Side Chic (15 page)

She walked over to me and rubbed my belly. “Grandma is going to feed her little baby good while you’re here!” I looked up at her and she was grinning from ear to ear. She was so excited about becoming a grandmother. My daddy was equally excited, that’s all he’d talked about the night before.

“Ma, I can’t be eating all of this good home cooking.” I laughed. “I’m big enough now. By the time I leave here next week, I will have to be airlifted out of here!”

“Oh hush your mouth! You are going to feed my grandbaby
,
girl. You can worry about your figure after you have her.” I’d told her that the baby was a girl. “You sure are big though. I don’t know if you are going to make it another two months. You look like you are about to give birth now!”

“Yeah I know.” I said taking a deep breath and then releasing it slowly.

“What’s wrong?” Ma asked taking a seat in the chair next to me. “You seem like you have something on your mind. I’ve told you that you can talk to me about anything. I applaud you for being a strong woman and wanting to work through your problems on your own but there’s nothing wrong with accepting a little help sometimes. Besides that’s what I am here for, regardless of what it is.” I looked at her, tears stinging the back of my eyes. The least little thing made me cry these days! She noticed the tears in my eyes. “What is it LaQuela?”

I ran my fingers through my hair, which now hung past my shoulders. “I’m just frustrated ma! It’s like the harder I try to act like this situation doesn’t bother me the more it does! I never thought that things would turn out this way but now that
it has I don’t know what to do!
I thought that my
leaving would solve everything but it didn’t because no matter how far I run I can’t run from my feelings for this man. I love him!” I cried. “I love him even more than I did before. Maybe it’s because I am carrying his babies. I don’t know what it is but I do know that there isn’t a day that goes by where I do not think about him or think about all of the good times that we shared. I miss us laughing and joking around. I miss us sitting and talking for hours. Am I wrong for feeling the way that I do?”
I looked at my ma waiting for an answer.

She reached over and caressed my face. “First of all stop that crying because it’s not good for you or the baby.”

“Ma, it’s not only one baby…it’s two.” Her eyes grew huge. “I know…I didn’t know how to tell you that it was twins at first but I am just so sick and tired of lying.
I’m just tired!
”

She shook her head and looked up towards the ceiling. “Lord have mercy, God give me the strength. Lala, is there anything else that you haven’t told me that you need to tell me?”

“No ma’am.”

“Girl, I am going to be honest with you. This is one messy situation that you have gotten yourself into! I mean it is just downright messy as can be! Now you asked me if you are wrong for feeling the way that you do. Baby you were wrong when you dropped your underwear and laid down with that man! What were you thinking? Were you thinking at all?”

“I don’t know.” I hung my head and looked down at my belly. “All I know is that now my babies aren’t going to have a daddy and it’s all my fault! I tried texting him and he told me not to text him anymore! I tried calling and he wouldn’t answer. I left a voicemail telling him that I wouldn’t bother him and anymore.
I can’t force him to see me or talk to me.
”
I sniffled. There were so many emotions through me all at once. I felt lonely, stupid, confused, and hurt! I was just downright miserable at this point!

“What? Did you tell him that you are pregnant?”

“No
, I want
to tell him face to face not in a text or over the phone so that I can explain to him that is mostly the reason I left. I know how some men think and he may think that the babies aren’t his. I have proof that I was pregnant before I left. My papers from my doctor have the date of conception on them. I brought them with me to show him if he acts like he doesn’t believe me!”

Ma got up and went over to the stove to check her food. “Well you may just have to tell him over the phone if he won’t agree to see you. Text him or leave a voicemail. One way or another he needs to know. I don’t agree at all with how this happened because I feel like you could’ve went out here and found a man that didn’t already have someone but the deed is done now and so I am not going to stand here and preach to you about what you should’ve done! Now all we can worry about is what you do from this point on.”

“That’s true.” I agreed.

“
So now what if you tell him and he says that he doesn’t want anything to do with these babies. What are you going to do then?”

“I’m just going to raise my babies by myself. I’m not going to try and make this man be a part of their lives if he doesn’t want to
be
!” Millions of women raised children by themselves every day! I could do it to if I needed to!

“Wrong!” She hit the counter with her hand! “You are going to have these babies and make his ass take a paternity test! He may not want to be a daddy to them but he still has a responsibility to help take care of these children! As a mother your job is to make sure that these babies are well taken care of! Damn trying to look out for him! Look out for them! It’s time that you put on your big girl panties and think like a grown woman! He played now it’s time to pay! I have been listening to you talk about what you did and what you shouldn’t have did and how you left so that you wouldn’t cause him any drama! Hell he had a part in all of this! You didn’t do all of this by yourself so you shouldn’t take on all of the worry and responsibility by yourself! You are twenty-eight years old Lala! It’s time that you start acting like it!”

“Why does everyone keep implying that I don’t act my age?” I asked becoming agitated.

“Because you’re not acting your age!
A woman your age should know that when you play with fire you are bound to get burned! You want to play big girl games but then when things get tough you want to jump and run! Uh-uhh baby that ain’t how you handle things like this!
You stand up like a woman and meet this thing head on! I am not saying that you should go to his house and cause a scene or anything like that but don’t back down and tuck your tail between your legs and go running back to Danville without doing what you came to do! If he doesn’t want to meet you then that’s fine, text him and let him know that you are pregnant! If he says that these babies aren’t his then you tell him that you have proof. If he doesn’t want to see it and still doubt you then you say okay and tell him that you and him can have a paternity test done after they are born! At this point you can’t worry about protecting his relationship because to be perfectly honest it doesn’t seem like he was too concerned about his relationship or family when he decided to have an ongoing relationship with you for two years behind his girlfriend’s back! Let him worry about that situation and you worry about seeing to it that these babies are taken care of!
”

Even though I knew the advice she was giving me was coming from a good place and that she was right. I still didn’t want to cause Tre any drama. I know that I shouldn’t give a damn about how things turned out for him as far as his girl was concerned after the way that he’d treated me when I’d reached out to him earlier but I did. I didn’t want this to become a situation where things got ugly and we ended up hating each other and not being able to be civilized to each other. I felt like our situation could be handled in a
civilized manner without a whole lot of drama. At the end of the day all I wanted was for him to at least be there for our babies. I knew that he couldn’t be there full-time like I would love for him to be but as long as he did what he could I would be happy with that. Maybe we could even work this out to where his girl never found out and everybody could be happy…maybe.

             
             
             
             
Tre

When I got home it was a little after nine, the house was quiet.
I was a little tired, ready to take a hot shower and
call it a night. I s
till had Lala on my mind, wondering what she could possibly want to talk to me about after all of this time.
I laid my keys down on the coffee table and walked down the hall to the boy’s room. I pushed the door opened and looked inside they
were both fast asleep. I went in a
nd kissed both of them and put the cover back on Shaun. He was a wild sleeper and always ended up kicking his cover onto the floor sometime during the night. When I was done I left out closing their door behind me. I continued down the hallway to me and Kisha’s bedroom. I pushed the door opened and walked inside. I was expecting to find her already in bed asleep or reading but to my surprise she was wide awake sitting in front of the computer.

She looked up from the computer as I walked into the room. “Hey baby!” She beamed excitedly. “Guess what?”

“Hey.” I replied looking at her skeptically wondering what she was so excited about. “What’s up?”

“Guess who
I
just sent a friend request to on Facebook?” She squealed and continued before I could answer. “LaQuela Chambers, the girl that wrote Confessions of A Side Chic! I am waiting for her to accept! I can’t wait to tell her how much I enjoyed the book! There has to be a part two! I mean…I know damn well that Karma is going to get some revenge on Trent after he done got Lele pregnant!” She rattled on and on. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I kept thinking that maybe I’d heard her wrong or maybe she was talking about a different LaQuela Chambers. She had to be because there was no way in hell she was talking about Lala. I noticed her staring at me strangely. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m good.” I said trying to pull myself together. I sat down on the edge of the bed.
I needed a seat because my legs felt as if they were going to give out. Too much shit was coming at me all at once!
“Baby, aren’t you taking this book thing a little bit too far? You are a borderline stalker!”
I was trying to play things off.

She twirled around in the desk chair that she was sitting in, cocking her head to one side and placing her hand on her hip. “Excuse you? Negro for your information, I am not nor will I ever be a stalker!” she corrected me. “I am friends with a lot of my favorite authors on Facebook! That is how I keep up with what they have going on and what they are about to drop next! This girl here is actually right from around here. I am really excited to know that we have an author
from right here in Boykins…”

I didn’t hear anything else that she said because now this shit had become
too
coincidental for it not to be Lala! I knew damn well there weren’t two LaQuela Chambers from Boykins, VA.
Lala done wrote a fucking book?
I thought to myself and then I thought about the title…Confessions of A Side Chic!
Man what in the fuck is this crazy bitch trying to do?
Is this what she wanted to talk to me about?

“Tre…Tre!” Kisha called pulling me from my thoughts. “Tre did you hear anything that I just said?”

“Nah baby, my mind was somewhere else.” I admitted truthfully. “What did you say?”

She smacked her lips and twirled her chair back around to face the computer. “Nothing…I didn’t say anything!” She snapped. “That’s just like you to have your mind somewhere else when I am talking to you!”

I placed my hand on her chair and turned her back around. “Yo, chill with the attitude and repeat what you were saying.” I told her running my hand up her thigh, hoping to calm her down. It was just like her to get bent out of shape over something as little as a book. She just didn’t realize the
significance
of what she had just dropped on
me and I prayed that she never found out! “What were you saying?”

She moved her red and black braid
s
out of her face, flipping them behind her shoulder. “I was saying that it’s really dope to have someone from our small town write a book! Her information on Facebook says that she currently lives in Danville, VA but I was thinking that maybe she will come back to her hometown one day and do a book signing! That way I could meet her and get her to autograph my book! That shit would be so damn nice! I could say that I’ve actually met one of my favorite authors!”

I was looking at her like she’d lost her damn mind! If it were left up to me that shit was never going to happen! “Baby, you’ve only read one book from this chic! How in the hell does that make her one of your favorite authors?”

“Because Tre, the girl can write her ass off! She writes so that you actually feel like you can see everything as it is happening in the book! She definitely has a gift!” She bragged about Lala’s book like a proud parent! “You wouldn’t understand though because you are not a bookworm like myself.” She giggled.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” I needed to find out more about this damn book. “So what was it about this book that made it so interesting that you are ready to go out and promote it?”