2. Noree Marcell
For some reason, his words kept playing in my head over and over again like a broken record.
Is she mine?
Is she mine?
Is she mine?
Of course she’s yours, I wanted to shout, but in that moment, I was frozen. Stuck in place like I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk. I felt like my stomach was in the pit of my ass.
My heart was doing more than pounding; it was doing the percolator in my chest, and tears were streaming down my face. I placed my hand on top of his to slowly move his hand from my chin. He peered down into my face, desperately waiting for me to tell him what was going on.
“She… she…” I cried harder, shoulders bouncing. “Ozy, I’m so sorry… this isn’t how I wanted you to find out.”
King wanted to play games on my phone. I couldn’t even remember what day it was, but because I was tired of him asking me for the code and having to keep putting it in, I went ahead and took the code off my phone and didn’t think about putting it back on.
We were out somewhere, and his electronics had died, and you know how kids are.
“Answer the question,” Ginger said, like she was annoyed and as if she hadn’t just spilled all my fucking beans. “Is she his or not?”
“Gin, let her answer,” Ozy snapped, looking over at her, face hard as a rock, veins popping in his neck.
I looked at her, face soaking wet and my vision blurring.
She had some fucking nerve going through my shit in the first place and then telling him my secret before I could. Oh, I was livid.
“You jealous ass dumb ass bitch.” I didn’t care that I was yelling or that I probably looked crazy with a little snot coming down my nose.
I pointed. “How dare you go through my phone! I was going to tell him in the right way, at the right time, on my terms. That wasn’t for your weird ass to say anything about me or my baby, and then you’re the reason I couldn’t get ahold of him? ”
Ozy looked back at me. His jaw tightened, and for a second, I couldn’t keep looking at him. I wiped my face and dropped my eyes.
“So that’s why you were tryna reach out to me?” he quizzed, as if realization had FINALLY settled in.
“Yes!” I cried. “That’s what I’m telling you. I kept trying to reach you because… I-I was scared and confused and didn’t wanna go through it alone. I…”
Ginger cut in. She laughed, then folded her arms up under her chest and rolled her whole neck.
“Me going through your phone should be the least of your worries.” She snickered.
“You thought having his baby would bring you some money, huh? I’ve been looking into you.
Why don’t you tell Ozy you were on the verge of being evicted?
Then, somehow, you show up at his house interviewing to be his nephew’s nanny?
Nah. You knew exactly who you were applying to work for.
You had this shit planned the whole time. ”
I glared at her. “It doesn’t matter if I was getting evicted or not.
Like, bitch, are you slow or something? You blocked me.
I was messaging him constantly, practically begging to talk to him and telling him how urgent it was for him to get back with me because I was pregnant!
” I scoffed. “And when I applied for the nanny position, I had no idea who I’d be interviewing for.
But you’re the reason he missed her crawling, her first steps… her first words.”
“Girl, bye. You got knocked up and kept the baby from a one-night stand, so who’s really slow? He never really wanted your big ass.”
Something in me went real quiet.
My hands stopped shaking, my breathing evened out, and the ringing in my ears dropped away to nothing. I took another step and closed the space between us.
“Say another word,” I threatened, ready to take it there.
“Noree.” Ozy stepped toward us, reaching for my arm.
She smirked at me. Head tilted, eyebrow up, that smug look on her face that I wanted to knock off.
“Another word… bitch.”
I slapped fire out of her, sending her head flying backward. She stumbled, but I stayed on her ass. I grabbed a fistful of her hair, wrapped it around my hand, yanked her head down, and started swinging again and again. Everything I had been suppressing when it came to her came pouring out.
She was hollering like she was being killed, and I didn’t give a damn. Glass plates hit the tile and shattered. Chairs scraped across the floor, and somehow, we crashed into the treat table, sending cupcakes tumbling to the floor. Frosting smeared across the tile, making it slippery.
Boom! She fell, and I went down with her, landing on my knees beside her. I just kept punching while she kept screaming. Her mouth was bloody, and I could literally feel my nails popping off my fingers one by one. That shit hurt like hell, but I wasn’t letting up!
“Get her off me! Ozyyyy! Please!!!”
She tried calling him for help, but help or not, I wasn’t stopping. She had been trying me since day one.
Eventually, she managed to swing back, and I won’t lie, a few hits connected, and she even scratched my face up.
Whap, whap, whap!
My knuckles caught her cheek, her jaw, the side of her head while she tried to fold herself up under her arms.
“I’m so… sick… of… your… annoying ass!” I shouted before I felt a pair of strong hands lift me off her. I was still reaching, still swinging at nothing but air, my chest heaving so hard it hurt to breathe.
PB pulled Ginger up off the floor while Ozy held me back. Our hair was all over the place and my fingernails burned like fire. I glanced down at my fingers and saw blood.
There was a woman I’d never seen before, a high yellow chick holding a baby boy, with a little girl at her legs. She had that baby’s head turned into her shoulder with her hand cupped over his ear, and the little girl had both arms wrapped around her thigh.
Seeing those babies watching me, I stopped trying to get out of Ozy’s arms and dropped my eyes.
“Bruh, what the fuck going on?” PB asked, looking back and forth between the three of us.
“I’m pressing charges!” Ginger wiped her mouth and looked at her hand, then started screaming. I rolled my eyes, so over the theatrics.
“Take the kids outside,” PB instructed the woman, and she nodded before Ozy quickly pulled me out of the kitchen through a different door.
Once we got far away from stupid ass Ginger, he let me go, and I shook my head. I couldn’t even look up at him. I pushed my hair back. My whole body was trembling from the inside out now that it was over.
I went to talk, but he cut me off quick.
“Nah, we can’t have this conversation here.” He looked around at the guests, who were being nosy as hell, practically reading our lips with their drinks frozen halfway to their mouths.
He dragged his hand down his face and held it over his mouth for a second.
“Meet me at the guest house.” He sighed. “Just give me a second to handle shit over here, ’cause we definitely gotta talk about all this shit.”
I looked at all the eyeballs on me, then down at my bleeding fingers, and nodded, looking back up at him. His jaw was tight.
“O-okay,” I said, and one of his security guards walked up.
“Sir… what’s going on?”
My mind was all over the place. I couldn’t even remember his name, but Ozy instructed him to drive me over to the guest house on the golf cart, which I was thankful for. With the way my fingers were hurting and how my legs felt like noodles, I didn’t even know if I would’ve made it over there.
“Yes, sir,” the security guard said, walking alongside me, shielding me from any of the guests present in the area. I was so embarrassed.
“Well, girl… the secret is out,” I mumbled to myself, wiping under my eyes the best I could with the back of my finger as I climbed into the golf cart with the security guard.