I slowly turned to him. “Look, Trill, I like you, but me and my child aren’t a prop for you to add to your image. Please make it your last time putting me on the spot like that. Thank you for dinner. Have a good night.”
The door was opened for me, and his driver let me out.
“Thank you,” I said politely and continued to walk to my building without looking back.
I’d set the boundary and hoped that he didn’t cross it. I had no problems cutting him off.
I’d barely stuckmy key in the door when Brandy’sBest Friendplayed loudly from my purse. It was the ringtone for both Ebone and my mother. Taking the phone out, I pushed the door open with my shoulder. Seeing Ebone’s picture on the screen, I answered.
“Bitch,”she said, skipping the pleasantries,“why is there a post on The Shade Room of you and Trill with a caption that says, baby on board?”
I closed the door behind me and stood against it with my eyes closed. “Ebone, please tell me you lyin’.”
“I ain’t never lied to you a day in my life. Check your phone right now.”
Kicking my heels off, I walked into the living room to sit down. I knew I had to brace myself.
“Are you looking?”
“I’ma bout to, Eb, damn. Gimme a second,”I snapped. I didn’t mean to, but my nerves were on edge. I was scared to even open the Instagram app.“I’m so…”
“It’s okay,”she let out.“You get a pass cause you carrying my godbaby, and this is some heavy shit.”
I tapped the app and typed “the” into the search bar. The Shade Room was the first profile to come up. I hit the name, and there we were. I checked to see how long the post had been up, and it noted twenty minutes. It had already gotten a few thousand likes and multiple comments. I was scared to even read them, so I asked Ebone what they said.
“What the comments say?”I set the phone down on my lap and rubbed my temples, feeling a migraine coming on.
“One comment say, ‘She crazy as hell for lettin’ that nigga take a picture of her, holding her belly, when she know that ain’t his baby, and the real baby daddy gon’ kick her ass when he find out.”
“What!?”I shrieked, snatching up the phone and scrolling the comments.“Where is that? Who said that? What’s the handle?”
“@ebthebigrealtor,”she replied.
“Who the…”I paused, catching on quick. It was her IG handle.“Now is not the time to be playing, Ebone.”
“Girl, the only one that’s playing is you. Why would you be all hugged up on camera like that? I thought you were keeping the pregnancy under wraps?”
“Ebone, you got two damn eyes. Four when you do what your optometrist tell you to do. Does it look likeI let Trill do anything? I was caught off guard. And his sneaky ass set that up. I can’t believe this shit,”I spat, and the baby kicked. I placed both hands on my belly and rubbed it. “Mommy sorry, Baby Boo.”
I didn’t know the baby’s gender yet, so I referred to him or her as Baby Boo. As crazy as it sounded, that was the one thing I didn’t want to take from Pryce. I’d already done that by being away half the pregnancy.
Ebone went quiet for a long second then spoke softly, as if she were being careful with her words.“I think it’s about time you made your way back to the East Coast, sis.”
I hung my head.“I know. He texted me.”
“Who? Pryce?”
“Yes.”
She inhaled sharply.“And what he say? Some Pryce shit?”
“Yeah.”I scrolled to Pryce’s message to screenshot and send to her.“Check your phone.”
“Okay.”She went quiet again. Too quiet.“Ahhh, shit, bitch. He been counting.”
“I know.”
“He said forty-eight hours.”
