She smiled and although she wanted to say ‘yes’, her eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head.
Sympathetically, I laid my hand on her shoulder.
“You need to talk?”
Again, one answer was on the tip of her tongue, while the other answer was in her eyes. Taking a chance, I sat in the chair next to her. Fallon and I weren’t exactly friends, and she was currently with a man I was completely over, however, she was in need. If anything, I could be a listening ear.
Fallon wiped her tears, blew out a deep breath, then cleared her throat.
“About five blocks over, back in the cut, there’s an abortion clinic. You can’t tell from the outside, looks like an abandoned building. On the inside though, it looks like a regular doctor’s office. I was sitting in there, ready to do what I thought was best for me. Then, something hit me.” She wiped more tears as I compassionately listened.
Hearing Fallon confess that she was about to have an abortion hurt my heart. At the same time, her choices were her choices. Being that I’d struggled to get pregnant and make it this far in my pregnancy, I was more sensitive where babies were concerned. That didn’t mean I would judge Fallon.
“A few nights ago, I was at Vick’s mom’s house having dinner with her. I don’t need to explain to you how Vick’s mother is; you know. So, I was surprised that she even wanted to have dinner with me. I thought maybe she’d changed her stance on me being in a relationship with her son. Over dinner, however, some shit didn’t sit right with me. She kept offering me shit, like I didn’t have a mouth to ask for what I want. It just felt so…stagedand almost like ugly-witch-with-the-apple type of thing. I kept declining her offers.” She chuckled and shrugged her shoulders while my brows furrowed.
“Ultimately, what had me running out of that abortion clinic was thinking about how I feltthinkingthat crazy witch was trying to poison me.” She laughed. “Instincts…that’s all I was going on. Sitting in that office, I told myself, ‘If you cared enough tothinkthis woman was poisoning you, and your paranoid ass kept her from doing it, so that you could protect your baby… Shouldn’t you be protecting your baby now?’” Fallon’s tears grew heavier as she sniffled. She pointed to the crumbled-up ultrasounds. “I’m carrying him or her… I’m gonna keep him or her because when I didn’t think I could, Ilovedthis baby.”
Reaching over, I rubbed Fallon’s back as she cried. Comforting her was my priority right now, but I had to admit that what she said had my spirit a wreck.
“Have you talked to Vick?”
She shook her head. “When he finds out I played the last few games,knowingI was pregnant, he’ll be mad as fuck. He wants a baby so bad.”
Fallon didn’t know my story with Vick unless he’d told her. She didn’t broach the subject, so I figured she had no knowledge of my miscarriages. It was something I never released to the media. It stayed between me and those closest to me.
“What’re you gonna do now?”
Sighing, Fallon dried her face and exhaled a long breath. “I have no choice but to tell him. I’m going through with the pregnancy, which gives me great peace. That’s another reason I know I’m making the right decision. Whatever the plan is for this child, it must be a great one. I hauled tail outta that place.” She busted out laughing at that. “Those people were looking at me like I was crazy.”
I laughed with her then, while imagining how her tall, lanky ass looked running out of that doctor’s office.
“Whew!” she let out. “This was the conversation I needed. Thank you, Mimi, for listening.” She embraced me like we were old friends, and I made sure my embrace felt just as tight.
“You got this, Baby,” I told her.
Nodding, Fallon swooped her ultrasound pictures up, placed them in her purse, and stood.
“I wasn’t even hungry.” She chuckled. “I came in here because I needed to make myself throw up. I figured smelling all the damn grease would turn my stomach and make me runbackto the clinic. Instead, you came in here. I feel so much better.”
Smiling, I stood and hugged Fallon again. “If you ever need to talk, you know my number.”
“Of course,” she replied with a smile. She waved at me on her way out of the door as I went back to my table.
The ice had melted in my Sprite by the time I sat down. Minutes later, PJ and Bri strolled into Hole. We hugged each other, ordered our food, and settled in for our fat-filled dishes. PJ and Bri were in a world of their own. Meanwhile, I was in times prior, dissecting every moment I spent with Vick’s mother. So much so, that I remembered her inviting me for dinner. The seemingly welcoming smile on her face was plastered to my memory like a worrisome bandage. I remembered to a T what she’d cooked both times—could still taste the lasagna in on my tongue. The thought had me gagging.
Getting up from the table, I hurried to the restroom with PJ and Bri on my heels. I busted through the first stall and heaved over the toilet.
“Mimi!” PJ and Bri cried, each holding an arm as I panicked. Tears blurred my vision as blood filled my head. I felt myself fainting, and I didn’t have the power to stop it.
SIN
“The contract is pretty straight forward. My firm can start drafting the floorplan as soon as you like.”
I glanced across the table at Jonathan Bibbs, a pro-baller who was looking to build a youth center in his childhood neighborhood. He heard about JSC through mutual associates and damn near begged me to come out and view the area he wanted to erect the building in. The site was empty—a run-down field that hadn’t seen a lawn mower in decades. There was much potential for the center being in the low-income area, and I explained to Bibbs that JSC was the right firm to handle the job.
This nigga needed to hurry and make up his mind, though. I’d been sitting in this meeting for over an hour, listening to him go back and forth between ideas that all sounded like bullshit. He wanted space-age instead of functionality, cost-effective instead of luxury. Almost as if his old neighborhood needed “to get with the times” instead of offering actual resources that helped his old community. He wanted a music studio in the joint, instead of a pool, an ice rink instead of a regular rink. I listened to him explain to me why renting office space inside the center would benefithimmore than if he used those same office spaces to set up a daycare, classes, a library, and even an arcade. He claimed to be wanting to help the community, but really, it sounded like he wanted to look like he was helping the community when really, he was trying to line his pockets. He wanted to appeal tothe peopleoutsideof the community instead of the people who could comfortably walk to the center to enjoy the space.
As far as his cost-effective stance, I hated that he thought his million-dollar investment wasn’t good enough to give the very best for the people he claimed to care about. In the contract I’d drawn up, I gave my opinion and left it up to him to decide. However, he was picking it apart like a nasty-ass fruitcake. All I needed him to do was make a move, so that I could head to the airport and back to my woman.
