Chapter 4 #4
He finished on stage, and Dionne snapped her fingers along with everyone else in the room, giving him his applause.
“You agree with him? You think bitches ain’t shit?” I asked her, now that he was off stage, and music was playing again. It was about two more minutes until 10:00, so I knew that my cousin would be up next.
“I think he was just telling his story. Speaking from experience. A woman put him in his feelings like that,” was her response.
“That’s not what I asked you though. Don’t run from the smoke. Do you think bitches ain’t shit?” I asked her again.
“I’m not answering that because it will turn into a bias debate.
You already know the answer to that question, but you want me to give you an answer that you already know is different from yours, so that we can get into a debate about it.
What I will say is that men ain’t shit either,” she sassed, right before she picked up the glass of wine that was sitting in front of her, and she took a sip from it.
Dionne had these black, velvet gloves on her hands, so when she picked the glass up, she made that shit look so classy.
“And that’s the answer that I was looking for.
Something told me that you were going to somehow bring niggas in the mix of this question.
I don’t hate women though, love. Just like you have some trifling ass niggas out here, I believe that there are bitches out here that are just as trifling.
Sometimes, men and women aren’t shit,” I replied, and she laughed at my response.
“Will you fall into the niggas ain’t shit category? This is the second time in the past two weeks that I’ve been around you, and your girlfriend isn’t with you. Where is she?” she asked me, and I smiled at her question, while pulling on my beard.
“You proving my guy right that just left the stage, love. That’s the shit that he was just on stage hollering about.
One of the things that stood out to me in his poem was that women love to make up stories in their head.
It don’t matter what the truth is. Ya’ll going to run off your own version, and what something feels like to ya’ll.
I already told you at the party that that wasn’t my girlfriend, yet you keep telling me the version that you feel is right, and what you want to believe,” I said, and she nodded.
“I’m not sure how much you know about me, but I grew up around a lot of men.
I know the way men move. Family, and friends mean the most to a lot of men, and it’s something that they keep sacred.
You mean to tell me that that’s not your girlfriend, yet you brought her into an intimate setting?
You expect me to believe that?” she asked.
“Dionne, what I get out of lying to you? I ain’t fuckin you, so I don’t have a reason to lie to you.
If I said she ain’t my girlfriend, then she ain’t my girlfriend.
Does anything about me give that I’m the kind of nigga to sit around explaining myself twice?
I ain’t going to do too much convincing my love.
I like what’s sitting in front of me. I like the way you look in that dress, so I can make an exception for you.
I’ll call her right now, and put the phone on speaker, so you and I can both hear her say that she isn’t my girl.
You want daddy to do that?” I asked, dead ass serious.
I could see what my words were doing to her. It was no coincidence that after I talked my shit to her, she crossed her legs, and she picked her glass up, so that she could take another sip.
“Yeah, sip that fuckin wine, and stop trying to pick fights with a nigga,” I joked, and she sat the glass down.
“You are the one that keeps talking to me. You keep sparking up conversation,” she said.
“And you like that shit because every time I talk to you, you respond. If I was bothering you, you would have been got up and moved, or you would have told me to shut the fuck up talking to you. I don’t know much about you, but I know the kind of woman that I’m dealing with.
If I was bothering you, wouldn’t you have looked me in my eyes and told me to shut the fuck up? ” I asked her.
Her eyes were on me, and they were piercing through me.
She couldn’t deny that she was attracted to a nigga.
I showed up tonight, clean as motha fucka in an all- black Prada outfit.
I smelled good too. If she would stop pretending that she hated a nigga, she would have probably jumped on me already.
She chose not to respond.
“What you doing when you leave here?” I asked.
“Going to one of the lounges out here. I’m doing it alone though,” she said, and I laughed because that was her way of trying to shut down whatever invitation from me.
“My cousin coming up next. Let’s make a bet.
If you like her poem, we can go somewhere together when we leave here.
If you think her shit is trash, tell me fuck me, and you not going anywhere with my black ass.
Can we agree on that?” I asked, hoping that she would make up her mind quick because the MC was coming back on stage, and he was getting ready to call my cousin up.
“I saw the line up for tonight, and I never heard any of your cousins poems before. That’s not a fair bet because I don’t know what I’m signing up for,” she replied.
“That’s why it’s called ‘a bet’. It’s a gamble.
You not supposed to know what you’re signing up for.
You going to take the bet, or no?” I asked.
She sighed, looked down at the pamphlet that was sitting in front of her that held the line- up of the artist tonight, along with their pictures.
She looked at Seren on the pamphlet, my family, and then back at me.
“Okay. We can bet on it,” she agreed, and I smiled.
She was right. The bet wasn’t fair. Seren was damn good at what she did.
I’ve seen the videos that she would post on social media of her reciting her poems. My little cousin could spit, and because she was so passionate about what she would talk about, she knew how to pull the emotions out of anyone.
If Dionne was a team sport, and if she moved off honesty, then she would admit that the poem was good, and she would spend the rest of her night with me. If she told me that the poem was trash, and we didn’t spend the rest of our night together, then her ass was a fuckin liar.
“Cool. I already know what lounge I want to go to,” I hit her with, and she just focused her attention back on the stage, tuning my ass out for good this time.
I bet she was sitting her ass there, praying that my cousin was trash. Little did she know she was in for a surprise.