What's Your Name?

Chapter 5: Can We Just Talk?

I pretended last night never happened. I erased it from my memory and pushed it aside. I wanted to forget.

So when I woke up curled up next to Pimmit as if I was a cat, I got up as if he wasn't there. Sure, I might've hit him in the balls a couple of times, and almost stepped on his windpipe trying to step on the bed, but it be like that sometimes.

When he finally realized the game I was playing, he decided to treat me as if I was his first girlfriend. Holding open doors, shying away from conversations, and even going as far as to place his hand on my thigh a couple times for the rest of the drive. And when we finally reached the city that never sleeps, I found myself marveling at the city around me. The bright lights that begged for your attention each way, the bustling streets filled with people, and the way Pimmit held my hand—

"Why are you holding my hand?" Pimmit suddenly said, breaking my train of thought.

I let go of his hand immediately and mentally scolded myself. Why was I holding his hand?

"No, no," His voice was soft and blocked out the noise around me. It cradled my ear and nibbled my lobe with its poison verbose. His hand reached for mine again and I fell into him. People gave us looks and whispered amongst themselves, but either way, we didn't care.

We were hopelessly denying our love.

In the streets of New York, we could be another couple. A couple of millennials going on a trip, a couple where the black woman looks younger than her counterpart because "black don't crack".

Pimmit and I went into various shops and acted like we were a young couple in their prime.

"You should get this shirt." I held up a shirt with the phrase, 'I'm not gay, but my boyfriend is'. He side-eyed me and pulled a shirt from the rack he was near, and I knew I had been beaten.

"How about this 'I'm not gay, but twenty dollars is twenty dollars' shirt?" He chuckled and held it up to his chest to see if it would fit. "I wanna find one of those Arnold Schwarzenegger ab shirts."

What?

"You know, those shirts that have the fake tanned and toned abs? I want one." He flexed and raised his hands over his head and shook his hands together as if he was in a body-builder competition. "Agrgh, get to the choppa, argrh."

"You sound nothing like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rudy. You sound like an angry retard."

"Hey! That's mean."

My face turned towards him only to find him standing right next to me, his face only inches from mine. He trapped me in between the racks and kept his hands close to my sides. Slowly, they snaked up to my "waist".

"You're gonna take that back right?"

I shrunk under him, but I didn't let him intimidate me. 

"Maybe I will, maybe I won't. What are you gonna do about it?"

He cleared his throat, put his hands on his hips and glanced about the store. Grabbing me by the wrist he shoved me into a fitting room.

I thrilled myself in anticipation as I waited for what he was going to do. What was he going to do His face gave nothing away.

"Um, ma'am? Sir? You can't be in the fitting room together," Came a voice outside the curtain, stopping Pimmit in his animalistic tracks.

"I'll deal with you later," He pointed at me and tucked his lips lightly, no doubt figuring ways to dump me in the harbor like a crate of tea. He glanced at the curtain and frowned. "Play along."