Her sons hadn’t stepped a foot out of line the day Mario died. They had spent the day walking around the town and seeing friends, and unfortunately, a gang member walked past them in the street the second a rival car passed. The gun was stuck out of the window and shot aimlessly, Mario didn’t stand a chance.
Later, Monique had found out that a bullet had hit Mario straight through the lung, causing it to puncture. He fought to breathe and eventually collapsed, most likely dying before he reached the house. Being the only adult in his life, Monique had to identify his lifeless body. That image haunted her for nights on end, and she stopped sleeping. Initially, she just wanted to sleep, so she got some pills from a friend, but she enjoyed the drowsy feeling and soon she wanted something more, something to lift her mood when she didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning. She still had three other children to feed and she needed to work, so she kept dabbling until she tried heroin, and the rest was history. At first she didn’t like the idea of sticking herself with a needle, so she got a friend to help her out, but once she was a true fiend, she didn’t care anymore, all she wanted was that feeling back.
Dee remembered seeing a change in her mother, it was almost instant. She stopped being the loud mouth mother she was used to, and she would sit around the house miserably, hardly speaking, just drinking and smoking endlessly, trapped in her own thoughts. No-one spoke about Mario very much, and Dee felt like he never existed at times. She never even spoke to her own brother about it, because she knew he was finding it hard to cope with, and she didn’t want to upset him. Kiki was only three at the time, and she never spoke about him either. She mentioned him maybe once or twice after his death but by then, she’d practically forgotten about him. Dee couldn’t blame her, after all, she was so young, but in a way she was mad at her for forgetting him – that was their brother. No-one ever spoke about their feelings, and they never cried in front of each other, it was an unwritten rule. Today, Dee still never cried in front of people. She saw it as an embarrassing thing, something to keep to yourself, and she’d never seen her family cry since that day either. It was just the way they were.
As she carried her precious boy home and put him to bed, she thought about everything that had taken place over the last few days. The fact that J had hurt her sister, the fact he no longer had a home to go to, the fact that her sister had gotten pregnant when she still had her life ahead of her. Dee thought about Jason and the baby and the lifestyle she had allowed herself to get involved with. She didn’t want her private life aired for anybody to see, and the fact she’d already seen magazines talking about Jason’s pregnant stripper was unsettling. What if those reporters soon found out other things, like her turbulent relationship with Trey, her drug dealing, her brother’s stint in prison, or her dead brother? She wanted none of it to be public knowledge, it was her family’s right to privacy and she may have ruined it all for a man. While she felt angry towards Jason for it, she also wanted nothing more than to call him and hear his voice.
Chapter 32 – Proposition
When Jason picked up the phone, Dee reacted differently to what she thought she would. While she planned to just speak to him calmly and casually ask if he wanted to come over, instead she found herself emotional.
“Hey, what happened? Is everything ok?” Jason asked, a concerned tone to his voice. That was when Dee remembered she’d hung up on him to punch J and she hadn’t called him back. It was now 11pm and though it was late, Dee could tell he was wide awake.
“I’ve had a really bad night” Dee answered, finding her voice cracking in between her sentence.
“Are you crying?” Jason asked, sounding more concerned than before.
“No” she said, though her voice gave it away that she wasn’t far from it.
“What happened?”
“I had a fight with J and my mom so I took Tushaun out of bed to bring him home”
“Is Tushaun okay?”
“Yeah, he’s asleep”
“Do you want me to come over?” he asked, and while Dee would usually play it off and tell a guy no, she knew Jason was different. He would never hold this against her, she could tell he’d never bring it up in an argument ‘that time she needed him’ or any bullshit that others could. She did want him to come over, so she said she did, and with that, Jason ended the call and told her he’d be straight over.
Dee found herself pacing around the room as she waited for Jason to arrive. Every few minutes she would look out of the window to see if she could see a car’s headlights, but she’d pull herself away again and continue pacing. She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t just sit down and relax but her mind was in overdrive, and she was ready to have a conversation, something she was going over in her head. After a while, Dee pulled herself away from the window and decided to make them a drink. Seeing the half empty bottle of Patron in the cupboard, she wished she could pour herself one but instead she poured herself a herbal tea, knowing it was good for her. She poured Jason one too, and finally, she sat down at the sofa. A few minutes later there was a quiet knock at the door, which was difficult to do on her hollow door, so Dee knew Jason must have been aware of not waking Tushaun up. As soon as she closed the door behind him he took one look at her and she made her way into his arms. It felt good to not say anything for a minute and just take in his warm body. His muscular frame felt firm and comforting against her and for a moment she closed her eyes and just took in the feeling, forgetting everything for just a moment.
“What happened?” Jason asked, following Dee to sit down on the sofa where she told him about the tea she’d made. Dee sighed, trying to think how to start.
“Basically after you called I got pissed and confronted J about what you said, but, I kinda punched him first”
“Dee” Jason scolded, sounding like a disapproving parent almost.
“You tol’ me he hurt my sister so I defended her”
“So what happened?” Jason asked, ignoring the fact he didn’t agree with her aggression.
“We fought, and then mom made us go outside to sort it out. But while we was outside she phoned J’s mom and tol’ her everything. So his bitch mom fucking kicked him out and now he got nowhere to go.”
“Shit” Jason muttered. “What’s he gonna do?”
“Well he’s gonna live at my mom’s, she don’t really have any other choice, and it was her fucking fault telling his psycho mom anyway”
“Is his mom really that bad?”
Dee rolled her eyes dramatically.
“You have no idea” she told him. “She well known round here”
“Shit Dee, I feel so bad” Jason sighed, rubbing his face.
“Why?”
“If I hadn’t told you, you wouldn’t have acted like that and then your mom wouldn’t have made the call. It’s all just escalated.”
”So you’re basically saying it’s my fault” Dee repeated, and Jason blinked once looking at her, wondering if he’d heard her right.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re saying it’s my fault” she repeated.
“How did I say that?”
“If I hadn’t reacted like that. That’s what you just said.”
“No. I said it’s my fault for telling you like that.”
“Which made me act like that, and it escalated from there”
Suddenly the lip pout was on Dee’s face and Jason paced himself. He’d seen the look before, and nothing good had ever come from it.
“You don’t need to fucking sugar coat it, I know what you’re saying. I can’t be trusted to act normal when you tell me something. You think I’m fucking aggressive or some shit.”
“Dee. I never said that”
“You implied it”
“Well, I don’t think I did” He told her, his brow furrowed in confusion. He found it extremely confusing how she could twist his words to make him feel like he’d said something completely different, and it was quite scary in a way. If she could do it with
this serious conversation, what else could she twist.
Jason sipped his tea awkwardly, hoping she would restart the conversation, because at the moment he didn’t want to say anything else to her that she would deem out of turn. It was moments like these he felt he didn’t know this woman at all. She was a completely different person to the fun, interesting woman he’d started to date. She had an angry side, a side he felt he didn’t know and couldn’t predict. He didn’t know where that side of her came from, but he just wanted to understand the woman he was falling in love with. In all fairness, he’d been saying he was ‘falling in love’ with her for a while now, and he was starting to believe he was actually in love with her, though so far they hadn’t reached that stage in their relationship and he didn’t want to scare her off. They still had a lot to learn about each other and a lot of details to figure out.
“So why’d you take Tushaun?” Jason finally piped up, deciding Dee’s silence was probably there to stay.
“He heard me and mom arguing and I just didn’t want him there in that atmosphere”
“Is he okay though?”
“Yeah, he was just tired. I felt horrible having to pull him outta bed and put his coat on and everything, carrying him round in the cold in his PJs”
“He should live with you” Jason said, verbalising his thoughts.
“I know that, but it was too hard. I can’t pay bills and feed and clothe him. I don’t know what to do”
At that moment, Dee put her hand into her hands, rubbing her forehead, and Jason could see the stress she was feeling over everything. He could see how much she loved her son and how bad she felt for not living with him, how bad she felt over her actions with J. Jason never agreed with violence or aggression, but he couldn’t say anything to Dee about it. She obviously had a reason for the way she was and he wasn’t in her head. Seeing her slumped into her hands, he thought about what he’d been up to that day, why he didn’t call her back until the evening, and how he never had a chance to tell her what he’d been up to because the guilt of Kiki’s situation had made him go for that conversation first.
He knew there was never going to be an easy way to introduce the idea to her, because he already knew that she had a stubborn nature. She didn’t take orders or suggestions from anyone else, she was her own boss and she did things her own way. If she said no, it probably meant no, and he knew he was going to have a challenge on his hands, however, if he wanted things to go his way he knew it might take time to convince her. Though she’d had a bad night, and he could tell she was stressed enough already, he decided to just come out with it. He figured her mood couldn’t get any worse to what it already was.
“I know what you can do” he told her, and she looked up from her slump, her eyes looking intrigued as she waited for him to speak again.
“Move into the house I bought”
“What?” she said instantly, before her brain had chance to think about it properly. Suddenly, Jason realised she may think he meant with him, and he thought that could be pretty creepy to her, considering it was so soon in their relationship. Plus, it wasn’t what he meant at all.
“I don’t mean with me” he explained. “I mean with Tushaun.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked again, her brow furrowing as she looked at him.
“I bought you a house, to live in with Tushaun. It’s in Detroit, and it’s yours.”
This time, Dee frowned even harder. Jason knew she must have heard him right, but maybe she just couldn’t get her head around it. “Again, what are you talking about?” she asked.
Jason smiled slightly.
“So, I suggested this to you ages ago, back when we were baby shopping, and you told me no, but, I want things to work out for you. I want Tushaun to come live with you, he’s a great kid, and he deserves to be with his mom. You’re gonna need more space when the baby arrives and I need somewhere to come visit you. Without sounding conceited, I’m famous, so, there’s only so long we can keep hiding out at your place before someone finds out this is where I am all the time. When the baby gets here, people are gonna want to catch a glimpse, sell photos, be up in our business. I just want to protect our family, and there’s more security at the other house, it’s safer.”
Jason couldn’t lie that he was surprised when Dee sat and listened through his whole speech, and even more so when she continued sitting silently after he’d finished, creating a little bit of an awkward silence. Awkward for him, considering he couldn’t gage her reaction. After a little while of looking at him, she finally spoke.
“You’ve really thought it through haven’t you?”
“Yeah, I have”
“Do you really think people are gonna be up in our business with the baby?”
“Dee, I wouldn’t lie about stuff like this. Those people can be animals, and I just don’t want you to get caught up in that. Who knows what kind of crazies will find out, they might start knocking on your door, trying to get in, you just don’t know.”
“Is it close?” she asked, and Jason frowned this time.
“Is what close?” he asked.
“The house. Is it close to here, coz I don’t wanna move away from everyone.”
“It’s real close, but it’s safe.”
Dee nodded.
“Is that a yes?” Jason asked. “Are you gonna move in?”
“I don’t know” she said, and Jason sighed.
“What’s there to not know?”
“It’s weird, like, somebody buying you a house. You ain’t just bought me a purse, it’s a house.” She emphasised, causing Jason to chuckle.
“I know what it is, but it’s important. It’s more important than a purse”
“I just don’t know” she said again, looking mentally distressed by the situation.
“You look tired” Jason observed, and Dee nodded.
“I am. It’s been a long night.”
“Tell you what. Let’s go get some sleep, and we’ll talk about it again tomorrow.”
Dee agreed, and the two of them made their way up the stairs to her bedroom, Jason following behind.
Chapter 33 – Maybe
Jason meant business when he’d asked Dee to move in to the new house. The next day, after much discussion, he’d convinced her that’s what they were doing, and even as they were packing up her stuff days later, she still deliberated whether they were doing the right thing, though he constantly reassured her and never let her change her mind. Dee told all her family and friends what Jason was ‘making her do’ and they were all happy for her, some of her girlfriends even telling her they were jealous she’d found a man to take her out the streets and look after her. Dee couldn’t help but feel a fool, like some woman caught up in a stupid love story or a gold digger that only wanted him for what he could buy her. Though he’d bought her the biggest gift of all, a house, as well as baby essentials, he’d never turned up with anything materialistic, such as some shoes or a purse. She knew it wasn’t through wanting, but because he knew how she’d handle it. She didn’t like the idea of people buying her things, she felt guilty, as if she didn’t deserve it, that they shouldn’t spend their money on her.
Dee had been to see the house before they started moving things in, and she couldn’t deny it was absolutely beautiful. It was like a show room house that she’d see on the TV or in one of those fancy magazines, and she couldn’t believe it was now hers to live in. She felt guilty again thinking how much it must have cost, and the fact it was already furnished saved a lot of work. As she looked at the beautiful sofas, she knew she no longer needed hers, but Jason insisted he would find a good home for them. Dee was starting to realise that though he had a ridiculous amount of money and fame, he had a kind heart. He didn’t throw money away, and rather than getting rid of the unwanted items from Dee’s home, he drove them all to charity that could use them, and she loved that side of him.
Outside of Dee’s new home at the front gate was an intercom system t
hat people had to press to get through to her. It meant no one could turn up on the doorstep unannounced, which was a lot safer than having random people knocking at all hours, something she was used to in the hood. Now she was in her new house, she was close enough to home that she could walk or drive around whenever she wanted, but she was also further away from trouble. She was excited to get her license back so she could drive around whenever and wherever she liked, making the convenience easier than having a long walk, especially now it was getting cold outside. It took a good few days to get everything moved into her new place, but once it was all done, Dee couldn’t believe it was finally hers. She gave her landlord notice she was moving out, but gave him the keys back straight away. Jason said he would pay the next month’s rent for her due to the short notice, and everything was sorted. She finally had a home of her own, and her son was living with her.
Monique was sad to see Tushaun move out of her house permanently. Though she complained about having to raise her grandkids, she’d grown used to having him around, and really, he was never any trouble. He was a good boy, and she was proud of her grandson immensely. Dee told her mother she’d still bring him round most days to see her, something that Tushaun wanted too. He was extremely close to his nana, and she’d been like a second mom to him, so he was happy to visit her all the time. Most of Dee’s friends drove; Tip did, Shaneeka did, Keisha did, and Jenai’s boyfriend did, so they were happy to come round and see her new digs, they couldn’t believe it almost as much as Dee did.
They’d moved into their new home in time for Tushaun’s 3rd birthday, which meant calling everyone who’d already received an invitation and changing the address, but Dee was excited to christen the house with such a perfect event. Jason had even done some groundwork with his family, and organised for their visit to fall the day before Tushaun’s party so his mom could set out baking a cake and some food for the kids. Dee not only had a room for herself, one for Tushaun, and another for the baby, she also had two other spare rooms in the house, so she’d made them into guest rooms, meaning Joy and Paul could stay over at hers and be involved with the party too. Joy went shopping the minute she arrived in Detroit, and bought all sorts of ingredients to cook with. She made herself at home in Dee’s kitchen, and even gave her some tips and got her to help out with the baking. For Dee, it was the first time she’d ever helped bake a cake, as her mother had never done anything like that growing up. She felt comfortable with Joy, and enjoyed her company. While the women baked, Jason and Paul relaxed in front of the TV.
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