This Could Be Us But You Playin' 2 (2 page)

Chapter 1

“Hey, Dre… what are you doing here?” Dominique asked as she stalled for time. Her mind was going a mile a minute while she tried to figure out what she was about to say. Whatever it was, she knew that she needed to explain herself and some way get out of the mess she found herself in.

“That’s the same thing I asked you,” he responded through clenched teeth while looking back and forth between her and Kaleb.

Dominique swallowed the lump in her throat. “Well damn, excuse me. There is no need for you to be rude as hell. If you must know, I’m here shopping for birthday presents for Peanut,” she replied, before placing her hand on Kaleb’s shoulder. “This is her new boyfriend, Kaleb, and he asked me to come to the mall with him to get her a few things.” She laughed nervously. “That girl is so picky, he didn’t know what to buy her.”

“Is that right? Well, I know for a fact that Peanut ain’t got no kids, so who do those Children’s Place bags belong to?” Deondre probed. Something didn’t add up and Dominique had him fucked up if she didn’t think that he wasn’t going to get to the bottom of it.

Dominique thought quickly. “Those are DJ’s clothes. Kaleb was just carrying them for me while I walked around Victoria Secrets and found Peanut some stuff.”

“You can carry yo’ own mutha’fucking bags!” Deondre barked. He looked between the two of them once more. “It looks to me like y’all are through shopping.” he paused for a second seemingly in deep thought. “Wait, aren’t you the nigga I’m buying the house from?”

“Yeah,” was all Kaleb said in return. Dominique closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She was so busy trying to cover her tracks that she forgot that Deondre had already met Kaleb.

With his eyebrows raised, Deondre took a step in their direction. “I knew I recognized you from somewhere.” He squinted his eyes and ran his hand across the small amount of chin hair he had. “How long you been dating Peanut, ‘cause Nikki ain’t told me nothing about you?”

Before Kaleb responded, he cocked his head to the side and took a step closer as well. He wasn’t intimidated at all by Deondre, and he wanted to let him know that. Of course, the larger man had him by a few inches, as well as more than twenty pounds, but to Kaleb that didn’t mean a damn thing. He had knocked out his fair share of large burly dudes, who usually thought that because they were bigger than he was that he would somehow be afraid to speak his mind. If the black goofy looking nigga in front of him said something out of the way, Kaleb planned to drop the bags he was carrying before he dropped his ass right beside them. Since Deondre was someone that he didn’t like anyway; there was no need to play games. If he wanted to set it off, Kaleb was going to make him think twice before he tried the shit again.

“For a few months now,” Dominique interjected when Kaleb began to open his mouth. She wasn’t sure what he was about to say, but from the look on his face, she knew that it wasn’t going to be friendly. Dominique looked back and forth between the two men as they continued to stand locked in the same stare down that they’d been in for the last few minutes. “They met at the club we went to a few weeks ago, and they’ve been together ever since.” She offered.

“Yeah, alright,” Deondre mumbled. He never took his eyes off of Kaleb because even though Dominique said it was nothing, something was telling him otherwise. He couldn’t prove it at that moment though, and didn’t want to push the issue, so he said, “Well, I’m about to roll. Where did you say DJ was again?”

“I didn’t say,” Dominique smacked her lips while placing her right hand on her hip, “but he’s at my grandmother’s.”

“Humph, alright. Well, give him that shit and let’s grab your car, so we can go and pick him up.”

“My car isn’t here,” she responded. “Kaleb picked me up from grandma’s house.” Dominique’s heart was beating a mile a minute. Her car was actually parked at Kaleb’s property, but of course, she couldn’t tell Deondre that because then he would know that she was lying.

Deondre twisted up his face. “So, he came to pick you up from the house that Peanut lives in, so y’all could go shopping for her a birthday present?”

“Yeah,” Dominique answered. She glanced quickly in Kaleb’s direction. When she saw how upset he looked, her heart dropped. 

“That shit don’t even make sense to me,” Deondre snapped, looking at her like she was stupid.

“Well, I don’t know what else to tell you because that’s what happened.” Dominique pursed her lips and stood her ground. She was sick of him questioning her. Either he believed her or he didn’t, but she wasn’t going to allow him to further embarrass her, especially in front of Kaleb. “Wait a minute.” She took a step backwards, “Are you accusing me of something, Dre?” she asked, now turning the tables on him.

Deondre shrugged. “No, I ain’t accusing you of shit. I’m just asking a fucking question. You getting real defensive for somebody who ain’t got nothing to hide.” When Dominique didn’t speak up about his shot at her, he looked at Kaleb up and down before he continued, “Alright, let’s get the fuck outta here.” Deondre waved her over. “I’ll take you to get your car and DJ, and we can head on home. I’m tired and think that we should spend the entire day in bed.” He smirked.

“Umm, okay,” Dominique responded. She peeped that he was trying to be funny because he knew damn well that they had never spent all day in bed before. He was doing the shit for Kaleb’s benefit.

Dominique looked over at Kaleb and when she saw the look on his face, she instantly felt bad. She knew that he was upset about her leaving him and going with Deondre, but she didn’t see any other way. It wasn’t like she could tell her fiancé no, especially after almost getting caught.
What else does he expect me to do?
Dominique asked herself, as she handed him the Victoria Secret bags she was carrying. Kaleb added it to the other bags in his hand before he passed her the things that she’d purchased for her son. Dominique couldn’t even look him in the face any longer because she knew that if she did, she would see nothing but disappointment, and she didn’t want that. Instead, she continued to stare down at the Children’s Place bags she was now carrying. 

“Thanks,” Kaleb said sarcastically when Dominique turned and walked away. It made him sick to his stomach when he saw her interlock her hands in Deondre’s. “I really appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome,” she responded over her shoulder, before she turned to look at him with apologetic eyes. As Dominique walked out of Victoria’s Secret hand and hand with Deondre, she hoped that he believed her lie about shopping for NiChia, because she knew that if he didn’t, things could get ugly.

*****

Before the car was put in park, Dominique jumped out and went to the backseat to grab a sleeping DJ. Once she removed him from his car seat, she slammed the back door and proceeded up the stairs and into her house. She was ready to get the hell from Deondre and his questioning ass. He had gotten on her damn nerves the entire ride home, and she was sick of it. After they left the mall, he asked her over and over again why she was there with Kaleb, as if she hadn’t told him right there inside the store. His questions continued while they rode to her grandmother’s house, but Dominique was too busy texting NiChia to really pay him any attention. She was telling her sister, if she was home, to hide so that Deondre wouldn’t see her. Dominique planned to lie and tell him that NiChia must have taken her car, which would explain why it was not parked in the grandmother’s driveway. She knew that if they pulled up and NiChia was there, she would have to explain where it was, and she sure didn’t want to do that. NiChia just happened to be spending the night with Desmond, so her plan worked out perfectly.

“Why you acting like you got a fucking attitude?” Deondre asked, as he took off his jacket and hung it in the closet. “If anybody should be mad, it should be me after catching yo’ ass all
friendly
at the mall with that nigga.”

Dominique frowned when she looked up from the couch where she was sitting and removing DJ’s clothes. “First of all, I’m not acting like shit. I do have an attitude,” she snapped. “Second, I’ve already told you why I was there, so you can calm the hell down. You’ve gotten on my damn nerves for the last hour and a half, and now I gotta fucking headache, damn!”

Once Dominique knew that she was in the clear and hadn’t been caught, she spoke her mind. She had allowed Deondre to say all of the smart shit he wanted while at the mall, on the way to her grandmother’s house, and even on the ride home, but that shit was dead now. Deondre had her fucked up if he thought that he was going to keep throwing up her being with Kaleb in her face, as if he actually knew something. Granted, Dominique knew she was dead wrong and could have been caught if Deondre had walked up a few moments earlier, but he hadn’t.

“You having a headache ain’t got nothing to do with me. What I’m trying to figure out is why are you so mad, if it was nothing. If you were actually shopping for Peanut, why all the attitude?”

“Are you stupid or something?” she asked, picking up DJ and placing his sleeping head on her shoulder. “Why the hell wouldn’t I be upset about being accused of something that I haven’t even done?” Dominique grabbed their son’s clothes and overnight bag and headed towards the stairs. 

“I never accused you of anything,” Deondre told her, following behind her.

“I can’t fucking tell! You have asked me at least thirty questions since we left the mall, and I keep telling you the same thing, and that’s that Kaleb is Peanut’s boyfriend, and we were shopping for her something for her birthday,” Dominique continued with her lie. She laid DJ down in his bed and turned around. “I don’t know what else you want me to say.” 

“What I want is to make sure that you ain’t fucking around with another nigga.” Deondre watched her as she went into their son’s closet and emptied his dirty clothes into the laundry hamper. “That’s all I want, Nikki.”

Well, I guess you see how I feel when you bring yo’ ass in here at the crack of dawn,
or when you don’t answer your phone for hours at a time
, Dominique thought to herself.
Now the shoe is on the other foot and you scared.
She smirked as she walked past him and out the door. The fact that she hadn’t said a word ate him up inside, and she knew it. When she entered their room, Dominique took a seat on the bed and kicked off her shoes. Once she was finished, she looked up and almost burst out laughing when she saw how scared and annoyed Deondre looked. She was about to say something about it when a thought hit her.

“You know what?” She asked, even though she wasn’t looking for a response. “It’s funny that you questioning me about shit and trying to act like I’m guilty of something, but you never even bothered to mention why the hell you were at the mall in the first place. Last I remember was you were going to Louisiana for a few days.” Dominique peered at him. The more she thought about him being caught in a lie, the more it pissed her off, especially when he was coming at her crazy. “I’m wondering how you ended up at the mall…in Morrow of all places.”

Deondre just stood there for a moment. He really didn’t know what to say because he didn’t expect Dominique to bring up the fact that he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. Deondre was so caught up with interrogating her that he never stopped to think about the fact that his shit wasn’t looking good either. With his head now threw back, he laughed, even though there wasn’t anything funny. Deondre was using the extra time to come up with some sort of lie because he knew that if he didn’t, Dominique was going to go the hell off. The sound of her exhaling loudly let him know that he had just about run out of time. Lifting his head back up, he looked her directly in the eyes.

“Well, I was about three hours from home when I got a call from the coach’s secretary. She said that he had to cancel due to a family emergency,” Deondre told her. “After that, I turned around and brought my ass home.”

“So, why didn’t you call me and let me know that your plans had changed?” Dominique asked with her lips pursed. She didn’t buy the story at all and wanted to see just how far he would take it.

Deondre licked his lips before he replied, “It was supposed to be a surprise. I knew that I had been fucking up lately, and I haven’t been the easiest person to deal with, so I wanted to sneak back and do something special for you. I had already grabbed a few things and my last stop was the mall, where I went in to pick up something that I’d ordered a few days ago.”

“Dre, you are so full of shit!” Dominique yelled. She didn’t remember seeing anything in his hand when he approached her and Kaleb. With her face twisted up, she looked up at him and rolled her eyes; he was definitely reaching. “Why do you have to lie so much? Just say that you were never really going out of town, and you got busted trying to sneak over one of your hoe’s house.”

Deondre’s eyes got wide. “You don’t believe me?”

“Hell nah, and I ain’t even gone act like I do,” she told him, getting loud. “You must think I’m stupid.”

“Okay, you don’t wanna believe me. Just give me a minute.” He told her, putting his finger up. Before she could say anything in return, he turned around, walked out of the room, and headed down the stairs.

When Dominique heard the front door open and close, she rolled her eyes up in her head.
I swear his ass will say everything but the damn truth.
While she waited for Deondre to return, she leaned down to pick up her shoes. With them in her hand, she got up from the bed and carried them over to her closet before she sat them on top of one of her shoe racks. Now that she was finally alone, Dominique had a chance to really think. It was then that she realized just how close she and Kaleb came to being caught in the act. Not even a full minute before she turned and saw Deondre, she and Kaleb were in an intense lip lock. She knew that if Deondre had walked up a few seconds earlier, shit would have definitely gotten real in Victoria Secret’s. Dominique knew that both Deondre and Kaleb could have anger issues, and she was glad that things were settled without any real confrontation. Dominique was in the process of stepping out of the closet when she heard Deondre coming up the stairs.