Selfish ~ Trevor Jackson

Meet The Parents

"Mom," Trevor said, "This is my girlfriend, Rihanna Mayers." She looked over at me with a small, forced smile and put her hand out to shake. I hugged her instead. No matter how much it pained me to hug someone I didn't know, I embraced her just to make her change whatever negativity she had about me.

"You can call me Deanna actually. 'Rihanna' is my stage name," I grinned.

She genuinely smiled then, "Hello, Deanna. I'm Cam Baxter, but you can call me Ms. Baxter."

Trevor motioned me to the older, chocolate skinned woman next to Ms. Baxter and introduced me to her too. I said Hello and she nearly jumped into my arms for a hug. I chuckled aloud at her suddenness. She quickly let me know how old school she was.

Trevor's grandma was beautiful for her age, her skin was beautiful and she had this gorgeous head of long silver hair. There was no hint of distress anywhere on her face, and I was lost in admiration for a moment.

She told me to call her Nana, which was fine with me. I never had a close relationship with my own Nana, so when she told me that I could call her such a term I knew that something inside of me clicked in the moment she uttered the nickname.

"This is my daughter, Leanni," I said pulling her from behind me. She held onto her teddy bear and scrubbed her eyes as she approached Nana and Ms. Baxter. They coo-ed and melted at her as they shook her small hand and hugged her little body.

The bruises were going away now. I could see a faint one on her arm and I prayed that neither of them would ask about it. It was still sensitive, needless to say.

"I just baked some cookies, would you like some, Leanni?" Nana asked. Lee Lee nodded her head and took Nana's wrinkled hand and followed her inside.

We followed behind her, Ms. Baxter telling me how cute she was. I thanked her and I stepped foot into the small home, I was hit with a shocker. It smelled of chocolate chip cookies, but it was bone chillingly quiet. I expected the house to be filled with family members and people getting up and hugging me and telling me funny jokes that would embarrass Trevor, but it was barren.

However, I could tell that it was at some point filled with laughs and long conversations. Every area of the old home had pictures of Trevor and his brothers. I smiled when I saw them and urged to touch their warm fronts to see if I could imagine being there myself.

There was a really, really old brown couch covered with plastic in front of a television. A red recliner sat against the wall that separated a dark, narrow hallway and the bright, open kitchen. In the very corner near the window was a floor lamp and a table layered with pictures, just like the ones scattered around the area.

"You wanna see my room?" Trevor asked. I looked up at him and nodded my head the same way Leanni did when she heard that there was cookies. He pulled me along and that was when I realized that his hand was locked with mine the entire time and I hadn't noticed.

He flicked the light on and took me to the door at the very end of the hallway. There was two other doors before his and a part of me wished that I had gotten a hotel. If there were only two bedrooms in the whole house and five of us, how on Earth was this going to work?

I stepped inside the room and the light flicked on. I twirled in a circle trying to inspect every inch of the room. It reminded me of mine before I left Brooklyn.

White walls with every centimeter of it covered with posters of bands, singers, rappers, and entertainers. A small television in the corner with a really old Xbox game system and one or two games along with them. Only difference was there was one other bed in the room.