Chapter 9
nine
. . .
Cassidy
I turned to see Omar Devante Greyson’s pecan brown eyes staring back at me.
I was sure I still looked visibly upset, but I tried my best to hide it.
I always envisioned that the moment we crossed paths again would be a day of reckoning.
Yet, I was puffy-eyed and snot-nosed, just how I was the last time he’d seen me.
"You good?” he asked, assessing my mood and snapping me out of my twisted fantasy at the same time.
“Me? Yeah, I’m good.”
“Yeah? Life treatin’ you good?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Same. It’s crazy running into you here. What are you doin’ out in Miami?”
“Work conference,” I answered, keeping my responses short.
“Oh, cool.”
“And what about you? You’re a little far from Tallahassee, right?”
“I am. We made the move out here a couple months ago.”
I dipped my head in a quick nod while driving my eyes past him. “Cool. Listen, it was nice seeing—”
“Cass, wait. I didn’t expect to see you again, let alone today. I told myself that if I ever did cross paths with you again, I’d tell you to your face that I’m sorry for how I handled everything. I don’t regret my son, but you never deserved to be tangled up in any of that.”
I couldn’t deal with everyone who had a place in my heart, whether past or present, using me as their emotional sounding board.
My emotions were already running high after finding out about my mother’s diagnosis, and a part of me fought to respond with something toxic, but I refrained from saying anything that would keep us in each other’s presence longer than need be.
“Listen Omar, I—”
He interjected before I could finish, “And I know that shit just probably made everything awkward, but I had to get it off my chest.”
I shook my head. “This entire conversation is awkward, Omar. It’s fine. It’s been months. We’ve both moved on,” I said, stating fact over fiction.
No sooner than the words fell off my lips, his phone lit up, showcasing a family photo of the three of them and she had a ring on her finger.
It was then that I realized that Omar was more of a steppingstone to me than he was a stumble.
He’d come into my life for a season. Long enough for me to teach his ass a thing or two before he could go back to her and be the man she required, which wasn’t the man I needed.
Seeing him again only made me realize just how special Hendrix was.
For once, I was the project, and he was the fixer.
“I’m glad it all worked out for you, really…” I told him.
“Yeah, same for you and that ball player,” he mentioned.
Although he hadn’t mentioned Hendrix by name, my antennas went up. “How’d you even know anything about that? I thought you weren’t into the blogs and celeb gossip.”
“I’m not. Malaya, she saw and mentioned it.”
“Mentioned it, huh?” I asked. I would’ve like to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation, I thought to myself.
“Yeah, and I mean to be honest, I was like damn, she traded up from a nigga like me. I knew you deserved better than me, Cass. We both did. That ain’t no secret.”
Correct, I thought.
“I ain’t have my shit together when you met me, and I wasn’t ready for someone like you.”
Also correct, I thought.
He licked his pink lips before speaking up again. “He keepin’ you happy, right?”
My eyes brightened with relief when I looked past him to see my driver in the gray Toyota Corolla pulling up in the nick of time. I was not about to talk to my old nigga about my new, old nigga.
“My Uber is here, so I gotta go. Take care of yourself,” I said before slipping into the backseat of the sedan and pulling off.