Page 66 of Rich and Rotten

“You always had a problem with hearing what you want to hear.”

I nearly broke my neck with the way I twisted to look at him. “You held an entire conversation in front of me, and never said anything to me. Fucked me knowing you had a family.”

“You allowed me to fuck knowing I had a family.”

I couldn’t turn and look at him because that was the truth. As a woman, I should have stopped whatever was going on, but I allowed it. Allowed him to have my body in a way that only he could.

“Won’t happen again.”

I could hear his house slippers shuffle across the floor. When the fuck did he get house slippers in my house?

He kneeled down until he was almost eye to eye with me. “Nazani is my daughter. Natalie is my best friend, and we have a child together.”

I snorted. “As if that ever works out. She knows that she’s your best friend?”

He nodded. “Yes. We dated before she realized that she wasn’t you, and she would rather have my friendship than try to compare to a woman who she couldn’t compete with.”

“What? That sounds crazy.”

“May sound crazy, but it’s the truth. Nobody has compared to you since I left, Tata. I’ve been in and out of relationships before I decided to just fuck. It was easier to fuck a woman than to give her what was yours.”

“Giving them dick is giving them what’s mine,” I muttered. “And sleeping with your best friend was the best course of action for you?”

Nazir laughed. “I never slept with Natalie. We kissed a few times, but I never had sex with her. She was special to me, and I knew if we crossed those lines that it would ruin things.”

“Nazir, please get out of my damn face because clearly you are playing games with me. How do you have a child and never slept with that girl?”

He finally got down on the floor with me, his legs extending on either side of me. “We had our daughter through IVF. Natalie wanted to be a mother, and I wanted to be a father. We decided to go in half on a baby. Nazani is the best thing that has happened for the both of us, and we co-parent. She knows about you…probably too much.”

The words wouldn’t come to me because I didn’t know what to say. What did I say to an explanation like that? Two friends, deciding that their friendship meant more than trying for a relationship, had a baby.

I don’t know if I was more shocked at the fact that he had a daughter with his best friend, or the fact that Nazira had a little sister who had a similar name to hers.

“There’s so much that I don’t know about you. You come back and expect me to give you my all. Nazir, you never even introduced me to your mother or family.”

He nodded his head, understanding where I was coming from. “I was protective of you. Shit sounds like a bullshit-ass excuse, but it’s the truth. I wanted to keep you away from that side of my life. You saw me as Nazir, and I didn’t want you to see where I came from.”

“What we had was fake then.”

“You introduced me to your family? Did I sit down and shoot the breeze with Malcolm Rich?”

He had me there. Nazir had been a secret like he made me his secret. I was afraid for the same reasons that he was. I feared my father would judge him and force me to end things. My mother would take one look at him and tell me that I could do better.

Nazir didn’t come from wealth, and that was what they expected from me. They wanted me to marry a man who could take care of me, and at that time, Malcolm couldn’t do that. I never held it against him, though.

“I never cared about the money, Zir.”

“That shit is easy to say when you have money. For me, everything was about money because I had a family to take care of, a father who died in prison…a mother who needed help, and a sister who needed to be raised. So, it was always about money for me. I couldn’t take you away from what you knew and introduce you to struggle. Nah, I wasn’t going to be that nigga.”

“We could have made it together. I’m not so far removed that I don’t realize that all people don’t live like this.”

He stroked my cheek. “The only thing I want to introduce you to is more wealth…never seeing you struggle. I don’t want that for my daughters.”

It was the way he said “daughters” that made me smile.

“I don’t know, Nazir. It’s so much.”

He kissed both of my hands. “Nothing has to be figured out today. I want to know my daughter, and whatever way you think works is the way we’ll do it.”