Dancing on Achilles Heels BxB (Staten Krown)

13

I get back to the house. Prissy is sitting in the living room. My aunts are giving her that look. They are giving her that judgmental look. It's just a matter of seconds before they start talking shit about how stupid she is right to her face as though they knew something that everyone else didn't.

Luckily, I beat them to the punch.
"Can I talk to her alone?"
I watch how my aunts react. Their faces swelling up with irritation. All except Priscilla. I look at Priscilla and she just seems devastated.

"Come on," Aunt Priscilla tells the others.
I watch as they leave. They get up and walk out of the room going out to the porch to the hot summer weather to probably smoke and drink the 40s and talk shit with the other neighborhood ladies. I pull up a chair and sit next to Prissy. My cousin was always loud to the point where she blocked out everyone else's voices. Now it was different though. Now she was completely quiet. It was as though she had just realized for the first time ever that there were other people that mattered besides her.

"He told me he loved me," she whispers across the table.

A part of me is upset with her. She knew that money was mine when she took her ass out of town with my father. Now that she was pregnant he sent her back home on the first thing smoking while he was probably out with some other young dumb pretty girl. I can't be mad at her right now. She was getting enough of that from the other women in our family.
"Of course he did."

It's sad that I think so low of my own father but none of this surprises me. Not anymore. I felt bad for Prissy. I push my chair closer to her. She starts crying almost immediately, throwing her hair on my shoulder and almost pissing out of her eyes. It's so damn much. I don't mind though.
"What do I do?" she asks.
"It's your choice. It's your body," I explain to her, "Don't let them push you into making any decision that you don't want to make. But if you do have this baby...please. Don't let him raise it. I'm speaking from experience here."
"My mom would kill me if I had this baby."
"It's not her choice," I respond, "Listen I get more then you know..."
"How the fuck could you possibly get it?" Prissy asks.
"Love is a weakness. It's like you have a deck of cards and there's one that is bent and broken. And so you build up this house of cards. And whatever direction you build it in you feel like you are going somewhere, but there is that one bent and broken card at the bottom. It's too late to remove it so you are just hoping that it all doesn't come crashing down.
"I know you, Desta. You and my brother are out there fucking girls not caring. It means nothing to you guys. You've never been in love. I thought I had someone who loved me. Someone who was going to take me out of the Bottom."

"Prissy, I'm not fucking girls. I'm gay. And I think I do know what love is. I do know what weakness is..."
Prissy looks at me with shock. I don't think she's had any idea. It always blows my mind when people don't have an idea. Her brother did have a different girl every other day. I had a lot of girls hit on me and I think Prissy probably thought I was having sex with those girls but I wasn't.
Telling her about my sexuality hits her hard. But then she does something that I don't expect especially from someone in the Harsh family.
She smiles.

"You support me. I support you. I don't know what the fuck the last generation of this family has been doing..." she tells me, "But moving forward that ends here."
It means the most to know that I have that support. I hug Prissy. I hug her and we talk. We laugh. We joke. We sit in that kitchen for what seems like forever and honestly in her darkest moment it seems like we've found a light.

And that light leads us right to each other.
She heads to sleep and I walk outside to see my Aunts. They are still on the porch, still talking. I know why they really brought me here. They wanted to talk me to talk Prissy out of having the baby. For some reason, they felt like I could do it.