“Shut up.” I mumbled.
“I’m serious,” he said, still laughing. “What he do? You finally let him hit and now he acting different?”
“Dique!”
“What? I’m just asking. I’m a nigga, I know how it go.”
I was two seconds away from hanging up on him when another call came across the screen and it was finally Malik. Every muscle in my body tightened at one time. Dique wasstill talking, still clowning, still in my ear and I was no longer listening to him.
“I gotta call you back,” I cut in.
“Yeah, aight, go answer your man?—”
I hung up before he could finish and immediately switched over.
“Hello?”
There was a pause first. Then Malik’s voice came through but not warm at all. “So now you answer.” He said.
I sat back slowly in the seat and looked out the window. “You weren’t answering me.”
“Because I ain’t want to.” He shot back.
That stung more than it should’ve. I didn’t speak for a second, and he didn’t rush to talk either. That alone told me exactly what type of time he was on.
“So that’s what we doing?” I finally asked.
“That’s what you been doing,” he replied. “You been treating me like I’m some pussy you can just push off to the side every time your life gets crazy.”
I closed my eyes. “That’s not what this is.”
“That’s exactly what it is,” he said, and there was something in his voice in his tone I never heard before. He sounded like he was just done. “You act like you can call me when you feel like it, hang up when you feel like it, throw me out a car in the middle of some serious shit, then call me again when you decide you want to hear my voice.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Neither is how you been treating me.”
I swallowed hard. The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror but knew better than to say anything. “You don’t understand…”
“Nah,” he cut me off. “You right, I don’t understand. I don’t understand why every time I try to stand solid with you, youdecide for me that I can’t handle it. I don’t understand why you keep acting like I’m weak just because I don’t move like the men in yo’ life move.”
“That’s not what I think Malik.”
“Then what you think, O’Shynn?”
He said my full name because he was serious-serious now. I looked down at my hand in my lap. “I think this life is dangerous.”
“No shit.”
“And I think being close to me makes you a target.”
He let that linger for a second. Then he said, “That was my choice to make.”
I didn’t say anything to that because it was true and because hearing it from him made me feel worse than I already did. He continued on. “You don’t get to keep deciding what I can handle just because you scared,” he spat. “And I’m not finna keep chasing a woman that only wants me around when it’s easy. I got real feelings for you, but I’m not no fucking dummy.”
That right there took the rest of the air right out of me because I didn’t know what to say but I liked it. It wasn’t easy for men to handle me because I never wanted love but with Malik it was different. Outside the window the city lights were flashing past, as people walked along the sidewalks, with the cars passing, all while I sat there in the backseat feeling like my whole chest had been caved in over a nigga. Make it so bad, the worst part of this was, he was right.
“I tell you what O’, don’t fucking call me until you ready. You know exactly what I mean. I gotta go.” He hung up. It was at that very moment I decided I was going to get my man. I couldn’t allow past heartbreak and the trauma of this life stop me from being happy.
