Page 4 of Only if You Catch Me
Before I got too deep off in my thinking, I had to check myself. It didn’t matter why she was with that man. It wasn’t any of my business. I couldn’t hate on him for bagging her, and if she liked it, I loved it. The blunt made its’ way back around to me, and I found myself watching Persia rather than throwing money. David whispered in her ear, and I studied her body language. In my opinion, the chemistry wasn’t there. Nah, she wasn’t attracted to that man. If they were in the strip club together, I doubted she was a prude. He should have been all on her getting that pussy hot while the dancers put on a show for her. Who came to the strip club with their significant other to be boring? If she was mine, I would have been tonguing her down while a stripper gave her a lap dance or something.
Seeing my fine ass lady with a half-naked baddie gyrating on her would have me harder than Chinese arithmetic. Maybe I was staring too damn hard because Persia tore her gaze away from the stripper that was sauntering by, and her orbs darted over her surroundings. When her gaze landed on me, my eyes narrowed as I pulled from the blunt I was holding. We had a brief stare off before she directed her attention back to her nigga. Whatever he was saying must not have been interesting at all.
Persia was holding my attention more than the strippers in her sleeveless, crème catsuit. Everything aside from her arms were covered, and she had me salivating over her like she wasn’t directly beside her husband. Finally, I tore my eyes away from her and passed the blunt to Ryder. Regardless of whether or not I felt David was a lame, I was big on respect. Persia was hiswife, and I would have a problem with a man openly eye fucking mine. The word pussy could never be used to describe me, but I was gon’ respect David because in my opinion that was what a real man did. Still, there had to be a reason I kept running into shorty.
Doll came over with a sexy smile on her face and began putting on a show for me. She was one of those semi-lazy strippers that felt because she had a pretty face, she didn’t have to do much. In a sense, she was right. I didn’t give a damn if a stripper stood on her head, did back flips, or if she simply stood in front of me and made her cheeks clap. If she was fine with a nice body and didn’t have body odor, she could get my ones.
Just because I was tipping, I never took that to mean I could touch the dancers in a sexual manner. Doll and I were cool, and we’d been intimate before, so that was the only reason I smacked her ass as she did a slow wind in front of me. Out of my peripheral, I saw figures approaching, and I looked up and saw David and Persia. Persia was a few feet behind him and looked apprehensive about coming over. David on the other hand extended his palm.
“What up, Kastian? I got a shipment coming in next week. Holla at me.”
“If I need you, I know how to get up with you,” I responded to him while watching the movement of Doll’s ass.
“I know. I’m just saying, I got some good shit in this shipment, and I know it’s going to go fa”
When I turned toward him, his words halted. David stopped talking as my jaw muscles flexed. I didn’t come to the club to talk business. He only got the courtesy of me politely declining once. I despised an annoying ass nigga that didn’t know how to catch hints. I wanted to relax not talk about guns in a setting where you could barely be heard without shouting.
“I got you. Just keep me in mind, man.”
David turned to leave. When he placed his hand on the small of Persia’s back and led her back to the spot they’d been standing in, I could have sworn my body temperature rose. There was no way I was perturbed by a man touching his own wife. I didn’t even know Persia. She was attractive, but so were plenty other women. Maybe I was so into her because she was off limits, and niggas liked playing with fire. That had to be it.
By the time the second song ended, I was high, tipsy, and Doll had taken the rest of the money that I had left, so that was her cue to head to another area of the club. As the sweeper collected her money, she leaned over with her breasts in my face and spoke into my ear. “I’m leaving in like an hour. It’ll take me another hour to get home and freshen up. I’ll be waiting for you.”
I eyed her breasts hungrily. “That’s what I like to hear. I’ll let you know when I’m on the way.”
“What did David want?” Ryder asked once Doll was gone.
“Telling me he has a shipment coming in next week, like I don’t know how to get in touch with him if I need some shit.”
“How the hell did he bag that?”
As if I didn’t know what his wife looked like, I followed Ryder’s line of vision and saw Persia throwing ones on Doll as Doll twerked on her. David’s lame ass just stood back watching. “Nigga definitely don’t know what to do with that,” I mumbled.
“You good? I’m about to run out to my car and get some head from Chyna before the club closes. If I make it in right after the club closes, Tesha will be less likely to accuse me of cheating.”
I shook my head while reaching for my cup. “You niggas don’t have the sense God gave you.”
“Aye,” Ryder shrugged. I’ve been with Tesha for three years, and I’ve only cheated a handful of times. You fuck the same female for three years and then you can side eye me. I’ve known you for fifteen years, and you’ve never even had a girlfriend.”
“Because I wasn’t ready to be faithful. You should have taken notes.”
Ryder’s shoulders hiked into another passive shrug. “I’ll stop cheating soon. I love my shorty. I just gotta get it all out of my system before we get married.”
I gave a curt nod and directed my attention back to my surroundings. Doll wasn’t off just yet, but I was about to take another shot and head out. I had shooters spread out around the club and once I left, one of the lil’ homies would follow me to make sure I was good, but I still didn’t like to be out getting too fucked up. I had a lot of money, a lot of jewelry, and expensive cars. I also had the status that a lot of niggas wanted. It was inevitable for someone to eventually try me, so I had to be on point at all times even when I was supposed to be relaxing. But it was the life I chose, and I had to deal with it. Since I decided not to keep trying to get Toya pregnant, it was back to the drawing board. In the meantime, I was about to go knock the lining out of Doll’s pussy.
CHAPTER 3
Persia
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes as I sat down at my mother’s dinner table. She tried three different weekends to get me over for dinner before I agreed. I loved my mother because she was my mother, but I couldn’t take her and her antics on a regular basis. She was annoying and selfish as hell which made being around her torture. We weren’t close at all. My sister Tina was three years younger than me, and she felt the same way about our mother as I did. In fact, we made a pact that if one of us agreed to dinner the other had to come. Having to face our mother alone was something neither of us had the desire to do.
It had been a month since I last saw my mother and two weeks since I last spoke to her. I knew she’d ask questions about my job, David, and our home life not because she cared, but because she wanted to make sure I wasn’t messing things up. In her eyes David was a great catch, and she couldn’t understand why I wasn’t at least on baby number two. Children would mean child support if we ever got divorced. Everything was about money. God forbid I actually had children out of love.
Tina sighed as she sat down beside me, and it was crazy the amount of prayer and mental preparation we had to do just to get through dinner with the woman that gave birth to us. Sheila was 5’7 with rich, dark brown skin, cognac-colored eyes, and thick, curly hair that she mostly kept pulled back into a bun. She’d picked up some weight over the years, but she was probably no bigger than a size ten. Our mother used to make it a point to keep her nails and hair done. She was rarely ever caught outside the house without makeup on, and she would spend her last on an outfit and some shoes. Over the past two or three years, she stopped wearing as much makeup, and she rarely got her hair professionally done anymore.
Maybe as she got older, attempting to trap a man wasn’t as important to her as it had been in her younger years. I didn’t think she was as obsessed with finding a man and getting married as she was when she was younger. My mother had even tried her hand with white men. Nothing seemed to work out for her. After she bowed her head to say grace, Tina and I followed suit. The moment she said amen, her head lifted, and she looked at me with hiked brows.
“Why didn’t you bring David? I haven’t seen him since New Year’s. You two are good aren’t you?”
