One Night Only (Complete)

treat them better

“Your trash ass ex,” Erik points to you, “Had to be him. He the type of bitch to pull this shit.”

After twenty minutes of nonstop calls, you decided to switch your phone off. Anyone wanting to reach you could wait or contact Erik.

“If it is him I’m a kill him for real,” he threatens.

“You killed him for fake?” Anaya chuckles quietly at her own white dad joke, but what she doesn’t know is that he’s serious. You only know because of that night at the McDonald’s when he told you about his scars.. and then the look on his face when you pointed out Armont’s car at your apartment. It was as though Kill Bill sirens sounded. He looked then like he could kill and you’d had to calm him down. All you told Anaya about Erik’s latent rage was that Erik beat Armont’s ass and you never heard from him again.

“I don’t know who did it, but I think I should change my number,” you grunt trying your legs again and this time you stand. You feel like an old person, but you just gotta walk it off.

“I’ll go upstairs and do it now, then we can go,” you tell Anaya who walks to the stairs with you, helping you along.

“I gotta check on my baby anyway. He was knocked out upstairs, butt all in the air.”

“It was that flight y'all took. Did he cry?”

“No he had his snacks and then he slept a lot of the time. I thought he’d cry because of his ears, but the ibuprofen worked.”

“Ibuprofen?” She done drugged the baby.

“Yeah about thirty minutes before the flight for ear pain.”

The baby is still sleep. That’s gonna be a headache to deal with later, he’s gonna wanna stay up through the night if he sleeps through the day. You find a number you saved for an impromptu nanny. Not too impromptu, you knew you’d need one and you’d already set things up for the week. This woman was on standby. When you call, she answers enthusiastically on the second ring. You waste no time getting to the point of the call.

“Hey Raven, it’s Y/N. Are you available to babysit right now?”

“Right now? Yeah! How long?”

“About three to four hours.”

“Yeah, definitely!”

“Great, I’ll send a car for you now.”

When you hang up you see the small smile pulling at Anaya’s lips.

“…What..”

“I’ll send a car for you,” she mocks with a grin and you push her out of the room before either of you wake the baby. Then you find your laptop and go to AT&T to start the process of changing your number.

—

With radio pop blasting from the speakers, you sang to the top of your lungs with Anaya during the entire half hour out to Beverly Hills. Fittingly, Beverly Hills by Weezer was in the rotation which earned more yelling. Anaya appeared to be transfixed with the tall palm trees. It didn’t look like this in DC. There was a lot of neoclassical architecture in DC.. grey slate and tall buildings, but tall trees? Nah.