Chapter 30 #2
I took a deep breath and brushed my hand down the back of my neck.
Fuck was I supposed to do in this position?
Beg her to give me something other than attitude?
Explain to her that Reign was my ex and only here because The House of Nova Ray was special to her, too?
I didn’t owe Mahogany an explanation. Shit, I didn’t owe her anything.
We weren’t where we used to be. Would I have loved for us to be?
Yeah. A little. A nigga still had a little bit of PTSD behind the back-and-forth shit.
Who’s to say she still wasn’t on that type of time?
Unsure of life? Unsure of herself? Unsure of every fucking thing.
I hated that shit because the one thing she should’ve been sure about was me.
Bold thing to say considering we were fresh, and hadn’t done much of anything besides fuck, but it was true.
I was intentional. I showed her that through everything.
Not just sex. Through conversation and the way I handled her too. Guess she didn’t give a fuck.
Again, I sighed and ran my tongue over my bottom lip.
Glancing over at her, I wanted to tell her she looked good.
Really wanted to wrap my arms around her and bury my face into the side of her neck.
I wanted to put my lips on her soft skin.
Wanted to take her ass to the crib, bend her over and punish her for leaving me.
But I had to be condensed into a version of myself that I didn’t want to be with her.
Because she had rules. Because she’d put up a bigger wall.
Because she did damage no one else had done.
Played with me. Toyed with me like I was disposable.
Well shit, I was. Look at where we were.
“I was just telling Mahogany the place looks amazing. What event planning company you use?” Tamia asked, breaking the awkward silence.
“My sister found the company, so I don’t even know,” I flatly replied, looking at Mahogany from the corner of my eye. She was on her phone, scrolling through her TikTok feed, refusing to give me attention.
Deciding I’d had enough of the awkwardness, I nodded, tapped the bar, and said, “You ladies have a wonderful night. I appreciate y’all sliding through.”
Mahogany mumbled an ‘uh huh’, Tamia smiled and thanked me, and I walked away, feet feeling heavy as hell.
I was supposed to do more. I was supposed to say more.
I felt it in my bones. No way in hell I felt compelled to walk over there for nothing.
But… I was stubborn and I refused to let Mahogany…
I refused to let Mahogany hurt me again.
Yeah, that’s what she did. She hurt me. Fuck it.
I had to admit it. Had been a hard ass pill to swallow for real.
“Where’d you go?” Reign asked, walking over to the spot I stopped to stand in.
I didn’t know what the fuck was up with her, but she’d been hanging around me all night. I wanted to tell her to find something else to do. Especially since Mahogany was here but I said fuck it. It was what it was.
“Nowhere,” I flatly replied, putting my cranberry juice up to my lips.
I needed something stronger. If I was going to be in a battle between mind and heart, I needed a couple of shots of 1942.
Shifting my eyes over at the bar, I thought about going back over to order me a double shot but said fuck it.
I couldn’t sit through another moment of awkwardness with Mahogany’s ass.
Fuck was she acting like that for anyway?
If Reign was my shorty, what would it be to her?
She cut me off—it wasn’t the other way around.
I clenched down on my jaw and glanced over at her. Our eyes met for a moment before she childishly rolled them and looked away. I shook my head and took another sip of the cranberry juice I didn’t want.
I couldn’t stand her ass. Not only because she cut me off but because despite everything, I wanted her.
Bad as hell. Not just on a physical level either.
I really, truly missed the fuck out of Mahogany as a whole.
You know how excruciating the past six months without her had been?
I hadn’t woken up excited about work since shit went left.
At the beginning, we were doing the whole Zoom thing, but I stopped attending meetings because staring at her through a screen pissed me off.
It made my desire heighten. Made my frustrations stronger.
So, I went from meeting with her twice a week to discuss plans, to handing the meetings off to one of my associates.
I didn’t meet with Mahogany until the end of the month for our monthly review.
I’d even stopped showing up at walk throughs because she always had someone else with her and there was this robotic thing she did that pissed me off.
I said I wanted to be hands-on with The House of Nova Ray, but I literally couldn’t be.
Not after the change. And it wasn’t anybody’s fault but my own, so I didn’t blame her.
I couldn’t blame her for any of it. I started it.
This whole attraction with her. The flirtatiousness.
Fucking her. That was all me. I didn’t go into the situation blindly; I knew exactly what I was doing.
I should have done a better job controlling myself.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t be in this predicament, stealing fleeting glances, frustrated because I couldn't have her the way I wanted her.
“I feel like the album gon be crazy,” said Titan before putting his cup up to his lips.
Judah frowned. “That nigga is washed. Kendrick buried ‘em.”
“I can’t believe we still having this conversation,” said Rah, shaking his head. “He didn’t bury him—the nigga just fucked up dawg’s confidence. At the end of the day, Drake still Drake and when he come back its gon’ be over for niggas.”
“You believe that shit, cuz?” asked O. He grunted. “You got crazy faith in buddy.”
“Because he Drake,” Rahmir said, matter of factly. “All he gotta do is get back to his roots.”
“He won’t though. Once a nigga’s confidence is fucked with, it’s done for. All a muthafucka got is their confidence. You strip ‘em of that, it’s done for,” said Judah.
Titan sucked his teeth. “Just watch. I don’t want to hear you bumpin’ none of his shit when it comes out either, fool.”
About twenty minutes later, I was posted up with my niggas.
Drake and Future’s Jumpman was blasting from the speakers and had started a whole ass debate about the beef between him and Kendrick.
I would have given my opinion on it if it weren’t for my attention being elsewhere.
It was on Mahogany. Where else would it have been?
She was in the room with me, wasn’t she?
Pulling on my energy and shit. Her spirit was calling out to me, as it always was.
But I was planted—refusing to give in to the urge to walk back over to the bar.
The most I’d been able to do was watch her.
With a heavy beating heart. I was resisting like a muthafucka.
And resisting didn’t feel good. It honestly made me sick to my stomach. I wanted her so bad.
I looked away from her, cleared my throat, and caught Judah’s eye. He looked over in Mahogany’s direction, put his eyes back on me, and shook his head.
“What?” I asked.
He turned his cup up to his mouth and stood next to me. “What you waiting for?”
“Fuck you talking about?”
“The obvious, nigga,” said Orion. “You been standing here, quiet as hell for twenty minutes, eyeing Ms. Couture Interiors. You on shorty ass like back pockets.”
Rahmir snorted. “Hell yeah he is. Stuck too, like Reign ain’t in the building.”
“Fuck Reign being here gotta do with anything?”
Rahmir smirked with a squint. “So, you on shorty ass like back pockets, hm?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Mind your business, nigga.”
“I just don’t see why you won’t just go over there, bro,” said Judah.
I didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. I didn’t owe any of these niggas an explanation about shit.
Neither of them knew what I’d been through, dealing with her ass.
She was too complicated. Too confused. Too wishy-washy.
While at the same time, too Mahogany. Alluring.
Mesmerizing. Thirst-quenching. Addictive.
You know how deadly of a combination that was?
Walking back over to her, telling her all of the things that sat at the tip of my tongue was a risk I didn’t want to take.
A risk I couldn’t take. I was, honestly, no funny shit, afraid to put myself out there again.
As I stared at her, I thought about the possibility of us.
The contract was finished. We could do more.
We could be more. But then… I’d think about the back and forth and chill although I could feel her wanting to talk to me just as bad as I wanted to talk to her.
In fact, she wanted more than conversation.
She wanted my hands on her. She wanted my lips on her.
She wanted me. And while I wanted her too… the risk was too grand.
I wasn’t in the mood to put my heart into something just for her to hit me with some other shit a couple of days later. I mean, like I said, the contract was done, but the contract wasn’t the only thing standing in the way of us. She had shit. She had a lot of shit.
It had been months since we had that uncomfortable conversation…
something could have changed but what if they hadn’t?
What if I put myself out there and she shot me down again?
I didn’t want to be rejected by her. I couldn’t handle that shit, for real.
I might’ve sounded like a bitch but if there was one thing that Judah said that made since about the whole Drake, Kendrick conversation, it was the statement about confidence.