SIX #2
“Unfortunately.” Danyelle took a sip of champagne. “It’s a gift and a curse. Mostly a curse because people be exhausting.”
Nina felt her on that one. “Hello!”
For the next hour, they moved through the gallery together as if that’s how God intended the day to go.
Danyelle had opinions about everything. She hated one sculpture because she said it looked like something a man made after learning the spiritual meaning of a womb.
She loved a series of photographs featuring Black girls in church hats.
She teared up quietly in front of a painting of an old woman braiding a child’s hair.
She realized she was most relaxed in segments depending on what her spirit was drawn to at the gallery.
It was just enough to simmer her anxious thoughts, but not enough to completely forget the drama in her life.
Nina wanted another glass of champagne before she called Roberto.
She traveled over to the bar where Danyelle was chatting with a guest.
Nina lifted her head, realizing that she was standing under a hanging installation made of glass butterflies that had been carefully painted. She liked to believe that butterflies were always a sure sign of God being nearby.
“This one is for sale,” Danyelle informed her after her guest left.
“I haven’t made it to that side of buying art just yet.”
She was a novice in the game and only had one piece to her name, and that was the one Jio purchased for her on their first date. Oh, the things he used to do to put a smile on her face. Nina desperately missed the old days because they included the old Jio.
Danyelle pulled out her phone. “Give me your number.”
Nina touched her chest. “Me?”
“Yes, you,” she snickered.
“You look like you need friends who don’t ask stupid questions and won’t judge you for ordering fries at expensive places.”
Nina laughed. “Yeah you read people.”
“It’s a gift girl.”
Nina hesitated for only a second before taking the phone and typing in her number.
Danyelle glanced at it before smiling. “Good. I’m texting you so you don’t disappear into whatever emotional prison you came from.”
Nina shook her head, but she was visibly amused.
When she finally left the gallery, her demeanor had shifted. She felt lighter and less hostile. God was going to turn her situation around. The only thing she had to do was keep her faith.
By the time she got home, it was dark.
She slipped off her suit jacket and draped it over a hook and set her purse on the entryway table. Her heels clicked softly against the hardwood as she moved deeper into her safe haven.
Her heart skipped a beat once she saw Jio sitting on the edge of her sofa with his elbows on his knees, head bowed, hands clasped together like he was praying but knowing his lunatic ass... he was probably trying his best not to break something.
Nina stopped walking as whole body reacted before her mind could.
“What are you doing here?”
He didn’t look up right away.
The city lights painted his profile in shadows.
His haircut was fresh but it always was.
Jio didn’t have many off days. It was rare that he looked like what he was going through.
The more she learned about him, the stronger her discernment grew to sense when everything wasn’t okay, and something internally about Jio looked undone.
He had no right to be sitting in her apartment unannounced after everything.
She was sick of him coming and going like this was his sanctuary, especially when he made her feel like she needed protection from him sometimes.
She was about to give him a piece of her mind until he lifted his head.
The look in his eyes stalled her anger and she swallowed her bitching.
“What happened?” She needed to know because that would determine how she handled him.
He shook his head once, like he didn’t trust himself to speak.
Nina walked toward him slowly. “Talk to me, babe.” She was soft as ice cream when it came to him.
He stood but not with his usual confidence.
The man reaching for a hug wasn’t the man who normally entered a room and changed the temperature merely by his presence.
This wasn’t the dude who made a threat sound like poetry.
His bottom lip quivered and he was struggling to not cry.
Nina was scared, but she had to be strong for him and provide a safe place for him to land. He didn’t have to be tough with her.
“You can tell me anything, your secrets are safe with me,” she reassured him.
His eyes moved over her face as if he had been waiting all day just to see it.
Jio tried to hurry and turn his head, but she’d already peeped a few tears slipping down his cheek. His composure cracked and she heard the pain in his cries.
He was ashamed of his emotions, but he didn’t have to be.
Nina’s heart broke instantly. “Oh baby,” she whispered.
Her sweet voice was all it took for him to step into her aura.
She didn’t have a clue how much he’d been needing her.
His body was weak, but little did she know his spirit was weaker.
Nina caught him in her arms. His arms wrapped around her waist and he pressed his face into her stomach as he sank in front of her, not quite kneeling but close enough to where she didn’t want to let him go.
She froze for half a second, stunned by the posture of it all.
Jio was unshakeable. He was trying his hardest to remain God’s strongest soldier, but today he folded, and he was not a man who gave up.
Ever. He didn’t give up nor did he give in.
But here he was, holding her like she was the only solid thing left in his world.
Nina’s hand went to the back of his head, her fingers rubbed it gently.
“What’s wrong?” she asked again in a voice barely above a whisper.
His hold tightened around her.
“I don’t wanna be him,” he confided in his baby.
Nina looked down.
“Who?”
“My father.”
The words came out rough and heavy, like they had been sitting in his chest for years with nowhere to go.
Nina stayed quiet and Jio breathed against her, trying to gather himself. She could feel the tension in his shoulders, the restraint in his body, and the war inside him between his pride and his feelings.
“I look at myself sometimes,” he continued, “And I see that nigga and I don’t want to see him at all.”
Nina swallowed. She felt that completely.
“He’s what niggas in the streets call slime,” Jio said. “My dad isn’t just violent… he’s cruel and sneaky.”
“That’s what makes him slime?”
Jio nodded. “Exactly.” He pulled back just enough to look up at her, his eyes wet and angry at the same time.
“I used to swear I’d never be nothing like him.”
Nina’s thumb brushed along his temple. “You won’t be.”
“But then I hear myself sometimes,” he said. “I hear how I talk and I notice how I’m moving. I don’t want people to be scared of me…I hate that shit.”
Nina’s chest tightened. Because there it was…
a realization. Jio had never named his fears aloud before.
He was openly admitting that there was a darkness that lived inside of him.
He was capable of love but it often came with a sharp bite like a vampire.
He was protective but it came off as possession.
Jio was a flawed man and he’d done plenty of irreparable damage while masking it as loyalty because admitting otherwise would mean sitting with every wound he had ever created.
“You’re not your father,” Nina said but she didn’t sound so convincing.
“You don’t believe that.”
“I do.”
“Nina…”
“I swear to God.”
He stared at her like he wanted to believe her more than anything.
But belief had never come easy to Jio. The only thing he had faith in was her.
Jio didn’t think he could be a good man.
He didn’t believe he could have peace either.
Would he ever make it out the streets? Would he end up in jail like his daddy?
Shit, he didn’t believe in his damn self these days.
Everything was just going good. Shit was running smooth…
until it wasn’t. He rested his forehead against her stomach again, and Nina held him tighter.
He went quiet and she didn’t mumble a word either.
The only sound you could hear was them breathing.
The outside world moved at a fast pace, but in her loft, things were still.
Nina stood in the middle of her living room holding the most dangerous man she knew as he trembled like he was two seconds away from getting a whoopin’.
“I really wanna be a better man, baby… for you.”
Nina closed her eyes. His confession was the reason she couldn’t move on.
They were the reason why she kept forgiving him and why she kept searching for the man inside the monster and convincing herself that if he could say it, he could become it.
“I know,” she whispered.
“I don’t think you do.”
She looked down at him. He was fuckin’ right.
Jio stood slowly and wiped his face with one hand.
He was embarrassed now. The vulnerability retreated almost as quickly as it had appeared.
He snatched his innocence away which led to feelings of rejection.
Jio only showed her his bleeding heart for a second before he locked it away.
She didn’t even get a chance to try and heal it.
“I’m trying,” he said, voice low. “With you, I’m trying.”
“I see that sometimes.”
He looked back at her sharply. “Sometimes?”
Nina regretted the word as soon as it left her mouth, but not enough to take it back.
“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes.”
Jio’s eyes changed first. The wetness disappeared and his rough demeanor resurfaced.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Nina sighed. “It means exactly what I said.”
“Nah, say it.”
“I don’t want to fight tonight.”
“Me neither but still answer my question.”
Jio never thought they were arguing when he was demanding shit and that right there was the problem.
She walked into the kitchen, needing space and a bottle of water to help clear all the champagne she’d had at the art gallery.
He followed her with his eyes.