Chapter Three
Rhythm I looked up from the food I was cooking on the stove when I heard the
front door opening. A frown found its way to my face as I heard Raheem’s footsteps approaching the kitchen.
To my surprise, when he rounded the corner, he wasn’t alone. Behind him was Lady Lingo with a smug look on her face.
“You can’t be fucking serious,” I said, placing my hand on my hip. “What is she doing here?”
“I have a name, you know.”
“Oh, I have several names I can call you. Would you like the list to choose from?”
“All right!” Raheem yelled, holding up his hands. “Rhy, Imani is a guest. Chill out. We’re going to the studio.”
“You just left the studio, Raheem.”
“And I barely got anything done because you kept calling and texting me, wanting to argue.”
“Who was arguing? I said we needed to talk.”
“And I told you I was busy. You blew up my phone the whole time I was with my producer. That made me look unprofessional as hell.”
“Oh, now you’re worried about the way you look?”
Imani laughed. “This is why I told you not to date anybody outside of the industry. They have no respect for our craft.”
“Bitch, who the fuck asked you!” I yelled, taking a step toward her.
Raheem grabbed me around my waist and walked me backward.
“Rhy, you need to calm your ass down. Damn.”
I pushed him off me. “Don’t tell me to calm down when you walk into our home with this bitch!”
Imani laughed. “You seem to love claiming ownership of things that don’t fully belong to you.”
I frowned. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Raheem stepped into my space once again. “Imani, go on to the studio. I’ll meet you there.”
She smirked. “Sure thing.”
She lightly touched his arm as she sashayed out of the kitchen and down the hall to the studio. Raheem took a seat at the table with a frustrated look on his face. I didn’t care how upset he was. Shit, I was upset too. This wasn’t the first time she’d been in our home.
A few months back, he had a bunch of people over in the studio. I’d just gotten home from work and arrived to find about five cars in our driveway. I’d silently prayed that they didn’t stay too long because these muthafuckas never knew when to leave, and he didn’t have sense enough to tell them to go.
I walked into the house and put my things down. After stopping in the kitchen to pour myself a much-needed glass of wine, I walked down the hall to the studio in the back. The potent smell of weed hit me before I even opened the door, and the sound of loud rap music engulfed my ears.
Opening the door, I was greeted by what looked like a whole ass kickback. Food, liquor, and ashtrays filled with cigarette butts and blunt roaches were all over the place. Raheem’s friends were entertaining some random females. Then, there was him… sitting on the couch, with Imani blowing him a shotgun. She grinned and gave him a seductive look as she gazed down at him.
“You like that?” she asked.
“Hell yeah.”
“Raheem!” I yelled over the music.
Lazily, he turned to look at me, and so did she. She turned up her lip as she backed away from him and took a seat in an empty chair.
“Hey, baby,” he said, grinning as he climbed to his feet.
He made his way over to me and tried to kiss me, but I turned my head.
“What? No love for your man?”
“Can I talk to you?”
I didn’t give him a chance to respond before I walked back down the hall. Behind me, I could hear his friends joking that he was in trouble. Closing the door, he followed behind me into the kitchen. I stood at the kitchen counter with a scowl on my face.
Raheem raised his hands. “I promise, I’ma clean the mess up when they leave.”
“It’s not even about the mess. It’s you having a bitch in your face like that.”
“Who, Imani? She’s just my labelmate, baby.”
“It looked like a whole lot more than music making going on. Did you see how she looked at me? Like I was interrupting some shit in my own damn house?”
He waved me off. “Don’t start trippin’, Rhy.”
“Oh, baby, you haven’t begun to see me trip. She needs to go.”
“Hold up, now. That is my studio. We share every other part of this house, but that’s my space. We’re working.”
“Raheem, ain’t a lick of work getting done in there. Please don’t act like I’m blind.”
“Fuck, Rhythm! You blowing my high with your nagging!”
I scoffed. “Nagging?”
“Yes, nagging. That insecure shit ain’t cute, ma. I’m your man. You don’t need to be worried about me with any other female if you trust me.”
I laughed. “Okay, Raheem. Bye.”
“Don’t act like that.” He tried to grab my hand, but I snatched away. “So, you mad?”
“Nope. I’m just starting to see a side of you that I don’t like very much. You keep it up, and I’m gonna act accordingly.”
“The fuck does that mean?”
“Whatever you want it to mean, baby. Have your fun, but you don’t want me to start having mine.”
I glared at him before walking out of the kitchen.
Here we were, months later, having yet another argument about the same bitch.
“What is it now, Rhythm?” he asked, glaring at me. “Now you wanna talk after you moved out of our bedroom.”
I moved out of the bedroom after our argument that night. I could barely look at him, let alone sleep next to him. My feelings were hurt, and he didn’t seem to give a damn.
“Well?” he asked.
“I don’t like being in this space, Raheem. You already know how I feel about you and that girl, and you’re gonna bring her into our home?”
“We’re working, Rhythm.”
“You’ve been at the studio for hours. You can’t hold off for one night to talk to me about the state of our relationship?”
He threw his hands in the air. “What do you want me to do? You’ve already got it in your head that you don’t mean to me what I mean to you. Then you tell me some shit about our relationship running its course. What am I supposed to say to that? Sounds like you’ve made up your mind to leave me.”
“If I meant anything to you, you’d be trying to rectify the situation, not bringing the problem home.”
“You sound so insecure right now, and I’ve never known that to be you until Imani came around.”
I scoffed as I turned away from the stove. He couldn’t be fucking serious.
“Insecure? Raheem, if I’m insecure about anything, it’s because that’s how you’ve made me! If the shoe were on the other foot, you’d be showing your ass! You think I don’t have options? You think other men don’t approach me or that there haven’t been opportunities for me to act inappropriate with niggas close to you? I’ve always respected you as my man, and what do you do? You want me to be okay with you parading the next bitch around like she’s your woman.”
“I never even said I was going to do it!”
“You presented it like the opportunity of a lifetime! It would be good for business. We’d be touching more money than we ever had. That’s what you said. What part of your fucked-up ass brain thought that was okay to bring to me? You wanna play house, go right ahead. But you can do it without me.”
I grabbed the pot from the stove and tossed it in the sink before storming out of the kitchen. He called my name repeatedly, but I ignored him as I headed upstairs to the guest room. Stripping down, I headed into the bathroom and turned on the shower.
Once the water was just right, I stepped in and allowed the flow from the showerhead to mask my tears. I was mentally exhausted. I’d been able to pull myself together long enough to get through my workdays, but once I hit the front door, my emotions consumed me.
It was hard to come to the realization that my relationship wasn’t as solid as I thought it was. I was beginning to feel out of place. Before I stayed where I wasn’t wanted, I would leave. It wasn’t like I couldn’t afford to live without him. Sure, he took care of me, but I was more than capable of taking care of myself.
After my shower, I changed into a pair of sweats and a tank top. Going to the closet, I pulled out my duffel bag and suitcase and packed enough clothes to last a little minute wherever I ended up. I gathered my laptop and anything else I needed for work too. Thirty minutes later, I was walking downstairs. Music from the studio drifted from down the hall.
I shook my head as I headed out the front door. After tossing my things into my G-Wagon, I climbed in and pulled out of the driveway. The drive into town only took about twenty minutes. I headed straight for my favorite hotel chain and booked myself a room for a few days.
After getting settled in, I turned off my location and climbed into bed and pulled the covers up over my head. No sooner than I had gotten comfortable, my phone started ringing. I didn’t have to look at the screen to know who it was because the ringtone was a dead giveaway.
I swiped the ignore button to reject Monique’s call, only for it to ring right back. Again, I rejected the call. A few seconds later, a text came through. Nique: Why is your location off?
Nique: I know you didn’t just ignore me.
Nique: Stop playing with me, Rhythm. Answer the damn phone before I call your mama. She really would call my mother if she couldn’t reach me, and then my mother would call me fussing and asking a thousand questions. The last thing I wanted to do was discuss my relationship woes with her. She’d tell me it wasn’t a good idea to come out here in the first place.
She’d preached to me repeatedly not to move all the way across the country for a man that wasn’t my husband. Just because it had worked for my cousin didn’t mean it was my path too.
I sighed heavily as I decided to call Nique back.
“What’s going on with you?” she asked as soon as she answered.
“Nothing, Nique.”
“Lie again. Did something happen with Raheem?”
I was quiet.
“Girl, if you don’t start talking!”
I rolled my eyes and started from the beginning. I hadn’t told her about the conversation he and I had the night I broke up his little smoke session with his boys. By the time I was finished, she was livid.
“I know you fuckin’ lying! I’ll beat his ass. The fuck you mean a fake relationship?”
“That’s what he said.” My voice was shaky as I began to cry. “What if he’s already messing around with her, Nique? He brought that bitch in my house, and he could have already fucked her. She had this smug look on her face, like she knew some shit I didn’t.”
I began to cry harder, thinking about what could have been going on behind closed doors. What if this whole idea was a cover-up for an ongoing relationship? Did he really think I’d be stupid enough to go along with it?
“Where are you right now?” Nique asked.
“At a hotel. I told him if that’s the life he wants to live, then he can do it without me.”
“Wait, you plan to stay in a hotel until when?”
“I only packed for a few days. I just needed some space. I guess I can take this time to start looking for an apartment or something.”
“Shit.” Nique sighed heavily. “I was gonna surprise you, but I was coming to visit next week and stay for a couple days.”
“Really? That would be great. I could really use my best friend right now.”
“I can try to come earlier—”
“I don’t wanna interfere with what you have going on, boo.”
“Girl, fuck this job. Well, not really. I love my job, but I love you too. I’m due for a vacation, and my lil yea yea works in timekeeping. He’ll make sure I’m straight.”
“You’re seeing somebody?”
“Not officially. He’s something to do when there’s nothing to do. But that’s neither here nor there. I’ll see when I can book my flight and hit you with the info. Maybe we can view a few places together.”
“We can do that. You don’t have to come early though. I could use a few days to process all of this so I’m not a crying mess when I see you. I appreciate you, Nique.”
“You know how I feel about you, babes. You’re my A-one since day one. Raheem is gonna see me when I get there.”
“No. I don’t wanna deal with any shit. I just wanna pack my things and leave quietly. He doesn’t even know where I am, and he knows better than to come to my place of business, showing his ass.”
“Okay, girl. I’ll hold off on him for your sake… for now.”
I sighed. “I just wanna sleep right now. It’s been a long ass day, and I’m mentally exhausted.”
“Okay, well get some rest. Call me if you need me.”
“I will.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
We disconnected the call, and I put my phone on do not disturb. After plugging it into the charger, I turned out the lights and snuggled into the covers. For the longest time, I stared out the window at the night sky, wondering where the fuck I was going to go from here.