by N'Dia Rae
Nova
A fter being disrespected by my husband, I went to lunch alone and then returned back to work. I quickly wrapped up my day and headed home.
The way he spoke to me sent chills down my spine. Never in our relationship has he ever spoken to me this way. I rushed home through the traffic and when I got there I peeled off my clothes and threw on my comfortable robe.
Sashaying around my kitchen, I whipped out a bottle of Moscato and a tall wine glass. Typically, I preferred Riesling, but today I needed something sweeter to combat the bitter taste Tyriq left in my mouth.
The bad thing about Moscato is, it’s so delicious it’s easy to knock it back. Three glasses of wine later, I was relaxed and stretched out on our sofa flipping through the channels.
I decided to turn on my Roku and go to Hulu so that I could catch up on the latest of Love and Hip Hop Atlanta. I was severely behind. I was curious to know how things ended up with Scrap Deleon and his crazy ass love triangle. That one bitch, Tommie, was psychotic. I couldn’t help but be entertained by her crazy going from zero to one hundred in a matter of seconds.
After about two episodes, I checked my phone to see if my husband had at least called me. But he hadn’t. My stomach began to growl so I paused the show and went to the kitchen, knowing damn well there was nothing there.
Since my husband wanted to be a dick, I decided to go get dressed again and head out to grab a bite to eat from Sardi’s, the Peruvian chicken spot. Tyriq loves their food and all of those delicious sauces they have. I’ll order me some and leave it out on the counter to piss him off since he wanted to act crazy with me.
Once I was re-dressed in a pair of jeans and a pink tank top, I rushed back downstairs. Just as I turned my doorknob, I was startled by a man standing on my stoop. He looked as if he were about to knock on my door.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked.
“Are you Nova?” the man questioned. He was older with a head full of gray hair.
“You’re on my doorstep asking if I am Nova. Nigga please, get out my way. And get off my property,” I snapped as I tried to move past him to get to my car. The grumbling in my stomach overpowered my concentration.
“You are more beautiful than I imagined,” his voice cracked.
I stopped in my tracks and turned back around to him.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re Nova, I know you are. You have my nose. You’re my daughter,” he confessed, his eyes welling with tears.
“My father is dead. So whatever bullshit you are on, you can quit it,” I snapped.
The mysterious man walked closer towards me.
“Listen to me, Nova, you are my child. My name is Reginald Hoover and I dated your mother, Antoinette Johnson twenty-eight years ago. I have proof.”
What the fuck? How is this nigga going to pop up with this shit? I’m way too hungry for this but I was curious.
I stepped closer to him, looking him in the eye.
“You got some pretty big balls to come around here claiming that you are my father. Are you calling my mother a liar? Because I grew up believing my father was dead.”
“I promise you, I am not lying. Here is a picture of Antoinette and I when she was pregnant with you.” He handed a tattered Polaroid to me.
There was my mother, looking like she was about to pop, while Reginald draped his arm around her, smiling. My heart began to race as I grew angrier with every exhalation.
“Why would she lie then?” I asked as tears stung my eyes.
“I’m ashamed to say this but I was married to another woman. Your mother knew and she got pregnant on purpose. But I accept my responsibility in the role I played.”
I became paralyzed as this man dismantled everything I believed to be true. All of these years I thought my father had died and had no family, when he was alive all along. It felt as if the walls were closing in on me and I had a pair of hands gripped around my neck. I could barely breathe.
“I’m so sorry for not being around,” he apologized, stepping even closer. Recoiling, I backed away. Being able to move surprised me since I felt that my knees would buckle at any time.
“Why the hell weren’t you around?! Why would Antoinette lie to me?!” I shrieked at the man.
“She was upset that I wouldn’t leave my wife. I told her I wanted to be a part of your life, just not hers. She couldn’t accept that. I even confessed to my wife about you when you were born. But your mother changed her number and moved away. I’ve looked everywhere for you and was never able to track you down. Admittedly, I gave up.”
The tears that hovered in my eyes fell like heavy raindrops. It was as if my life had been shattered.
“What the hell is going on?” my husband’s voice called from behind me. I didn’t even hear his tires rolling in the driveway when he pulled up.
“Ty, this is my father.” My bottom lip trembled as I stared ahead at the man who possessed my nose and my eyes.
“What?” Ty asked as he moved closer to us.
“I can take a paternity test to prove it,” Reginald announced.
“I think that’s best. You go get the test and we’ll be here,” my husband spoke, pulling me away into the house.
After crying into his arms for about five minutes, I finally told Tyriq what Reginald had said to me.
All he could do is plant kisses on my forehead and whisper to me that it was going to be all right. These years I spent hating my mother were not for nothing. She was truly a rotten bitch.
Reginald came back with the test. We took and then mailed it off to the lab. Now all we can do is wait.
11
Skye
“ T his semester we will be focusing on childhood learning patterns…” My new professor, Professor Gaines, explained the syllabus while the class took notes. I tried to keep focused on her lecture but it was difficult.
Two weeks had passed since I spoke to my mother and I was feeling slightly guilty. We hardly ever fought but I had to stand my ground. She was dead wrong for going back on her promise.
Because of her bullshit I had to apply for student loans and get in debt, which I wanted to avoid. Hell, I don’t even have a credit card. I was serious about keeping my credit good and my name clean.
After the stress of securing a loan and dipping into my savings for my books, I needed to relieve some stress. Quan had been texting me a lot this week and finally we were going out tonight.
Since the night I met him, he’d been on my mind. In between filling out loan applications and cursing my mother out in my head, I daydreamed about him wrapping his arm around me and pulling me in close.
He had a sophisticated thug appeal to him that made me wet. He was def the type of nigga that brings out your inner hoe. I couldn’t wait to see him.
When he told me he was taking me out, he demanded that I wear something nice.
After class, I rushed home to get dressed for our date. I poured my body in a high waist gold pencil skirt and a white leotard that exposed my back. I slid my French tipped toes in some black open toe stilettos. My hair was pulled in a slick bun while my lips were matte nude and my faux eyelashes were on fleek.
Misting myself with my Chanel perfume, I waited for him to pick me up. While staring at my phone to check the time, Nova called me. We hadn’t spoken since she stormed out of my mother’s engagement announcement.
Since I was currently mad at our irresponsible ass mother, I picked up.
“Wsup,” I asked, while peeping out my blinds in anticipation for Quan.
“Skye, I met my father,” she started.
“What are you talking about?” Her father had been dead since she was born.
“Antoinette lied to me! She fucking lied all these years! He’s alive! We took a paternity test and did a rush for the results. He came by the other day…” she began to explain.
With every word she told me about our mother being a side hoe, my stomach did back flips. I cringed as the tru
th came to light. Perhaps what Rico’s children said about their relationship was true. She had been fuckin’ him while their mother was alive and when she died they made their move to get married.
“Are you there?” Nova asked in between her tears.
“I’m here, sis. I can’t believe that bitch! I cannot believe she did this to you, to us!” I yelled. My mother was a hoe who put men before her children. In retrospect it had always been this way. There was always some loser ass nigga around who she did everything for while neglecting us.
“I haven’t even spoken to her,” Nova admitted.
“What is there to say? She will only lie some more. All she does is lie. I didn’t even tell you that she took back her offer to pay my tuition!”
“What the hell? I knew she would do that! How are you going to go to school? What do you need from me? I can help.” That’s the thing about Nova. We may not always get along, but she is always there for me. Every semester, she gives me about $500 towards my books and extra money for other supplies. She looks out for me like a big sis should. In fact, she actually does more for me than my mother.
When I think about it, Antoinette had never done much for either of us. I was just blindly loyal because she was our mother. I’ve always pitied her for the way she grew up and thought it wasn’t her fault we were poor. But it was. She is a lazy, hoe-ass liar!
“I had to take out a loan,” I replied.
“Fuck that, I’m giving you some money this weekend. See if you can cancel that loan. I’ll just dip into my equity. I don’t want you to start your life behind and be a slave to debt,” my sister replied. As bad as I wanted to take her up on her offer, I couldn’t.
It was time for me to be independent. I didn’t want to end up like Aoki or worse, like my damn mother.
“Nova, I appreciate the offer, sis. I really do. But I can’t accept money from you right now. I need to be independent.”
“You’re so stubborn,” she laughed. At that moment Quan knocked on my door.
“Nova, that’s my date. Let’s meet up this weekend to talk. We have to confront our mother,” I said as I hung up the phone.
When I opened the door, Quan stood there dressed in a pair of nicely fit flood pants, a fitted jacket, and a pair of Tom Ford loafers. His shoes cost more than my entire outfit. Actually, it probably cost more than all the outfits I’d worn over the last few days.
“Damn, you look gorgeous,” he complimented.
“Thank you. You look good too,” I replied.
“Let’s get out of here.” He reached for my hand, pulling me away. We walked downstairs to his ride, which was a decked out Range Rover.
Opening the door for me, he gave me assistance into the car. He hopped into his side and pulled away from my apartment. While cruising, he turned on the radio and Ro James’ “Permission” was on.
“This my shit,” he spat as he turned the volume up.
“It is a sexy song.”
Butterflies had taken up habitat in my belly. My nerves were such a mess that I couldn’t even speak.
“Where are you from?” he asked after the song went off.
“I was born in D.C., raised partially in The Gardens and the rest of my childhood I lived in Oxon Hill.”
“You so damn prissy to be from the hood,” he lightly chuckled, while stopping at a red light. I was staring straight ahead, but I could feel his eyes burning into the side of my face. Avoiding the awkwardness, I turned to him.
The moonlight brought out the light color in his eyes. They had become hypnotizing.
“I’m not that prissy,” I protested.
“That shit ain’t a bad thing, shorty. Prissy girls are cool. I can’t stand no ghetto bitches. Too damn loud. Always want to throw hands. I’m like bitch, if I wanted to date a loud, violent motherfucker, I’d be with a nigga. I like my women soft,” he laughed as he drove away.
“I bet you ain’t never even been in a fight,” he assumed. It couldn’t have been further from the truth. I’ve been in fights in high school. Lost some, won some. Bitches like to try you when they think you’re meek. I used to get picked on for having long wavy hair. They would say that I think I’m cute.
Yeah, bitch, I think I’m cute, but it ain’t got to do with hair. It wouldn’t matter what grew out my scalp, I would have high self esteem. But since Quan didn’t like women who fought, I nodded at his assumption.
“Nope, I don’t fight,” I lied.
“I figured. You too pretty to fight.”
“Where are you from?” I asked to divert attention away from my lie.
“Uptown! I’m from Harlem, B.”
“How’d you end up down here?”
“College. Damn, your young ass was probably in middle school when I entered college. I’m out here robbing the cradle.”
“I’m legal now,” I sassed, while playfully rolling my eyes.
“That’s all that matter. I should’ve asked for some I.D. My man’s got caught up with a young bitch once. She was sixteen, had an ass like she was twenty-five. He ended up doing five years for that. ”
“That’s crazy, but what school did you go to? What was your major?” I probed. He was so fine and I wanted to know more about him.
I loved his New York accent, and the way that he carried himself.
“Are you with the feds?” he joked because of my questions.
“That shouldn’t matter if you’re not breaking the law.”
“True. Well, I went to Howard. I majored in business and currently I’m the CEO and partial owner of a chain of coffee houses called Mocha Hut.”
“Oh wow, I’ve heard of them. They’re all over the city. There’s one next to my school that I study at sometimes.”
“Yep, that’s me and my business partner’s company. I spend most of my time in our headquarters in Silver Spring. I make my rounds to the other locations. I may have seen you before.” He winked.
“Nice. You’re an entrepreneur.” That would explain why he was paid.
“What do you want to do after you graduate?” he asked as he reached Georgetown, D.C.
“I want to teach English and dance.”
“Oh yeah, you did tell me that. What made you get into that?” he pried.
“I love the English language. I like to read and write and I want to give back to my community. I feel like teaching is the best way to do that. I don’t want to do it forever. Eventually, I want to publish my poems and stories. And on top of that I am a dancer. I’ve been in lots of ballet shows.”
“Damn, I’m feeling you. You sound like you have a good heart. Teaching is a tough gig. These little niggas these days are crazy.”
“I know but someone has to do it or they won’t get the help that they need.”
“True,” he replied when he parked in the garage.
After walking over and letting me out, he placed his hand around my waist and walked me out of the garage to a hotel.
I hope he didn’t think that I was sleeping with him. Just because he was fine, doesn’t mean he could get my pussy on the first night. No matter how bad I wanted to pounce on his dick, I knew I had to take it slow so that he would respect me.
“There’s a dope restaurant on the roof. I have a reservation. We’ll overlook the water,” he announced when he opened the door for me. I exhaled a breath of relief.
When we arrived to the roof, my nerves began to rattle again. It was a gorgeous view. In all my years of living in the DMV, I had never seen Georgetown from this perspective.
The moonlight bounced off of the dark, rippled river while other lovers strolled by. Colorful flowers decorated the balcony where we sat and soft jazz music played in the background.
“It’s beautiful up here,” I complimented.
“I only wanted to see you in a beautiful light. You look too good to take to hood-spots, like where I met you.”
“I thought you said it was your friend’s lounge. Why are you trying to convince me to not go back?” I asked
.
“Just because it’s my friend’s lounge doesn’t mean that it’s for chicks like you. You deserve to be in the finest places. Not no smoky hookah spot with a bunch of d-boys and wannabe model chicks. Like that girl you were out there with?”
“Who, Aoki?”
“Yeah, whatever her name is. I could tell by looking at her that she was a gold digging thot. I watched her as she looked every man up and down, sizing them up. Trying to see how much they were worth by what they were wearing.”
He was wise because he had Aoki down to a science.
“I know you ain’t like that. I got that energy from you. And after talking to you, I know for sure you not about that life. But why are you hanging out with her?”
“Aoki isn’t all bad. She’s a good friend. She used to go school with me. That’s how we met.”
“Let me guess, she dropped out to dig in men’s pockets?” He laughed as the server came over to take our orders.
We quickly scanned the menu. He ordered a Jameson on the rocks and the steak dinner, while I ordered salmon and a drink with mango, champagne, and rum.
I attempted to distract his attention away from Aoki because I cared about her. She had been a good friend to me despite how she carried on with men. As long as she wasn’t fucking my man, I could care less what she did.
However, I did like that he was able to read people. He was smart and intuitive. He was much different than that asshole Chad.
“Are you single?” I asked, because you can never be too sure.
“Yeah. I’m about my money right now. Looking for a wifey, though,” he replied.
“What about you?” he threw back at me.
“Yep.”
“What happened to your last boyfriend?”
“His name was Chad, a thug who was controlling and cheated on me. I loved him so I stayed with him. But when he became stalkerish and borderline abusive, I broke up. But that didn’t stop him. He stalked me so bad that I had to move off campus and my grades suffered. Eventually, I lost my academic scholarship…”
As I told Quan more and more about Chad, I could see that he was visibly upset. I could see him turning red while the vein in his temple throbbed. It was sexy how much he cared about me.
