Page 64 of Raising Love
“And that’s what I’ve been trying to tell her,” I said. “The Simmons have offered to take the baby many times to give us a break. But Ivy’s all, I don’t want to just drop our responsibilities on them. And blah, blah, blah.”
“Why would she say that?”
“Hmm?”
“Hmm?” my mother mocked. “Why would she feel that having the Simmons take the baby would be like dropping responsibilities?”
“Because…” I dragged out. “She feels I go out too much and I’m barely in Greene Gardens helping out.”
My mother pointed her knife at me. “And there it is.”
“Mama, I gotta go out to not only make club appearances but to destress,” I insisted. “I’m trying to get to the championships. I gotta make money. I didn’t plan for any of this. I wasn’t ready.”
“All I'm hearing is ‘I, I, I,’” my mother interjected. “What about her? She wasn’t ready either. And considering how driven that girl is, I’m sure she has her own career goals and plans.”
I looked off.
“And I’m sure she likes to have a little fun of her own too and wouldn’t want to be cooped up in a house raising a baby she wasn’t ready to raise either.”
I mumbled, “Ivy boring as hell, so I highly doubt the fun part.”
My mother was quick to pop me up the side of my head as soon as all the words came out of my mouth.
“Ow, damn!” I shouted, grabbing my head. “Why’d you do that?”
“Because you’re being selfish,” she said. “That’s why.”
I kissed my teeth.
“So is that why y’all are beefing?” she probed. “Because you keep leaving the house to party?”
“Umm, yes and no.”
She stared at me for a moment.
I squeezed my eyes closed and kept them shut when I confessed, “We slept together.”
My mother’s jaw dropped. “Oh, my God.”
“Mama, please.”
“Leo,” she said, her voice heavy with disappointment—which was exactly why I didn’t want to tell her anything.
My mother has been on me for the longest about my sleeping around with different women. She was proud of me for sticking with Vanessa this long, but she kept asking when I was going to take the relationship to the next level. I never revealed that I had no plans to, because we didn’t even have a real relationship, and I was content with that. But now, me telling her I had sex with Ivy? Yeah, she wasn’t going to go easy on me.
“I skipped a date for her,” I confessed. “I had plans to go out the last time Ivy and I had an argument, and I skipped my date for her.”
“Why?”
I stared at her for a moment and then said, “You can’t get mad.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Leo, what did you do?”
“I… I made her cry.”
My mother gasped, lifting her hand again to hit me upside the head, but I stepped back.
“Now you about to piss me off!” she shouted.
