SAJE
“Oh, really? Who?”
Reason had just gotten done putting me through the mattress, and we were lying in bed, both on the verge of falling asleep.
Anything involving his world always excited me.
We’d been dating for months and had gotten extremely close.
But even though we were close, he kept his personal business separate from what we had going on.
So, him bringing up introducing me to somebody had me feeling like we were stepping into new relationship territory.
“My business partner and good friend.”
“Okay, handsome, let me know when, and I’ll be there.”
Reason leaned over and kissed my lips. “My stylist will find you a gown, and I’ll hire a crew to do all that shit you women like to do before a special event.”
Now he was speaking my language. I was a bitch who loved to get pampered, catered to, and glammed up on the regular.
“Thank you!” I blurted excitedly. To show him my appreciation, I slowly kissed his chest, traveled down to his eight-pack, and guided my mouth toward his pretty dick. Then I hungrily wrapped my lips around it and showed him how thankful I was.
Two weeks later, I was looking like a high-fashion model and ready to attend the event with Reason. We walked around the gala, briefly speaking to guests, and he introduced me as his woman. I felt proud to be on his arm.
Reason was the type of man who had everything on a woman’s list of what she wanted in a man, and he was all mine.
“There go my bro.” He pointed toward the bar area. “Come on, that’s who I want you to meet.”
My whole insides felt like they were about to fall out when I saw who his bro was.
It was none other than Basheer Buchanan.
The last time I saw Basheer, I remember being scared as shit, giving birth in his grandfather’s house at the age of sixteen.
As a young teen girl, Basheer was the first boy who had me wide open before I understood what was really happening.
He was a couple years older than me and one of the cutest boys I’d ever seen in my neighborhood, so I was on whatever he was on.
I found out he was in Miami with his grandpa because his grandmother was scared he would end up following the wrong crowd in New York like his parents had at his age.
So, she shipped him off to live with his rich grandfather in Miami.
As far as my parents were concerned, I could do no wrong, which was why they let me go wherever I pleased in our suburban neighborhood.
They were so trusting, or maybe it was because they were focused on their careers.
To them, me being able to stay at other people’s houses meant they were getting free babysitting services.
Or maybe they didn’t care because I was already a teenager.
Which was why they let me spend the night at those people’s houses too.
On those nights, I went right over to Basheer’s house.
His grandfather would fuss, but that was about all he did because he was too busy sleeping with some of the married women in our area.
He didn’t have time to keep an eye on us all night.
It wasn’t until one of his lady friends walked in and caught Basheer and me naked as the day we were born, fucking like wild animals. She ran out to get his grandpa, and all I remember her saying was, “Titus! Your grandson is upstairs having sex with a pregnant girl!”
Pregnant? I thought, not knowing exactly what she meant. I heard some of the girls at school talk about pregnancy, but that was all I knew about it. My mother and father never had that conversation with me.
The woman and his grandfather came rushing up the stairs, and by the time they barged into his room, we were already dressed.
“Girl, show us your belly,” the lady ordered like she was my mother.
I hesitated until she repeated herself.
I lifted my sweater, and they stared at me like they’d seen a ghost.
“Dammit, Basheer!” Mr. Titus shouted. “You’re always doing shit you don’t got no business doing. How the hell are we going to explain this to this girl’s parents?”
Basheer and I looked at each other confused, but we didn’t say a word.
I looked down at my belly and noticed it was bigger than usual, but I didn’t know it was because I was pregnant like these two were saying.
I was a tomboy. I wore big clothes, and I was naturally a big-boned girl, which was probably why nobody said shit about my weight gain.
“Titus, I don’t think you should tell her parents.”
“What you mean? If they don’t know already, they will find out, and guess who they are going to come looking for?”
Ignoring him, the woman looked at me again. “Do your parents know you’re pregnant?” she asked me.
I didn’t even know I was pregnant, and my parents hadn’t said a word about it.
I shook my head no.
Both adults kept looking from me to Basheer.
“I have a friend who is a doctor. We can find out how far along she is and go from there,” she told Mr. Titus, who looked disappointed as hell.
“That shit will not work,” he retorted and stormed out of the room.
As time went by, I did start to notice the changes in my body, and I did my best to hide it from my parents.
Eventually, it all caught up with me, and before long, I was inside Mr. Titus’ house, screaming at the top of my lungs, giving birth to his great-granddaughter with the help of his lady friend, Ms. Lewis, and her friend, Dr. Mckenzie.
They gave me everything I needed for my aftercare and monitored the baby since they said I hadn’t received any prenatal care or gone to the doctor my entire pregnancy.
I let them do whatever they needed to do, as long as they kept the baby.
I wanted no parts of her. How could I when I was technically still a minor myself?
Mr. Titus paid Ms. Lewis and Dr. Mckenzie for their silence and bought Basheer a one-way ticket back to New York. I cried so much because I’d gotten used to spending all my time with him, and now he was gone. After the birth of our baby, I never heard from him or saw our daughter again.
The entire experience scared and traumatized the shit out of me, and that day, I vowed to never ever have kids again. And somehow, my parents never found out they had a grandchild somewhere out in the world.
That day, that memory, was one I acted like never existed. I never told or hinted to anybody that I had given birth to a child. I moved on with my life, avoiding any recollection of that chapter until Basheer and I stood face-to-face again at my new man’s gala.
While Reason mingled with his peers, I slipped away to the ladies’ room, and Basheer was right behind me. We found an area that was out of sight, and after getting through the shock of seeing each other again, we started kissing. No words were said as one thing led to another.
Basheer had me bent over in the expensive gown his friend purchased for me.
It was so wrong, but it felt so right. From that day forward, we couldn’t stay away from each other.
Basheer never spoke about what happened to our child, and I never asked.
That was, until my husband started talking about having a baby.
For days, Basheer and I fussed over whether we should tell Reason about our past. We went back and forth so much that we decided to say fuck it and kept it to ourselves. Reason finding out was something I never imagined happening, especially not in the way it happened.
Two fucking months had gone by, and I was just as angry as I was the day of the gender reveal, maybe even angrier.
My life had gone to complete shit. Everything that could’ve gone wrong went wrong.
On top of that, I lost my job, and just thinking about how it went down put me in a foul mood all over again.
Imagine the shock I got when I went back to work a couple days after the gender reveal fiasco and found everything in my dressing room neatly packed. This only meant one thing; they were letting me go. These muthafuckas didn’t have the balls to call and fire me.
I kicked the box that was near me and almost broke my toe.
“Fuck!” I yelled, hopping on one foot until the pain eased.
My plan was to make the executive producer tell me this shit to my face. I snatched the door open and ran right into Sandy Milton, the executive producer, who had her fist balled, ready to knock on the door. Standing behind her were two tall security guards.
“Hey, Saje, I’m sorry to inform you that—”
“Sandy, you ain’t gotta inform me about a gotdamn thing. My packed boxes did all the informing,” I said sarcastically with a smirk on my face. “The least you could’ve done was not make me waste my time and gas driving up to this bitch.”
“No need for the hostility, Saje. I’ll be honest, I was the one who recommended the removal, and the studio leadership authorized it due to the scandal you’ve been involved in. It’s affecting the workplace.”
“Bullshit! What does my personal life have to do with my work, Sandy? No one had the right to run and tell my fuckin’ business. Instead of making an executive decision, y’all could’ve come to me and asked me what happened.”
“Saje, I’m sorry. Our decision is final.”
I stared at her, not believing I was going through this.
“Do you know what y’all can do with that final decision? Shove it up y’all flat, stank asses!” I replied, answering my own question.
“This is all business.”
She thought saying that would make a difference. It didn’t do shit but make me even angrier.
“Saje, as a courtesy, there is one thing we would like you to do for us.”
Sandy didn’t wait for me to respond. She kept talking. “We would like to film one more episode, you know, killing off your character.”
The fuck?
“Bitch, one more episode, my muthafuckin’ ass! Go find a stunt double or some shit and kill that bitch off your stupid ass show!” I spat.
Sandy and the rest of them had me fucked up.
“Y’all will never find another Saje St. Pierre! I made this show what it is. What other thick, pretty bitch gon’ get y’all the same views like I did?”