Page 37 of Giving Him Something He Can Feel

“Nothing, I was jus—what are you doing here?” I couldn’t start going easy on him just because I felt bad for his past. Niggas ran game all the time all in the name of trauma.

“Came to take you and lil’ ma for lunch, but from what she just said you already had that.” He held her up, smiling in her face.

“What about ice cream? We haven’t had that, Trek.” Leave it to my child to be the fucking crossing guard.

“You haven’t? Then that’s what yo’ day is missingshorty.”

“It is?” her dramatic ass asked, before looking in my direction. “Mommy can we go have ice cream with Trek? We can get clothes later.”

My eyes narrowed in his direction, before softening when I looked at her. “Yes baby we can.”

The ice cream parlor was right up the street, so we opted to walk, never mind how awkward it was considering I said much of nothing, but Adorie talked his ears off. He got a little break after she got her ice cream and convinced us to walk back to the house on the side near the park. Of course she made her way to the park, leaving me alone with Cartrek.

“You still mad at me, Peach?”

“Mad at you? Why would I be mad at you, Cartrek?”

He shrugged. “You tell me. Been running ‘round with old boy avoiding me and shit.”

I stopped and looked at him for a minute before I spoke. “How am I avoiding you, Cartrek?”

“Cause I had to pop up on you to see you.”

“Cartre—” I was about to speak, but before I could his lips were on mine, and he had pulled my body into his.

“I’on like the idea of you letting another nigga be with you like this.”

“You gotta stop putting your lips on me and touching on me. Don’t you have a baby on the way?” I asked pulling from his embrace and turning to look for Adorie.

“She’s by the slides and nah I don’t.”

I shook my head. “Wel?—"

“In the grand scheme of things, shit like that don’t matter.” He said that so close to my face that I knew a kiss to my temple would follow. It did too, because within seconds he did just that.

“What do you mean?”

“Little people don’t really matter when it comes to what’s supposed to happen.” Here he was talking in riddles.

I was about to say something slick, but his phone started ringing. He answered it within seconds, stepping back from me.It wasn’t a long conversation at all, if anything seconds later he was assuring whoever was on the other line that he was on his way. It was definitely a woman because I could hear the high pitch in her tone.

Just that fast I was reminded of what Kash said, “These niggas are for everybody.”

ChapterSeven

Jovie - A week later…

I looked in the mirror studying myself for what felt like forever, looking for something. Very much something to physically indicate that that little alien in my gut was in there. I mean I felt him every day, but I didn’t see him. Not yet at least, but I was ready to see my baby boy. We didn’t know the sex for sure, but for some reason I felt like it was a boy, hell I lowkey needed it to be a he considering I didn’t know a damn thing about pigtails and didn’t want to learn. Plus, I felt bad if I had a daughter. I witnessed first-hand how Cartier was with his sister. Last week he was talking about cutting her off because she said she had a man, this week they were beefing because she had pushed back her visit weekend. It wasn’t hard to peep that baby girl had a guy and was doing that thing we all did. You know spending all the time in the day with him. Us females did that shit all the time, especially the young ones. Anyway, I wasn’t up for subjecting a baby girl to his overprotective ass antics. I could only imagine what my daughter would go through.

“Still can’t see shit, but you are thick as a snicker baby mama.” Cartier walked in the bedroom eyes glued to my booty.

“Thank you.” I cackled before reaching for my dress.

“Anytime. I thought you had lunch with Vee today.”

“I did, but I wasn’t really feeling well, and I got up late. I’ll hang out with her at some point. I need to get to the studio and look over the plans for one of my events.” I shook my head just thinking about one of the situations I had going on.

He nodded. “What got you irritated?”

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