Addicted to You

by Porscha Sterling

  Fuck, I thought as I straightened my clothes and ran my hand over my face in distress.

  The shit was bad. And I halfway thought that was how Tami wanted it. She knew what she was doing when she came there with Tamiyah in the car, telling me that she was done being a mother. She could have told me that shit at home, but she’d wanted to cause a scene and she did. Maybe exposing herself as an addict hadn’t been part of her plan but the headlines in the morning about us having a public fight definitely was. The video would hit the blogs soon and, by morning, I would be the leading story. I would be the monster and Tami would have all the sympathy she wanted from the public as the victim.

  “Are you okay?” one of the drunk white guys asked. He held his hand out to help her up.

  “No, I hurt everywhere,” Tami cried.

  Disgusted, I watched as she put on a show for her pity-party.

  “I don’t know why he hates me. I only want to be a good mother. I want my daughter to love me.”

  A chorus of “awws” erupted from the crowd. Before I was able to slip through the door to my shop, I glanced at Tami and saw an evil smirk form on her lips. She was playing and I’d allowed her to win.

  On God, I really hated that fake-ass celebrity shit.

  17

  Sage

  * * *

  Somehow, and I wasn’t quite sure when, I was able to fall asleep after the craziness that Tami had caused when she showed up at Official Ink. But I wasn’t able to do it until after spending hours scrolling through the comment section under all of the viral video posts of Ink and Tami’s fight. Interestingly enough, most people sided with him, although he appeared to be the more aggressive one. Tami’s party life and antics in public weren’t as reported about as the fight but that didn’t mean people didn’t know about it. Public opinion was that she deserved what Ink did to her.

  The following day, I was swamped to my eyeballs in financial reports I’d been told that only I could go over. That part, I was skeptical about. Charles, the board member who had brought the paperwork over to me, was the one who had told me that I needed to sign off on their accuracy. There was no way that I was going to sign off on something I hadn’t thoroughly reviewed—which I was sure he knew—so it was likely that my entire day would be spent tending to it.

  “They are hazing you,” Sherelle said as she walked into my office. She pointed her eyes to the pile of papers on my desk.

  “The financial reports are checked nearly a million times before they leave the finance department. There is no way an error is in there. I’ve never seen the board ever check over that paperwork once it comes in. They lied to you.”

  I nodded. “Maybe. But I don’t trust them to not have put something wrong in here to catch me being lazy. Especially Charles.” I rolled my eyes. “He hates me.”

  “He does not!”

  I gave her a pointed look and her shoulders dropped.

  “Okay. Maybe he does…” she replied and then sat down in the chair on the opposite side of my desk. “Let me help you. As an executive assistant, I have a background in accounting, so I’ll put it to use.”

  Placing the document I’d been scrutinizing flat on my desk, I looked up at her. I was truly thankful for Sherelle; I normally didn’t gel well with people that I didn’t know but we had clicked from the beginning. She was always looking out for me.

  “Why are you so great?” I asked with sincerity.

  She smiled. “For one, I’ve been happy as hell since the day I found out that you—a young, Black diva like me—was coming here to sit at the head of the table and run shit! There is no way that I’m going to let them old-ass white people, and I say that in the nicest way, bring you down. You can always count on me to dish it to you straight and help you when you need it.”

  That warmed my heart in ways that I couldn’t even begin to explain so I returned her smile. There weren’t many people in my life, outside of Lola, who openly protected me. Even my own father didn’t do that.

  By the time we were almost finished going through everything, we had ordered and eaten lunch, dinner, and a late-night snack. It was a little after midnight when I decided to put my foot down and send Sherelle home. As I’d expected, she fought back some but gave in when I promised her that I would pack it up shortly after.

  I was lying. As much as I hated to admit it, I didn’t want to go home yet. Ink hadn’t called or texted me all day and the only thing that stopped me from thinking about it was the fact that I was so busy. For the first time since he’d started taking me to lunch, he didn’t show, and I had a million questions in my head as to why.

  About thirty minutes after she left, I had swapped up my playlist and was tapping my foot to the beat of a hot new hit by Megan Thee Stallion when my office phone began to ring. With my eyes never leaving the document in my hand, I put the receiver to my ear.

  “Sherelle, I promise that I am about to leave in a few minutes. I’m almost done.”

  “This is not Sherelle. Why the hell are you still at work and why haven’t you been answering your phone?”

  I frowned and placed the papers down on my desk. “Lola? What’s wrong? I thought you and Kale were getting ready to catch a flight.”

  “That’s what I have been trying to tell you all day! I’ve been calling your cell and your office line, but you weren’t answering either one.”

  I’d complete forgotten that I’d forwarded my office line to voicemail. The only reason Lola was getting through now was because all forwarding settings reset after midnight.

  “My phone is on silent and I’m still here because I’ve been swimming in paperwork all day. What’s going on?”

  “Tami’s dumb ass is what’s going on. Do you know that bitch showed up here three hours ago, high as fuck, asking Kale for drugs? And she had Tamiyah!”

  “What?”

  I was positive I hadn’t heard her right. There was no way that Ink would have left his daughter with Tami so soon after their fight. He was serious about never letting her see Tamiyah again, even though I’d repeatedly told him that he couldn’t say things like that. I’d grown up without a mother and, in many ways, I felt like it ruined my life.

  “According to Tami, the daycare called her to pick up Tamiyah because Ink never showed up and that’s why she had her. We didn’t even know that she was there because she left her in the car to wait while she was begging Kale to give her drugs. She said Ink had cut off all her cards and she didn’t have any money.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes! I heard the whole thing, even though Kale went outside to talk to her; you know I was eavesdropping. We have been trying to call Ink but he’s still not answering and we have to catch a flight in a couple of hours. Have you heard anything from him?”

  A lump formed in my throat. This wasn’t like him at all. There was no way he would disappear and leave his daughter hanging unless something had happened to him.

  “No, I—I haven’t,” I said, scrolling through my missed calls. None were from Ink; however, someone had called me multiple times from a blocked number.

  “Have you checked the hospitals? Or the jail website?” I asked suddenly.

  “Yes, the hospitals but... no, I didn’t even think about jail. Why would he be locked up?”

  “I don’t know.” I sighed. “But the only time I’ve ever had this many blocked calls in my phone was the time you got arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct that one time. Hold on, I’m looking now.”

  I was already online searching for myself. The craziest thing was that I was actually hoping that he was in jail. At least then I would know he was alive. The only thing that would keep him from his daughter was if he physically couldn’t get to her. My heart dropped when I found nothing. After even searching state-wide, there still was nothing about Ink.

  I went to my missed calls again and then decided to check my voicemail while Lola talked on and on about how much she couldn’t stand Tami and how much of a terrible mothe
r she was. There were two visual voicemails available from the blocked line. I clicked on the first one that was left and read through it as fast as I could.

  “He’s at the jail,” I said finally.

  “What? So he was locked up?”

  “No, he said he’s in a holding cell, but he hasn’t been charged with anything. They picked him up after he got in a fight with... someone. I’ll have to listen to the message to hear exactly what he said.”

  “Damn, that’s crazy.” Lola sighed. “Well, let me get off the phone so I can let Kale know. I need to see if we can push back our flight.”

  “No... you don’t have to do that.” I paused for a few moments to think. “I can keep Tamiyah until Ink can pick her up.”

  “Are you sure about that? What do you know about taking care of a child?”

  I rolled my eyes. “About as much as you do. Besides, Ink was calling me to ask if I could watch her anyway so I’m sure he doesn’t mind.”

  “Thank God! Because I really didn’t want to have to push back my flight for somebody else’s brat. I’m so ready to go!”

  “Lola!”

  “What? Girl, you know I ain’t got no kids and that’s for a reason. I’m selfish, shit!”

  Tamiyah was the cutest little girl in the world. Though named after Tami, she only remotely looked like her. With spirals of honey-brown hair dancing around her head and milk chocolate skin, she was an absolute dream.

  When I picked her up from Kale’s, she was already asleep. The next morning, I woke up to her standing by my bed, staring at me so hard that I’d opened my eyes after feeling like I wasn’t alone. Once she saw that I was awake, her inquisition began immediately.

  “Where are we and where is my daddy and Uncle Kale?”

  Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I sat up, yawned wide and stretched my arms up to the sky.

  “Your Uncle Kale had a flight to catch so he asked me to watch you until your daddy is able to pick you up from here. And we are in my apartment.”

  “This is an apartment?” she asked with her hands up as if she were shocked. “But it’s so big!”

  I laughed. She was so cute. “Yes, it’s pretty big but it’s technically still an apartment. Having a house requires too much maintenance but I still need allllll the space.”

  “Wellllll...” She jumped up and joined me on the bed. “What are we going to do today until my daddy comes?”

  That was a good question. Since we weren’t at Ink’s house, I didn’t have anything around to entertain a child.

  “How about I paint your nails and...” I looked around. “And we can play in my makeup, if you want.”

  Those were obviously the magic words because her face lit up like a lightbulb.

  “Yes!”

  She stood to her feet and began jumping up and down on the bed with all the energy of a five-year-old child at eight o’clock in the morning. On the other hand, I didn’t function at full potential without a shower and at least one cup of coffee.

  “First, I’m going to make you a bowl of cereal so you can eat and watch T.V. while I take a shower and then we will get started.”

  She cocked her head to the side and gave me a sideways look.

  “What kind of cereal?”

  Another good question. I was a health nut and didn’t have anything that any normal kid would eat.

  “Uh… how about waffles instead?”

  “Deal!” She squealed and commenced to jumping once again. Laughing, I slid from under the sheets and grabbed my robe to pull it on.

  “I want one, too!” she said and then tumbled off my bed to help herself to a pink silk robe that I had lying on the end of the bed.

  Once she’d secured it around her small, short frame, she took off in a Beyoncé-style strut towards the door.

  Shaking my head, I laughed a little to myself and then followed behind her. The little girl was a whole trip.

  It was a rainy, wet and all-out miserable day in Atlanta but Tamiyah made it a beautiful day for me. Most kids annoyed me because they demanded a lot and I valued time to myself but she wasn’t like that. I truly enjoyed her company and, though only five, she handled herself like she was much older. It was crazy how I could actually have conversations with her. In the end, I felt like I could pat myself on the back. I had absolutely no experience with handling a child but so far, so good.

  “My daddy hates my mommy.”

  Okay, maybe I had spoken too soon.

  Looking into Tamiyah’s pretty face and peering into her sad eyes, I balled up my nose and shook my head.

  “I don’t think that’s true. Why would you say that?”

  She paused to stop coloring and scrunched up her face to look up at the ceiling. “Well… my mommy told me that. She said he didn’t want her to be around anymore.”

  Hmm, I couldn’t say that I was sad to hear it.

  “Does that make you sad?” I asked, picking up a crayon of my own. With it in hand, I began to color in the image on the other side of the book. As a child, I had a therapist who used to color with me when she wanted me to talk and open up to her about my feelings. I had become withdrawn and my father thought it had something to do with me not having a mother in my life.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered, as if she knew it was wrong to speak truthfully. “But I know my daddy is only sad when mommy’s around. He doesn’t think I know it because he tries to fake it, but I know his sad face.”

  “What does his sad face look like?” I asked, trying to find a way to change the subject. “Let’s see how good an actress you are.”

  Still holding her crayon, she lifted her head and gave me her best impression of a ‘sad Ink.’ It was so cute; I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “And what does your sad face look like?”

  She was so pretty, like one of the dolls that I would pretend were my babies when I was a little girl. Only someone as evil as Tami would abandon that child. I would’ve jumped in with both feet at the opportunity to be her mother.

  “This is my sad face.”

  She made a pitiful puppy dog face with her bottom lip poked out and I laughed even harder. She joined in and then happily asked me to make my sad face. I used my pointer fingers to pull the ends of my eyes down and pushed my lips out as if I were crying. She thought it was hilarious and erupted with giggles.

  After completing our picture, we were about to go on to the next when there was a knock on the front door. I had an idea who it was. Though Ink hadn’t called back, I’d left a message for him letting him know that I had Tamiyah and gave him my address.

  “Is that Daddy?” Tamiyah asked, observing the expression on my face.

  I nodded. “I think so. Stay here.”

  At the door, I checked the peephole and the first thing I noticed were Ink’s slumped shoulders and sunken eyes. He seemed completely depleted of energy, devastated about whatever had gone on since the last time I’d seen him. It tugged at my heartstrings.

  The only thing I wanted to do was figure out how to make him feel better.

  18

  Sage

  * * *

  “Thanks again for this.”

  I looked up from a magazine that I’d been flipping through in time to see Ink emerge from the hall leading to the spare bedroom that I’d made up for Tamiyah to sleep in. After he’d gotten in, I made him a shower, washed his clothes and then started dinner since it was almost that time. After we finished eating, we watched a movie together and Tamiyah fell asleep in his arms. He didn’t seem ready to leave and I didn’t want him to, so I offered up my place for another night and told him that he could leave in the morning.

  “Don’t mention it,” I said, sitting up on the sofa. “I’m happy that I was able to help… and that you trusted me enough to let me.”

  Letting out a breath, Ink sat on the other end from me and pressed his elbow on the arm of it before running his forefinger across his perfectly trimmed goatee.

  “I trust you more than y
ou know. It may sound crazy, being that we haven’t known each other all that long but…”

  He let his words hang in the air and then shrugged to complete his thought. It didn’t matter that he didn’t finish; I understood what he was saying.

  “I’ve never been able to click with anyone this way either. I don’t know, it just feels right. Like fate.”

  Nervous, I pressed my feet down into the shag rug and then teetered back and forth from the tips of my toes to the balls of my feet. For some reason, I couldn’t look Ink in the eyes.

  Turning to me, he lifted his brows. “You believe in fate?”

  That was a no-brainer for me. “I do. Not in totality but when it comes to the grand scheme of things, I do. I definitely think that certain parts of our lives are meant to be, but we have free will in how we get there. Some people take the easy road and some take the hard road but, in the end, we get where we are supposed to be.”

  There was something so boyishly attractive about the way that Ink looked at me in that moment, like my logic fascinated him.

  “You’re perfect,” he said then. “My mind was totally fucked up when I got here but you have a way of making a nigga feel like new.”

  My body responded to him and I swallowed hard, feeling my nipples harden through the thin material of my shirt. It was late, the candles I’d lit in the living room were setting the mood and I hadn’t had sex in God knew how long. I was horny as hell and the sexy way that his hooded eyes drooped lustfully as he stared into mine said that if I pushed the issue, he was game.

  “I have other ways of making you feel like new.”

  The connection between us was so strong, it was clear that we were made for each other. Without words, our eyes spoke to each other, our bodies yearned to be together. We had chemistry on a different level from anything I’d ever experienced before.