Prior to this morning, I’d never cheated on Takari. I needed this head, though. It was the only thing that was going to alleviate some of the stress that I had been dealing with.
12
Takari Evans
Two months later
“You coming out with us tonight to celebrate Brooklyn’s birthday?” Kassidy asked me the moment my ass touched the seat in her car.
I had obviously been going through it these past two months because I didn’t even remember that it was my best friend’s birthday. Two months ago, I put that ring on the counter, and I swore that I wasn’t stepping foot back into that house, nor that marriage. So far, I’ve made good on two of those things.
After the night that I spent with Za’Kai, I went and picked my kids up the next day and brought them over to my mom’s house with me. Of course, Jerrod had been blowing my phone up the entire time, questioning my whereabouts and the kids’. It wasn’t like me to keep him away from his children, so although I wouldn’t come to the phone for him, I would give them the phone so they could talk to him.
I knew my fate the moment I decided that I was going to walk away. Sure enough, he’d frozen all of my accounts, even stopped paying the bill for my cell phone, and the biggest one of them all was when I went into the preschool one day to finish up some paperwork, and I saw a for sale sign on the window. Had I not been tucking money away for a rainy day, I could honestly say that he took just about everything from me, but that wasn’t the case.
A week after I took my ring off, I took Za’Kai’s advice and went looking for a townhouse for me and my kids. Crazy how I went from living in a big ass mansion where you could get lost if you didn’t know your way around, to living somewhere that didn’t have enough room for you to even think about getting lost. The townhouse wasn’t little at all; it was just a lot smaller than what the kids and I were accustomed to. After the townhome was set in place, I knew that it was time for me to start looking for a job. Like Za’Kai had told me, I had the degree to pretty much get any job I wanted, and that’s what I did.
I wasn’t working the job that I could see myself retiring from, mainly because it wasn’t the dream that I’d set out to be doing, but the salary was great. I was able to land a job at a very lucrative water company here in Miami as a business advisor. I was hired on the spot, and for the past month, my life has circled around me being a mother, a worker, and just somebody who was trying to get it right.
I felt like I was failing my children, especially my twins. They questioned me almost every day on when they were going back “home” or if Mommy and Daddy still loved each other. They were too young to understand what was going on between their father and me, but I think Journey got it. Since the abortion, she and I had been so distant from each other, and I didn’t know if the abortion made us that way, or if our current living situation was the cause of it. All I knew was that I couldn’t get through to her and neither could her dad.
Speaking of Jerrod, the only time that he and I conversed with each other was if it involved our children. Of course, he tried to talk me into moving back home whenever I would either drop the kids off to the house or to his mother’s house, but it just wasn’t happening. His threats of taking the kids away from me had slowed down, but with him, there just wasn’t any guessing. The night he threw me out on my ass and dumped trash on me made me realize that that man was capable of pretty much anything.
I wasn’t the same person after that. I felt like he took a lot of the life out of me with that one, and if anything, I was carrying that load with me because the only person to know about that incident was Za’kai. I wouldn’t dare tell my mom, my sister, or my best friends about it because I didn’t need them judging me. Not to say that they were judgmental, but I did feel like I would hear a bunch of I told you so’s. I trusted Za’Kai with my business for whatever fucked up reason, which was so odd to me because I didn’t know much about him.
The night that I fell asleep in his room at his grandmother’s house was actually the last time that I’d seen him, and that was okay because I didn’t need to be trying to pursue anything right now anyway. I just wanted Jerrod to sign the divorce papers that had been sent to him months ago, so I could get my happiness back.
“Probably not. Jerrod has the kids for the weekend, so I’m probably just going to stay home and relax,” I said, sliding my seat all the way back in her car and lying down.
I could feel her eyes on me, and out the corner of my eye, I could see that she was shaking her head. I hadn’t had a job in years where I had to clock in, work a certain number of hours, go home and be a full- time mom, where I had to help with homework and everything else. So, when the weekend came, I wanted to take advantage of that.
“Brooklyn is right. Your ass is boring as fuck. Shrimp, what the fuck is wrong with you? You need to be damn celebrating that you finally walked away from that crazy ass man. I couldn’t stand his ass from the moment you brought him around, and neither could anyone else. Why you letting this man control your life like this? It’s the weekend, you’re free of the kids, and it’s our best bitch’s birthday. You ass is going out. I don’t care what the hell you say,” Kassidy damn near yelled, and I rolled my eyes, hoping that she would shut the hell up already.
I didn’t feel like I was letting Jerrod control me. Hell, I just didn’t want to go out! The whole ride, Kassidy talked about how we were going to pick up Brooklyn so the three of us could go shopping and find us something for the club tonight, and how she would drag me out of the house tonight if she had to, and everything she said went in one ear and out the other.
In about twenty more minutes, we finally pulled up to Brooklyn’s home. Along with her jeep in the driveway, there was another car parked alongside hers. I just hoped that it wasn’t one of her little girlfriends in the house because I did not feel like fighting today. All the girls that Brooklyn messed with, they never liked Kassidy and me for whatever reason. I think that they were jealous of our closeness or whatever petty issues they could come up with.
“That’s her new girlfriend, Breshay’s, car. You’re gonna like Breshay. She’s cool,” Kassidy said, and I nodded.
I couldn’t care less if I liked her or not because I wasn’t looking for any new friends. She was Brooklyn’s girlfriend, so as long as Brooklyn liked her, then that was all that mattered. The two of us finally got out of the car together, and Kassidy knocked on the door while I stood behind her texting Journey and replying hell no to a text message that she’d just sent me, asking if she could go to a birthday party tonight. I wasn’t even saying no because of the things that she put me through a couple of months ago, it was her disrespect toward me and her brother and sister that had me saying no.
“Oh, hell no! You can’t come in my house, Shrimp. Your ass didn’t even call a bitch or send out a text message to wish me a happy birthday. Since when we started doing that?” was the first thing that came out of Brooklyn’s mouth when she saw me.
I laughed because I already knew that this was coming. This girl answered the door in her lin
gerie, with a silk robe that was so short that it might as well have been a shirt, and the tie was undone, so I could see all her goodies. I walked inside her house and playfully grabbed her ass while we hugged, and I sang happy birthday to her. I could feel eyes on me as I sang to Brooklyn, and that’s when I looked around and saw a beautiful, light skinned woman sitting down in the living room with a small smile on her pretty face. She was beautiful as hell and probably the girlfriend of Brooklyn that Kassidy was telling me about.
“That’s more like it. Come inside. You’re the only one who hasn’t met my girlfriend yet,” Brooklyn said, grabbing onto my arm and pulling me into the living room where her girlfriend was sitting.
I was beginning to wonder whether Kassidy and I had interrupted something because both of these bitches were walking around in lingerie with short ass robes on. Not to mention, the glass plate on the ottoman in the living room that only had a few slices of fruit left. Along with that were two empty wine glasses not too far away from Brooklyn’s girlfriend’s foot, and there were about two candles that were lit in the living room as well. Brooklyn was acting all giddy, and her girlfriend was acting like she was high off something, so yes, we might have definitely interrupted something.
“Baby, this my other best friend that I was telling you about. You can call her Shrimp, that’s what everybody else calls her. Shrimp, this is Breshay, my girlfriend,” Brooklyn said as he made the introductions.
We waved at each other, and I took a seat on the couch. I couldn’t even remember what number girlfriend this was that Brooklyn was introducing me to. When it came to dating, although Brooklyn was very girly, she was like a man whore when it came to relationships. Her ass was always cheating, plus her mouth was too damn slick, so a lot of her relationships didn’t last. Something about Breshay told me that she wouldn’t be the type of woman to bite her tongue when it came to Brooklyn. The two of them looked like a match made in Heaven. She just didn’t look like the weak type, which is what Brooklyn had been known to date in the past.
“So, Shrimp, Brooklyn told me that you have kids. How many kids do you have?” Breshay asked me.
Kassidy and Brooklyn were wrapped up in a conversation about how excited they were to be going to the club tonight, so it left Breshay and I some time to talk amongst each other.