On paper, it was guaranteed to be a wild night. For Jio, it should’ve been… it could’ve been since this was where he had the most fun. He loved the strip club and the strippers loved his trickin’ off ass right back. But tonight, he sat quietly in VIP staring out at the crowd.
A dancer settled beside him at one point, draping her long leg across his shoulder, trying to get his attention. Another stopped by the table and asked him to buy her a drink and some wings. These hoes were crazy.
He barely looked at any of them. The entire place felt strangely empty although it was packed wall-to-wall with people, which was when it dawned on him that no one he laid eyes on were Nina.
“What the fuck am I doing here?” He was ashamed and disgusted. It wasn’t that they weren’t bad bitches because they were drop-dead gorgeous. Probably prettier than Nina. Their asses were fat. They were young, dumb, and easy to get, but he knew what he once had, and these hoes couldn’t dare compare to her.
They wouldn’t be able to challenge or inspire him. They lacked motivation. He didn’t believe any of them would want to make him better.
Most importantly, none of them mattered.
A year ago, a pretty face and a nice body would've been enough to distract him for the night. Now it felt like work.
When one of the dancers leaned over and asked if he was okay, Jio laughed because the irony wasn’t lost on him.
The answer was, “No.”
He wasn’t okay at all and sitting in a strip club pretending otherwise suddenly felt ridiculous.
By midnight, he’d had enough. He left his fam behind and headed home alone.
The penthouse greeted him with silence and it wasn’t the peaceful kind. The quiet reminded him that he was lonely. Jio even missed her dog Nino. They both were missed. Her blanket still sat folded over the couch exactly where she’d left it. One of her books remained on the coffee table. Her favorite mug sat near the sink. Pieces of her everywhere served as little reminders that she was here, but she fuckin’ wasn’t.
Jio walked through his penthouse before eventually stopping in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Manhattan. The city was alive beneath him, millions of people all withdreams and opportunities. Out of all the women that lived in New York, he only wanted one.
His phone sat on the kitchen island. He kept turning around to stare at it before he went over to pick it up. Scrolling to Nina’s name took less than a second. Calling her would've taken even less time.
His thumb hovered over the screen, he could practically hear her voice already.
Truthfully, he wasn’t sure which outcome would hurt worse.
The phone rang three times before he hung up.
“No,” he said aloud firmly.
The word came out as a warning for him to leave her alone for real this time.
Not because he wanted to, but because it was what she wanted.
For the first time in his life, he respected a person enough to give them what they needed instead of what he wanted. Especially since Nina didn’t leave because she stopped loving him, she left because she wanted to love herself just a little bit more. At least that’s how Ephrem described it, which helped him finally understand the difference.
Tomorrow he would get back to work. He needed to refocus and handle business that had fallen to the wayside. Jio had money to make and he couldn’t keep moping around. According to Ephrem, she’d been busy as ever. If she wasn’t neglecting her future, he wouldn’t be doing so either.
The streets had taught him a long time ago that distractions got people killed. It made niggas careless and somehow could easily make you lose focus and forget the mission. He couldn’t have that.
Jio leaned back against the couch and closed his eyes. He felt a tear or two fall down his face as Nina's laugh echoed through his memory.
“Hoes are distractions,” he mumbled bitterly as he thought about his baby and her beautiful smile… “Nina included.”
It was time to get back to being a made man.
ELEVEN
“I GOTTA STAY ON GUARD, I’M BEING SMART AND PLAYING MY CARDS RIGHT.” G HERBO
ONE YEAR LATER
The funny thing about getting your life back on track was that nobody warned you how exhausting it would be. For months, Nina was confident that she missed the pressure of yearning for success. She replaced Jio with meetings, responsibility, partnerships, and literally drowned in it, but was she happy? Did she truly have peace or was she just filling several voids that were empty due to the lack of his presence?
