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Monday morning, she came into my office, telling me how she’d gone to the strip club with her boyfriend, Monterius, over the weekend, and a fight had broken out between the dancers. See, I’d rather be at home, going over my Sunday school lesson for my babies instead of witnessing a crazy fight.
“What I’m doing will be quick. What’s up?” I asked, prepared for whatever she was about to ask me.
“Did you ever think about what you and I discussed last week?” she asked with a smile on her beautiful face.
“We discussed a lot of things. You have to be very specific,” I said.
I knew what she was referring to, though; I was just trying to find a way to talk around the subject like I always did whenever I didn’t want to just flat out say no.
“Normani, I’m talking about going out with me tonight. My cousin, Billionaire, is home from prison. Five years, girl. My big cousin just did five years behind bars, so we’re going out to celebrate with him. It’s going to be a vibe. Normani, I’m telling you; you’ll love it. Listen, my big cousin, my man, and their friends are paid and well known in Miami. The club that we’re going to tonight, we’re going to have our own little section with them. I know you don’t drink, but you can still go and catch a vibe. You’ll be with them and me, so nothing is going to happen. Besides, with the niggas that we about to be around tonight, we’re going to be protected regardless,” Twinkle said, trying to win me over, but it just wasn’t working.
She might have thought that she was easing my mind and possibly convincing me to come along, but everything she said was really the sole reason why I didn’t want to go. Why the heck would I want to attend a welcome home party for someone who just spent the last five years of their life behind bars? It wasn’t my place to judge him because I would leave that to God, but I mean, what did the man even do? I could be around someone who attempted murder, robbed a store, or whatever crime he could have possibly committed to get five years in the first place. Then, she was talking about all the men who were going to be there tonight, so no, that just wasn’t my idea of a good time.
If people wanted to consider me to be boring, then I’d take that label, but I just never wanted to be in a situation where I was taken out of my comfort zone. I wouldn’t even fit in. People would automatically look at me and notice that I had no business in a club. I didn’t even have club attire. My closet was filled with blazers, church dresses, jeans, dressy shirts, and work clothes. It wasn’t like I could pull out a little black dress from the back of my closet and throw it on because I didn’t even dress like that.
“Twinkle, that’s just not my thing. You go out and have a good time. I’ll be here Monday morning to hear all about it,” I said, and she sucked her teeth.
“Normani, I promise I’m not even trying to be funny, but what the hell do you have to do when you get home? Please tell me what you have to do that’s so important that you can’t get out of the house tonight. Girl, it’ll just be for a couple of hours,” she said.
“I have things that I have to do. For one, I need to finish up my laundry, I need to do a deep conditioning of my hair tonight, and—”
“Girl, please! Those sound like excuses! Just come. You can even drive your car, and I’ll just ride with you. That way, whenever you want to leave because you’re not feeling it or whatever the case may be, you can just go. It’s not imperative that you deep condition your hair tonight because your hair is bomb. You know that, and everyone else does too. I love your silky, curly hair and all those baby hairs. I wish I had baby hairs like yours. Normani, you are naturally pretty, so you don’t gotta do a whole lot to get ready. For me. Pleasseeee,” she begged, crossing her hands together and sticking out her bottom lip—making herself look sad, so I could give in.
I sighed and then slouched in my chair.
“What will I even wear? I don’t have anything club like in my closet, and—”
“I’m a step ahead of you, boo, because I already knew you would say that. I’m going to bring a few of my new pieces from my warehouse over to your house, and you just pick what you want to wear. Oooh, I’m so happy. I promise you’re going to enjoy yourself tonight. You’re going to love my cousin. He’s cool,” she told me.
“I’m not going to love your cousin. I’m going to get out of the house like you asked me to,” I shot at her.
Twinkle laughed while playfully rolling her eyes.
“Hmmm,” was all she said before she stood up from her chair.
Twinkle ran down what time she would be at my house and everything else, and then she finally walked out of my office.
I left about fifteen minutes after her because I had to finish what I was working on. At the same time, I was also trying to come up with one hundred different ways to tell her that I didn’t want to go. I literally had no excuse. My parents were on a church retreat, and they wouldn’t be back until tomorrow night.
My older sister, Naomi, was eight months pregnant, carrying her first baby with her husband, Liam. Although she had a month to go before my niece’s arrival, she looked like she was ready to pop any day. So, hanging out with Naomi was out of the question too. These days, the only thing she wanted to do was sit with her feet propped up, stuffing her face with whatever pregnancy cravings she happened to be longing for at that moment. Just like my father, my sister’s husband was a pastor, so that alone gave Liam cool points in our family.
My daddy used to always tell us that when we were old enough to start dating, we needed to get with someone who reminded us of him. I agreed with that, but only to a certain extent because if God ever decided to stop holding my future husband hostage, he didn’t have to be a minister. Of course, I would want him to know the Lord and to even have a relationship with Him, but to have his own church and be a minister really wasn’t what I was looking for.
My sister’s husband, Liam, we’d known him for years. He and Naomi had attended school together since the two of them were in elementary school. That was another plus for him with my father because it wasn’t like Naomi was going off with a complete stranger. Liam attended our parents’ church, and we knew his family well.
I just hoped I got lucky, and my father liked whoever I brought around. His validation of anything I did meant a lot to me. It would be awful to have an interest in someone, only for my parents not to like them. I wasn’t really sure if that would be a dea
l-breaker for me, though. It really would just all depend on what my parents, or should I just say my father, didn’t like about the person. My mother told me in private that she didn’t care who I brought around, as long as I got somebody because she felt like my clock was ticking. Still, I felt that I had plenty of time because I wasn’t even thirty yet.
Once I accepted that there was no excuse good enough for me to give to Twinkle, I just accepted the fact that I would have my first club experience tonight. I didn’t even have a club experience when I was in college because I was such a good girl and afraid that my daddy would pop out of the shadows and embarrass me. I had no idea how tonight was going to turn out, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t ready for it.
9:00 P.M.
“Ding-Dong!”
My doorbell rang while I was in my bathroom, adding lip-gloss to my lips. I was sitting at my vanity, so I picked up my phone, which was resting on the counter, playing low music, and checked the Ring app to make sure that it was Twinkle at the front door. It was. This girl was there at exactly nine on the dot, just like she told me she would be. I assumed her punctuality was designed to not leave me any room to switch up and decide not to attend tonight’s rendezvous.
I sighed because the closer it got to us getting out of the house and going to the club, my desire to stay home intensified. The club we were going to was King of Diamonds. I had done my research on the club about an hour ago, and everything about that place just screamed that it was something I didn’t want any parts in. The strippers, the gang of people that would be huddled inside the club… just everything. I didn’t mind letting my hair down and doing something fun, but this just wasn’t my idea of a good time. Only for Twinkle would I do this, though, because she definitely had a way of making me feel bad to the point that I was left with no choice but to just give in.
