“My mom was also abusive and a drunk, so when I was at the hospital for a full week, not one person came to visit me. I was only twenty then. When the doctor released me, I left townfor good and never looked back. I wanted to leave him, her, and everything about that city behind me. It wasn’t that I was trying to keep it from you. I tried to block it out of my mind, and I’m sorry for that.”
“Damn. I’m sorry you had to go through something like that. Now, I’m mad that I ain’t really fuck his ass up. I only hit him one time. I can go back and do some more damage.”
“Stone.”
“All right. I’ll let him make it, but he better not pop up in my face no time soon.”
“Hopefully, he won’t.”
Hearing Shanet’s side of the story cleared everything up, and I wished I had heard it then, but I knew I wasn’t in the right headspace. Everything she told me made so much sense, but if I’d heard it the same day, it wouldn’t have made any sense at all. Now that I knew what she went through, all I wanted to do was protect her.
Shanet was thirty years old, which meant Devonte had been searching for her longer than the amount of time they had been together. A man like that wouldn’t let our run-in be the end of it. He was going to try something again, and I wanted to be there when he did. I wanted to be the person in Shanet’s life who made her feel safe enough to stay instead of running away.
Stone poundedin and out of me hard as my body shook violently underneath him. We had been going for less than fifteen minutes, and I’d cum three times. This last one was threatening to take me out.
“That’s right, baby. Cum for me.”
“I’m cumminggg!” I sang as Stone kept his speed and pressure against my spot with steady thrusts. He commanded my body in ways I didn’t know were possible. When he’d sucked the last orgasm out of me, he pulled me onto his chest.
I was more than happy to be back in Stone’s arms. Those few days without him felt like torture, like someone was trying to rip half of my body from the other. The time I’d spent away from Stone was enough to make me realize a few hard truths aboutmyself. It let me know that my need to know everything about him was rooted in my own need to hide things about myself.
There were so many things about myself that I was ashamed of. My entire childhood was a series of unfortunate events that happened one after the other. The more I tried to reinvent myself, the more I became obsessed with changing others.
I had an alcoholic mother who was depressed for most of my life. All I knew her for was being crazy or sick or both at the same time. Most days, my mom would curse me out for no reason, and on the days that she wasn’t, she was in bed, barely able to lift her head to talk to me.
From the time I was five years old, I fed myself and made sure I was bathed. I got through all twelve years of grade school alone, and I still managed to graduate with honors. A lot of my childhood was a blur, but I would never forget how unloved I felt.
I got with Devonte my freshman year of high school out of necessity. At that age, I needed to be seen, and he was the only person who made me feel that way. I would go by his house when my own house had become too much for me to stand. His parents made sure I had everything I needed when I wasn’t able to get it on my own.
I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge how much Devonte and his family helped me out as a teenager, but that didn’t make the abuse I suffered anything less than abuse. He took advantage of me not having anyone other than him, and made sure I knew it every time he went upside my head. I would get my head pushed into lockers for even glancing at another boy at school.
I got embarrassed on the courtyard every time he felt like it, and despite it all, I still loved him. I tried everything to fix Devonte, just as I had done with my mother, but nothing worked. The more I loved him, the less he gave a damn about me.
The obsession I had with fixing others came from my desperate need to be wanted. Every time Devonte hit me, I loved him harder, and every time my mother ignored me, I worked harder to gain her attention. My mother was incapable of giving me the love or even the attention I needed, and I didn’t realize that until I had spent a week in the hospital, and no one came to visit. Now that I was lying in Stone’s arms, I realized I wasn’t asking for too much. I was just asking the wrong people.
Stone:
You up for meeting me after work?
Shanet:
I always am.
Stone:
Good girl. See you soon.
I shot Shanet the address,letting her know where to meet me. She would be off work in less than twenty minutes, so I was already headed to the spot. Shanet had been begging for pieces of me since we met, and I never wanted her to feel like she had to beg me for shit.
I wanted to give her anything and everything she needed, but it was important that I took things one step at a time. I was not a person who could easily show who I was all at one time. I needed time and space to open up, but Shanet was taking my apprehension as rejection.
I pulled up to the cemetery and waited for Shanet to make it. I hadn’t been here since the day we buried Rome. Mama Bea made sure Rome was buried right beside my mother. She had a spot for me reserved on the other side of my mother, and her spot was reserved on the other side of Rome.
She also had a bench placed in front of their graves so that we could sit down if we planned on being there for a long time. That was going to come in handy today because I wanted to introduce Shanet to two of the most important people in my life.
Shanet pulled up not long after I parked, and she jumped right out of the car. Once she made it over to me, I had already gotten out of my truck and was walking toward her. I pulled her into a hug and kissed her on the cheek.
“Thank you for coming.”
