Destined

58.

"Do you ever worry about the future?" Dj asks me after moments of silence. We had spent the last 20 minutes walking around her neighborhood admiring it. She realized it was more to it than she thought.

"Nah," I tell her.

"I do. I worry that one day we'll separate, and after we do it will be permanent,"

Worry flashes on her face, but I squeezed her hand in reassurance. "That won't happen, I promise you it won't. No matter what happens I'll never leave you,"

"You know I won't either Jayon but things happen. Remember what I told you about life hitting hard, especially it hitting hard on people like us,"

"People like us?"

"We're black. Don't you know life's harder for us?"

"Our skin color has nothing to do with how our life's should turn out Dj, I can't believe you'd even say something like that,"

"You wouldn't understand what I mean Jayon, you're mixed,"

"That doesn't mean shit," I say. She was saying ridiculous things. She had never brought up the fact of me being mixed in our whole time of knowing each other. Did she really think we weren't equal because of my ethnicity?

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that," she told me quietly. "That wasn't fair at all,"

"At the end of the day, I'm a male and you're a female, but that's the only difference either of us have among eachother. Not the color of our skin, plus you aren't that much darker than me anyway," I grinned. She had such odd paranoia.

"Whatever," she says, showing me a smile.

I looked at her braids, stroking my hand through them. "When are you gonna take these out?" I asked. They were beautiful but I was tired of seeing them on her, especially when she wore them the same way every day.

"When I want them out," she told me.

"Oookay," I roll my eyes. "But honestly though Dj I can't imagine me having a child. I didn't wanna talk about how I really felt about it, but what you said about it earlier really has me thinking,"

"If you did have one, would you stick around to raise it?" She asks me.

"Not if you don't want me too," I answer honestly.

"Jayon, seriously?"

"What?"

"If I didn't want you to take care of something YOU created, something YOU caused, you wouldn't help raise it?"

"No because I love you Dj, I don't love her and I never did, it's fucked up how bad this situation would really be, because the mother already loves me and if we had a baby..."

"That's not the point. A child NEEDS their father, you out of all people should know that, we both know that,"

"Fuck Dj, okay," I raise my voice. I didn't need to hear from her, from anybody that a child needed their father because I already knew that.

"I just don't want you to think abandoning a child is okay because it isn't. I understand we're together and you feel like you should be committed to me at all times but I want you to be committed to me in the right ways,"

"Yeah, yeah," I say. She really was the most intelligent female I had ever meant. She knew what she wanted for herself, that's why she expected so much from me.

"I hope you're hearing me," she says.

We spot a bench to sit on, staring at each other for awhile with our hands still intertwined. She starts caressing the side of my face slowly.