Selfish

21.) Try Me

Christopher Maurice Brown ◇

I wander the halls of the dance studio that Crystal's always at until I finally reach a door that has the letters C. Sutton engraved in it.

I pull the door open and stumble inside and my eyes go wide at the sight I'm seeing.

Crystal's dancing on a guy in perfect sync with the music playing loudly from the speakers in the room causing me to frown.

The fuck is she doing? I know she was expecting me so why is there another nigga in here and why is she all up on him like that?

A load of questions flood into my mind as I try to come up with a reasonable explanation for her to be all up on this dude, but not long after I started considering the possibilities I thought to myself why am I searching for an excuse for my girl to be all up on someone else?

"Yo!" I shout catching both of their attention.

They come to a stop finally acknowledging my presence and Crystal smiles at me and casually says, "Oh hey Chris. You're early," as if everything's all good. As if she wasn't just grinding on some guy and I just witnessed it happening.

I don't respond to her immediately. Instead I mug the shit out of her and watch as she turns the music off and says to the guy, "That's exactly how I want it to be Destin! We'll probably teach it to the others in the next few days alright? We might just have to have a re-run of it to perfect it, but I think it's great."

"Aight," he responds and picks up his duffle bag with a bottle of water in his hand. "I guess I'll see you then." He walks towards the door and gives me a head nod that I don't return then leaves the room.

Crystal's now unplugging cords and picking her things up so I think it's the right time to ask her what the fuck was that.

"The fuck was that?" I bark.

She furrows her eyebrows at me and asks, "What?"

"What?" I mock her. "Don't tell me you think what just was going on with that nigga was nothing. In case you didn't know shit like that goes down with me and you not you and all the niggas in this mother fucking century."

"I'm doing my job Chris," she replies defensively.

"So apart of your job is bumping and grinding?" I bicker sort of harshly. "Ion think so."

"Don't be petty," Crystal sighs and makes a face at me. "C'mon Chris as a dancer you know sometimes you're gonna have to get close to people!"

I suck my teeth at her excuse. "And as a man I know no dude wants to see or even think about his woman grinding on someone else! What the fuck Crystal?" I spat back.

She's not about to use the excuse that she's a dancer to get out of dancing on him like that. That wasn't cool and I'm not about to just take that lightly.

I can tell that I'm annoying her because it's evident on her face, but she doesn't get smart with me.

"Chris I'm choreographing with him. Just now we were coming up with a routine for an upcoming video production that we're working on together and my ideas and his ideas just came to life. Apart of my job is working with people, dancing with people, and pretty much being hands on," she explains calmly. "If you can't deal with that I don't know what to tell you."

That's when it dawns on me that she's actually right. I'm still not comfortable with it, but I knew she was a choreographer and this is something that I should have expected. "Oh... Oh yeah," I mutter lowly. "My bad baby."

"It's fine. Just know it's a part of my job so you'll have to get used to it okay?" She looks me in my eyes. "But I get it. You've been cheated on and you don't want it to happen again. I understand, it's okay."