When she spoke like that, it made my skin crawl. It sounded desperate and stupid. “How is that, Simone?”
“We were always together.”
“Yea, fucking.”
Instantly, I wanted to take that back because I saw tears in her eyes as she spat, “You don’t know how it is, Tammy!”
“How what is?”
Simone covered her face with her hands, but I could hear her sobs.
This drunk bitch, I thought.
I was the one that almost got shot in the head by my boyfriend. What the hell was she crying about?
It was the liquor and I knew it. I didn’t feel like sitting here listening to one of her drunken rants about being broken hearted over this married man.
“You don’t know how it is to never have a man want you– to have a man always choose another bitch over you! Look at me! I am thirty years old! I am comfortable! I have a beautiful home! I’m not ugly! Yet, every man, every man, that I have been with has always been somebody else’s man. Do you know how it feels to only be good enough to be the side bitch?!”
As soon as Simone realized what her drunk ass was saying, she looked embarrassed. Her face revealed the fact that she had accidentally told her dirty little secret. I was floored. I knew that Tre was married, but I assumed that that was a special case for Simone. I would have never thought that she always fucked with another woman’s man.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, girl. What about Dave and Steve?” I thought bringing them up wouldn’t make her feel so bad. They were the loves of her life in college.
“Dave was in a relationship with a bitch at Mississippi State! Steve had a woman on campus. The bitch was a cheerleader.” As Simone spoke, she looked so disgusted. It was clear that her disgust wasn’t aimed at herself. Her repulsion and hatred was with the real girlfriends of these men.
Again, I was floored. These were men that she had mentioned before as we became closer and closer. Never once did she mention that she was the side bitch.
I watched her tears in repulsion and wasn’t trying to hide it. I knew that Simone was willing to do anything for a piece of dick, but she just confirmed just how far she would go.
I had never seen a woman so obsessed with having a man, especially with having one that didn’t belong to her.
Luckily, Simone soon took her drunk ass home. I think what she said had settled in and embarrassment sent her home.
So, I was left to wallow in self pity. I lay across the bed in Donte’s guest bedroom holding a pillow tight while a rerun of R&B Divas played. I looked at Syleena Johnson and Nicci Gilbert have it out while the TV was on mute.
I wished for problems as simple as theirs. I had gone from minute issues to my boyfriend trying to kill me. Just a few weeks ago, I thought my life was over because I couldn’t get rid of a nigga who was bringing me down. Now, I wished that I had never left him, because my life was much worse now than it was with him.
Then, just as the reluctance of my choices came into my mind, Donte appeared in the doorway wearing basketball shorts and a bare chest. Soon my reluctance turned into assurance.
Leaving Jimmy was definitely the right thing. However, whether living here while hiding from him was a good idea had yet to be determined.
“Simone finally took her drunk ass out of here?”
I giggled slightly. “Yes. Finally.”
“You okay?”
I didn’t even bother masking my pain. I felt captive – hiding from a man that I once would have never walked away from. Seeing my sadness, Donte climbed into bed with me. Effortlessly, he spooned his body with mine and wrapped his arms around me. We had been sleeping like that for the last week and a half. It was his way of protecting me. Only he didn’t know that he was making living there even worse for me.
FIVE
THURSDAY, JULY 18TH, 2013
Omari
What Ching wanted me to do was fairly simple. Instead of running the risk of getting caught in the streets or in the air with weight, he and his connect wanted to arrange for the weight to come through UPS shipments.
The connect in Texas would ship weight stuffed into compartments of appliances through UPS. Then he had the appliances shipped to an address that was on my route. I was sure to get the package and deliver it. Ching even shipped weight to a few niggas he supplied to across the city.
Like I said, fairly simple. It was keeping Ching and any of his runners off the streets and his work under the radar. No one would suspect a UPS truck. It was a hell of a risk for me. If ever caught, I would lose my job and more. But I was making five hundred per kilo that I delivered, so it was way too profitable to turn away from.
The summer was always poppin’. More drugs exchanged hands during “Summertime Chi” than any time of the year. Ching’s business was booming. He had three trap houses on three different blocks on the Westside, Laramie/Jackson, Racine/Halsted, and Damen/Halsted. So on average, I made about two to five grand a week.
I wasn’t balling but I was able to dig myself out of the financial hole that I was in. I didn’t splurge because I was saving enough bread to buy a crib and pay off my mom’s crib.
I finally felt like things were coming together for me. I had even put more focus on Aeysha and less on my dips. All except one– Simone. The chick had my head, for real. She was different than any of my other dips. She was older, so more mature, established, and secure. She knew what she wanted and she didn’t play games trying to give it to me. I had been able to take her out a few times, to nice places that I could have never afforded to before. I wasn’t balling on Ruth’s Chris, but she was pretty impressed with J Alexanders.
I hadn’t gotten the panties yet, but that was all coming in due time. Her eyes told me that she wanted me. She was being a lady, but I knew that all it took was for me to act like I wanted it for her to open them legs for me.
As I rode my truck down Damen listening to the Yeezus album, I planned on that night being the night. I was making a drop for Ching to the trap on Damen. Then I was heading back to the factory to change, shower, and pick up Simone for dinner and drinks.
I had been doing this shit for three weeks, so the routine was fairly simple for me and the block boys. I approached the apartment building where the trap house was carrying a washer machine on a dolly. I was delivering about five kilos of coke and ecstasy powder that the block boys would make into pills. Since I was UPS, I had a key to get into the security gates. I entered the building like normal. Only this time, when I entered the hallway, I was ambushed.
Before I knew it, there were two guns to my head and a young nigga in front of me pointing a nine millimeter right between my eyes.
“Don’t move, nigga.”
My natural reaction was to get a good look at these motherfuckas to make sure that they weren’t Ching’s block boys. I knew I had never seen the one in front of me before, but as soon as I acted like I was about to turn my head, I felt the gun whip across my face.
I was bigger than these lil’ niggas, so he couldn’t pistol whip me to the point that I fell. But, since they were little niggas, lil niggas with no souls and no appreciation for a life, I stood still and listened to ‘em.
“Now this what we gone do,” the one in front of me ordered. “Me and my man gone take this work from you. Then my other man gone escort you back outside to your truck. Just leave with no problem and I won’t pop yo’ ass. Understood?”
I slowly nodded my head as I took surveillance of this young motherfucka. Besides a black hoodie and bandana covering his face and head, and despite me spotting dreads peeking out of the hoodie, he wore black jogging pants and LeBron XPS joints. These gym shoes were loud colors of green and damn near three hundred dollars. Not too many young niggas could afford them shoes. As he and one of his dudes carried the washer out of the back door of the apartment building, I knew that it wouldn’t be hard for Ching to find out who these little niggas was by them shoes alone.
Luckily, they kept their word a
nd didn’t pop me. As the last dude walked me out of the building with a gun in my back in broad daylight, I was pretty relieved that he just let me walk to my truck once we got to the security gate.
“Guilt Trip” was pumping through the speakers as I hopped into the truck. I could see the back of dude’s Abercrombie hoodie as he ran back into the building. Admittedly, I breathed a sigh of relief, but I wasn’t trippin’ about the work that I’d lost.
I was only the middle man. This was Ching’s work. And it was apparent that somebody in his camp was leaking information on the deliveries. So, I knew he’d take care of it.
Aeysha
Eboni invited me to a Thursday night prayer service at her church, Whole Truth Church of God in Christ.
Things were at there worst for me. After weeks of job searching, I hadn’t gotten one call back. Not one. That was heartbreaking because I was putting everything into finding a job. I felt so lost and scared that this was going to be my situation for the rest of my life.
Things seemed to be getting worse for me as they were only getting better for Omari. He had been so happy for the past few weeks and things were looking good for him financially. He was working lots of overtime and paying off bills that were in the red. I was happy for him, but I was becoming even more scared for myself. There was more and more distance in our relationship. He was gone all of the time and I knew that he was hiding things from me.
So, I prayed. I was on my knees in a pew next to Eboni. I could hear her praying and crying, asking God for several things for herself and her children. As she continued to pray, her cries became more intense, so I held her hand tight as I prayed for things of my own.
They say that storms of life don’t have to destroy you, but my storms were wiping me out. I wasn’t the secure woman that I use to be. I was run down. I felt useless. I felt ugly. I felt insecure. I asked God to turn all of that around and give me back what my tribulations had taken from me. I asked him to give me back my relationship. I asked for my happiness back. I asked for job security and a means to educate myself.
These were little things to pray for. I could hear the preacher at the pulpit demanding the healing of disease for the sick and shut in and to take away the pain of those dealing with bereavement. I felt insensitive for begging God to give me what seemed insignificant compared to Eboni kneeling next to me begging God to allow her to take care of her three children in better ways. I felt even more useless because I was asking God for things that I should have easily been able to give myself.
As I spoke to God, I could feel my cell phone vibrating as it lay on the pew in front of me. I had to check it because I was waiting to hear back from Omari about meeting up for dinner in thenext hour. I quickly checked it and it was a text message:Doin’ some overtime. Sorry, gotta cancel. See you at home later.
The pit of my stomach began to turn. My women’s intuition was on fifty. But instead of getting angry, I continued to pray; hoping that God would show me a sign of where to go and what to do.
Simone
“Well, if you pregnant, it ain’t mine! So why the fuck you tellin’ me?!”
The way Tre talked to me made me feel like shit. I couldn’t believe that this was the man that I had loved for the last two years. It had been a month since he broke up with me. It had been a month of him ignoring my calls and not answering any of my emails, since I had to resort to that after he changed his number. No matter how much time it had been, I missed him like crazy- so crazy that I emailed him telling him that I was pregnant.
I wasn’t pregnant, but if that got his attention good enough for him to call me, then so be it. If it got him to actually meet up with me, I would figure out the rest later.
“Tre, I swear! I’m two months, baby. I went to the doctor yesterday.”
“Bitch, you crazy as hell!”
I filled the phone with tears. The pregnancy was phony but the tears were real. I had given this man two years. I had given him my everything and loved him better than his wife ever could. No matter how much he felt about his wife, I couldn’t believe that he didn’t love or even care about me enough to even believe me.
“You think I’m crazy all you want to, but what the fuck yo’ wife gone say when she find out?!”
I think I was crying so hard because I wanted him to believe me that bad. All I needed was some physical time with him so that he could remember how good we were together.
When he got silent, I knew that I had at least scared him enough that he was willing to hear me out.
“Stop treating me like this, Tre. I love you, baby. You know that I would do anything for you.”
“Simone, it’s over.” This time, he wasn’t yelling. It was as if he was begging me to get it through my head.
“It being over ain’t got shit to do with this baby! And if you don’t stop treating me like this, I am telling your wife!”
“Bye, bitch!”
When the call ended, I couldn’t believe it. Tre had called me from an anonymous number, so I couldn’t call him back.
I couldn’t believe that I had gotten so desperate, but I was willing to do whatever I had to do to get what I wanted. I had always been like that.
As I held my phone in my hand, it began to ring. It was Omari, so I quickly stopped my tears so that I could answer his call.
“Hello?”
“Hey, baby. Be there in ten minutes.”
“Okay.”
I was set to go out on a date with Omari. We had been seeing each other for a few weeks, but it didn’t get my mind off of Tre. I loved Tre when Omari barely seemed interested in me. Yes, he took me to nice places and called me often, but he ignored all of my advances. I needed a man, someone to rock me to sleep and make me forget about being lonely.
Omari, for whatever reason, was too timid to do that. When we first hung out, I could tell that he was intimidated by my nice job, nice car, and big home. But as the weeks went by, I noticed that he was dabbling into some extracurricular activities that was putting some coins in his pockets. Therefore, he was able to treat me on the level that I was accustomed to. I knew exactly what he was dabbling in because he talked freely around me. It turned me on to be with a nigga in the dope game. That was a first for me.
But like I said, he had yet to fuck with me like I wanted him to, so as we said goodbye I finished getting ready with little urgency. Prior to Tre’s phone call, I had showered and changed into a mint green mermaid maxi dress. Paired with some stiletto sandals, it was casual yet classy enough for wherever he had in mind to take me that night.
Just as Omari rang the bell, I was finishing up the retouch of my makeup and getting rid of the smudges that the tears left. My mind was still on Tre and it was driving me crazy. I checked my cell for a missed call or email one more time as I walked towards the front door. Luckily, I had an email, so I stopped dead in my tracks in the hallway. Quickly, I opened the Google Mail app. It was indeed Tre, but once I saw that he started the email with “Hoe”, I closed the email and decided to read it later.
When I opened the door for Omari, he looked like he was having just as much of a fucked up night as I was.
“Hey you.” No matter how tired he looked, he greeted me with a smile. It actually looked like laying eyes on me had brightened his day. He looked over the curves that my maxi dress enhanced and licked his lips. “You look great.”
“Thank you. You look great, but tired. Long day?”
Omari stepped into the foyer as I went to grab my purse.
“Yea, something like that. I had a crazy day.”
“Well, we don’t have to go anywhere if you’re too tired.”
Purse in hand, I walked towards him. As soon as he could reach them, he grabbed my hands and pulled me towards him. My pussy leaked as my body came in contact with his. This man had undeniable presence. His smell alone wrapped around me and suffocated me.
“I want to feed you,” he told me as he kissed my forehead.
“You can feed me in o
ther ways.” I was literally purring into his ear. I was being forward, but I didn’t care. Tre had left me feeling like less of a woman. I needed to be convinced otherwise. Omari was the perfect man for the job.
Suddenly, I could feel the familiar heat that was always between Omari and I when we were together. There was sexual chemistry between us that was so magnetic that it felt like my body was being drawn to him. Yet, he ignored that chemistry so effortlessly that it made me question my femininity. He would only kiss me, as he did at that moment. Only tonight he was aggressive with his touch; grabbing me by the back of my head, sucking each of my lips, and biting them gently.
“Let’s stay in.” I was practically begging. I was so ready to give this man all of me. I wanted him to take me so badly.
He continued grabbing my hair with his huge hands as he spoke to me. “You sure?”
We were breathing hard and staring into each other’s eyes. He knew that I wanted to give him this pussy. The way he procrastinated taking it made me want to give it to him even more.
My answer was taking off his shirt. The sight of his bare upper body made me thank God silently. This man was built like a Greek God. Flattening his tire that day was well worth it. It was the only way that I could get him to stand still long enough to hold a conversation with me. On lunch, I flattened his tire with a letter opener from my office. Then, as the day ended, I stood in the window waiting for him to come to his car. When he did, I hurried down the stairs to offer my help.
Yet, as we kissed, touched, and groped one another as we walked to my couch, I knew it was worth pulling that crazy ass move and mentally gave myself a pat on the back for pulling this sexy motherfucker. I was always the type of woman to do what I had to do to get my way, and tonight was no exception. I was tired of Omari’s sexy ass denying my femininity. I knew he wanted this pussy, and he was playing around with taking it.
I pushed him down on the couch. Then I immediately dropped to my knees in front of him. I tore at his jeans, damn near ripping them as I excitedly unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants. Omari looked at me pleasingly. He was happy that I was eager to please him.
Secrets of a Side Bitch Page 4
