Chapter 4
Dionne Henry
Loving Me Differently
Iwoke up to the smell of breakfast. I didn’t have the slightest clue what time it was, but judging the sun was shining in my bedroom, I knew that it wasn’t super early.
I was in the middle of my bed, with the covers pulled up to my shoulders, and I had my head resting on a pillow.
My eyes slowly opened, looking in the spot where Tank would usually sleep whenever he stayed the night over, but the spot was empty.
The smell of breakfast had to have been coming from him.
He had to have been the one that was in the kitchen, throwing down.
I could feel my head pounding, and this felt like a stress headache.
Because of the deep sleep that I had been in, I woke up a little confused, trying to piece together what had me stressed out, and had brought on a headache.
That’s when everything started coming back to me, and I remembered the events that took place yesterday evening at Tank’s mom’s house.
The big secret that I revealed to him. I thought about all of that, which caused me to groan, kicking my feet up under the mattress, hating that it had to play out like that.
I laid in bed for about five minutes more, and then I sluggishly pulled myself up.
I quickly got out of bed, slipped into my house shoes that were on the floor, and I dragged myself to the bathroom.
I found the toilet, where I relieved myself of my bladder, wiped, and flushed.
Next, I went over to the sink, so that I could wash my hands, brush my teeth, and I rinsed my mouth out.
I found a claw clip for my hair, where I pulled it up, and I forced myself to get through my tedious skin routine.
Just knowing what took place yesterday evening had put me in a bad head space, so everything that I was doing in this bathroom, it felt like it was hard work, and like I was dragging myself to do it.
I eventually finished up, and I walked out of the room, moving slowly through the long hallway, and eventually, I was out front, in the kitchen area, where I could see Tank, but he couldn’t see me.
He was standing in front of the stove, using the spatula, flipping over whatever was in one of the pans, that I couldn’t quite make out from where I was standing.
With his other hand, he had the phone glued to his ear, and he was laughing at whatever the caller was saying to him.
He wore black briefs that hugged his behind, and because Tank was in the gym, I swear he had the cutest ass for a man.
His body was ripped all over, and tattoos filled just about every inch of him.
His twist were in his hair, and they looked just as nice, and healthy as they always did whenever he had them in.
“Yeah aight, nigga. I may pull up over there later then. I’ll let you know by this afternoon,” Tank said to whoever was on the other end of the phone.
It’s like it suddenly hit him that I was standing here because he eventually turned his head, taking his eyes off the food, and he looked over at me.
When he turned to look, like a damn creep, my eyes dropped, going right for that dick that was resting on his thigh.
I had no idea how the hell he was able to carry that big ass tool around every day, but he did, and he made it look easy, too.
“Aight. My baby up. Ima hit you later,” he said, and then he ended the call, tossing the phone on the kitchen counter.
“Good morning, baby. Come here,” he called out for me, weakening my damn knees.
It was just something about those two words that literally made me dizzy.
Tank had a way of telling me, “come here”, and it was something that was so sensual about it.
Like, he could say those two words to anyone else in the world, but when he said it to me, the meaning behind what he was asking had a different meaning to it.
Like the goofy that I was when it came to him, I pulled myself off the wall because I had been leaning against it, like a creep, watching him as he was cooking breakfast, along with running his mouth on the phone.
“Good morning. Who were you talking to?” I asked, once I was close enough to him.
“That was June. He ain’t want shit. Just was calling to see what I was up to,” he responded, sitting the spatula down on the counter, and then he reached his hands out for me, and once he had me close enough, his hands held me by my hips, as he looked down at me.
I kept my hands at my side, gazing up into his eyes.
“You didn’t tell him about last night, right?” I had to know.
“Of course, I didn’t tell that nigga that shit. Come on baby,” he responded, taking his hands off my hips, and he lowered them, putting them on my ass.
The second he did that, I raised my arms, putting them around his neck, and I stood up on my tippy toes.
I didn’t even have to tell him what I wanted him to do because he already knew.
He knew that I wanted him to lift me up, and that’s exactly what he did.
The second he started holding onto me, I leaned my head into the crook of his neck, and like I was his child, he swayed me in his arms, rocking his body from side to side.
Nothing in this moment needed to be said.
I think it was clear that I needed him. It was clear that I loved him.
It showed in the way that I was holding on tightly to him.
I literally didn’t want him to let me go, and he knew it, which is why he turned us around, so that the eggs that he was frying in the pan, he could take them out and put them on a plate.
“You hungry? Let me feed you,” he asked, and his words caused me to smile.
“I can try to eat something,” I let him know.
That’s when he walked us over to the island, took one hand off me, so that he could pull the stool back, and he lowered me down.
“What did you cook?” I asked him. My question caused him to smile.
“You gotta go grocery shopping baby, so I did what I could with the little that I had. I made you some sunny- side- up eggs because I remember you telling me that that was the way you liked to eat your eggs. There was some turkey bacon in the fridge, so I whipped that up, along with some French toast, and you had a little fruit too, so I cut that up for you,” he shared with me, and as he was talking, I found myself all giddy inside because I never really had a man cook for me.
The men from my past, they would always allow their money to do the talking.
Meaning, they would be quick to send a chef to my house to cook for us, or they would just have food delivered to us.
I always thought that when men would do that, it would be so romantic, but sitting here, knowing that Tank just cooked breakfast for me, and judging by the smile on his face, I could tell that he enjoyed it; that’s what made this moment even better.
He kissed me on my forehead, and then he went back over to the kitchen.
I watched him as he pulled out two glass plates from the cabinet, and he sat them down on the counter.
He added food onto both plates for us, and then he went into the next drawer, where he pulled out forks, and he placed them on the plates.
He walked over, sitting a plate in front of me, and he placed one down in the spot where he was going to eat.
Next, he came back over with the fruit, syrup for the French toast, and two glasses, in which he poured orange juice in them.
Now that we had everything, he took his seat, and I turned my head, so that I could look at him.
“Thank you, baby,” I released, and like this wasn’t a big deal for him, he waved me off, and then grabbed my hand, so that he could say a quick prayer, blessing the food.
Tank immediately dug into his food, while I was a little slower to eat.
While he was eating, my eyes went to his hands, specifically his knuckles.
They were bruised. Even with his chocolate skin, I could see the bruising on his knuckles.
I could see the purplish/ blackish bruises that I know wasn’t there yesterday.
He noticed that I was looking at him, which caused him to look at me.
I reached my hand over, took the fork out of his hand, and I held his hand in mine, examining the bruises that were there.
At one point, he did try to remove his hand from my grasps, but I wouldn’t let him.
I wanted to see it, and once I felt like I’d seen enough, that’s when I let him take ownership of his hand again, and I sighed.
“You killed him?” I asked. I didn’t have to tell him who I was referring to. He knew exactly who I was talking about.
“Nah. I beat his ass though,” he stated, and I nodded.
“Did you say what he did to me in front of anyone?” I asked.
“I didn’t,” he was quick with his response.
“So, you didn’t tell anyone what he did then?” I reworded the question.
When he took his eyes off me, and they dropped, looking down at my plate that was still filled with food, I knew then that he had told someone, and that’s when I quickly stood up from the stool, and I tried to walk away, but he reached his arms out, pulling me.
He scooted the stool back that he was sitting in, so that he could leave space for me to stand in front of him, and once I was there, he scooted the stool back up to the island, locking me in, leaving me with nowhere to go.
“I told you not to tell anyone about that, Tavion, and you still did it. That’s why I didn’t want to ever talk about it. You did exactly what I knew you were going to do,” my voice cracked, as I looked him in his eyes.