The 80s

Movin' On Up

"I wasn't alone all those late nights. I-... I came to you filthy every single day. I lied, I cheated. I led you on but Jasmyn I...I'm just..I love you so much. I can't do this to you anymore."

I was crying harder than I ever have in my life, I was honestly four minutes from a heart-attack. I saw him reach for me through my tears, but I snatched away furiously.
"How could you!"

He looked at me speechless... drained.

"Answer me!" Here he was having the nerve to look at me like a toy he broke on accident. "Prince...." I wheezed. "You never loved me."

"I always did and....I always will but I-"

"That's not how you treat people you love! For years Prince, you lived a lie... you let all this happen to us. And I forgave you time and time again but this time-" I gripped my chest again as a mother wave of pain set in. I felt my heart literally breaking as sudden realizations set in.
"I forced you to say it that's what it was...this is all my fault."

"Jasmyn if there are any questions you have i'm willing to answer them." he said, reaching out to me.

"Keep your hands off me!" I demanded, snatching my hands back

"Ok ok.." he sighed, resting his hands back on his side of the table. "No more secrets, no more lies. I want it all out in the open."

My brain was fried, nothing could've prepared me for this. I really didn't know what I wanted to know or if I even wanted to know anything. I just tried to focus on my breathing and keeping it stable.

"Who..." I wiped my eyes, complete disregarding my makeup. "How many?"

He shook his head, staring off into space. "God... too many to count."

I nodded, biting my lip and tasting my salty tears and the bitterness of my lipstick.

"Wow... after all the years I devoted to you... years! Years that I'll never get back you know " my voice was straining from all the pain.

"Princess I-"

"Don't you fucking Princess me" I threw my wine glass across the room as he ducked his head in shame as if he already prepared himself for this reaction. "Don't you Princess me. I drove myself off the fucking edge for you, and I wasn't even the only one."

He shurgged, teary eyed and lost for words. "It's my nature.... would you love me if I was anything but what I am?"

My hand started shaking. "Your nature?...."  I felt my jaw start to loosen and years of frustration start to build inside of me.

"You kicked me out the house, so you could finish talking to Vanity, after us being together all night."

"I needed sometime to think"

"I fucked you in your studio booth, while I was breaking up with Michael, like an idiot." I cringed feeing disgusted with myself. I've never sat right with that one. Michael deserved a lot of things for the way things went down between us but that wasn't one of them.

"Wait a sec-"

"I got on a plane and come to Detroit to surprise YOU for your birthday and come to find out you have a fucking fiancé that you were hiding from me."

"I never meant to-"

"I hated you for what you did to me at that show Prince."

"I wasn't trying to hurt you-"

"I hated you!" I repeated, so those words could sink in his brain. "But then you took me out that one night and told me you love me and I thought about how hard that must have been for you. And I thought, this this is what a man looks like. This is how a man loves." I sniffled, trying to make my word audible through my sudden cycle of crying. "But you not telling me where you were going and sneaking out before sunrise, in the middle of the night, without even saying goodbye , that is not being a man, Prince....."