run of the mill.

19th

Shawn shook his head and looked at the bed Beyonce lay on trying to have the child he helped create. He touched his forehead and tried to remember how he even got to this point. He could vaguely remember leaving his damn house to find her. He remembered calling his mother though. That was gruesome. 

"She did what?" Debra said into the phone with serious shock in her voice. Shawn didn't bother to respond to that question because he knew that his mother had in fact heard him. Shawn decided to just skip over that whole little surprised question and get to the real reason why he had called her in the first place. 

"Momma have you heard from her?" Shawn asked a little impatiently as he paced back and forward in their, his room. He tossed the ring from hand to hand.

"No Shawn, why would she call me? When did she leave?"

Shawn gnawed at his bottom lip, not wanting to admit that he had been ignoring her so long he didn't know. He hadn't been in town for almost two weeks. "I-I don't know," he mumbled.

"You don't know."

"I-I haven't been here momma."

Shawn flinched at the way she didn't say anything for a second. He was sure that he had fucked up. She was, as everyone called her when she wasn't around, the silent killer. "She's pregnant Shawn. With your baby." Her voice was harsh, and he felt the scolding down to his bone. "And you don't know when she left you?"

"Momma," he said. "I have stuff to take care of, things to do. My career-."

"Fuck your career," she seethed again. Shawn stopped pacing at the use of the foul language. That was not like his mother. She never cursed. She might have gotten a little loud once or twice but she never used obscenities. "Your career," she said, her voice belittling it like it was nothing. She huffed. "Shawn I am so disappointed in you... I thought so highly of you when you found out that girl was pregnant and you stuck around. I knew for sure that I had raised a strong black man."

Shawn sat on his bed, gnawing more at his lip with his head down as though his mother was there, standing over him as she spoke. "But..." she didn't finish it but Shawn knew what she was going to say. She was going to say that he wasn't the strong black man she thought he was. She was going to say that he might have been able to drag men down the field on his back but he was still weak. He was still a child living a grown man's life. He wasn't ready for everything he had attempted to give himself. He wasn't ready for a family and a marriage and a household and all the things he thought he was.

And he had stupidly dragged that girl along. Made her fall in love with him so that she would do anything he said. If Shawn asked Beyonce to jump off a bridge, Debra was almost positive she would. Just for him. And how did he repay her for dragging her away from everything? He partied all night and flew to God knows where for the hell of it and skipped doctor's appointments to make special guest appearances. No this was not the man she'd raised at all. She did not know who this man was. 

"Fix it," she said in a final tone. "Shawn fix it or I swear..."

"Momma," he replied in a little voice. "I'm trying."

"Try harder Corey!" She screamed suddenly. "Damnit, how could you be so selfish!? The man I raised was not a selfish brat!"

"Momma-."

"Shut up!" Debra breathed like a bull into the phone angrily. "Fix it now."

And she hung up the phone.

Shawn looked at his phone and lay back on the bed. He looked up at the ceiling and wondered how the fuck he got so wrapped up in the world that he didn't notice that the one around him was crumpling. How had he gotten so caught up that he didn't realize what he was doing to the woman he loved. She loved him so much. Beyonce did for him so many times she dedicated herself to him in ways she didn't have to more than once. And she never asked for anything. She never maxed out a card or splurged on his dime. She was perfect for him and he had taken advantage of that.