SEVENTEEN #3
Jio frowned. “What?” he asked them both.
“You said thank you?”
“Yeah nigga. What was I supposed to do, pistol whip him?”
Kadeer was acting stupid.
“To a man who told you no?”
“He’s Nina’s Pops.” The shit wasn’t rocket science. He knew when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. They didn’t call him the poker king for nothing.
Kadeer shook his head. “Damn, you do love that girl.”
Jio looked away. He hated when people said things like that out loud, like his love for Nina was a secret that he’d been caught carrying.
Auntie’s face softened. “My baby done grew up.”
“Please don’t start.”
“I remember when you used to think apologies were optional.”
“They still are for some people.”
“And there he is,” Kadeer said.
Jio shook his head, but this time he did laugh.
Auntie placed her hand on Jio’s arm. “Charles is a father.”
“I’m aware.”
“Listen to me…” She was trying to make a point. Jio just didn’t have the patience to hear her out.
He looked at her.
“He’s a father to a daughter who almost lost herself more than once and then the other child on drugs. Nina’s also the youngest.”
“What does any of that gotta do with him saying no?”
“It was out of fear. I don’t think he’s saying no to you but no to the idea of letting his baby girl go in general. You won’t know how that feels until you have your own daughters.” She didn’t fuck with the Marcelles at all, but she was trying to provide Jio a different perspective.
Jio said nothing, but he’d heard her loud and clear.
Auntie Vee continued. “You know what men like Charles see when men like you come sniffing around?”
Jio’s expression didn’t move. “Trouble.”
“Risk,” she corrected. “There’s a difference.”
“I’m not a risk to Nina.”
“No. You’re a risk for Nina.”
He frowned.
Auntie Vee squeezed his arm.
“That girl will follow you into fire if she believes you need her there and Charles knows it too.”
Jio closed his eyes.
“You sure you ready for what that means?” Kadeer asked him.
From the tone in his voice, Jio knew he wasn’t kidding anymore.
“I’m not talking about the wedding. The party. The ring. None of that. I’m talking about being somebody’s husband for real.”
“Shit, I already feel like I am.”
Kadeer tilted his head. “Not on paper.”
“That’s why I’m doing this. To make shit official.”
“I know.” Kadeer paused. “But marriage is different.”
Jio’s eyes narrowed slightly. “How you know?”
“Because girlfriend can walk away mad and people call it a breakup. If the wife walks away, everybody feels it. The kids. The families. Everybody involved, and last but not least, them pockets do!”
Auntie Vee hummed in agreement.
Kadeer kept adding his two cents. “You don’t get to disappear into yourself when things get hard and you can’t make no more decisions alone just because you think you know best. You can’t protect her by keeping her in the dark and then be surprised when she resent you for it.”
This was that real talk that Jio wasn’t quite ready for. He was hitting too close to home.
“She gon’ need all of you,” Kadeer said. “Not just the part that pays bills and threatens to fuck shit up if she gets to acting out.”
Auntie shot him a look.
“Kadeer.”
“What? We all know this nigga a lunatic.”
Jio huffed. “Call it what you want.”
About his, he was pulling the trigger and asking questions later.
The three of them stood there in the middle of the jewelry store surrounded by diamonds that cost more than some houses, talking about love like it was the most dangerous investment any of them had ever made. For Jio, it would be.
Jio picked up the ring again.
This time, he didn’t look at the diamond.
He looked at the empty space inside the band. It represented a promise that he would vow to keep and that was to forever protect, love, provide, and fuck her good.
“I don’t know how to be a perfect husband.”
Auntie scoffed. “Good cus perfect men are liars.”
“Boring too…” Kadeer agreed.
“But I know how to be her husband. I know what she sounds like when she’s trying not to cry. I know when she hungry even if she says she's not. I know she gets overwhelmed when too many people need something from her at the same time, but she won’t say it because she hates feeling weak.”
His fingers closed around the ring.
“I know how much she misses her grandfather when something good happens more than when something bad happens.”
“I know that she don’t want to be like her family and she likes the bubble we live in. She wants a life with me.” Jio stared down at the ring.
His voice almost disappeared. “I’m going to make it to where she’ll never question choosing me.”
The confession sat between them.
Auntie Vee touched his face the way she used to when he was a boy. Her thumb brushed against his cheek. “Be the best husband you can be.”
He nodded once.
Kadeer cleared his throat, trying to save himself from feeling too much in public.
“So... you buying it or what nigga?”
Auntie smacked him in the back of his head. “Ouch!”
“I’m just trying to move this along. The nigga on the verge of crying in here.”
“Fuck you, no, I wasn’t.” he chuckled.
“You had lover boy tears in your eyes.” The man was clearly full of jokes today.
Jio slid the ring back into the box and motioned to the sales associate to come back over.
“I’ll take it.”
The woman was pleased. She’d made her mortgage for the rest of the year off this one sale. “Excellent choice.”
“Can you engrave it?”
Auntie Vee clasped her hands together. “Ooh, that’s going to be nice.”
Kadeer leaned in. “What you putting? Please don’t put no corny shit.”
Jio ignored him.
The sales associate grabbed a small card and pen. “What would you like it to say?”
Jio thought about it. There were a thousand things he could say to Nina. He could promise her the world, but she knew he was going to give her that anyway.
He looked down at the ring one last time and one sentence came to mind.
“Wherever you are.”
He caused everyone to still.
The sales associate wrote it down. “Beautiful.”
Jio nodded. “Just like my baby.”
The paperwork took longer than he wanted, but Jio signed everything placed in front of him without blinking at the price.
The associate handed him the small box with both hands.
“Congratulations!”
She tucked the final receipt into an envelope and handed it over. “There’s a card in there of an insurer we recommend. I highly suggest you make that your first call in the morning. You just spent a lot of money, Mr. Gotti,” she said with a cautious smile.
He stared at the black velvet box. It was small enough to fit in his palm but heavy enough to change his entire life. “Let me put it in a bag for you,” she offered.
“Thank you.”
Security scanned the parking lot before giving Jio the green light to step outside. Auntie Vee climbed into the backseat first, still emotional but pretending not to be.
Kadeer looked at him once they settled in. “You nervous?”
“No.”
Kadeer laughed. “Liar.”
“Maybe a little.”
“That’s good,” his auntie chimed in.
“How?”
“Means you know what you got to lose.”
Jio looked toward the road. Because that he did… more than anybody could ever understand.
Kadeer bumped his shoulder against Jio’s. “For what it’s worth... her folks gon’ come around.”
“I don’t give a fuck if they do or don’t,” he said straight up.
Auntie Vee leaned forward from the backseat. “Just don’t propose nowhere stupid.”
Kadeer laughed. “What counts as stupid?”
“A basketball game. A restaurant with sparklers. Anybody’s birthday party. Somebody else’s wedding. Near a pool. On Christmas. At a funeral.”
Jio stared at her through the rearview mirror. “A funeral?”
“You men be doing dumb things when y’all emotional.”
Kadeer pointed at her. “That’s true.”
Jio shook his head as he started the truck and pulled out of the parking lot. He had one hand on the wheel and the other resting against the inside pocket of his jacket where the ring sat close to his heart.
For the first time since Charles told him no, the anger quieted. Her daddy couldn’t comprehend their love, but the fucked up thing was that he never even tried.
He didn’t know what it felt like to love Nina after almost losing her or how it felt to watch her sleep and silently promise God he’d trade his life for hers without needing heaven to negotiate. He wasn’t caught up in the moment or his feelings and it wasn’t a rushed decision either.
He had loved Nina in too many seasons for this to be impulsive, which was how he knew that he was doing the right thing. He was about to be somebody’s husband.
η
The city was unusually quiet as Roberto steered the SUV through downtown.
Traffic had finally thinned, leaving only the occasional set of headlights passing beneath the glow of streetlights.
Nina rested comfortably against the leather seat, one heel kicked off, the other dangled lazily from her toes.
The exhaustion she’d been carrying all week had finally caught up with her.
She was tired, and the only thing that could fix it was real rest and maybe a ninety-minute massage, but an at-home one.
She didn’t even have the energy to go to the spa.
Roberto glanced at her through the rearview mirror.
“Is everything okay, Miss Marcelle?” Her energy was heavy tonight.
“Danyelle irritated me.”
His eyebrows lifted. “How so?”
“She told me I should date other people.”
He chuckled. “Danyelle is… eclectic,” he found the best word he could use to describe her.
“Very.”
“You're too young. Date ‘em all,” Nina mimicked, rolling her eyes. “As if I have the time to entertain more than one man.” She sort of rubbed her the wrong way. Nina wanted to let it go but it wouldn’t be tonight.
She folded her arms across her chest before staring back out the window.
“I know she meant well, but still,” she expressed.
For a moment, Roberto said nothing. Years of driving around rich folk taught him that they didn’t always need answers. Sometimes they just needed space to hear their own thoughts out loud.
Finally, he spoke.
“You know why I don't give relationship advice?”
She looked up. “Why?”
“Because relationships are fickle.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”