FIVE #4
“Nah, E… you don’t have to leave.” He shot a dagger at his supposed-to-be girlfriend.
“I’m trying my best not to show you another side of me,” he said quietly. “But you really taking me there, my love.”
Nina crossed her arms defensively.
“I went to see my friend in the hospital.”
“Your friend? So now you know this nigga for real?”
“Yes.”
Jio nodded slowly like he was trying to control himself. “Hmm…okay…. So tell me baby girl, what is it about this nigga that you can’t come off?”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s giving thirsty,” he continued calmly. “And I’m turned off.”
“Thirsty? Turned off? BY ME?” Nina stared at him in disbelief.
“Very.”
She laughed. “You sound insane.”
“Not as insane as I can show you I know how to be. Stop moving like you don’t know who the hell I am.”
“He got injured, Jio.”
“And?”
“I’m supposed to not care?”
“Exactly,” he said as if it wasn’t rocket science. She was the reason why they weren’t locked in. Her and her stupid shenanigans.
Nina’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, you’ve officially lost your mind.”
Jio stood up slowly.
“Nah. I’m watching another man continuously play in my face with a woman I made clear was mine.”
Nina scoffed loudly. “I do not belong to you.
“You sure about that princess?”
The way he said it sent heat up her spine. But it wasn’t fear. Nina hated when he talked to her in this way because fuck, it turned her on so bad. She was delusional but he’d made her this way.
“You don’t own me.”
“I don’t remember saying I did.” He stepped closer. “But I do remember saying I don’t share.”
Her pulse jumped and her coochie did too.
“This is exactly why people think you’re crazy.”
“And yet you still answer my calls.”
He stopped right in front of her now. Jio was close enough to smell his cologne and feel the tension boiling between the two of them.
“I’m gone y’all. Please don’t tear my store up.”
Neither of them bothered to say goodbye. Ephrem turned the open sign off and locked the door behind him.
“You like that nigga?” he asked quietly.
Nina swallowed. “No.”
“So, why do you keep entertaining him?”
Jio desperately wanted to know.
She knew that as bad as she wished she could tell him the truth, she couldn’t. It wasn’t easy to say, “Because baby he answers the phone when you don’t.”
Or perhaps, “He watches all the corny shows that I like when you can’t even sit still for thirty minutes without your phone ringing.”
And…. “When I’m with him, I know that I’m safe and I don’t have to worry about my head being blown off.”
She couldn’t say any of that, so instead she whispered, “I don’t know.”
Jio stared at her for as long as he could before nodding like he’d recently received the confirmation he’d been searching for.
“That’s the problem…. I get it now.”
“What?”
“You think confusion makes shit less dangerous.”
Nina folded her arms tighter. “Try again.”
“I finally figured you out.”
“You think controlling me means you love me and that’s wrong.”
His eyes darkened.
“Nah baby,” he said softly. “You thinking I’m being controlling but whole time, I’m just trying to protect you.” His words didn’t soothe her.
“This is becoming unhealthy,” she said, sounding like she was backing out and giving up on him. But Jio wasn’t going to let that happen.
“Probably is.”
His honesty caught her off guard.
Jio reached up and gently brushed her hair back behind her ear.
Even when he talked to her in a tone that she wasn’t used to, with harsh “grown-up” words, as she and her siblings used to call it back in the day, he was always gentle with his touch, leading to the constant mindfuck that she couldn’t climb out of if she wanted.
Because everybody else got the monster but she’d been blessed to get the man who desperately tried to do his best not to become one.
“You embarrassing me out here,” he murmured.
Her heart thudded harder.
“That’s your ego talking.”
“It’s my patience talking,” Jio shot back in a serious tone.
“So what happens when you run out?”
His gaze locked onto hers.
“You don’t wanna know.”
Silence filled the room until her phone buzzed loudly in her purse. Jio glanced down at the screen lighting through the leather bag.
When she pulled it out, it was KOBIE.
Jio looked up at her and smiled. But it wasn’t a happy one.
“You should answer,” he suggested.
Nina didn’t move.
The phone kept vibrating.
Jio stepped back slowly. “Answer your man.”
Nina stomped her foot. “He’s not my man,” she whined.
“But I’m supposed to believe you don’t want him to be?”
He’d trumped her with that one. She opened her mouth, prepared to defend her case, and then she closed it because truthfully she was tired of lying.
Jio laughed sinisterly. “Exactly.”
He headed toward the door, but before leaving, he looked back one final time.
“Nina?”
She was no longer baby or pretty girl.
“Yes Jio?”
“If I ever decide to stop being understanding about this situation…” His eyes dragged over her slowly. “You really not gone like how it ends.”
He shut the door behind him and for the first time since meeting Jio, Nina wondered if she was standing too close to the line that she’d been warned about by everyone who loved her.