Page 19 of Wasn't Supposed To Be Yours
They eventually sat the bottle down on the table for us. Our waitress sat my French 75 down, and she grabbed two of the shot cups, poured some of the Don Julio in each cup, and she pushed them our way. From there, she asked if we were ready to order food, and Tank allowed me to go first. I ordered the shrimp alfredo dinner, while Tank ordered a few things. I heard him ask for wings, fries, eggrolls, and ribs. He had a big appetite, and that only made him more attractive because I loved a man that could eat.
The waitress left again, leaving just the two of us.
“Take a shot with me. That’s what comes with you losing the bet,” he offered, reaching over, grabbing his cup, and then he picked the other one up, so that he could put it in my hand.
“I’m only going to take one. I’m for real. I don’t know you enough to get drunk around you,” I said, and he nodded his head, as if he had no choice but to respect it.
“I hate that you feel like you can’t trust me because Dionne, I swear to God I’m the realest nigga that you will ever meet in your life. I’m big on respect. I’m big on making a woman feel comfortable when she’s in my presence. Even if you had lost the bet, and you decided that you didn’t want to come here to the lounge with me, I wouldn’t have pressured you or shamed you for not doing so. I’m locked in with the shit that’s happening in the world. I know that a woman can’t be too trusting when it comes to these niggas. I know right now that my word is all that I have with you, but you good around me. Come on. You said one shot, so all I’m going to let you do is one shot,” he finished.
I don’t know what it was. I don’t know what he was doing to me, but I believed him. I could feel it in my spirit that he wasn’t going to allow anything to happen to me.
With my drink in my hand, we hit our cups together, and we took a shot. Tank threw his drink back like it was juice, while I struggled a little bit with taking mine. I did finish it though, and when I did, I put the cup back on the table. Because I did struggle a little bit, Tank tried to be funny, and he was clapping his hands at me, as if he was congratulating me.
I hated to admit it, but God did I have so much fun with this man. I came to this lounge with him, with so many layers on me. I’d internally told myself that I wasn’t going to stay longer than an hour. I ended up staying for well over four hours. I was so uptight when I’d originally sat down, not even being able to take my purse off my shoulder. I didn’t want to share too much with him in the beginning, but as time progressed, it’s like it registered to me that I wasn’t sitting next to a monster.
It was the way he was so attentive to me. When my food arrived, he asked me a couple of times how it tasted, as if he wanted to make sure that I wasn’t biting into anything that wasn’t fully cooked. It was the way he offered to share his food with me. The way he would make me laugh, even though I wouldbe sitting here, fighting like hell not to laugh at some of the things that he was saying to me. Not once did he sexualize me. He never even touched me. The grandparents that were once in his life, and that had helped raised him, you could tell that their mark was left on him. You could tell that there were women in his life that he loved and adored because it was a reflection of the way he treated me tonight.
It was almost three in the morning, and we were outside of the lounge. No lie, I was tired as hell.
“How you got out here?” he asked me.
“I look an Uber. I’m going to call one for me,” I shared.
There was this look on his face, where I could tell that he wanted to maybe even get in the Uber with me, so that he could make sure I got home safely, but during dinner, we spoke on our living arrangements, and I’m sure he was playing the conversation back in his head when I told him that I didn’t let people know where I live like that. I protected that information like it was my social security number.
“I’m too much of a man to let you get in an Uber by yourself, but I get that we’re not on that kind of level yet, so I gotta just respect it. Go ahead and call it. I won’t leave until you get in the car, and I threaten the driver,” he said, and I laughed.
I navigated to the Uber app, and I found a premium service black truck. Less than a minute, it let me know that someone would be here in two minutes, and they were coming in a Cadillac Escalade.
“Go to the trip,” Tank said to me. I went to the app, and I showed him the trip, where he could see the driver. It was a Spanish man, and he was rated 5 stars, with over 1.5k trips, and he’s been doing Uber for 3 years. Tank looked at that, and then he used his finger to scroll down, where he saw the price of the trip. Since it was a black truck that I requested, the price was a little more than usual. It was $46.78.
“Go to your CashApp. Let me see something,” he suggested. I went to the app, and he went for the top left corner of the screen, where the QR code was.
He pulled his phone out, scanned the code, and I watched him as he sent me $60.
“Use that to pay for your Uber. You don’t come out of pocket when your with me,” he stated. That manly man part him couldn’t help but to expose himself. Tank didn’t have to pay for my Uber because he just paid close to $2k for dinner tonight.
The bottle, the food, I ended up having two cocktails, and he left the waitress with a hefty tip. The least I could do was pay for my own Uber, but he wouldn’t even let me do that.
“Can I get your number, or you still don’t know me well enough to give it?” he asked. I thought about his question for a few seconds. Without even responding to him, I just stuck my hand out, so that he could hand me over his phone, and I keyed in my number for him, adding my name.
“Let me call that shit. Make sure you didn’t give me the wrong number,” he blurted, and I laughed.
He called me, and my phone rang in my hands. He had a ‘305’ area code. I saved his number to my phone, and we looked down the street, and we could see the Escalade pulling up.
“What’s the tag number? Let me just make sure that’s him,” Tank said to me.
Instead of reading the tag number out to him, I just showed him my phone screen, so that he could look at it himself. I watched as he mumbled what the tag number was, and then his eyes left mine, and he scanned the plate number on the tag, once it pulled up, and it parked on the side of the street. I saw that it matched, and he saw it too.
“It’s good. Come on. Let me put a bug in that nigga ear,” he said, stepping to the side, so that I could lead the way. I didn’t even attempt to act like I was going to open the truck doorbecause I had a man right on the side of me, so I wished that I would touch the handle to a door.
Tank put his hand on my waist, just so that he could move me out of the way a little bit, and he opened the door. The second the door opened, you could smell that new car smell, with the scent of something sweet. From where I stood, I could see the inside of the truck, and it was nice, and clean. The driver turned around to look at us, and there was a smile on his face.
“How you doing, man?” Tank asked him.
“I’m doing alright. How are you?” the driver was a Cuban dude, so he had a thick Spanish accent.
“I’m doing well. I had myself a nice date with a very beautiful woman tonight. I want to continue to see this beautiful woman, so with that, you gotta do your part, and get her home safely. Don’t try no shit with her, man. I’m loco. I get crazy. Get her home safely. You hear me?” Tank asked the driver, who laughed, and he shook his head eagerly, letting Tank know that I was in good hands, and that he didn’t have to worry about anything happening to me.
