
Still, he ignored my pleas. “I love you.”
“Jimmy…”
“I LOVE YOU!!” Those three words exited his mouth with such force that I jumped in fear. My sudden movements ignited Jimmy’s reflections. He came towards me wildly. I finally decided that this was my only chance to get out of there alive. The light in the hallway seemed to glow like a guiding light towards the front door. As he came towards me, I jumped on top of the couch and over the back of it. No sooner than my bare feet hit the carpet, I took off running. I wasn’t able to make it two feet before I heard the gun go off.
Pow!
Instantly, I screamed in terror as I hit the floor. Milliseconds later, I felt the pain in the side of my head and warm blood running down my neck.
Omari
“What up, Pretty Boy.”
My eyes rolled into the back of my head as soon as Ching called me that gay shit. I hated when my family called me that. I never disliked my parents for anything until somebody called me “Pretty Boy”. It was their fault I got the name. My mother was the only dark-skinned woman that many people have seen with light eyes. Her eyes are gray. She’s a pretty woman too. Her friends and sisters always told me how beautiful she was back in the day. She use to model back in the 60s when the industry wasn’t hiring too many dark-skinned African-American women to model for anything. She had even been Jet Beauty of the Week three times.
I got a lot of my mother’s features, including the dark skin and gray eyes, mixed with my father’s height, build, and signature slanted eyes. My mama calls them “bedroom eyes”.
When I was a little kid, I tried my best to shake that pretty boy image. I got tatted up from head to toe. I let my hair grow out into long locs that were damn near to my waist by then. I always kept them up in different styles. I hit the gym hard and bulked up. But all that didn’t do anything to keep the nickname from sticking to me when it came to family. Shit, I even tried my hand at hustling to shake the pretty boy image, but that shit didn’t work for me either, which is why I was calling Ching.
“What up, Ching. Man, I need a favor
.”
I knew Ching was tired of me calling him for favors, but I didn’t have anybody else to call. He was my older cousin who had three blocks on the Westside sowed up with block boys serving loud, coke and pills for him.
He chuckled a lil’ bit when he said, “How much you need, man?”
Instantly, I was irritated. I pretended to bang my head on the steering wheel of my 2001 Impala. I felt like less of a man every time I had to ask another man to help me feed mine.
But, being six years older, Ching was like an uncle to me. Since my father wasn’t in my life, I clung to my older cousin and looked up to him. He often treated me like his nephew, rather than a cousin. So, it was easier for me to ask him for help and I knew he would always look out for me.
“Just a couple hundred ‘til I get paid Friday.”
“Come holla at me in the morning on your way to the gig.”
“Fa’ sho, bro. Thanks, man.”
“Aye, ain’t you tired of this shit? You workin’ just to pay me back.”
He was right. I couldn’t even argue with him. I was tired of working check to Monday; getting paid on Friday and being broke by Monday. This was nowhere near where I planned to be at twenty-eight years old, but you gotta play the hand that you’ve been dealt. Obviously, poverty was the hand God dealt me. I got a petty gig straight out of college at UPS while continuing to look for a job in the field that my degree was in. The money was cool at first. It was good enough to take care of me and my girl, Aeysha. But once my mother got in a car accident and ended up on disability, she needed my help financially. Then Aeysha lost her job a year ago and it was a wrap with the help she was on the bills.
“I keep telling you I can use your help, man.”
My instant reaction was a laugh. “Man, you already know what happened last time.”
When Ching first got heavy in the game, he put me on the street as one of his young workers. Man, he put me on that block and I flopped! I couldn’t sell water to a fish. Standing on a corner all day drove me fucking crazy. Ching took me off the block in less than a month! Hustling just wasn’t for me. So, I took my ass to school.
“I wouldn’t put you on no block, my nigga. I got use for you in other areas.”
Easy money sounded real good at that moment. Just thinking about waking up at six in the morning to work for eight hours for a check that wouldn’t even belong to me once I got it made my stomach hurt with embarrassment.
“Naw, man. I’ll pass.”
But thinking about the possibilities of getting locked up, not being able to fend for my mama and Aeysha in the little ways that I could, made my stomach hurt worse.
Tammy
The feeling of death is so unreal. I was so scared that it felt like the anxiety would give me a heart attack and kill me before the bullet did. But no matter what, I didn’t move. I lay still, listening to Jimmy talk to himself.
“Oh my God. What did I do? I’m so sorry, baby. I’m sorry.”
Jimmy was hovering over me as I lay lifelessly on the carpet. I could feel the moisture from my blood as it leaked out of my head and onto the carpet underneath me. Jimmy hovered over me. He apologized over and over again while kissing me. I could feel his wet tears as they leaked from his eyes and onto my face.
Not once did he check to see if I was alive. Not once did he call the police.
As soon as I knew that I had been hit, my instincts kicked in and I played dead. I lay as motionless as possible while fighting the urge to flinch in response of the burning sensation in my head. I don’t even know how long I laid there. It felt like hours, but it could have been minutes.
I wondered if he was going to shoot me again, to ensure that I was dead. I wondered would he shoot himself. I wondered all of these things as I lay there asking God to forgive me for my sins and accept me into the pearly gates of heaven.
I was jolted out of my prayers as I felt Jimmy leave me. I could hear his footsteps. He was running around the living room knocking stuff over. He even stepped over me as he went into the kitchen doing the same thing. I could hear pans crashing onto the floor and appliances breaking as they hit the tile. Then I could hear him in my bedroom. I assumed that he was making it look like a robbery, so I continued to lie lifelessly until finally I could hear the front door open and close.
Surprisingly, I could stand, so I ran to the front door and put all of the security locks on. I wondered why I hadn’t done that in the first place, allowing Jimmy to get in easily with his key.
Then, I ran into the living room to find my cell phone. I began to become more frantic and was panicking. I couldn’t find it and more and more blood was dripping from my head onto my body, clothes, and even on the furniture and floor as I frantically looked for my cell phone.
Soon, I gave up the search and discreetly looked out of the balcony door out into the parking lot. I could see Jimmy driving erratically out of the complex parking lot in high speeds. Knowing that I was now at least safe from Jimmy for a few minutes, I darted out into the hallway and begin screaming.
“Help me!!! HELP!”
It was eleven o’clock at night, so someone should have been awake. I was banging on apartment doors one after the other, not even waiting on anyone to answer before I started on the next.
“HELP!!! Please, somebody help me!!”
I was dying and I knew it. My mind was spinning. My heart was beating at rates that I had never felt before. My head was pounding like a bass drum so much so that I could hear it in my ears. Blood was all over me.
And just as I could hear heavy footsteps running up the stairs, I passed out.
TWO
TUESDAY, JUNE 18TH, 2013
Simone
I couldn’t believe Tammy was blowing my phone up like this! She had called me at least four times. Her and Jimmy were probably getting into it, but I was on a mission at the moment. I told myself to call her back later than morning.
When I heard the trunk close, I knew that this was my last opportunity to get Tre back. I quickly glanced at myself in the rearview mirror to make sure that I looked good. Since it was three in the morning, I couldn’t see much of anything though.
“You should be all set,” Tre said as he spoke to me through the passenger side window.
As the wind blew, the aroma of his favorite fragrance, Acqua Di Gio, came over me and gave me a familiar feeling.
“Can you get in for a minute? I need to talk to you.”
His instant reaction was annoyance, but he quickly tried to mask it as he climbed into my Camaro. Since he was 6’3” with a big build, it was a tight fit.
“What’s up? Talk.”
This is how Tre had been treating me for a month, after he dumped me because our affair had gotten too serious for him. He actually found a conscience and wanted to be faithful to his wife.
“Tre, I miss you.”
Immediately, he moaned and groaned like this was the last conversation he wanted to have.
“I can’t miss you?” I was fighting back tears already. I had given two years to this man. I loved his dirty drawers and he knew it. “I don’t care about your wife. I was willing to share you, and I still am, if that means I can have you in my life.”
“Simone, you deserve your own man.”
“But I want you, baby,” I told him as I lay my hand on his thigh. “Don’t you miss me?”
“I gotta do right by my wife. What we had was good, but it was wrong. It was starting to be about more than sex. You have caught feelings. That ain’t cool. The only woman that should have feelings for me is my wife. I told you that in the beginning. This was only supposed to be about sex.”
“I know…”
“Apparently, you don’t! You’re calling me at all times of night. You’re expecting shit out of me that ain’t my place. Look at where we are. It’s three in the morning and I’m changing your tire. I’m not your boyfriend, Simone.”
No matter what he was saying, he was still there. Though he felt like me and
him were only about sex, he came to my aid. When I was slicing my tire, I knew that he would.
I did what I had to do to see him face-to-face. For weeks, he’d been ignoring my calls, even sending me straight to voicemail. Whenever I did get him on the phone, there was no convincing him to come back to me.
So, I did what I had to do. I waited until three in the morning, drove to where I knew was only a few blocks away from his house, and sliced my tire so that it would go flat. Knowing that I could change a tire on my own, I figured if my distress call didn’t get Tre’s attention, I would just throw the spare on myself and think of something else. Tre never let me know where he lived, but I had followed him home a few times. I figured being close to him would better my chances on him coming to help me.
After text messaging him and asking that he please come change my tire, he replied that he was on his way. That right there let me know that something in him still cared, and I was determined to bring it out of him that night.
Just thinking about the way Tre had been treating me for the past month brought tears to my eyes. In my heart, I knew that this couldn’t go on forever. When I met Tre at a club named Swag two years ago, he told me that he was married, but I wanted him anyway. I was use to being the side bitch. I didn’t care that he was married. I pursed him anyway. His extreme height, wide build, chocolate skin, and crazy swagger made him irresistible. I bought him drink after drink as we conversed about any and everything; sports, politics, music. We stepped, danced, and had a ball. I knew that night that he wanted me. A few hours after the club closed, that was confirmed as we fucked until the sun came up in his Lexus truck.
From that night on, we were inseparable. Whether we were in a committed relationship or not, he was my man. Because he fulfilled my needs, I didn’t care about his wife. No, he wasn’t around for the holidays. No, he didn’t take me on dates. No, he didn’t financially take care of me. But physically and emotionally I was being fed, and I missed that.
Secrets of a Side Bitch Page 1
