Chapter 3 #2
“A few nights ago, I was at Vick’s mom’s house having dinner with her.
I don’t need to explain to you how Vick’s mother is; you know.
So, I was surprised that she even wanted to have dinner with me.
I thought maybe she’d changed her stance on me being in a relationship with her son.
Over dinner, however, some shit didn’t sit right with me.
She kept offering me shit, like I didn’t have a mouth to ask for what I want.
It just felt so…staged and almost like ugly-witch-with-the-apple type of thing.
I kept declining her offers.” She chuckled and shrugged her shoulders while my brows furrowed.
“Ultimately, what had me running out of that abortion clinic was thinking about how I felt thinking that crazy witch was trying to poison me.” She laughed.
“Instincts…that’s all I was going on. Sitting in that office, I told myself, ‘If you cared enough to think this woman was poisoning you, and your paranoid ass kept her from doing it, so that you could protect your baby… Shouldn’t you be protecting your baby now?
’” Fallon’s tears grew heavier as she sniffled.
She pointed to the crumbled-up ultrasounds.
“I’m carrying him or her… I’m gonna keep him or her because when I didn’t think I could, I loved this baby. ”
Reaching over, I rubbed Fallon’s back as she cried. Comforting her was my priority right now, but I had to admit that what she said had my spirit a wreck.
“Have you talked to Vick?”
She shook her head. “When he finds out I played the last few games, knowing I was pregnant, he’ll be mad as fuck. He wants a baby so bad.”
Fallon didn’t know my story with Vick unless he’d told her. She didn’t broach the subject, so I figured she had no knowledge of my miscarriages. It was something I never released to the media. It stayed between me and those closest to me.
“What’re you gonna do now?”
Sighing, Fallon dried her face and exhaled a long breath.
“I have no choice but to tell him. I’m going through with the pregnancy, which gives me great peace.
That’s another reason I know I’m making the right decision.
Whatever the plan is for this child, it must be a great one.
I hauled tail outta that place.” She busted out laughing at that.
“Those people were looking at me like I was crazy.”
I laughed with her then, while imagining how her tall, lanky ass looked running out of that doctor’s office.
“Whew!” she let out. “This was the conversation I needed. Thank you, Mimi, for listening.” She embraced me like we were old friends, and I made sure my embrace felt just as tight.
“You got this, Baby,” I told her.
Nodding, Fallon swooped her ultrasound pictures up, placed them in her purse, and stood.
“I wasn’t even hungry.” She chuckled. “I came in here because I needed to make myself throw up. I figured smelling all the damn grease would turn my stomach and make me run back to the clinic. Instead, you came in here. I feel so much better.”
Smiling, I stood and hugged Fallon again. “If you ever need to talk, you know my number.”
“Of course,” she replied with a smile. She waved at me on her way out of the door as I went back to my table.
The ice had melted in my Sprite by the time I sat down.
Minutes later, PJ and Bri strolled into Hole.
We hugged each other, ordered our food, and settled in for our fat-filled dishes.
PJ and Bri were in a world of their own.
Meanwhile, I was in times prior, dissecting every moment I spent with Vick’s mother.
So much so, that I remembered her inviting me for dinner.
The seemingly welcoming smile on her face was plastered to my memory like a worrisome bandage.
I remembered to a T what she’d cooked both times—could still taste the lasagna in on my tongue. The thought had me gagging.
Getting up from the table, I hurried to the restroom with PJ and Bri on my heels. I busted through the first stall and heaved over the toilet.
“Mimi!” PJ and Bri cried, each holding an arm as I panicked. Tears blurred my vision as blood filled my head. I felt myself fainting, and I didn’t have the power to stop it.
SIN
“The contract is pretty straight forward. My firm can start drafting the floorplan as soon as you like.”
I glanced across the table at Jonathan Bibbs, a pro-baller who was looking to build a youth center in his childhood neighborhood.
He heard about JSC through mutual associates and damn near begged me to come out and view the area he wanted to erect the building in.
The site was empty—a run-down field that hadn’t seen a lawn mower in decades.
There was much potential for the center being in the low-income area, and I explained to Bibbs that JSC was the right firm to handle the job.
This nigga needed to hurry and make up his mind, though.
I’d been sitting in this meeting for over an hour, listening to him go back and forth between ideas that all sounded like bullshit.
He wanted space-age instead of functionality, cost-effective instead of luxury.
Almost as if his old neighborhood needed “to get with the times” instead of offering actual resources that helped his old community.
He wanted a music studio in the joint, instead of a pool, an ice rink instead of a regular rink.
I listened to him explain to me why renting office space inside the center would benefit him more than if he used those same office spaces to set up a daycare, classes, a library, and even an arcade.
He claimed to be wanting to help the community, but really, it sounded like he wanted to look like he was helping the community when really, he was trying to line his pockets.
He wanted to appeal to the people outside of the community instead of the people who could comfortably walk to the center to enjoy the space.
As far as his cost-effective stance, I hated that he thought his million-dollar investment wasn’t good enough to give the very best for the people he claimed to care about.
In the contract I’d drawn up, I gave my opinion and left it up to him to decide.
However, he was picking it apart like a nasty-ass fruitcake.
All I needed him to do was make a move, so that I could head to the airport and back to my woman.
My phone buzzed across the table. I would have ignored it had I not seen PJ’s name flash across the screen. Gripped with something I’d call fear, I snatched up my phone in the middle of Bibbs about to start in again.
“‘Sup? Where’s Naomi?”
“Sin!”
PJ’s tone had me out of my chair, out of the restaurant I’d met Bibbs at, and rushing to my rental car.
“We were about to have lunch, and all of a sudden, she got up and ran to the restroom!” I barely heard what PJ was saying as she cried. I cranked the car up and flew out of the parking lot, headed straight for the airport, not giving a damn that I left all my shit at the hotel.
“She was throwing up, then she fainted! Oh, my goodness, Sin!”
“Where is she?” My heart was in my stomach, worried like hell. I’d just talked to my baby. We’d just had a successful time at the doctor’s office. Everything was okay. Not this! I prayed there was nothing wrong with my woman nor my baby. This would devastate Naomi.
“We’re waiting for an ambulance. Bri is in the restroom with Naomi while I came outside to call you.”
Shit!
“Okay. I’m about to hop a flight to her. Tell my baby I’m on the way.” Feeling guilty that I’d left her while coming on this business trip, my eyes misted. I was so damn far away!
“Okay,” PJ tearfully replied. “The ambulance is pulling in now.”
“Bet. I’ll be there shortly.” I said it, but as I hung up, I prayed it was true. I needed a flight, ASAP. If these muthafuckas didn’t put me on somebody’s damn plane without an issue, the airport was gon’ have an issue!
I swerved into parking, hustled to get the rental turned in, then went to stand in my airline’s long-ass line. Two minutes later when the line hadn’t moved, I started fuming.
“The fuck is goin’ on up there?” At the ticket counter, a couple with colorful-ass clothes on were cackling and talking with the representative like they didn’t see several people waiting for them to move the fuck on.
“Hey!” I got their attention. “Y’all laughin’ and shootin’ the shit like y’all don’t see this line. I’m tryna be patient when I really wanna flip all this shit over, so I can get on a plane and get back to my woman.”
A rumble went through the line as people agreed with me but were too scared to speak up. The receptionist stared with her mouth hung open.
“I see all those cavities in ya mouth from here, shawty. Close it and move this line.”
She snapped her mouth shut and did as I requested. Within minutes, I was in front of her requesting to hop on the next flight.
“Sure, Sir. It’ll cost—”
“I don’t give a damn what it’s gon’ cost. What time is it leaving?”
“In the next hour with a thirty-minute layover in—”
“Give me the ticket.” At this point, it didn’t matter. I just had to get on a plane. Being in California, I was too far away. Helplessness seeped in as I went through security, then sat to wait for boarding.
Me: I’m boarding soon.
PJ: Okay! We just made it to the hospital.
Hanging my head, I shut out all the noise around me and thought about the only thing that gave me comfort right now, my woman. Naomi was everything to me. Her mental well-being was my number one priority. If anything happened to our baby, she wouldn’t handle it well, and I wasn’t by her side.
It’s fucked-up how we were just laughing this morning.
Now, Naomi was in a crisis and my ass was across the country when we were usually glued at the hip.
Never again. If I had to travel, Baby Girl was going to be with me.
Worry wouldn’t allow me to function if she wasn’t within a ten minutes’ drive of me. Damn.