Went and found a man, but I'm hoping you're alone now.
BEYONCÉ
My head didn't stop spinning from the moment I walked away from them.
I was in complete shock. My heart dropped at the news and never went back to normal.
After I left Onika and her newly revealed baby daddy, I went back up to the section but I was in no mood to party anymore.
My mind was racing a mile a minute. I couldn't stop thinking about the times she could've mentioned having a kid, and why she didn't. We spent hours together catching up and a child never came up once.
The music was now too loud and the lights were annoying, I was getting overstimulated and ready to go.
I sat down surrounded by drunk people who were having a great time and grabbed a water bottle so I could sober up more to eventually drive back to my hotel from Drakes house once we got there.
My eyes didn't leave the stairs waiting for Onika to come back up them until I felt someone's hand on my shoulder. I looked up and saw Drake standing over me with a blunt between his lips. "You good? Why are you sitting here looking as sad? Where's your girl?"
"I'm good." I kept it short because I didn't have it in me to say much else. Especially not while we were still in the club.
"Alright, well let me know if you need anything." He caught the hint and walked away from me.
The longer Onika was gone, the more I started to overthinking. What could she still be doing with him? Did she leave with him?
It felt like at least half an hour before she came upstairs, long after her friends did. I didn't know what to do, so I just stayed still as she walked over to me while avoiding eye contact. I'd never seen her so bashful in my life. She barely even looked at me until she was right in front of me. "Can we talk?"
"Uh, yeah." Despite everything I was feeling, confusion was the main emotion and the only way I could get any questions answered way by talking to her. "We can go talk in the sprinter, the driver always stays and waits."
I got up and we very awkwardly made our way out of the club. The feeling was something I never experiences with her, even after I confessed my feelings for her, we never had a moment that felt as awkward.
The quietness and wind from outside instantly relieved my nerves a little bit. It was exactly what I needed.
I had to ask the driver of the sprinter to open it for us but we eventually got inside and sat with an awkward silence. The difference in her couldn't go unnoticed by me, she seemed drained just from being around that man for half an hour.
She sighed before finally breaking the awkward silence. "I should've told you earlier, and I'm sorry you had to find out this way."
"How come you didn't?" I spoke calmly because I had no reason not to be.
"Honestly, when I meet people outside of mom-related things I hold off for a little bit and then things kind of changed when you confessed your feelings for me. I didn't expect things to turn out the way they have between us and I started to get a little scared."
I raised an eyebrow. "Scared for what?"
"I know you said you liked me, but I wasn't sure if you actually liked me or just the idea of who I used to be when we were in high school and telling you about my son would definitely reveal that. Maybe I wasn't ready or maybe I didn't expect myself liking you so- I don't know. I just felt like I couldn't and then it started feeling like too much time passed."
I was caught off guard by her admitting her feelings for me. Even though I was picking up signs, I didn't think I would be hearing that from her for a very long time.
I couldn't help but wonder when it was going to come up, if ever. "I guess I can understand that even though I still wish you would've told me. Are you and Nas still..." I didn't want to outwardly ask, but the way he was acting had me wondering if they were still together in one way or another.
"No, not in the slightest." She quickly shook her head and laughed at the idea. "I'd never be with him again and I haven't been with him since before my sons first birthday, he just has a control problem and I haven't really been with anybody since him so he was throwing a tantrum. He's a big drama queen."
"How old is your baby?"
"He's not much of a baby, he's five now." She hesitated before speaking. "We call him Junior."
I couldn't help my shocked reaction, and my eyes widened. She named the baby after him? "Damn?"
"...Yeah. I was only nineteen so my frontal lobe wasn't all the way developed. I didn't even want to have a baby but like I said, he likes to be in control. My son is the biggest blessing I could've ever asked for but that was an insanely traumatizing song. Nas wouldn't even be in my life if we didn't have a kid, but that was what he wanted all along."
"Him telling at you like that is crazy, regardless." I didn't even want to leave her with him in the first place, but after she told me who he was to her I really had no choice."
"He gets like that, and I learned to stop entertaining the madness but I guess that's part of the reason why I left him all those years ago. That and he's not really a good man, or smart, or ambitious either." She chuckled, "Let me stop because I could go all night. But moral of the story, I'm sorry you had to find out about it in such a dramatic way. I hope this doesn't have to change things too much."
I didn't respond for a minute because I needed to get my thoughts together. I didn't even know what to think.
"This is a lot of information to take in and I need to sit with it before I give a definitive answer or say the wrong thing." I wasn't exactly ready to be a stepmother and I didn't know the first thing about being around kids.
She ran her hand through her hair and let out a deep breath. "This is exactly what I didn't want to happen."
"Look." I put my arm around her because it felt right. We were just damn near about to kiss in the club, an arm around her wasn't much. "It's not like I'm about to leave here and never text you again, I just need to get my thoughts together. I like you- the current version of you, and I want to be jumping for joy that the feelings are reciprocated, but a kid is a lot and you have to understand that."
"Okay." She smiled. "I was trying not to like you because I didn't think I was ready to like anybody, but you make it hard not to like you."
I looked away so she couldn't see that I was smiling too. "Well I'm glad I wasn't being delusional about everything. I think we should put a pin in this for now and talk about it when we're good and sober."
"Yeah, I agree because my head is still spinning right now."
I laughed, "Alright. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to go."
"Yeah, I'm not really in the mood to party after the last couple hours. Let me call my friends and see if they're ready to go."
I sat there and waited while she called her friends and they were all do drunk that it took a while even to ask a simple question. They said they wanted to stay to contuse to part and they were grown so Onika could leave without them. They definitely thought we were leaving to go have sex based off what I could hear.
I called us both an Uber back to Drakes house and then I dropped her off at home myself because I felt completely sober. There was still a lot of tension but our conversation relieved a lot of it so the car ride wasn't as bad as the walk to the sprinter.
This time, I was the one kissing her on the cheek before she left. The ball was in my court now.
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Bey?
Onika?
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