Chapter 6 Ashton #2
“Listen, y’all, this is my battle to fight.
I don’t want or need anyone jumping in it for me.
I appreciate the love and support, but I know how I want this thing to go.
I’ve worked too hard to build my marriage, and I’m gonna be the only one to tear it down, brick by brick.
Right now, I just need y’all’s love and support and to have my back if I do need some female’s ass whupped,” I expressed, looking at Corinna who rolled her eyes.
Nicole’s lips twisted, and Elonica lifted an eyebrow.
“I don’t want it to be any uglier than it already is.
But I promise if I do need something, I’ll let y’all know.
I took a while to tell y’all because I didn’t want these reactions. ”
“I hear you, big bro, but I hope that I don’t see her ass on the street. Or I’ma drag her,” Corinna professed.
“I understand y’all being upset, but you’d better watch your mouths,” Mama warned, pointing a finger at all of us.
“Well, that’s all I’ve got. If no one has any more questions, Titan and I are about to dip up outta here,” I announced.
Titan popped his head up, and seeing me standing, he got up and walked to where I stood, bumping his head against my hand. I rubbed his head as I waited for my parents to stand. I gave them a hug and kiss before doing the same with everyone else.
Muffin had finally come to town to visit her mother. I had sent her a message, asking her to come see me when she visited. I told her we needed to talk. I didn’t give a damn if Alex had told her about our fight or not, but she and I had a conversation that had to be held.
She had texted me when I was on the way to my parents’ saying that she would swing by my place at five.
“I’ve got one question for you. Why?”
“Why, what?”
“Don’t fucking play with me, Muffin. I’m ’bout to throw this damn apple at your forehead and bust a hole in it and make applesauce,” I raged, squeezing the apple in my hand.
She rolled her eyes. “I know you’re not talking about that Alex situation.”
“What else would I be referring to, Zoe? I don’t give a shit about anything else you’ve got going on in your life right now. The shit is over between us, and I’m just waiting for the papers to be finalized. But why my teammate? That shit was foul as fuck!”
“Who did you get the photos from? I bet it’s some bitch you’ve been fucking. Probably that reporter that’s been hanging around you like glue.”
I had no idea how she knew Chanel had been hanging around, and I also knew better than to ask how she knew.
“That’s not the concern. The concern is, why would you do something like that, Zoe? Of all the niggas you can fuck with, you choose one I have to work with. What kinda bitch shit is that, and how the fuck you expect me and this nigga to work together after this?”
“Ashton, that’s really not my concern. If that’s what you called me over here to talk about, you could have saved you and me both time and gas for me. I could have said this over the phone. Hell, you found a way to keep working with Spencer Brown after I fucked him.”
“You just gon’ sit and play in my face like that? All the shit I’ve protected you from, everything that I gave you, and how I have done nothing but forgive you for years, and this is the payback I get. What the fuck I ever done to you, Zoe? Huh?”
It wasn’t until she started backing up that I realized I had moved from my spot by the refrigerator and walked her down. Her eyes were wide, and her bottom lip trembled. I shook my head.
“You’re a trifling bitch.”
“And you’re the son of one.”
“The fuck you say to me?”
“When I was sixteen and pregnant with your kid, your mother took me to get an abortion so that I didn’t mess up your ‘hoop dreams.’ Although she told me not to tell you about it, I did. Do you remember what you said to me?”
“That maybe it was for the best because we weren’t ready to have kids at the time.”
“And what I should have said to you, but didn’t, was that if you felt like that, then you should have wrapped your dick up or kept it in your pants.
What I didn’t know at the time and wouldn’t find out until years later was that you also got Cierra Andrews pregnant, and your mother did the same bullshit with her. ”
I clenched my jaw. I had never forgotten about either incident, but I had put them at the back of my mind. It was easier to pretend like that shit happened to someone else than allow it to plague me all these years.
I was wildin’ in my younger years, and after I told my father about both incidents, he got my mother involved. She chewed my ass out, as did he, but she had a “solution” to the problems. I didn’t protest either one of the suggestions, because I didn’t want a kid.
I was young, dumb, and full of cum. I knew I should’ve been wrapping it up, but I wanted to “feel” them. The only lesson I needed after that was when Tara Varner gave me chlamydia, and I decided after that I would never fuck a girl raw again.
When Muffin found out that I had been fucking around with Tara and had a disease, she forgave me for it. That was the day that I decided she was my road dog, and I would always be down for her, no matter what. I knew there was no way that I would lose her, so I stopped fucking other girls.
The only thing that I didn’t tell her about was Cierra Andrews. My mom suggesting that Cierra get an abortion was right in alignment with her mother’s suggestion. Both women were absolute on the fact that we weren’t having kids.
Cierra was an all-A scholar, and she had big dreams of going to med school after college to become a surgeon.
Her mother wasn’t letting anyone mess up those plans.
Cierra was embarrassed that she had gotten pregnant, especially considering that she was a “smart girl” and had looked down on others for finding themselves in that situation.
She was down with me for not telling my girlfriend that I had cheated on her, so I was cool. I thought my secret was long buried a few years later when I proposed to Muffin and asked her to marry me. Not once had she ever brought it up, and I couldn’t help wondering how she knew.
“My mother did do the same thing with her. She was right in both instances; I’m not going to back down on that.
You were skipping class with your friends and smoking weed and drinking.
Not only weren’t you ready for a baby, but that baby could have come out with any type of disability. So yeah, I’m not backing down.”
“She was not right, Ashton!” Muffin screamed at me.
“She was, Zoe. We were too damn young to be having kids, and my dumb ass should’ve been wrapping it up instead of wilding out like I was.
I learned a lot from that shit. That’s why I started mentoring young boys like me, because I didn’t want them going down the same path I had. I was the one who was wrong, Zoe.”
“No, your mother was wrong to insist that I get that abortion when I was pleading with her and crying that I didn’t want to.”
“But your own mother supported the choice.”
“My mother was intimidated by and in awe of your mother. She looked up to her and would have said anything to please her. She was impressed by everything about your mother—her name in our community, the way she dressed and wore her hair, the way she spoke, and how everyone admired her!”
“I’m sorry. That’s not my damn fault. But I don’t regret the shit that we did, because we weren’t ready. We were fucking kids ourselves, Zoe. You were failing almost every subject in school and lazy as shit. How the hell do you think you were ready to be a mother? Huh?”
She rolled her tear-laden eyes. “Well, you don’t have to regret it, but I do. I regret that I let your mother force me into something I knew that I didn’t want. Because guess what, Ashton? I cannot have kids now.”
“What?” My stomach dropped as she wiped her eyes, and her shoulders slumped. “What are you talking about?”
“Exactly what I said. I cannot have kids, and I learned that four years ago.”
Right around the time that she started fucking around on me all the time. “What? How do you know that?”
“I kept begging you to give me a baby back then, and you kept telling me that if it was meant to happen, it would. You said that we weren’t trying to prevent it, so it was only a matter of time.
After seven months, I went to see my doctor.
They ran tests on me and found out that I was infertile because of some scar tissue left behind during the procedure. ”
“You never told me, Zoe.” My voice was hollow, and my heart was hurting for her and me.
“Because I didn’t want you to look at me as less than a woman. I didn’t feel like a woman around you. I felt less than anything.” She sobbed. Her voice was broken.
I reached for her to comfort her, but she backed away and swatted at my hands.
“Don’t touch me. You and your mother took what was precious to me.
You both robbed me, so I found men who made me feel like a woman.
I gave what was left of me to a few men I’ve met through the years and some who were around you: your former assistant coach, Coach Steed; your former teammates, David Arcel and Mike Brohanan; and now Alex as a final fuck you. ”
My heart shattered to the floor. She had not only fucked Alex but also two teammates I had been real cool with, and a coach I hadn’t trusted with my eyes pinned on him.
But the worst part was that something significant had been stolen from both of us, and she had not trusted me with that knowledge.
She hadn’t given me the option to find a solution that would work for us.
“We could have made it work, Muffin. When you quit talking about kids and focusing on getting on those shows, I thought you weren’t ready. I could have paid for us to—”
“Don’t,” she hissed, wiping the tears from her face. “You couldn’t have given me back my dignity. So fuck you and fuck your mother.”
She snatched her purse up off the table and stormed out of my house. I dropped down at the island, shook, confused, and hurting.