Love Me

by Diamond Johnson

  At the time, I didn’t think anything about signing the prenup because I just knew that divorce was never going to be an option. In a way, yes, I was naïve. Plus, I really wanted to marry him, and he told me that if I didn’t sign the papers, his father wouldn’t leave him the business. I knew how much that business meant to him, which was another reason why I signed. I couldn’t get those words that he said to me out of my head, and I could feel the love that I did have left for him slowly drifting away.

  I didn’t even pressure him about coming home anymore. Most nights, I either slept in the room with Jada or Jaden because I just couldn’t stand to be around him.

  The time finally came around for me to pick up Journey from her detention. Jada was in the back seat watching a movie on the iPad with her headphones in her ear, and she’d let me know at least ten times since she’d been up that she was feeling better. My mom went ahead and picked up Jaden from school for me, so once Journey came to the car, I would be on my way to pick him up.

  It took about five minutes before Journey finally came out of the double doors, and the first thing that I noticed about her as she walked to the car was that her uniform collared shirt was pulled up like she was purposely trying to cover her neck. I silently closed my eyes, and I counted to ten in my head, praying to God that she wasn’t disguising what I thought she was. At this moment, I was overjoyed that Jada’s headphones were in and she was so wrapped up in watching Hotel Transylvania 3 that she wasn’t even paying the two of us any attention.

  Journey lived for sitting in the front seat, so I knew something was up when she got to the car and tried to be slick by getting in the back.

  “No, get up here in the front. I need to talk to you,” I let her know right when she opened the door in the back.

  She looked at me hesitantly for a few seconds and then she closed the door and climbed in the front seat, right before she placed her backpack down on the car floor. The car was still in park, and I casually leaned over the console, pulled her collar down, and examined her neck. Just like I thought, a hickey that took up just about the majority of the left side of her neck was there for the whole fuckin world to see! It was fresh too, and I knew for a fact that that hickey wasn’t on her neck this morning. I didn’t think that I would have to start dealing with shit like this until she hit seventeen, or by the grace of God, maybe even eighteen.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Journey? So, not only are you sneaking around in the hallways kissing boys, but you’re even bold enough to have these little boys sucking on your damn neck? I don’t even want to have to ask you this, but are you having sex too?” I asked her, and she had the nerve to look at me like she was offended.

  “Really, Ma? No, I’m not having sex! The boy that I was in the hallway kissing, that wasn’t even my boyfriend. Prior to today, I had never even kissed a boy. This was both of our first time doing it. We met up in the hallway just to talk, and right before I was getting ready to go back to class, he pulled me in to him for a hug. It just happened, Ma. He kissed me, and I kissed him back. What’s the big deal? You act like you weren’t kissing boys when you were my age,” she said.

  I swear, it took everything in me not to slap her ass for talking to me like that. Out of all three of my children, I swear that this was going to be the one who had me in jail. I’ll never understand why Journey turned into this person. She used to be the sweetest little girl. I remember vaguely when the twins were born, and she would help me with them any chance that she could. It would be three in the morning, and the twins would wake up like clockwork, crying. Journey would get out of her bed, trying to help either feed them or change them, and if it was a school night, I would always tell her to just go back to bed. That’s just how caring my baby girl was when she was younger. Now, when I talked to her, at times, I felt like I was talking to the damn devil himself.

  “The big deal is you’re thirteen, Journey! To answer your question, no I wasn’t kissing boys when I was your age, because unlike you, I feared my mama. I knew that if she were to have gotten the same phone call home that you just got today, my mama would have kicked my ass! That’s your problem right there, you don’t damn fear me! Please, don’t let my weight fool you. I don’t know how many times I have to keep preaching this very same thing to you. You’re letting a boy kiss you and suck on your neck, and you’re claiming that he’s not even your boyfriend. I would have much rather you told me a lie that you were in love! Don’t tell me no shit like that because you make yourself look and sound dumb. Hand me over that phone. You won’t be getting this back until God knows how long,” I said and reached my hand out.

  Sucking her teeth, she lifted up in her seat so she could get the phone from her back pocket, and then she handed it to me. I placed the phone in the middle console and quickly pulled out of the parking lot.

  It took us about twenty minutes to make it to my mother’s neck of the woods. My mom now worked a good job that she’d had for over fifteen years, but no matter what, she just refused to move out of the projects. She loved it there for whatever reason.

  I’m not going to lie, I could see what she loved about having a candy lady who lived just a few doors down, having women around the building who did hair and nails, so she never really had to leave the building, or just finding out about the latest gossip that goes down in Miami. But even all of that good stuff couldn’t get me to want to move back to the projects.

  From the time that I was born until I turned eighteen, I’d always lived in the hood, so now that I was in a position where I didn’t have to live like that anymore, I was for damn sure going to take advantage of it. Don’t get me wrong, I’d never forget where I came from because some of my best memories came from this neck of the woods.

  “Mommy, can we go to the playground for a little bit?” Jada asked me as soon as I helped her out of her car seat. She had to have been feeling better if she was asking about the playground.

  “Let’s go see Grandma first,” I told her, and she smiled while nodding her head up and down.

  Journey was long gone up the steps and already inside my mama’s house, probably on her way to tell on me, which I really didn’t care about because I knew that my mom wasn’t going to side with her. Journey was wrong, and she just needed to own up to her shit. Since the door was already open, I walked right in, and the first person that I noticed inside the house was my sister, Sky.

  “What you doing over here?” I asked, plopping down on the seat next to her.

  As soon as I asked the question, Jaden came running from the back room and jumped into my lap. Like always, his school uniform was filthy, and from the splashes of tomato sauce that was on his shirt, I could tell that he must have had spaghetti today for lunch. Like I always did, I rained kisses all over his face, and he took off to the back room again, where he was more than likely playing his game.

  “Mommy called me and told me that she was making chicken souse, so of course I came running. What’s going on with your daughter? She came in here and didn’t even speak. She went right to Mommy. I don’t know what she’s in there saying to her, but I know she’s snitching to her about something,” Sky let me know.

  “Sky, that girl is going to have my ass in jail. The principal called me this afternoon and let me know how she personally caught Journey in the hallway kissing some boy. They gave her an after-school suspension, and when I go to pick her ass up, she has the nerve to get into my damn car trying to hide a hickey on her neck with her collar. I just don’t know what I’m going to do with that girl, Sky.”

  “You need to beat her fuckin’ ass! I keep telling you that shit! Taking her phone is not going to solve shit,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  At the same time, my mama came out of the kitchen with Journey, but instead of joining us in the living room, Journey went to the back.

  “She told me what happened, and I made sure to let her little ass know that she was dead ass wrong,” was the first thing my mom said.

&nbs
p; I was glad that she was on my side with this one because when it came to her grandkids, I swear she would side with them over me. The food still wasn’t ready, and Jada kept bugging me every two seconds about going to the park, so I gave in, making sure to drag Sky along with me. Before we even made it to the playground, I went a couple of houses down and purchased a few of my favorites from the candy lady. Now that we had the things that we wanted, we took the stairs.

  Once we went through the gate that led to the playground, Jada took off running. There was an empty bench that gave Sky and me the perfect view of Jada, so that’s where we chose to sit.

  “Damn, who is that?” I heard Sky ask out loud.

  I was so wrapped up in a group message with Brooklyn and Kassidy that I didn’t even bother to look up to see who Sky was talking about. Sky and I were like night and day, and I swear when it came to men, we liked different kinds of men. Sky loved her some hood niggas. I’m talking the type of men with golds all in their mouth, old, matted up dreads, pants sagging, tats everywhere on their body, with about three different baby mamas, and let’s not forget the fact that half of the men she fucked with still lived with their mamas. Let her tell it, they could fuck good, so I guess that’s all that mattered to her.

  It wasn’t anything wrong with hood niggas. Hell, to each his own. They just weren’t my type. Any man that I dated had to be what I wanted my son to be. Jerrod was that when he wasn’t on his high horse and being an asshole.

  “Look at him, Shrimp. This man is fine, girl. I know his dick is big. I can tell just from the way he walks. He walks like that shit is too fuckin’ heavy to carry around. Dammnn, look at those sexy legs. Are you seeing this man right now? This man’s skin is golden. God, look at those tattoos. I think he was over there with the other niggas playing basketball because he’s drenched in sweat. My God, I would like to be the washcloth that he’s going to use tonight to clean his body off.”

  My sister sounded thirsty as hell, and I wanted to throw the damn icy that was in the middle of my legs at her. I finished texting what I was texting to my girls, and then I finally looked up. My body froze. My mouth was wide the hell open as soon as I realized who it was. Everything that Sky just said about him, he was all of that and more. He was bending down, talking to his pretty daughter, and when he laughed at something he said, I saw the deep dimples that were stamped into his cheeks. He was fine. Fine beyond words. So fine that even with me just looking, I felt like I was cheating.

  My pussy hadn’t jumped like this in years for a man because the only man that it had ever done that for was for Jerrod, and it’s been years since he was able to get me this hot and bothered. When I felt the dryness from the outside air going into my mouth, reality hit me that I was damn near drooling over this man like I wasn’t a married woman, so I bit my bottom lip while pushing a piece of my long hair behind my ear.

  “Imagine taking dick from a nigga like that. You know I don’t want kids, but I swear I would push out how ever many he wanted me to. Where the fuck is this nigga from, Takari? It’s not normal to walk around here and be all fine like that.” Sky kept going on.

  “I know him,” I let her know.

  “Bitch, stop lying. If you knew him, you would be divorced by now. That’s not the type of nigga that you keep in the friend zone,” her ass said.

  “I don’t know him personally, but we exchanged words a week ago when I took the kids to the movies. Remember I was telling you about the rude ass nigga that I had to curse out? Well, that’s him,” I told her.

  “But you forgot to mention the fact that the nigga was fine! Oh shit, I think he was able to feel us looking at him. He’s looking at you, Shrimp. Oh my God, look at that smile. He’s coming this way!”

  I’d stopped looking the moment she said that he was looking our way, and I focused my eyes on my daughter, who was playing on the monkey bars. I could just feel him coming our way, and I wished like hell that he had gone in the opposite direction. I was pissed at myself and Sky for staring at him because he probably now thought of us as just chicks more chicks who were all on his dick. I’d never been thirsty like this for a man. Not even my own husband. Granted, when we exchanged words for the first time, I was able to pick up on his handsomeness, but that was while we were in the theater, still in the dark. Now, the sun hadn’t even set yet, so the spotlight was on him. For whatever reason, I was nervous. My palms were sweaty, and it wasn’t the Miami sun that wasn’t causing that either. It was his ass.

  “You still alive? All that shit you be talking, I just knew that someone would have beat your ass by now,” he said, followed by a smirk.

  That attraction that I had for him quickly went out the door. It was his mouth that I couldn’t stand. I felt like he talked too much shit. I knew that everyone had flaws, and his stood out like a sore thumb. When his mouth was closed, and he wasn’t saying shit, he could be the perfect man, but the moment he opened it, there was nothing perfect or attractive about him. If anything, I just wasn’t used to it.

  If this was his way of trying to prove to me that he was interested, it was different to me. Even with me being a married woman, men still tried and shoot their shot with me, and none of them are ever this damn arrogant or rude.

  “I should be asking you the same thing. You’re going to run into the right woman one day, and she’s going to get her husband, boyfriend, daddy, brother, whoever she can find, so that they can beat your ass. Do you talk as much shit to men as you talk to women? I get the feeling that you don’t, which is why you don’t scare me,” I said and rolled my eyes, not even giving him any eye contact because I was too busy focusing on Jada.

  My body cringed each time she swung from the monkey bars because she was so wild.

  “Is that what you think I do? Talk shit? I’m having a regular conversation with you, baby girl. I don’t give a fuck who a female decides that she wants to put on me, she just better make sure that the nigga can fight and that they have some good ass insurance because trying to fight me, I’m liable to send your ass to ICU. I fight just as good as I fuck. What other insinuations would you like to make about me?” he asked.

  I shouldn’t have found the statement that he made about fighting and fucking to be sexy, but damn, it turned me on. I took the icy from the middle of my thighs and crossed my legs because I was bothered. Hot and bothered.

  “You shouldn’t care about my insinuations. I’m not your girl, neither am I one of your baby mamas,” I threw out there.

  Although I didn’t know shit about him, aside from him being a jerk. Knowing that he had two children, and there could possibly be more, he just screamed that he was part of the more than one baby mama club.

  “But you wish you were, though, huh? I must have fucked you in my past life because you hate a nigga for no reason at all. Talking about one of my baby mamas! I mean, since you brought the shit up, I’ll just throw it out there. I have two children, which is that beautiful little girl over there, and my son, who’s over there, playing ball with the other little boys. Both of my children share the same mother. I usually don’t go in on females like this, but something tells me that you can handle my mouth. Your nigga not fuckin’ you consistently, huh? Lack of dick got you bothered, right?” he asked, and I ignored every question.

  I could hear my sister next to me quietly cracking up a storm.

  “It’s cool. You don’t have to answer the questions because you pretty much let it be known each time you open your mouth to speak that you’re dick deprived,” he said.

  I blew out a breath of annoyance because he was pissing me off with his statements about me, which he didn’t know for sure were accurate, even if they were.

  “And let me guess, you either live in one of these apartments with your mama or this baby mama that you were just talking about. Hmmm, what else? You couldn’t possibly have a real job. Not with all of those jailhouse tattoos all over your body. What do you do for a living? Post up on that wall with the rest of those niggas and scream
that you move weight? Sadly, that’s not a real job, my friend. Hmmm, what else can I come up with? You say that you have two kids, but you probably just have two kids that you know about, or you’re a liar like most niggas and leaving the rest of the kids that you have out because you don’t want me to be turned off by you. Be honest with me, baby, because you honestly turned me off the moment you opened your mouth a week ago. So, fuck you! Don’t talk on my life when you don’t know shit about it!” I snapped on him.

  I don’t know why, but he had it in him to make me so damn angry.

  “Ima address everything you said, going in the order of the bullshit that came out of your mouth. I don’t live on this side of town, but my grandma does, which is why I frequent over here the majority of the time. Why you so pressed about my baby mama, though? You wish that it was you who got the dick and carried my kids, huh? Yeah, I think that’s the reason why you so pressed. I don’t know if you call cutting hair a real job, but that’s what I do. At thirty- five years old, I don’t have to fix my mouth to say that I have a boss because I work for my fuckin’ self. You see my daughter? Does she look like she in need of anything? I take care of mine more than a little bit. Because I’m black, you assume that I move weight? Had you met me years ago, you would have been right, but you dead ass wrong today.

  “Two things I’ll never lie on is my dick and my kids. If I say I have two kids, then I have two kids. I also don’t have to worry about having kids running around that I don’t know about because I strap up twice, and if I don’t, my pull out game is stronger than that mug you got on your face. Talking about I got jailhouse tattoos. You must have me fucked up with one of these other niggas because none of my tattoos were done while I was locked up. Every piece of ink on my body was two hundred and up.

  “At first, your mouth turned me on because I knew that after a long day, I could just put something in it, but you not even the type of bitch that I would want to stick my dick in. Your mouth is reckless, Ma, and I’ll fuck around and hurt your little boy body having ass! My daughter damn near bigger than your ass. Grow some fuckin’ titties first, and then I’ll think about having this conversation again,” he said.