Side Chic 4 (Forever Ratchet) (9 page)

“Cool…” Was his reply.

“Tre…don’t act like that. I told you why I can’t stay.”

“Okay, we’re good. I’m not mad…I wish that you could stay but…I understand that you need to go and pick up your baby.” He gave me another quick peck. “Don’t forget to call me.”

“Okay, I won’t.” I got in my car and backed out of the driveway. I wasn’t down the road a mile before I reached over and took my cell out of my pocketbook and powered it on. As soon as it came on, two text messages came through and my voicemail notification alerted me that I had a new voicemail. I checked the texts and they were both from Mello still asking me to give him a call and asking me why was I ignoring him. I rolled my eyes up in my head before going to my contacts and finding Nelle’s name. I pressed her name and waited for the call to connect. The phone rang a few times before, she picked up sounding upset.

“Hey.” She answered.

“Hey girl, are you okay?” I asked trying my best to sound concerned.

“Hell nah, I’m not alright.” She snapped. “It’s going on 11:00 in the damn night and Corey hasn’t made it home yet!” I heard her voice crack. “I am getting tired now and I don’t want to hear any more bullshit about he’s working late! My gut is telling me that he’s up to no damn good!”

“I feel you cuz but try to calm down.” I smiled wanting to burst out laughing. “You may be getting yourself all worked up for nothing. I doubt if Corey is silly enough to be back up to his old bullshit. He has worked too hard to prove to you that he wasn’t like that anymore. Just try and give him the benefit of the doubt before you go jumping the gun.”

“Fuck that! I have…” Her words trailed off and then I heard her asking, “Where have you been?” I knew then that Corey had just walked in. I heard him saying something but I couldn’t make out what it was. The next thing I heard was Nelle going off. I pressed end and
disconnected the call.

“Guess, I know who won’t be getting any dick tonight.” I laughed aloud.
“There seems to be a bit of trouble in paradise.”

Kisha

A few days after the incident with Tre, I found myself standing on Skeet’s front porch just before noon. I’d been standing there debating whether or not to ring the bell. I wasn’t sure if going to his place had been a smart decision. He’d been begging me for weeks to come over so that we could talk, saying that he had some things that he needed to say to me face to face and up until that morning I’d been refusing to see him or speak to him. I was angry with him for nearly taking my life as well as his own in the car accident. For some reason, maybe stupidity, after hearing how pitiful he’d sounded on the voicemail he’d left early that morning, I’d broken down and went to see what he wanted. I figured that it couldn’t hurt to at least hear him out. I would’ve made him come to me but he couldn’t because he was still recovering from the two broken legs that he’d suffered from the car accident.
              I rang the doorbell and waited, looking out across the yard at the neighbors in the yard next door. The man was outside playing football with his two boys while his wife stood on the porch and watched. I felt a pang of jealousy. I wished that could’ve been Tre and I. I wished that things had turned out differently instead of the way that they were now. I’d never wanted for my children to grow up in a broken home. I’d wanted to give them what I never had, a mother and a father. I’d done all that I could to ensure that but it still hadn’t been enough. Being young and dumb, I’d never stopped to think that in order for a relationship to work both people involved had to want the same thing and work towards that. Instead I’d thought that if I loved Tre enough and put up with all of his bullshit, eventually he’d chose his family over the hoes in the streets. I shook my head at the realization of how stupid I’d been. I continued to watch the family next door until my attention was pulled away by the sound of the door being unlocked.

The door opened and Skeet sat in a wheelchair.
He looked the same except he’d cut his beard and there were a few scars along the side of his face that I assume were a result of the accident. I stood there momentarily frozen just staring at him. I’d thought that my first time seeing him I would be upset and curse him lower than a dog for how he’d put both of our lives in danger. I thought that all of the anger that had been pent up inside of me for the past two and a half months would surely would surely boil over and I’d explode but for some reason the opposite of that was happening. I felt bad seeing him in the condition that he was in. The Skeet that I knew had always exuded strength but this man sitting before me didn’t exude that at all. Instead he looked weak and fragile and a part of me felt that I was partially the blame. It was like a wave of emotion hit me as soon as he opened the door.  In my mind, I kept seeing the sad, upset expression that he’d worn in the doctor’s office the day of the accident. I saw the pain in his eyes when I’d told him only days before that I didn’t plan on keeping his baby. I felt bad now as those images played back in my mind. I wished that I could have a chance to do it all over again. I would’ve handled it differently. I would’ve broken the news to him in a better way instead of being as insensitive as I had. At the time I hadn’t really taken the time to consider his feelings at all. I’d only been thinking of my own.

“Hey, come in.” He spoke moving back out of the way of the door so that I could get past him. I walked in closing the door behind me. “We can go into the kitchen. I was eating some lunch. Are you hungry?”

“Nah, I’m good.” I replied trailing him into the kitchen. I took a seat at the table across from where he had a plate that held a sandwich and some chips sitting.

“Are you sure that you don’t want any?” He offered again as
he positioned his chair at the table. “You know how I get down in the kitchen so you know it’s good.” He cracked a slight smile revealing deep dimples in each of his cheeks. It’d been years since I’d seen those dimples because they’d been hidden by the full beard that he’d been sporting.

“I don’t want anything to eat.” I said wanting to get to the point of my visit. I didn’t like the affect that he was having on me. I’d been doing a lot of thinking over the past couple of months about changes that I wanted to make within my life for myself and my boys they didn’t include a man. It was time for me to focus on being a mother and establishing some type of stability for my boys
and for myself. I was getting older not younger. For years, I’d been depending on Tre and my family to take care of me and the boys. I’d even depended on Skeet at one point in time. I didn’t want to depend on anybody else anymore. It was time for me to depend on me and that is exactly what I was about to do as soon as I was able to get around without the crutches that I was using. “What did you need me to come by for?”

I watched closely as the smile faded from his face and was replaced by a serious expression. He took a sip from the glass of juice
that was sitting on the table and then placed it back down next to the plate and took a deep breath. “Kish…I’m sorry for everything.”

I interrupted him
because I didn’t feel that it was necessary for him to keep on apologizing over and over. “Skeet, you’ve already apologized a million times through text and on my voicemail.”

“I know that but I wanted to say it to you…face to

face.” He let me know. “Can I finish, please?”
              “Yeah…”

“Like I was saying, I am sorry for everything that happened. I am especially sorry about the accident. Every time that I think about it, it nearly kills me thinking of what could have happened. Not what could’ve happened to me but what could’ve happened to you, you could’ve died that day.” He looked up at me and I saw tears in his eyes. He shook his head and ran his hand over his face. “I don’t think I could’ve lived with myself knowing that I’d been the cause of your death. I would’ve taken my own life.”

“Skeet, it wasn’t all your fault.” I said after seeing how upset he was. I could see that he really was sorry and it touched me. “I could’ve handled things differently than I did that day. It was my insensitiveness that cause you to lose it the way that you did. I never took the time to think about how my decision would affect you. At the time, I didn’t care to be honest. I was only thinking about myself and the fact that I didn’t want another child. I should’ve known that you would be upset but like I said at that time I didn’t care.”

“Yeah but I still had no right to put my hands on you. No matter how upset I was. That was no excuse.” We both got quiet for a moment and then he continued. “I have never loved a woman like I love you. I’ve loved you for a very long time now. I can remember seeing you with Tre and wishing that you were mine before anything ever happened between us. I
’ve always felt like he didn’t deserve you because of all of the things that I knew that he was doing out in the streets. I would always say to myself that if given the chance, I could make you happier and treat you like you deserved to be treated. Then when I finally got that chance, I nearly killed you.” He let out a sarcastic chuckle.

“Skeet will you stop talking like you did it on purpose. It was a mistake.”

“Nah, I allowed my anger and pain to cloud my better judgment. I was so mad at you for wanting to have an abortion that I didn’t take the time to think about what might happen if we started fighting in that car while I was driving.”

“I guess we both used bad judgment.”

“Yeah…I guess we did.”

He looked over at me and asked. “Can I ask you something?”

I wasn’t sure if I should say yes but I nodded my head anyways.

“Why didn’t you want my baby? I mean
, what made my baby any different from Shaun and Quan? Was it because it wasn’t Tre’s? I need to know because that has been fucking with me since the night that you told me that you thought that you were pregnant and didn’t want to keep it.”

“I didn’t need another child…we didn’t need a child together.”

He looked confused. “What? What is that supposed to mean? And why is that something that you felt like you were the only one who had a right to decide? If I remember correctly, it takes two people to lie down and create a life. So how come, only one gets to decide to end it?”

I let out a frustrated breath. “Skeet,
us being together in the first place was a mistake.” I saw a pained expression take over his face. So I explained. “I should never have left Tre and ran directly to your bed. That was the wrong way for me to handle the pain that he’d caused me. I didn’t want to deal with it at that time, I wanted something to numb it, something to take my mind off of it and that something was you. You were my distraction and at the same time you were my payback. I knew that being with you would hurt Tre and that’s exactly what I wanted. I wanted to hurt him the same way that he’d hurt me by sleeping with all of those other women out in the streets and getting Lala pregnant. I wanted to show him that he wasn’t the only one who could do some foul shit because I knew that he’d never expect me to fuck with someone else. Especially not one of his boys.”

“Wooow…really? Is that really how you felt about me? That I was just some gotdamn rebound!” He roared. I’d known that my words wouldn’t be easy for him to hear but they were the truth.

“Skeet…”

“Skeet my ass, Kish!” He banged his fist on the arm of the chair, cutting me off. I was kind of glad that he was in a wheelchair because if he hadn’t been there’s no telling what he may have done to me in that kitchen. “
Was I just something for you to do the first time that we fucked too? Was I just something to numb your pain then too?”

“Yeah…” I lowered my eyes feeling guilty because I’d always known how deeply that he cared for me. I’d never meant to hurt him but clearly I had.

He backed his chair away from the table and rolled towards the living room. I got up and followed him. I didn’t bother grabbing my crutches. “Just leave me alone, yo. On some real shit, you can leave because I really don’t even want to look at you right now. I’ve said everything that I wanted to say as far as me being sorry about the accident.”

“Skeet, what more did you expect? Did you honestly think that I was over Tre that quickly? Did you really think that I was in love with you or that I could be so soon after everything that had just happened between Tre and me?”
I yelled after him, limping as quickly as my one good leg would carry me while trying not to put any pressure on my bad leg. “I’m not saying that I was right for how I handled the situation but stop acting like you were some clueless victim! You knew what time it was! You knew all the while how I felt about Tre and so you had to know that all of those feelings hadn’t just vanished overnight!”

He stopped and swirled his chair around to face me! “I also knew how you still kept in contact with me after t
he first time we fucked! How whenever we were in the same space together you would flirt with me on the low. You led me to believe that even though you were too weak to pick up and leave Tre, that you did have some kind of feelings for me deep down inside! I’m not saying that I thought that your feelings for him had all vanished but I did think that once you found out about his other family you were done and ready to move on. Ready to begin a new chapter of your life with me and finally give us a real chance because you knew that is what I wanted. You knew that because I constantly told you that! So how about you stop acting as if you didn’t know what fuckin’ time it was! You knew but your selfish ass didn’t care!”