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“I don’t know. I just feel like…” He paused for a spell. “Shit, I fucked up, Shi-Shi. I saw you wanted it to be over and I finally gave you the space you obviously needed. Then I heard from this nigga, telling me not even to contact you. Azmir co-signed—I mean, Shi-Shi, I heard how Azmir can get down…how he earned his reputation behind the scenes back in the day. But when I saw that nigga, and he…”
When Austin’s words delayed, I asked, “What?”
“When I first saw that nigga, I thought it was a joke.”
I flinched, disturbing the bubbles. “Why?”
“He didn’t seem like your type.”
This topic annoyed the hell out of me. When Jas and I started dating, a number of people mentioned me not being his type or him not being mine. Even his cousins made it a point to inform me of their opinion. Why did people assume to know me enough to understand my type?
Hell, I’d still been single for close to four years, given how I’d broken up with Austin then jumped into a whirlwind affair with Jas weeks later. Lately, I had been learning so much about myself; what made me smile, what frustrated me, what music affected my mood, when I didn’t need to be around people, and how to be alone, sit, and think. There was so much more I’d been working on; my identity as a woman, what defined my womanhood, what my spirituality actually was, who God was, how did I feel Him, how I experienced Him, and why was I here?
Some questions had been defined over the past year; some were still floating in the empty universe. Being away from my family and best friends isolated me from all of my comforts that could be described, at times, as distractions. Traveling the world broadened my mind, sometimes confused me, and often emptied me of all I thought I knew about Ashira. So if I’d been in this obscure place for the past few years, questioning and discovering myself, how did people believe they could define what they didn’t know had been evolving?
I cleared my throat. “What’s my type?”
“Shit,” he breathed hard and seemingly uncomfortably into the phone. “I don’t know. Someone who can make you laugh your silly ass off. A man who can deal with your mood swings when you’re at work. Somebody you can take to your father’s Kappa balls or someone to help finesse Celestine when she’s going crazy on you for no reason.”
I thought about that.
“Your mother thinks I’m a motherless train wreck.” A soft scoff left my throat. “She called me after our breakup and thought to remind me of it.”
Austin sucked his teeth. “That’s messed up.”
“But that is really how she felt about me all those years.”
“She was bugging.”
“I know.” I nodded. “She was protecting you.”
“She’s a mom, Shi-Shi.”
“And so am I…now,” left my mouth in a whisper.
Not that I was embarrassed. Chi-Chi was an amazing add-on, no matter how crazy things had been between her father and me.
“She’s cute. I see the pictures you post of her all the time.” That brought her little face to mind, and I smiled broadly, chin dipping into the water. “I don’t ever see her father. That’s fucked up.”
“Why?”
“Because you gave him a baby. He ain’t have to chase you and was damn lucky even to let you open up to him. He got you pregnant, and then what?”
“What?” I echoed his question senselessly but was hella curious about his theory.
“You tell me. Is he still around? When I reached out to you for the first time a month ago, you said you were single. That still true?”
I nodded. “It is.”
“Shit,” Austin whispered. “I don’t know if I should be happy or mad as fuck for leaving you out there like that. If I would’ve handled my business as your man, our lives would be so different.”
“This is true.” I poked my lips and nodded again.
Or is it?
If Austin and I didn’t break up as we did, there likely would have been no Jas. I would’ve never cheated on Austin. And if I didn’t push Jas as I did back then, he would’ve never been attracted to me romantically. However, if there had been no Jas in my life, I likely would have still been running on that same hamster wheel in life. I would have still been daydreaming about opening my own club, still stuck in an office from eight am to six pm, making my father’s dreams come true.
Or would you?
