you’re on my time. You feel me?”
O put on that confused face again. “What are you talking about, baby?” he asked.
His eyes were glassy. He seemed real disoriented. He was pissing me off even more by acting nonchalant.
“Is everything okay?” the girl came behind O and asked.
Tina followed her and responded for O. “Everything is just fine,” Tina said.
The girl rolled her eyes. “O, is everything okay?” she asked, placing emphasis on his name.
“Bitch, I said everything is fine. O is talking to his girl right now!” Tina yelled.
“I’ll show you a bitch, bitch!” the girl shot back, walking over to Tina.
O was still acting nonchalant like everything was everything. But I wasn’t about to let Tina embarrass herself for no cheap-ass whore. I stood in front of Tina and started pushing her out of the club. Meanwhile, O disappeared again and the girl was steady screaming shit. You fat bitch this, you fat bitch that. And Tina was screaming back, “I got more money than ya bum ass!” That night was crazy.
“Celess I’m sorry. I was feelin’ it,” O tried to explain.
“Well, you need to leave whatever that shit was alone, ’cause it had you lookin’ slow and shit.”
“Yeah, that E will do that to you. You forgive me, sweetheart?”
“You owe me for this one,” I said.
“Come through and I’ll make it up to you.”
It had been a week since the incident at the club, and this was the first time I was hearing from O. He was about to be cashed in. I was losing love for him. He had me at my point where I was ready to juice him dry and then cut him off. I had suspected he put another girl in my place and bumped me to number two or something. I couldn’t understand why he was frontin’ on me like that, but it was really making me not care anymore.
I told O I would come through, but instead, I went to get my hair done. The shop was empty, being as it was a Tuesday afternoon. My bull Steve did my hair for me. And when Steve did my hair it was an all-day affair because he would spend more time gossiping than actually doing my hair.
“Those shoes are cute,” Steve commented on my Chanel boots.
“You like ’em?” I asked for no reason at all.
“Yeah, they hot. My girl would look good in them.”
Steve was an ITCH-an in the closet homo. He always talked about a girl who nobody ever seen. But that particular afternoon he indirectly came out.
“Yo, how do you do it?” he whispered.
“What?” I asked.
“Walk in those heels.”
I thought Steve was going to ask how I got away with being a woman. I was sure he knew. But maybe he didn’t.
“I’m used to it,” I said.
“This guy I know, he’s gay and he’s gonna start dressing up like a chick and get a sex change, the whole nine, but he said he don’t know how the hell he gonna walk in heels,” Steve said, laughing.
Bingo, I thought. Steve had to be gay. Anytime a man uses the word
“Hello,” I answered my cell phone.
“Where the hell you at?” O asked.
“I just left the hairdresser,” I said.
“You a nut for telling me you was coming down here,” he said. “I might as well go shoot dice,” he continued.
I knew what that meant. He had money to spend, and I didn’t want to miss out on that.
“I’m on my way, damn, can I get cute first?” I whined.
“You could have called a nigga.”
“My bad. I’ll be there in like a half,” I said.
I pulled up to O’s house twenty minutes later. Ninety-five was empty. As soon as I walked in, he grabbed me and started kissing me. He started stripping me. I stopped him from removing important articles of clothing, but he was persistent.
“Who you been giving my pussy to?”
“Nobody,” I said, trying to control his hands.
“Then why you haven’t been giving it to me?”
“Boy, you been trippin’ since you got back from Baltimore. What were they feedin’ you down there?”
“It’s not what they been feedin’ me, it’s what they haven’t been feedin’ me. I’m lacking pussy. Can you feed me some pussy?”
I grabbed his hand just in time to stop him from grabbing my balls. O never acted like this before. Usually I took charge and he just followed my lead. What the hell he was doing I didn’t know, but it was bound to get me killed. I had to think of something quick.
“My period is on,” I blurted out.
O stopped kissing me.
“Damn!” he said. “Thanks for blowin’ my high.”
He sat down on the couch and patted his dick as if he was trying to calm it down. I sat down next to him, trying to keep a distance. He grabbed my hand and put it on his penis.
“Pull it out,” he said.
I did. I stroked it for him. He started getting into it, and he grabbed my head and forced it down on his dick. I sucked it. What the hell, I figured I owed him that much for not having a pussy he could eat.
I left O’s house with $500. This was the icing on the cake. I knew for sure he had somebody else. Five hundred dollars meant he was giving half of my money to another girl. I was pissed about it but I let it slide. He obviously had his reasons for playing me. I went home and called it a day. I put on
February
I evaluated my situation. I had lost James and I was in the process of losing O. Tariq was the only one I had a grip on. Tariq was still paying my mortgage, but I needed another James to pay my other bills. O was still lookin’ out on my wardrobe and pocket money, but it was nowhere near what I used to get from him. I needed to make a comeback. Tina was getting bored too. White Derrek would wire her money ever’ so often and this Puerto Rican hustler named Jahuan from down the badlands was taking her out and would buy her some shoes here and there, but that wasn’t enough. We took a trip up New York to go to a fight and met some guys just in time for Valentine’s Day. Tina put me down with boxers. She used to mess with one back before her and I met, and she told me all about the kind of money some of them make.
The fight was interesting. I’d never been to a live boxing match before then. We went to the after-party at the Pierre on Fifth Avenue, which was where the meeting and greeting began. This brown-skinned bony dude came over to Tina and me and told us that his friend wanted to holla. We were prepared to tell bull to get lost, but when we saw that his friend was Christopher Talley, the super middleweight champion of the world, we were like all right.
“What are yall drinking?” Chris asked.
“Apple martini.” It was Tina’s favorite drink.
“A peach schnapps,” I said.
“Good fight,” Tina said.
“Thank you,” he replied.
