Chapter 11
Antoinette Floyd
Fight the Feeling
Iwas at the welcome home party that Dionte’s family were putting on for him.
Literally, they started planning his welcome home party on the way home from the prison.
It was being held at Dionte’s mom, Danita’s house.
My relationship with Danita was a wishy washy one.
We could be good one minute, and then we could be beefing the next.
Because she was my daughters’ grandma, back then, I used to try and keep it cordial with her, but these days, I would be on whatever time that she was on with me.
Dionne was older now, and I wasn’t with Dionte, so I really didn’t have much of a relationship with her.
I used to call her years ago to check her and tell her to keep my name out of her fuckin mouth because one of the things that she used to do was talk about me, and all the kids, and baby daddy’s that I had.
Dionne would come back, telling me what she heard, and when I would check Danita about it, she would tell Dionte, as if he was supposed to beat my ass.
Him and I would be arguing over the phone, and I’ve lost count on the number of times that he told me he was going to slap the shit out of me when he saw me.
I was just glad that those days were over. Those days were hard times for all of us. Dionte was free now, and we were all in a much better place because of the news.
It was after nine at night, and I was in Danita’s backyard.
Tommie was sitting next to me. Free left not too long ago.
Even though this wasn’t Tommie’s and Free’s family, they knew just about all of Dionne’s family, so they came in support.
Dionne was over at the table where they were playing spades.
She wasn’t going to let her dad breathe.
She was sitting in between him and Tank.
It was easy for Tank, and Dionte to get along. I never questioned that they wouldn’t.
“I’m about to go back in the house, and ask Danita for another slice of cake,” Tommie said, carrying on like she was family. She’d already had two plates of food and dessert, and now she was going back.
I shook my head, watching her as she stood up.
I watched as she made it to the patio door, and one of Dionne’s cousins, Mark said something to her, and she waved him off, and then walked inside the house. He shook his head, and he walked over to me, holding a paper plate in his hands that was filled with the soul food that was cooked.
“Why Tommie always acting like that? Why she not trying to fuck with me?” Mark wanted to know.
Technically, Tommie, and Mark weren’t related, but it still wouldn’t be a good look because he was Dionne’s cousin at the end of the day.
I knew my kids, and I knew the kind of men that they were all into.
Tommie had a thing for hood niggas, and I hated that even with her getting older, that was still something that she was attracted to.
Mark was hood, and he looked good, but the nigga didn’t have shit.
If I taught my girls anything, I taught them to go for the nigga that had shit!
Mark had multiple kids, multiple baby mama’s, and he still lived here with his grandma.
I can very well see why my daughter was choosing not to fuck with him.
“Mark, where is your primary place of residence?” I asked him.
I was sitting, with my legs crossed, holding a red cup in my hands.
There was a little bit of the sweet red wine left in the cup that I had been sipping on.
I didn’t want to come to the party empty handed, and being as though they didn’t give us much time to prepare, I only had enough time to bring a couple of bottles of wine, and I made my infamous baked beans, since it was barbecue on the menu.
“What you mean what’s my primary place of residence?” he asked, not knowing what I was trying to ask him.
“Meaning, where do you lay your head every night,” I clarified, breaking it down for him to better understand what I was really trying to ask him. He must have got it now and knew that I was trying to be funny because he shook his head, and he sucked his teeth once it clicked for him.
“Damn, so because I’m currently in a fucked-up position right now, living with my grandma, that means that she can’t give a nigga no play?
I got a job though. I ain’t no bum ass daddy, either.
I always got my kids. All of them running around the house right now.
None of my baby mamas got me on child support, either.
This is the longest that I’ve kept a steady job, and if I keep at it, they could possibly move me up.
Tell Tommie to fuck with a nigga with her fine ass,” he kept on going.
I didn’t have the mental capacity to sit here, and continue going back and forth with him, so I stood up, picking up my Prada handbag that I had resting behind me on the chair, and I placed it over my shoulder.
It clicked to Mark that I wasn’t going to entertain this conversation, so he eventually just walked off. My empty plate was still sitting on the table before me, so I grabbed it, going to toss it in the trash, once I made my way through the house, and said my final goodbyes.
I was tired. I was up since three this morning because we had to take the six-hour drive down to the prison for the parole hearing.
Once the hearing was over, and Dionte was processed out and everything, we came back home.
I only had time to come home, go to the grocery store, pick up the things that I brought with me to the party, and head back home, where I cooked the baked beans, showered, changed into some clothes, and I’ve been here for a few hours.
I was ready to shower, crawl in my bed, and take my ass to sleep.
“Where you getting ready to go?” that deep voice called out to me from across the backyard. It’s like his ass had another set of eyes on me, that weren’t the ones that he was using to focus on the Spades game.
The second I picked my feet up to move, he called out to me, wanting to know where I was going.
He didn’t give a damn either that there was a backyard filled with his family, and even some of Danita’s neighbors had come over.
Some of them knew Dionte from when he was a little boy, and all evening, they had been telling him how happy they were that he was home.
“Home,” I yelled back at his ass.
I couldn’t read his lips, but he said something to everyone that was at the table, and then he stood up.
Before he walked away, he kissed Dionne on her forehead, and then he made his way over to me.
I had to clear my damn throat, as I stood here, trying my hardest to look normal, as he walked his fine ass over to me.
Not to glorify having multiple kids by multiple different men, but if we were going to make this a competition, there wasn’t a bitch alive that had a better line up of baby daddies than me. Every single last one of my daughters dads were fine. Each of them gave me beautiful children, too.
Dionte though. This man was drop dead gorgeous, and prison had honestly done his body great.
I’m not sure why, but it also took so many years off him.
He didn’t look like a man that was fifty- five years old.
The same gorgeous chocolate skin Dionne had, the one I’d praised since she was a baby, was mirrored on him.
The fine hair that my daughter had, that had come from her dad.
It was a little cool out, so he was dressed in a black turtleneck, black slacks, with black Prada dress shoes.
It was funny because you could just tell that Dionne had picked out his outfit.
That clean look had our daughter written all over it.
He looked good. Whatever his plans were for the night, which I’m sure was to find a bitch to lay up with, I knew that he was going to make her night.
“Why the fuck would you just try to leave without saying nothing to nobody?” he asked, walking over, and the first thing he did was take the empty plate out of my hands. He stood over me, all muscle. Just solid, and heavy.
“I was about to throw the plate away, and then make my rounds,” I let him know. He had a hard look in his eyes, as he glared down at me. Almost like he was looking for something.
I haven’t been around Dionte all day… like up in his personal space because for one, I didn’t have a reason to, and also, I wanted to allow my daughter, and his family to soak up his first moments of being free with him.
Even with me not being all in his face, I would still have moments where I would find myself glancing over at him, taking him in, and paying attention to the small things.
Prison changed him. Dionte wasn’t on any kind of papers.
When they approved his parole, it was with him maxing out his sentence, meaning he served his time, so they didn’t put him on parole, probation, ankle monitor, none of those things.
He was legitimately a free man. With that, he could smoke a blunt or two if he wanted, but when it was offered to him, he turned it down.
He let it be known that he didn’t do drugs, and he turned down a drink too, saying that didn’t drink, either.
Even though he went to prison as a minor, his ass was already smoking, and drinking, so it was shocking to see that he was no longer taking part in either of those things.
The nigga didn’t eat pork, either. Granted, he would say that while he was incarcerated, but we all knew that once his brothers got on the grill, that he would get a plate of ribs, but he didn’t.
That man only wanted clean eating. You could just sense that so much about him changed.
Much calmer, and mature. He still had that hardcore, dominate trait about him, as you can see he just made his way over here, trying to check me about not saying goodbye before I left.
“I’ll walk you to your car. Come on,” he said, stepping back, so that he could lead the way.