This Could Be Us But You Playin'

by Cachet

  “How you doing, Peanut,” Desmond spoke while staring NiChia up and down. The jean shorts she wore showed off her thick thighs, and her small breast spilled out of the top of her low-cut shirt. There was no doubt that he liked what he saw.

  “I’m good, but you can call me NiChia,” she replied, giving Dominique the side eye for passing on her childhood name to the handsome stranger.

  “Damn, it’s like that?” Desmond asked with his face twisted up. He didn’t know ole’ girl, but she was starting to rub him the wrong way already. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand, that was a stuck up bitch. She was fine, but having a fucked up attitude would make her unattractive as hell.

  “Nah, it’s not like that. It’s just that’s my childhood name, and I’m not really too fond of that now,” she replied, glancing at Dominique once again.

  “A’ight, cool. I understand.” Desmond felt better knowing that she just wasn’t stuck up like he thought.

  “I’m Kaleb, by the way,” Kaleb spoke up when he noticed that he wasn’t going to be introduced.

  “Kaleb?” Why does that name sound so familiar? NiChia thought to herself. “Kaleb…wait, you’re not thee Kaleb, are you?”

  “Yeah, I guess. It depends on which Kaleb you’re referring to,” he said with a chuckle.

  “Humph, I’ve been wanting to kick yo’ ass for the longest.” NiChai told honestly.

  Kaleb thought that she was joking, but when he noticed the evil look that she was throwing his way, he knew that she wasn’t. Not wanting to mess things up even before they started, he glanced towards Dominique, cleared his throat, and said, “I have a section up there. You both can come up if you want.” He paused and looked down at Dominique. “It’s a lot less crowded up there,” he added.

  Dominique thought about it for a minute before she responded, “Nah, we good.”

  “Are you sure?” Kaleb asked in a smooth tone but inside, he was panicking. When Dominique nodded, he turned his attention towards NiChia. He hoped that she would be more obliged to come up and sit with them. “Tell your sister that she can come up. I promise I won’t bother her,” he said in a pleading tone.

  “We’re going to have to pass homie,” NiChia told him with an evil eye. Although she wanted to fuck Kaleb up, she was still dying to go. Of course she wouldn’t tell him that. “It’s about time for us to leave anyway. It was nice meeting you Desmond.” She smiled.

  Kaleb watched in defeat as NiChia grabbed Dominique’s hand and together, they made their way to the exit. Right before they disappeared through the crowd, Kaleb had an idea. If Dominique thought she was going to get away from him that easy, she was sadly mistaken.

  

  “Hello?” Dominique answered the phone groggily.

  “Good afternoon beautiful.” She heard on the other end.

  It took a minute before she realized who it was. This brought a bright smile to her face.

  “Who is this?” she asked, just to mess with him.

  “It’s Kaleb, is this a bad time?”

  Dominique stretched her arms high above her head and glanced towards the alarm clock. When she saw that it was a little after one in the afternoon, she rolled over to see if DJ was still asleep. The side of the bed that he’d slept on was empty, which let her know that either NiChia or her grandmother had already come in to get him.

  “Nah, it’s cool. I needed to get up anyway,” she told him, sitting up in the bed. “Wait, how in the hell did you get my number?”

  Kaleb chuckled lightly before he replied, “I have my ways.”

  “Is that right? Well, what can I help you with Mr. King?”

  “Mr. King huh? Alright, I’ll let you have that. Anyways, I know you have your thing going with your man and all, and I don’t want to disrupt that,” he lied. Kaleb wanted nothing more than to break up their union, so that he could slip in and take over what was his in the first place. “I guess I just really want to talk.”

  “About what?” Dominique questioned.

  She stood up and walked over to the window and looked out. From where she stood, she could see NiChia in the front yard chasing DJ around. He stumbled trying to get away, while she pretended as if she couldn’t catch him. Dominique could tell that they were both having a blast, and she was glad that she decided to go ahead and visit because it had been a while.

  “Just talk. I know that things ended pretty badly between us, and I just want to clear the air.” When Dominique didn’t answer right away, he did something that he hadn’t done since they were teenagers. He begged. “Please, Nikki. All I want is an hour of your time. If afterwards you decide that you don’t want to hear from me again, I promise I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Kaleb,” Dominique exhaled.

  As much as she wanted to play the hard role, she knew that she did really want to see him. Part of her just wanted to be in his presence, while the other part of her wanted to at least hear what he had to say for himself. She never got any closure after their breakup because she stopped talking to him. She had made Shanice swear that she would never bring it up again because the details were something that she didn’t think she could stomach. Now that Dominique was grown, she was prepared to hear him out, no matter how painful it may have seemed.

  “Okay, where you do want me to meet you?” When Kaleb heard her say that, he got happy as hell because he knew that it was his chance.

  

  A half hour later, Dominique was pulling up the destination. When she saw Kaleb standing outside with a goofy grin painted on his face, she couldn’t help but smile. He was just so handsome. She killed her engine, reached over, and grabbed her bag, before she stepped out of the car and walked over to where he stood.

  “What made you pick this place?” she asked, when she was standing in front of him.

  “I like their Italian Ices, and I think you will too,” Kaleb responded. “Plus, there’s a park across the street, and I figured we could sit on the bench and talk.”

  Dominique shrugged her shoulders and followed behind Kaleb as they both entered the place called Rita’s Italian Ice. It took a few minutes for Dominique to figure out what she wanted, so she allowed Kaleb to pick for her, and she went with the Green Apple Ice. Once they got their order, together they walked across the street and took a seat on one of the nearby benches. The two sat in silence for a few minutes, each caught up with their own thoughts. When five more minutes passed, Dominique started to wonder if Kaleb was going to speak up. She was giving him a chance to talk to her, yet he wasn’t doing that. Meanwhile, Kaleb sat there soaking up the fact that she had actually agreed to come, so he was happy just to be around her. As he sat there scooping up his Italian Ice, he was also stuck trying to figure out exactly where he should start. There was so much that he wanted to tell her, but he knew that he didn’t have much time. Dominique’s presence also made him nervous, and he didn’t want to say something to run her off because he wasn’t sure if he would get another chance to speak to her.

  “You never told me how you got my number.” Dominique said, turning to look at him.

  Kaleb laughed nervously, “I know someone who works at Sprint. I gave them your name, and told them to look you up. He couldn’t find you, so I asked a few other people. Turns out, you got Verizon.”

  “Boy!” She laughed as she pushed him. “You are so damn crazy.”

  Although Dominique didn’t say it out loud, she was flattered to know that he went through all that to find her number. After sharing a laugh, they went back to the quiet. This last for a few more minutes before she couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Kaleb,” Dominique started, finally breaking the silence once again, “didn’t you say that you wanted to talk?”

  “Yeah…I did.”

  “You haven’t said a word since we’ve been sitting here. What’s the problem?”

  Kaleb cleared his throat. “I want to first start off by saying thank you for meeting me. I also want to say that
I’m extremely sorry for everything that went down back then. I never wanted to hurt you—” he began.

  “It’s okay. I’m not even tripping over that anymore,” Dominique lied, cutting him off. She refused to let him know that she was still hurting behind it years later. “That was the past, and I’ve moved on, Kaleb. You should too.”

  “I know that you’ve moved on,” he responded, hating to admit that she actually had. “It’s just that I can’t. I have to tell you this, so please…please just let me finish.” When Dominique nodded her head to let him know that she would, Kaleb continued. “The day that we had that argument in my room, I was out of line and I knew it. I never meant for what I said to come out that way. I guess it just slipped. Then when you walked out, I figured that we both just needed time to calm down, and that is why I didn’t chase after you, even though I really wanted to. You and I both know that you probably would have tried to fight me, as mad as you were.” Kaleb chuckled, lightening the mood.

  “Hell yeah.” Dominique laughed along with him.

  “Anyway, I ended up calling you that night to try to apologize, but Tiffany picked up and told me that you weren’t there. I figured you told her to tell me that, and you were still mad.”

  “No, that wasn’t the case,” Dominique explained, “I actually wasn’t there. I had spent the night at my grandmother’s that night. “I didn’t see Tiffany until the next day, but some crazy shit happened, and I guess it slipped her mind,” she said, not mentioning the fact that the ‘crazy shit’ was her mother swinging on her grandmother and her beating her mother’s ass behind it.

  “Well, that explains it,” Kaleb realized. “All this time I thought that you were still mad at me. I figured I would just see you at the party and explain everything then. Truthfully, that’s the only reason why I went in the first place. I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Humph,” was all that Dominique could come up with. Looking back on things, she wished that she would have made it to the party. Maybe things would have turned out differently.

  “Of course, you know I ended up going to the party. Crazy thing is that shit didn’t turn out the way that I thought they would. I planned to talk to you and we’d go back to the way things were. Instead, shit got fucked up.”

  Dominique thought about just how fucked up things had turned and soon after, her stomach started to feel queasy. With her appetite now gone, she dropped the plastic spoon into her cup and sat back on the bench. She really wanted to tell Kaleb not to talk about what had happened that night, but remembered that she’d promise to let him finish his story, so that was what she was going to let him do. All of Dominique’s attention was now on Kaleb. She watched as he took a deep breath and started to tell her about the chain of events that led to him breaking her heart.

  “When Des and I got there that night, I went around asking everybody if they had seen you, but no one had. I figured you were running late, so I decided to sit on the couch in the living room and wait for you to show up. I had been sitting there for close to two hours when Shanice came over and sat beside me. I asked her if you had come with her, and she told me that she hadn’t heard from you that day, but that you were probably on your way.” Dominique looked over at Kaleb curiously. When he noticed she stared at her the same way before, he asked her, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I was just thinking about the fact that I’d called Shanice earlier that day, so she already knew that I wasn’t coming to the party. I even told her to tell you that I would call you later once the party was over,” Dominique explained, still wondering why her best friend hadn’t given him her message like she claimed she had.

  “I swear she never told me that. If she had, I would have taken my ass home right then. I told you I was only there because I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Wow, that’s crazy.”

  “I know.” He didn’t really speak on it, but finding out that information had Kaleb mad as hell. Had Shanice told him that Dominique wasn’t coming, things could have, no scratch that, would have turned out much differently. “Anyway, we talked for a few more minutes about school and other bullshit, before she disappeared and came back with a drink for the two of us. I took the drink, she left, and I drunk it while continuing to wait on you to show up. Maybe an half hour later, I realized that you weren’t coming. I figured your mother more than likely said no and because we hadn’t talked the day before, you didn’t get a chance to let me know. By then, I was ready to go. I got up to go use the bathroom because I was going to let Des know that I was leaving afterwards. As I walked up the stairs, I started to get dizzy. By the time I got to the top of the stairs, somehow, I slipped right outside of the bathroom and fell on the floor.” Kaleb shook his head.

  “Now, I know that I’m not the type to drink a person under the table, but I know for a fact that I’m not a lightweight drinker either. There is no way in hell that one drink, no matter what kind of liquor it was, would put me on my ass like that.” Without saying anything, Dominique agreed with Kaleb. In the two years that she had known him, he had had his share of alcoholic drinks and never had she seen him so messed up that he’d fallen. “Well, out of nowhere, I heard somebody ask me if I was okay. When I looked up to see who it was, I saw a girl standing there. Before I even got a chance to say anything, she walked over to where I was lying, helped me up, and together, we stumbled into the bathroom.”

  “So, you didn’t know who this chick was?” Dominique asked because she remembered that Kaleb and the girl that he had cheated with had been talking prior to the act.

  “No, I didn’t,” he answered. Dominique gave him a look that said that she thought that he was lying. “I swear to God, Nikki. I didn’t know who that chick was,” Kaleb proclaimed.

  “Alright, go head,” she urged him to continue.

  “Well, I was so confused by what was going on that when she sat me down on the closed toilet seat, all I could do was sit there. I guess I was trying to get my bearings together. I never got the chance to though because she walked over toward me and started to unbutton my jeans. I remember smacking her hands away a few times, but she just kept at it. Before I knew it, she had taken my dick out and put it in her mouth.” Kaleb looked up at Dominique with regret written all over his face. “I was so drowsy and fucked up, I could barely keep my eyes open. I swear, all I wanted to do was go to sleep. It was as if I was drugged or some shit. As she continued to do her thing, I just closed my eyes and allowed my body to drift into the rest that I so desperately wanted.”

  “Than what happened?” Dominique asked, even though she really didn’t want to hear it.

  “Honestly, I don’t know. When I woke up, Des was standing over me, smacking me in the face and yelling my name.” Kaleb looked up at the sky. “The next thing I remember is waking up at home. When I talked to Des, he told me that I had fucked up and everybody knew about it. I still don’t really know what happened that night,” he told her truthfully. “Like I told you before, I didn’t even know who the fuck that girl was. I had never laid eyes on her before that day, so why in the hell would she be sucking my dick in the bathroom at a party?”

  “I don’t know Kaleb.”

  Kaleb sat his cup down by his feet and turned to Dominique. “I swear to God, I didn’t intentionally cheat on you. You gotta believe me,” he pleaded, taking her hands into his. When he saw the doubt on her face, he spoke again, “I know it’s been years since it happened, but why would I lie now?” Dominique wiped away the tears that had fallen from her eyes with the back of her hand. She hated that he still had that effect on her. “If I could take it all back, I would. You gotta believe me when I say that I’d give up everything I have to make things right with you.”

  “It’s too late Kaleb,” Dominique whispered.

  “It’s never too late to start over,” Kaleb rebutted. He wasn’t going to let her get away that easy. “Just tell me that you forgive me and that we can move on and be friends.”

  Dominique nodded h
er head and Kaleb smiled, happy that she was at least giving him a chance. They talked a bit more about what had gone on since they’d been apart. When he told her about Kendall dying, Dominique was heartbroken. She felt so bad for Kaleb because she knew how much he loved his little brother. Tears poured down both of their faces when Kaleb explained just how it tore his mother up. Kendra lost it when her baby boy died. She was so messed up that she had to be taken away from the funeral home in an ambulance because she had literally passed out. Dominique’s heart ached when she saw Kaleb in that much pain. When she pulled him in to hug him, they kissed, and even though they broke it quickly, they both felt the surge of electricity that they felt from each other’s tongue. Neither of them knew it, but that was just the beginning.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “What you got planned to do today?” Deondre asked from the bathroom.

  “I don’t know. I was thinking of going shopping for a few things and getting my nails done,” Dominique replied, stretching her arms high above her head. “Other than that, I ain’t got shit on my agenda.”

  Stepping out of the bathroom, Deondre stood in the door with a towel wrapped around his waist. “What you think about getting married in the next month or so?” he questioned, catching Dominique off guard.

  “What?” Although she had heard him correctly, she had to make sure of exactly what he was saying.

  Deondre laughed nervously. “You know damn well you heard me girl.”

  “Yeah, I did. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t tripping.”

  “You ain’t.”

  Dominique looked at him strangely, before she sat up in the bed and asked, “Why do you want to get married early, all of a sudden?”

  “Damn, can’t I just want to get married before I leave for training camp?”

  Dominique looked across the room at him. “I’m not going anywhere. So, if that’s what you’re worried about, you can rest easy,” she assured him.