When I made it to the bar, the scent of her perfume hit my nostrils and even that felt familiar. It was as if the neurons in my brain began to fire off. Where in the hell had I smelled that before? Like a picture book, faces of the women I’d been with flipped through my mental rolodex, but nothing came up.
With dipped brows, I stood next to her, leaned my elbow on the bar, and said, “Excuse me.”
When she turned around and faced me, my heart damn near dropped out of my chest. It was Mahogany. But… not in a way I remembered her. She didn’t smell like vanilla. Didn’t smell like candy like that other perfume neither. Tonight was different. Very different. My eyes traveled down the front of her, lingering at the deep V-neck split in the top of her dress. Had she worn it before? I looked away, up towards the ceiling, steady trying to jog my memory. Nah, if she had worn this dress around me, I would have definitely remembered ripping it off of her. She was usually on her business casual shit. Never like this. She was likea distant memory. Something that stayed buried for a long time before it was unburied tonight. What the fuck was that?
“Hey,” she spoke, with furrowed brows.
I chucked my chin a little, still baffled by why the dress and everything about her seemed very fucking familiar. “When you get here?”
“About ten minutes ago,” she flatly said, her eyes locked on mine.
“Ah damn,” I scratched at my cheek. “I didn’t see you come in.”
“I saw you.”
“And you didn’t come speak to a nigga?” I joked, before throwing my hand up at her assistant, Tamia, speaking.
“You were…occupied.”
She saw me with Reign and probably automatically assumed she was my girl.
“So? Still should have come over to speak.”
She shrugged, fingered through her hair and looked away. I tilted my head to the side a bit, trying to catch her eyes. However, she refused to give them to me. She had an attitude. I could feel it coming off of her. An attitude for what though? We hadn’t spent time together in months. I couldn’t remember the last time… nah, I lied. I could remember the last time we spent time alone. I could remember it very well. That last time, at my crib, was the reason we were where we were. I was nowhere near as bitter about it as I was before. Felt like if she hadn’t put her foot down the way she had, The House of Nova Ray wouldn’t be ready. We’d still be behind. So… in a sense… it was a good thing she’d pulled back. Still didn’t like it though. Still had a tinge of bitterness in my heart about it.
I took a deep breath and brushed my hand down the back of my neck. Fuck was I supposed to do in this position? Beg her to give me something other than attitude? Explain to her thatReign was my ex and only here because The House of Nova Ray was special to her, too? I didn’t owe Mahogany an explanation. Shit, I didn’t owe her anything. We weren’t where we used to be. Would I have loved for us to be? Yeah. A little. A nigga still had a little bit of PTSD behind the back-and-forth shit. Who’s to say she still wasn’t on that type of time? Unsure of life? Unsure of herself? Unsure of every fucking thing. I hated that shit because the one thing she should’ve been sure about was me. Bold thing to say considering we were fresh, and hadn’t done much of anything besides fuck, but it was true. I was intentional. I showed her that through everything. Not just sex. Through conversation and the way I handled her too. Guess she didn’t give a fuck.
Again, I sighed and ran my tongue over my bottom lip. Glancing over at her, I wanted to tell her she looked good. Really wanted to wrap my arms around her and bury my face into the side of her neck. I wanted to put my lips on her soft skin. Wanted to take her ass to the crib, bend her over and punish her for leaving me. But I had to be condensed into a version of myself that I didn’t want to be with her. Because she had rules. Because she’d put up a bigger wall. Because she did damage no one else had done. Played with me. Toyed with me like I was disposable. Well shit, I was. Look at where we were.
“I was just telling Mahogany the place looks amazing. What event planning company you use?” Tamia asked, breaking the awkward silence.
“My sister found the company, so I don’t even know,” I flatly replied, looking at Mahogany from the corner of my eye. She was on her phone, scrolling through her TikTok feed, refusing to give me attention.
Deciding I’d had enough of the awkwardness, I nodded, tapped the bar, and said, “You ladies have a wonderful night. I appreciate y’all sliding through.”
Mahogany mumbled an ‘uh huh’, Tamia smiled and thanked me, and I walked away, feet feeling heavy as hell.
I was supposed to do more. I was supposed to say more. I felt it in my bones. No way in hell I felt compelled to walk over there for nothing. But… I was stubborn and I refused to let Mahogany… I refused to let Mahogany hurt me again. Yeah, that’s what she did. She hurt me. Fuck it. I had to admit it. Had been a hard ass pill to swallow for real.
“Where’d you go?” Reign asked, walking over to the spot I stopped to stand in.
I didn’t know what the fuck was up with her, but she’d been hanging around me all night. I wanted to tell her to find something else to do. Especially since Mahogany was here but I said fuck it. It was what it was.
“Nowhere,” I flatly replied, putting my cranberry juice up to my lips.
I needed something stronger. If I was going to be in a battle between mind and heart, I needed a couple of shots of 1942. Shifting my eyes over at the bar, I thought about going back over to order me a double shot but said fuck it. I couldn’t sit through another moment of awkwardness with Mahogany’s ass. Fuck was she acting like that for anyway? If Reign was my shorty, what would it be to her? She cut me off—it wasn’t the other way around.
I clenched down on my jaw and glanced over at her. Our eyes met for a moment before she childishly rolled them and looked away. I shook my head and took another sip of the cranberry juice I didn’t want.
I couldn’t stand her ass. Not only because she cut me off but because despite everything, I wanted her. Bad as hell. Not just on a physical level either. I really, truly missed the fuck out of Mahogany as a whole. You know how excruciating the past six months without her had been? I hadn’t woken up excitedabout work since shit went left. At the beginning, we were doing the whole Zoom thing, but I stopped attending meetings because staring at her through a screen pissed me off. It made my desire heighten. Made my frustrations stronger. So, I went from meeting with her twice a week to discuss plans, to handing the meetings off to one of my associates. I didn’t meet with Mahogany until the end of the month for our monthly review. I’d even stopped showing up at walk throughs because she always had someone else with her and there was this robotic thing she did that pissed me off. I said I wanted to be hands-on with The House of Nova Ray, but I literally couldn’t be. Not after the change. And it wasn’t anybody’s fault but my own, so I didn’t blame her.
I couldn’t blame her for any of it. I started it. This whole attraction with her. The flirtatiousness. Fucking her. That was all me. I didn’t go into the situation blindly; I knew exactly what I was doing. I should have done a better job controlling myself. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be in this predicament, stealing fleeting glances, frustrated because I couldn't have her the way I wanted her.
“I feellike the album gon be crazy,” said Titan before putting his cup up to his lips.
Judah frowned. “That nigga is washed. Kendrick buried ‘em.”
“I can’t believe we still having this conversation,” said Rah, shaking his head. “He didn’t bury him—the nigga just fucked up dawg’s confidence. At the end of the day, Drake still Drake and when he come back its gon’ be over for niggas.”
