Chapter 8
Dominic
Ifelt bad about letting things go down the way they had last night.
I needed to get away from Charly, though, because if I didn’t, I was about to tell her exactly how I felt about her.
Every time I was around her little short ass, she made me want to spill my heart to her, but I knew that would be devastating at best.
I didn’t want to put her in a position where she would have to choose to be with me or protect her reputation.
Whereas I didn’t give a shit what folks thought, I knew that she did.
And as much as I loved her and wanted her, and as much as I knew she loved me and would be with me in a second, I didn’t want to add that pressure to her life.
I stretched and yawned as I looked out the window and saw that it was overcast outside.
I’d planned to wash my car today, but that was out.
I grabbed my wood and tugged at it as I climbed out of bed and headed to my bathroom.
Stretching and yawning in the mirror, I noticed that it was time for another haircut and shape-up.
I would have to call my barber and set up an appointment to flow through later. My mind returned to Charly as I showered, and I thought about ways that I could make up to her for the way I snapped at her last night.
In all the years we’d known each other, I had never raised my voice at her.
Charly’s heart was precious to me, and I vowed a long time ago never to be the one who broke it.
However, I’d done just that at sixteen when she shared her feelings with me.
It was the day after her birthday, and while I had known that she had feelings for a brother, I’d chosen to overlook them.
It was safer that she remained nothing more than a friend.
And while I lied and told her that I didn’t have those types of feelings for her, nothing could have been further from the truth.
I told others that I didn’t want to hurt her and bring her down the wrong path.
That was true, too, but it wasn’t the reason that I’d broken her heart the day after her sixteenth birthday.
She called me earlier that morning and asked if she could drop by.
I told her that I was about to run out, but I’d be available after two.
Two hours before Charly arrived at my house, I had just returned from visiting Ariana, a girl with who I had been kicking it.
Ariana had told me she was pregnant and that her parents didn’t know yet.
She wanted to know what I was gonna do, and I had no answers.
The only thing I wanted to do was go back in time to the day that we met and keep walking past her fine ass at the mall.
She really wanted to keep the baby, but she knew her daddy would be angry and want to kill me.
My daddy would beat my ass because he had drilled into us the importance of using protection.
My hardheaded ass had to try it once, just to see if it really felt any different without a rubber than with one.
So, while Charlyse was spilling her heart, those things were flowing through my mind.
I was trying to figure out how to avoid marriage and a kid, because that was what type of time shorty was on.
The last thing I needed was drama between my baby mama and a new girlfriend slash best friend.
When Ariana finally told her parents about the pregnancy, luckily, they both agreed with me.
Neither of us was ready for a child, and they wanted their daughter to have a better future than that of having a YN for a baby daddy.
They insisted that she had to give it up for adoption, but my father insisted that he wanted to know more.
If it were my child, he wanted to keep the baby in the family.
He didn’t believe in his seeds having seeds scattered across the world.
When the baby was born, he made us get a DNA test. The baby wasn’t mine.
I’d narrowly escaped that bullet at a young age, and I learned my lesson. From that day forward, I wrapped it up. I didn’t give a shit who I was rocking with. I never took a chance with my seed or my health again.
I stepped out of the shower and dried myself off before I threw on a pair of basketball shorts, a T-shirt, and some Nikaj slides. The apartment was quiet when I left my bedroom, but I could hear the shower running in Charly’s room.
Knowing her little ass, she would probably stay holed up in there until she thought I was gone. I headed to the kitchen and fried some ham slices and made cheese grits, cheese eggs, and biscuits. By the time I finished, she still hadn’t come out of her room.
I plated our food and placed both of them on a platter before heading to her room and knocking on the door.
“Come in,” she called out.
“My hands are full. Can you open up?”
I waited for a couple of minutes before I heard her making her way to the door. She slowly pulled the door open, and my heart constricted in my throat to see her in nothing but a bath towel with her hair pulled up on top of her head in a messy bun.
“You good?”
She shook her head.
“What’s wrong with you? Thought you would’ve been hitting the streets.”
“I’ve got a really bad headache. I’m not feeling too well.”
I knew she suffered from headaches, and she had since she was in her teens.
“Listen, I cooked, so let’s get some food in you, and then you can take something for it. You still got those meds?”
“Yeah, I just didn’t want to take them on an empty stomach, and I didn’t have the energy to get up and cook anything.”
“It’s a good thing that I’m always looking out for ya then, huh?”
She smiled weakly, and her shoulders dropped. “Yeah. I guess.”
I felt bad because I knew that last night was on her mind. “Hop in the bed and let me feed you.”
“I need to throw something on first.”
“Okay, I’ll be right back.”
Charly rolled her eyes at me and replied, “Since when have we started doing that?”
She had always got dressed in front of me, but that had all stopped once she was in a relationship with my brother.
“Since you and Ramon.”
She rolled her eyes again. “Well, that’s over now, so can we get back to being us?” Her eyes searched mine, and they were more open than I had seen them in a long time.
I could see the hurt, the desire, the trust, and everything else she held for me in that one gaze.
“Yeah.”
She turned and walked to her dresser and grabbed a T-shirt and some panties.
I turned away as she dropped her towel to throw her panties on.
There was no way that I could sit and watch her and not get turned on.
It had always been a thing for me, but I always played it off like that shit hadn’t bothered me.
All these years later, and I wasn’t with anyone, and neither was she .
. . I didn’t want to tempt myself too much.
“It smells good,” she stated as she climbed onto the bed beside me.
Sitting in bed together had always been a thing we shared, too, and if I didn’t do it now, I knew she would feel the weight of it. The last thing that I wanted was to have this uncomfortable chasm between us.
“It is good. You know ya boy can burn.”
“That you can. Both of your parents were great cooks, so . . .”
We ate in silence before we finished our meal. Charly turned and asked, “What are you getting into today?”
“Nothing much. I probably will get a shape-up later, but I don’t have anything on the board. Why?”
“Just wondering.” She set her empty plate on her nightstand and scooted down in bed.
I got up, grabbed my plate and hers, along with our glasses, and placed them back on the tray. “I’ll be back,” I declared as I took them to the kitchen and rinsed the dishes. I placed everything in the dishwasher and returned to her room with a bottled water.
“Where are your meds?”
“On the top shelf of the organizer in the bathroom.”
I nodded and headed in there to grab them. The bathroom was rich with her luxuriant brown sugar and vanilla scent. I turned to look in the mirror and gripped the counter.
“Chill, man. Don’t fuck shit up. Y’all have been good all these years. You got this, my nigga.”
I had to give myself a pep talk because I was losing my grip on things.
With her being in my home, spending more time together, and knowing that we were both free, I had been leaning toward sharing my true feelings with her.
Yet, I didn’t have my shit together to do that.
I had a full-time job, and I made money racing.
But all that shit could change tomorrow.
The job was a dead-end job, and the racing could land my ass right back in jail.
I wasn’t any better off now than I’d been before I went to prison.
Sighing, I grabbed the pills and headed back into the bedroom.
“Here, take these so that you can start feeling better,” I demanded, shaking two pills into her outstretched hand.
She popped them into her mouth while I opened the water bottle. I waited until she had taken them before I returned the pills to the bathroom and climbed back into bed with her.
“Come here.” I spread my legs and reached for her. She climbed in between them and rested her back against me and her head against my chest.
For all sakes and purposes, we were friends.
But we had always operated like we were something more.
Most people wouldn’t be okay with how we flowed, and we always understood that.
In the past, her boyfriends hadn’t been any more comfortable with me than the girls I kicked it with had been with her.
Whereas some of the women knew that I sat in bed with her and vice versa, or that she felt comfortable walking around in the nude around me, she had never told any of the guys she dated that.
I didn’t give a fuck about the women I screwed around with, knowing that, because they were only there for one purpose anyway.
I never had long-term plans for any of the women in my life.
When I got out of jail and learned that she was with my brother, we had to adapt a different flow.
I knew that he wouldn’t go for that shit any more than I would if the roles were reversed.
The odd thing was, Ramon knew how Charly and I rolled.
He knew how we used to spend the night at each other’s places and sleep in the same bed and walk around each other with barely anything on.
That was why I couldn’t figure out back then why he would even want to fuck with her.
“I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“I’ll try to be better at expressing my feelings than I was last night. That shouting shit ain’t ever been you and me, and it’s not about to start now.”
“I know.”
“And I’m sorry that I walked away from you.”
“I know that, too, Dom. You don’t like being forced to face feelings and emotions that you’d rather bury. I know that I cornered you last night about what happened. I can’t say that I didn’t mean to, because I definitely meant it. I just hate that I made you feel some type of way about it.”
I kissed the top of her head. She moved it from my chest to my shoulder and looked up at me. “Friends?”
“Always, Shortcake.”
My heart tugged in my chest because at those words, I saw the sadness in her eyes.
I knew that she wanted more from me, and if there was any woman that I could give more to, it would be her.
Only I didn’t feel like I had shit to offer her.
If I had to pair her with any man other than myself, it would have been my older brother, Joaquin.
He was not only a good man, but a loving family man.
He wanted a family and to attend church and do all the Disney vacation shit.
He would be a wonderful provider to some woman someday.
He was a professional race driver with lots of sponsorships, and he was a household name. Joaquin had invested his money well. He was the type of man who could almost be good enough for Charly.
“I talked to Chopper again.”
“Yeah? What’d he say?”
“He says that the team is already tight, and that he doesn’t need to bring new energy. He says that he’s not sure my chemistry will fit in with the team.”
I sighed.
“You already knew that, though, didn’t you?” she asked.
“I know that he told me he was worried about your short fuse.”
She giggled. “I can see that. But what he can’t see is what I have to offer. I’m not the only one with a short fuse. He’s got several guys on his team that has one as well. Why is it that when a female has an issue, it’s a problem, but when a man has that same issue, it’s okay?”
“I’m not going down that road with you,” I stated in a warning tone.
She shifted in my embrace. “I would definitely force you down it if I were feeling better.”
“I know. But I’m gonna chill with you all day and take care of you. Maybe we could have that argument some other time.”
She turned around in my arms with her head against my chest.
“You know the minute that I knew I made a mistake with Ramon?”
“No. When?”
“When we became intimate.”
My jaw clenched, and I didn’t want to hear it, but I knew as her friend, she needed to get some things off her chest.
“Did he hurt you?”
“No. He was caring and concerned.”
“Then what was the problem?”
She stayed quiet for so long that I thought she had fallen asleep. When her shoulders shook and I felt moisture on my chest, then I knew that she was crying and not asleep.
“Charly.” Her name came out with a bite.
“Yes?”
“What was the problem?”
“I just knew that he wasn’t the man for me. I knew that I had made a mistake by giving myself to him.” She was sobbing. I wanted to beat my brother’s ass again. He had no right to take something so precious from her, especially considering that he hadn’t valued it at all.
“Why didn’t you leave him?”
“I know that it sounds stupid now, but at the time, I felt horrible. I didn’t want Ramon to feel like I’d been using him to cope with my grief over my mother or you being gone.
I stayed with him out of guilt. And then I felt like I should at least try to make it work since I’d given him my virginity.
I didn’t want to feel like a fool, giving myself for the first time to someone I didn’t truly appreciate or even love. ”
“Shortcake, that was a decision that you made, and one you’ll have to live with. You can’t change it, but you can move on and learn to make better decisions off logic rather than emotion. But don’t beat yourself up about that shit. You had no way of knowing you were fucking a frog.”
She stiffened in my arms and then burst out laughing several seconds later.
Knowing that I brought a smile to her face made me feel good, even if my heart was ripped.