Page 199 of Buy Back My Love

I had refused to have intercourse while I was pregnant even though my doctor told me it was perfectly fine. I just couldn’t get past having JB’s baby inside me while another man was inside me. My brain said absolutely the fuck not, and Van never pushed the issue. He took whatever I was comfortable giving him and left the rest alone.

Then Myles came, and somehow that man went from my boyfriend and my baby’s goddaddy to basically doing daddy duty without anybody sitting him down and asking him to.

Parenting was hard as hell. Anybody who said otherwise was either lying or had round-the-clock help. Myles was cute, but he was also demanding, loud, greedy, and apparently personally offended by sleep.

Van would work all day, come through the door tired, shower, then come find me and take the baby.

“Go do something.”

The first time he told me that, I looked at him like he was crazy. “Do what?”

“I don’t know. Take a shower, go to sleep, watch TV, stare at a wall. I don’t care. Just go.”

So I went, and when I came back an hour later, Myles had been changed, fed, burped, and was knocked out across Van’s chest while Snoop slept beside them.

The shit was almost disrespectful. I could spend forty-five minutes bouncing that baby around the house while he screamed directly into my ear, but Van picked him up and somehow Myles turned into a peaceful citizen.

Even his family had gone right back to believing Myles was secretly his. I had given up correcting them, especially after his mama cornered me in the kitchen one Sunday.

Denise waited until Van went outside with his daddy before she touched my arm.

“Can I tell you something?”

I was fixing myself a plate. “Sure.”

She lowered her voice. “I don’t judge you.”

I stopped reaching for macaroni. “Okay. I appreciate that.”

“I used to be promiscuous too.”

My hand froze over the serving spoon.

Excuse me?

Denise nodded like we were having some beautiful woman-to-woman moment. “I was young once. Made some mistakes. So I don’t judge you for not knowing exactly who Myles’s father was.”

I stared at her while she kept going.

“I just ask that you don’t break my son’s heart. Evander loves you and that baby.”

“Mmm.”

That was all I could get out.

“And pray against that sinful nature,” she added. “That’s what I had to do.”

I didn’t even know which part to address first: the promiscuity, her apparently believing I had been running around Mobile collecting possible baby daddies, or the fact that she thought prayer was the only thing standing between me and the next available penis. So I chose none of it.

“I’m gonna do that.”

Denise smiled and patted my arm. “Good.”

I took my plate and got the hell out of that kitchen, and when I told Van about it later, that nigga laughed so hard he had tears coming out his eyes.

“It is not funny.”

“Yes, it is.”