couldn’t think of anything else.
He reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me closer to him.
“Enough is enough,” he began. “Look, Celess, you remember me telling you about that time I spent locked up?” he asked, trying to feel between my legs again.
“Yeah, you made your mistakes, so what?” I said, still trying to keep his hands from roaming, not catching his meaning.
“So, it’s okay. I knew what you was about from the beginning. But I’m into that,” he whispered.
I stood frozen, nervous, and scared for my life. O had my dick in his hand and started stroking.
I couldn’t even get into it because of how shocked I was. O was fucking gay. That was some shit. All I could think about was wait till I tell Tina.
“AAARRRHHH!” Tina screamed in the phone.
“Tina, I could not believe it. I couldn’t even cum I was so appalled,” I said.
“So all this time he was hip to it?”
“That’s what he said.”
“That’s a damn shame. Can you imagine how many girls he’s fuckin’ that don’t have a clue that he likes dick?” Tina said.
“I know,” I said.
I must admit finding out about O did take a load off of me. That meant I was able to be myself around him. We started taking showers together and having more sex than ever before. Our feelings for each other grew stronger. And the money he was giving me doubled. I think subconsciously he was paying me to keep my mouth shut. But that was just fine with me because I needed him to keep his mouth shut too. Our relationship changed dramatically, though. We had gotten to the point where we said “I love you” every time we spoke. I was even considering being exclusive with him, which meant I wouldn’t have had to worry about a nigga finding out about me and killing me, because it was surely getting difficult to keep my secret.
I found myself going to extreme measures to keep Tariq, Shawn, and Throwback from finding out. I actually told Shawn that I thought I was pregnant. I faked him out for a month, telling him that my period was late and shit. Tina said I should have kept him going for a little while longer and got abortion money out of his ass.
Throwback was easy to string along because he was so far away. All of our time together was spent on the phone. But it was Tariq who had become a problem. He kept pressuring me to commit to him. He wanted a more serious relationship. I wasn’t up for one of those with him, because that would have made my secret even more difficult to hide. So I brushed him off. We been on and off for some time because of that. I didn’t mind, though, as long as my mortgage was still being paid.
“What? What do you mean, you haven’t received payment for the month of March yet?”
“Ma’am, it shows here that you paid for the month of February but not yet for the month of March and the due date was March first. It is now March twenty-ninth, so you’re going into the month of April delinquent, which means that you’ll owe two months on April first,” the woman on the other end of the phone explained.
“Well, have I ever been late before, I mean, what is the penalty? Is there a late fee?” I asked, totally confused.
“Ma’am, are you the person responsible for paying this mortgage?”
“No. That’s why I’m confused.”
“Well, maybe you should contact the person who is responsible for making these payments and have them send March’s payment along with April’s.”
“Okay.” I ended the conversation.
I was pissed. I called Tariq.
“What’s up?” he asked nonchalantly.
“I just got a phone call from the mortgage company. Apparently you didn’t pay for March yet.”
“The last time we talked, you told me that you weren’t ready for a commitment,” he said.
“Yeah, and?” I asked, frustrated.
“Yeah, and neither am I,” he responded.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m not committing myself to nobody’s mortgage who can’t commit herself to me,” he said.
“You know what, Tariq, that’s low. You could have called me and let me know that you were going to stop paying my fuckin’ mortgage. I mean, you was paying it all this time and I wasn’t committed to you.”
“Well, maybe I was trying to get you to commit,” he said, still sounding calm.
“Okay, but when we spoke a thousand times after I told you that I was cool, why didn’t you tell me that you weren’t going to pay my mortgage? If that lady wouldn’t have called me I probably would have wound up owing a chunk of change, and what if they would have put my ass out or something! That was real corny of you! Shit! I can pay my own fucking bills. Just like I had you paying my shit, I’ll have another one of my niggas picking up where you left off! Faggot!” I shouted right before I hung up the phone.
I knew I went too far, but I was upset. He could have had the decency to call me and tell me to start paying my own shit. Now I had to come up with $4,500 in three days.
“Tina, I need a favor,” I said, still sounding pissed.
“What’s the matter?” Tina asked, concerned.
“Fuckin’ Tariq didn’t pay my mortgage for March,” I told her.
“Well, call his ass up and tell him about his self,” she said.
“I did. He’s not fuckin’ with me no more, so…”
“He still trippin’ over that commitment bullshit?”
“Basically, but I need forty-five hundred dollars by the first.”
“Come get it tonight. I’ll be back in Philly by like nine,” she said.
“Thank you, girl,” I said, relieved.
Tina was in New York with Chris the boxer. She had been spending more time with him lately. Jahuan had been put on the back burner. Tina hadn’t even been going out with me much anymore. She was getting money, though. Chris was taking care of her and white Derrek was still sending her an allowance every week. Plus she still lived at home with her grandmom, so she didn’t have any bills like that. Me, on the other hand, I had to spend a lot of the money I was getting from Shawn on my bills and the money from O on myself, so I really didn’t have money to stash. But I knew Tina would have my back if I ever needed anything.
I went to Tina’s row house on Delancey Street that night. Tina had just got back from New York. She led me to her room in the basement of the house. She dug through her pile of pocketbooks and picked up a Dooney and Bourke duffel bag. She scrimmaged through the bag and pulled out a handful of balled-up money. I sat on the edge of her queen-sized bed and watched her unfold the money one bill at a time. She counted $4,000 in fifties and hundreds and then reached back into the duffel and counted out another $500.
“Why do you have your money balled up like that?” I asked.
Tina had a malicious smile on her face and said, “Girl, I stole this.”
“From where?” I asked.
“Chris,” she said, as if I should have known.
“You crazy! Why didn’t you just ask him for it?”
“’Cause he’s overdue already. I been accepting IOUs for the longest. He stingy as hell, always talking about he don’t have no money.”
“He gonna kick your ass when he find out.” I joked.
“Despite his career, Chris is a lover, not a fighter. Plus, I’ll put it back,” she said with confidence.
I was with O when I got an emergency phone call from Tina. It was just two days after she lent me the $4,500. She sounded breathless and it was hard to hear her, but I made out that she was at Methodist’s emergency room.
“O, I gotta bounce,” I said.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I don’t know, my girl is at the hospital and I have to get there,” I said frantically.
“The wrong nigga probably found out what was really under her skirt.” O couldn’t think of anything better to say.
