“Kyla. Everything doesn’t have to be discussed though. The event is over, so we’re past that.”
“We said we were going to be honest with each other. That was the whole agreement. I don’t need you to perform for me the way you perform for everybody else.” She crossed her legs and held her glass. “What happened in there tonight? And I need you to be real.”
I looked at her and thought about how much to give her and decided she had earned honesty. She’s been solid since we’ve been on this fake dating shit. She’s just a real ass female, and I vibe with her.
“There was a woman there tonight,” I said. “Somebody I have history with, deep history.”
She nodded like she already suspected something in that direction. “How much history.”
“Since ninth grade.”
She raised her eyebrows slightly. “That’s not history. That’s a whole life damn near. Tell me more.” She said as she propped her hand underneath her chin, waiting for me to spill my life to her ass.
“Yeah.” I took another sip. “Her family never approved of me. Not when we were kids, or ever, hell. I grew up in the hood, she grew up with money and a family that had a very vivid idea about who she was supposed to be with. I was never going to be that person in their eyes no matter what I did or how far I came.” I leaned back. “We’ve been going back and forth for years. She shows up, I open the door, she leaves. I wait and she doesn’t come back. She finally comes back. I open it again.” I shook my head. “I’ve been doing that for a long time.”
“But not tonight?” she asked.
“Not tonight. To be real, tonight was my first night not jumping for her. She’s called and texted me hella times but I’m not on that. I can’t fall back into that cycle. Not this time.” I answered honestly. Trying to convince myself and Kyla at the same time.
She was quiet for a moment. “Is that where your heart is. With her?”
I sat with that question for a second because it deserved a real answer.
“My heart has been with her since I was fourteen years old,” I said. “But after being hurt, brushed off and made to feel like I was something she was ashamed of for this long — I don’t know if love and resentment can stay separate forever without one of them winning.” I looked at my glass. “Tonight, she snuck away from her nigga at the event, and she was blowing my phone up. I was sitting there not answering it. Shit, that felt like the first time in years I wasn’t letting her pull my strings. And it felt good. It felt right, like maybe it’s time to completely get her out my system. No man will wait forever. Seeing that she’s moved on, that changed something in me.”
Kyla leaned forward and refilled both our glasses without saying anything for a minute. Then she looked at me.
“Can I be honest with you.”
“You can always do that. That’s all I’ll ever ask.”
“You are sitting in my living room looking like everything you went through to get here didn’t break you although it should have.” She said it straight, no performance behind it. “Where you come from, what you lost as a kid, what you had to do to take care of your family before anybody was taking care of you…mostpeople don’t come back from that. They get swallowed by it.” She shook her head. “You made yourself into something special. From nothing. And I don’t think you fully understand how rare that is.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Don’t ever let anybody make you feel like you’re not enough. Not her, not her family, nobody.” She looked at me straight. “Everybody has a past. That’s not what matters. What matters is what you’re doing with your future. And from where I’m sitting all I see is a great man who doesn’t give himself enough credit for it. You are Street Muthafuckin’ Hendrix, and excuse me, but anybody who doesn’t respect that is out their damn mind.”
The room was quiet after that.
I looked at her and something shifted in the way I was seeing her. Not the arrangement, not the campaign strategy, not Legal’s public image plan. Just her.
Sitting across from me in her own house saying everything that she didn’t even know that I needed to hear. She poured into me and the shit opened up something inside of me.
I didn’t know if it was the wine, the night or just everything that had been building up in me since that dinner. But I leaned forward and kissed her.
She didn’t stop me.
For a second neither one of us pulled away from the kiss, then something happened between us that hadn’t been part of any plan Legal had put together. Something that felt less like strategy and more like two people who had been being pulled toward one another.
When we pulled back she looked at me and I looked at her. Neither one of us said anything for a minute.
Then she laughed softly. Not embarrassed. Just in disbelief.
“Well,” she said as she smiled at me. If I ain’t know better, I’d think she was falling for a nigga.
“Yeah,” I said.
She slowly sipped the wine.
