18. No Disrespect, I Don't Mean No Harm

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Chapter Eighteen

"Whatcha mean me being too strict is making Aaliyah disrespect me?" Whitney wanted to know, folding her arms.

DeVante sighed to that.

He didn't know what to say.

Whitney had lowkey just yelled at Aaliyah earlier on today because she was supposed to be tidying up her room with her sister Lisa today but she didn't do that.

A house inspector was coming to see exactly how clean their house was.

Therefore... if their house was clean then they could have stayed there, but if it wasn't clean instead? Then they would have gotten evicted instead.

It wasn't that DeVante was completely against Whitney yelling at Aaliyah or anything...

It was just that she had been doing that too much lately, which wasn't good.

"Whitney. Listen to me. If you're too strict on Aaliyah then she might start to feel like she's not good enough, which could really take a toll on her mental health. That's how I said she might start disrespecting you. Do you really want that for her? And yourself?"

Although Whitney must not have heard DeVante's statement properly or anything because she was nodding like crazy.

"I don't care, DeVante!"

But she did care.

She really did.

She was just really infuriated right now to be honest. And she was taking all of that out on her poor husband.

"I swear, that girl just does my head in sometimes. Swear down it's that phone. She's almost always on that damn thing, and it's starting to affect her in some seriously negative ways. Why can't that girl be more like Lisa instead?"

Which was another thing she was doing wrong, according to DeVante apparently.

But when Whitney had heard from him that something from what she had just stated was wrong, she had just glanced at him as if she didn't have a clue in the world what he was talking about.

Because she did.

DeVante rolled his eyes.

"Baby, look at me."

She had avoided all types of eye contact with him, until DeVante almost had no choice really but to gently grab her by the shoulders.

Then he kissed her.

Hard.

So damn passionately.

Like never before.

He had always done that when she had gotten a little bit tensed up and he was in some sort of room with her.

But apparently, that wasn't what he wanted to "say" to her- he actually had something in which he wanted to tell his wife.

"You keep comparing her to her sister. You know we don't play favourites."

Whitney didn't even realise that to be honest.

No joke.

She had started to see things though Aaliyah's eyes for once. And she had even imagined her daughter and her switching positions.

Whitney would have been absolutely devastated if Aaliyah had done that to her.

If she was too strict on her.

If she had compared her to her sister.

What if Aaliyah was secretly depressed because of her?

Then what?

It was one Friday in April and Aaliyah and Lisa has just gone back home from school.

Lisa had arrived to the sitting room minutes after Aaliyah though because she liked getting changed before she had gone downstairs.

But Aaliyah?

Aaliyah seriously didn't care at all.

She had done a few tests, along with Lisa and everyone else in their grade at school- and she had just gotten her report for it.

These were mock exams though.

Not real exams.

So they mattered although not as much as the real ones did.

However, if someone had failed the real exams and/or they had done better in their mock exams, then they could have used that on actual results' day instead.

Aaliyah's grades were shockingly decent, because even though she wasn't a very well behaved daughter?

She had gotten way better grades than her sister had done.

"Mum, I got my report card and it's actually good.. for once!" Aaliyah beamed, hugging her, then she had greeted her father as well.

Aaliyah's grades weren't always this good, but after the help of a professional personal tutor, her grades were rocketing sky high.

Better than her sister's, for once.

It would have been an understatement to say that Aaliyah wasn't bragging Lisa about this on the way home, because she was.

Either way, she had given Whitney the report card, telling her to open it, and she did.

She was a little but skeptical at first, as Aaliyah's definition of good grades was a C grade or higher, but Aaliyah had kept on convincing her to open it.

And she wasn't leaving here until Whitney had done that.

Whitney had stared at her daughter, then at the brown envelope right in front of her, kind of rolling her eyes.

Then she put on her glasses and she opened it.

Aaliyah's grades were absolutely amazing.

She had done ten subjects in total.

5 As, 2 A Stars, 2 Bs

But there was this one grade that was really bad, which Aaliyah didn't notice and Whitney unfortunately did.

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