15. Zaire
There are some fundamental truths about women that I’ve learned through my interaction with them professionally but mostly personally. Women required reassurance. Even if they knew they were loved, they also needed to hear it and experience it. I also knew that in the early stages of anything, it was almost impossible to know a damn thing so reassurance was even more important. There are also some fundamental truths about men. They knew when they were in love with a woman because there were only two states of being. We either were or we weren’t and it felt different than a muthafucka. There was no conflict in that. Denial is par for the course for some, but men knew. I knew.
I knew I was in love with Nala, and I knew she was in love with me too. Maybe it was too soon to be caught up so deep. Maybe we weren’t ready yet. But there is no way to undo where we are now. I accepted the responsibility of being her man that day in the garage though I knew I was destined to be it, before then. I remember something my mom told me the day before she took her last breath.
“Baby, know love. Know how it looks and feels so that when it comes to you later in this lifetime, you’ll accept it as the gift God has given you to replace the love you feel like you are losing, right now. I am always with you and that is in love.”
At the time she spoke her words, I was filled with anger over losing the only woman who had ever loved me unconditionally. My mother sought out ways to make the lives of me, my brother, and my sister, better than the hard life she had been given by being born into a poor family and to parents who didn’t show many expressions of love. Despite some bad choices with men who used her body, my mother saw me and my siblings as gifts from God, and dedicated herself to making sure our “outcome was better than our income”. That was what she always said to us but by me being the oldest, I had to be the one to continue to instill that in Omar and Katara and see to it that they made it somewhere in life.
My mother’s words on love stayed with me but only as a means of remembrance, not something I hoped for. I said to myself if I had forgotten them, I would be forgetting her, so I tried to collect all the experiences I had with her that had any meaning. But when Nala came to Higher Pathways after having seen her years before and admired her poise and beauty, I started to think of my mother’s words and wonder. What if?
I wasn’t a fan of second chances and repeats because most people struggled to shift too far from past versions of themselves but that wasn’t our story. We just had a connection that re-emerged and opened an opportunity. It was for that reason that I truly cared for her. Because she didn’t deserve the old me. So the woman in my face was a nuisance but my politeness kept winning out. However, when she slipped me her business card that I didn’t even look at, I declined making the personal connection being fronted by a professional one, and handed it back to her. She needed to understand that she couldn’t have this dick and she definitely couldn’t have me. Nala was not only in my line of sight wearing a tight chin and hurt eyes while pretending to be reading brochures. She was in my heart, and I would protect her there.
The funny thing was, she wouldn’t be tripping if she knew the talk I had with my boy MJ while she took a long ass shower earlier.
MJ was leaving Atlanta and headed back to Las Vegas when he hit me up. He was supplying multiple 420 Smoke Day events around the country and had been busy traveling for that. Even though I wasn’t a heavy hitter when it came to ganja, I took a puff a time or two during vacations. Dr. Patton didn’t drug test unless there were concerns and besides that, I had a “script” to help with the insomnia I would get from time to time due to my caseload.
“What you up to Two 6s?”
Midnight Two 6s was my dice name. MJ rarely referred to me by my government name.
“Bullshit,” I said. It was a familiar rejoinder.
“That’s the best way,” he laughed.
Nala started humming and singing Muni Long’s Made For Me and it was loud enough to capture MJ’s attention. My baby could sing like a bird.
“Uh, you with a woman, dawg?”
“Yeah, man.”
I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to tell MJ that Nala and I had moved to the next level because that level wasn’t quite defined. So far he just knew about this woman I was feeling at work.
”You got her singing in the shower and shit. My man!”
I couldn’t help but smile but only for a moment. She wasn’t for gossip.
“It’s Nala, my lady.”
“Nala, Nala, Nala,” he said with a distant voice as if he was trying to recall.
“From the clinic.”
“Oh damn! You got her, Midnight? That’s dope. It’s about damn time. You were going out sad.”
“Don’t exaggerate it.”
“Let’s be real negro. You been whining like Keith Sweat trying to get with her… I was beginning to wonder if you had lost your juice.”
I ignored his ribbing when I heard the shower stop. I imagined her drying off her pretty ass brown skin and knew I needed to be inside of her before we started sessions.
“I gotta go, man. I’ll get with you later.”
MJ’s chuckle grated my nerves. “Aight man. Do what you do and get up with me soon.”
“Bet.”
I headed to the bathroom and opened the door finding her bent over applying some oily stuff on her hands to her legs.
“Stay right there.”
She looked back over her shoulder, hair all over her face.
When I pulled my boxers down and my dick sprang forth, she knew exactly what I wanted and bit her lip as only someone who understood the man that I am would do.
So believe me when I say, I needed this woman to understand she could stop tripping!