6. Kareem
Kareem
G rowing up, they used to say that too much heat made niggas go crazy.
I’d argue that love could make ’em crash out the same way, even harder, depending on the person.
At least that’s what it was like in my case.
I’d been sitting in the dark in Sawyer’s living room for the past three hours waiting for her to come home.
Just when I’d started to doze off, the door creaked open.
Sawyer stepped inside and let out a hard sigh, signaling her exhaustion.
Her overnight bag hit the floor with a thud as she flipped on the light and kicked off her Crocs, ready to hit the sheets.
But then her eyes landed on me sitting on her couch like I belonged there, and she stopped cold.
Sawyer stood frozen in the doorway, her next breath caught up somewhere between her ribcage and her throat.
She didn’t speak right away. Neither of us did.
We just studied each other, trying to decode each other like a complex ass riddle.
The air and the tension between us were thicker than Florida swamp water, but with more personal demons.
A few seconds passed, and the only thing on her body that moved was her eyes, scanning me up and down like some high-tech security system.
“You broke into my apartment . . . again?” she asked stiffly.
I scoffed. “Shit, I was damn near invited in. I ain’t give you almost ten racks for you to go the cheap route to get your door fixed.”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course, you’d barge in like you pay bills here when you don’t.”
I brushed off her comment and replied with a question instead. “Where you been?” I quizzed while slowly rising to my feet.
“It’s Thanksgiving, Kareem. I was in Tampa visiting my friends,” she answered matter-of-factly as she tramped inside with her arms folded and her cardigan wrapped around her belly.
Classic Aquarius type shit—always trying to play it cool on the outside when we both knew better.
“I should be the one asking you what you’re doing here. ”
“You bring me back a plate?”
Her brows snapped together, signaling the emotional shit storm brewing underneath her skin. “Do I look like your mama?”
“No, but you look like my baby mama,” I stated, glancing at her belly.
Even wearing a cardigan, the round bump was hard to miss, like a mustache on a yellow bone. She unconsciously pulled her cardigan tighter, even though the cat had already been let out of the bag.
She scoffed and escaped past me into the kitchen. I followed a few steps behind, conscious enough to keep some distance between us. “You’re one cliff-hanging ass nigga, y’know that?” she snapped, whipping her neck in my direction.
“Who me?”
“Yeah, you. You and I both know you’re not supposed to be here!”
“Since when has that ever stopped me?”
She smacked her lips. “Seriously, Kareem.”
“I know. But what the fuck did you expect me to do, Sawyer? You left Brazil and were just . . . gone.”
Sawyer huffed. “Because I needed space.”
“And I gave you that, shawty. But space doesn’t mean disappear.”
“To me it does.”
“You’re carrying my seed, shawty. You think I didn’t deserve a real conversation? You don’t get to erase me from the picture like I’m some bad edit. So, here I am. I risked it all to come back for you. For y’all,” I declared.
“Including risking both of us going to jail too? Then who the hell will take care of our daughter, Kareem? This is the same impulsive bullshit that got us into this mess in the first place!” Sawyer said, voice rising as her hands shot up in the air.
Her reply was followed by silence as I looked at her.
I mean, really looked at her—from the unmistakable curve of her belly to the angelic glow that surrounded her as if she’d been hand-delivered from Heaven.
I exhaled a deep breath and rubbed my beard while allowing the news to sink in past the surface and soften me up a bit.
I hated feeling like a soft ass nigga, but she brought that shit out of me.
Sawyer was the only person I’d consider softening my edges for.
“Daughter? We’re having a little girl?”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah. I found out at my last appointment.”
I started pacing her living room with my Gemini energy in full fuckin’ swing—emotions spilling out left and right like I was allergic to bullshit.
“If I’d never shown up here, then what? We would’ve never spoken again? I would’ve never known I had a daughter out there in the world somewhere growing up without me thinking I never gave a fuck about her?”
Sawyer huffed. “Kareem, can we not dwell on shit like that? You came on too strong in Brazil. It was too much for me, but you’re here now, so let’s just deal with the present.”
“How are we supposed to deal with the present when you never wanna talk about shit? I didn’t come on too strong in Brazil.
I came correct. I came honest. I came ten toes down like a real nigga is supposed to do.
I asked you to move to Brazil because I saw us building a life together for our family.
You ran because you were scared, point-blank. ”
“I wasn’t scared.”
I scoffed. “Cut the bullshit, Sawyer. If you wanna keep playing in my face and dancing around all the shit that scares you, we can do that, but I’m not goin’ nowhere. I let you walk away once, shawty. That’s not happening again,” I declared.
She rolled her eyes. “Please stop acting like you know me.”
“I will when you stop acting like you don’t want a nigga to care about you when you carrying my baby.”
“I never asked you to care about me.”
I brushed off her comment, knowing damn well she ain’t mean it. “Admit it, you want a nigga. You just don’t want to want a nigga.”
“This isn’t about what I want. It’s about what’s best for the?—”
I cut her off. “Say it. Say you want me.”
She smacked her lips. “Why? So you can have something to use against me? No thanks.”
“I’m not the enemy. Never have been.”
“We live in two different worlds that just happened to collide for a blink in time, Kareem. Nobody expects us to make it work,” she replied pessimistically.
I cocked my head to the side, trying my best not to flip out. “You ever stop to ask yourself why it’s so easy for you to throw a nigga out of your life when you and I both know it wasn’t supposed to end the way we left it?”
Sawyer made her way back into the living room and sat down slowly on the couch, hand resting on her belly. “I hate this.”
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
“Why?”
“Because contrary to what you may think about me, I’m not a heartless bitch. I don’t move through life feeling numb. I just don’t always know what to do with what I feel,” she admitted.
“And how do you feel? Be real with a nigga.”
“Trapped,” she answered. “I’ve fought so damn hard to be independent—to be my own person and stand on my own two feet.
And when you asked me to stay with you, it was like an alarm went off inside my head and my heart.
Moving to Brazil meant needing you and giving you a power over me that I still don’t think I’m ready to give. ”
I continued to soften on the inside but refused to back down when I felt like we were at a breakthrough or a breaking point. I wasn’t sure which.
“You think I like involving you in this shit? I hate it. That’s why I wasn’t trying to take it there with you from the beginning.”
“So why did you?”
“You know exactly why I did what I did. I can’t be the first nigga to crash out behind that pussy, shawty,” I answered.
I could tell she almost wanted to laugh, but she held back. Her guard was still up, but I saw the crack in her armor. I swaggered over and joined her on the couch.
“You can’t charm your way through this, Kareem.”
“I’m not trying to charm you, shawty. I’m trying to earn you. I did the hard thing so that you wouldn’t have to.Now, come here,” I said, outstretching my arms.
“Kareem, I?—”
“I said, come here, shawty.” She finally leaned into my arms. “I don’t want to own you, Sawyer. I want to love you, to learn you, every part, every crevice, everything,” I admitted, feeling softer than a pile of baby shit.
Sawyer twisted her neck to look up at me. “You love me, Kareem?”
I nodded slowly with my eyes stationed on hers.
“Gotta be in love to do something this crazy, like risk my freedom. But I ain’t come all this way to put no extra pressure on you, shawty.
I only came back to show you I’m here. And maybe one day, you’ll trust me enough to entertain the thought of leaving with me. ”
“My waters are dangerous, Kareem,” she warned. “Can you swim?”
“I’m willing to learn. I don’t mind drowning for you, shawty. Because I’m not letting you go,” I declared.
I noticed what looked like a drop of hope in her eyes before it turned into something else. “You’re stubborn as hell, y’know that?”
I shrugged lazily. “I’m a Gemini, baby. You think I give a fuck if I started as the villain in your story? Because you and I both know I’m the hero now. I’ll never apologize for wanting you with me. For wanting us to be a family.”
She nodded. “I get it now. I do. And I’m sorry for leaving the way that I did. You’re right. I was scared. I still am.”
“It’s okay to be scared.”
“I can’t even imagine how you feel by risking your life and your freedom to be here for me right now.”
“There’s no other place I’d rather be, shawty. My home is wherever you are.”
The longer she remained in my arms, the faster the tension between us started to melt. The unresolved drama in the air had disappeared, leaving behind a peaceful silence as I gently rubbed her belly.
“In my past, love wasn’t always as warm and gentle as the word sounds, but I do want to give this a real shot. I think we both owe it to the baby to see what comes of this,” Sawyer admitted while placing her hand on top of mine.
“Yeah. I do too.”
As I continued to rub her belly, I felt the baby kick for the first time. The feeling was so surreal that I stopped touching her stomach altogether for a few seconds.