“Don’t have me out here looking stupid,” I said at the same time he did.
“Exactly. If she wasn’t feeling me anymore or willing to ride out the stressful times, she needed just to tell me. But I’ll be damned if I needed to hear from someone else what the fuck my girl was doing with another nigga.”
I nodded. I knew the humiliation of having friends or family tell you what your significant other was doing behind your back. I’d heard rumors about my so-called best friend and first boyfriend, but ignored them because I never thought it could be true.
“So…” I prodded.
“One night, I went to this party. I’d finally had a free night and wanted to hang with my girl, but she said she was going to visit her parents back home. I thought, cool, I’ll hang with my boys. We go to the party, and it’s fun or whatever. I’m dancing, enjoying the vibe, but had to go to the bathroom. On my way back, I hear a familiar voice coming from one of the bedrooms, moaning. I knew who it was. I knew that moan, had heard it before. I bust through the door—they hadn’t even bothered to lock it. I see her with a dude I’d thought was a friend of mine, ass out, fucking my girl. Raw.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. I hated cheaters almost as much as I hated abusers.
“What happened?”
He shrugged, turning back to the skillet on the stove. “The usual. I beat his ass and told her she could fall off a damn cliff. She tried for weeks to get back with me, but I wasn’t having it. I finally stopped hearing from her months later, after we graduated.”
“And your former friend?”
“After that ass-whooping, he knew to give me a wide berth whenever we were around each other. After graduation, I never saw him again either.”
“Damn,” I said, taking the last sip of my wine. “So wait, that was your last relationship?”
“Nah, but it was my longest.”
“And your most significant, I bet.”
He scrunched his face at me. “Why you say that?”
I laughed. “It was, wasn’t it.”
His head tilted as he pondered. He gave a slight nod. “I guess you could say that. I never got as deep with the other women I was involved with as my first girlfriend.”
I nodded, snickering. “Typical.”
“What was that?” He turned his ear to me, cupping it as if he needed to hear me better.
“I said, typical,” I iterated.
“What the hell that mean?”
I giggled more at his offended tone. “I mean, men often do that. Get hurt once, and then keep their emotional distance from every woman moving forward. But let a woman do the same, and we’re called bitter.”
“Really.” He raised a challenging eyebrow.
“Really.”
“Yet if I recall correctly, it wasyourass who’d been doing the damn running between us.”
He had me there, but I wasn’t giving in so easily. “I was just cautious.”
“Whatever, ain’t nobody calling women bitter for being hurt.”
“Tuh, areyouserious now?”
He gave me an incredulous look.
“The same thing happened to me with my college boyfriend. I told you about it. My then-best friend not only fucked my boyfriend, but got pregnant by him. Of course, I was devastated. But I lost count of how many times I heard, ‘don’t become bitter now’ or ‘all men aren’t like that’ whenever I said I wasn’t ready to date again. I had to go to law school across the country in D.C. just to escape everyone looking atmeas if I’d done something wrong to make him cheat on me.”
“Okay,” he said after a while, beginning to plate our food.
