My phone rings and it’s Tamara, my bestfriend from high school.
“Hey Prince!” I say.
“Hey, Tee! What you doing?”
“Girl, I’m sitting here waiting for Steve to pick me up,” I reply. “He says he has a birthday surprise for me.”
“Oooh! Go Tee! Go Tee!” she sings. “But wait, your birthday isn’t for another week.”
“I know, but he said this is the pre-birthday surprise. Prince, he’s so nice to me.”
“That’s what you always said you wanted, Tee.”
“I know but it’s scary to have what you always wanted. I keep thinking that he doesn’t mean it or that he’s trying to trick me. I keep preparing myself for the day when he changes his mind like JB did or meets someone else like my BBDD. So it’s like…I enjoy it, but I’m still on guard, waiting for him to decide he doesn’t like me anymore.”
The phone is silent.
“I’m sorry, Prince,” I say. “I just…I’m scared sometimes because I feel like I can trust him to be my friend but then again my head is telling me to prepare for him to leave.”
“Just chill, Tee. Enjoy it for what it is.”
“I know. Alright chick. Lemme go, here he is.”
“Have fun! Send me pictures!”
I walk out of my dorm room wearing my white princess sundress with silver sandals. Steve is standing beside his car looking like Carlton Banks. I swear, this man has more ‘looks’ than a fashion magazine.
“Happy early birthday,” he says and gives me a hug. I can tell he is holding something behind his back.
I step back and hold out my hand. “What you got for me?” I ask eagerly.
He produces a bouquet of…
“Baby breath?” I ask him.
“Look closer.”
I peer into the folds of the tissue paper and then I laugh. There’s one…two…three….four…
“Steve!”I screech. “You bought me a bouquet of GAS CARDS?!”
He grins.
I immediately start crying and he shakes his head at me and opens my door for me. I take out my phone and text Anna. Steve just bought me gas cards. Did you talk to him and tell him that’s what I love?
A minute later Anna texts back. LOL! Happy Birthday, dawg!
“Are you hungry?” Steve asks and adjusts his glasses.
“No, I had breakfast already. Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise, put this on,” he says and hands me a black cloth headband.
“Uh..This doesn’t match my outfit.”
“Use it as a blindfold, genius. Come on..It’s a surprise. We have 15 minutes to get there.”
I pull the headband over my hair and down to my eyes, peering suspiciously at him before covering my eyes completely.
“Here, listen to this,” he says and places an Ipod in my hand. I plug int he ear pieces and I squeal when I hear Jodeci crooning through the head set.
Lately, I’ve had the strangest feeling…..
Before I know it, the car stops and Steve helps me out asking me to leave the blindfold on and the ear pieces in.
He better not be taking me near no water because I just got my hair done, I think to myself. And he know I can’t swim.
“Trust me,” he whispers into my ear as though he can read my mind.
We go inside a building and then up an elevator. I can’t hear anything because R. Kelly is in my ear singing 12 Play.
He guides me inside a doorway and I bump my hand and then he sits me down. A couple of minutes later he pulls my hand and guides me through another doorway. We walk for a few feet and then he takes my hand and I hear a door close behind us.
“You ready?” he asks me. I can tell he is so excited.
“Yeah boy! Hurry up!”
He removes the ear pieces first and I hear silence. He then removes the blinfold. I’m confused as I look around the room.
The door opens again and a woman in a white coat pops her head in.
“Hello Ms. Tee. It’s nice to meet you. Your doctor will be right in for your annual check-up. Go ahead and get undressed and have a seat.”
I gasp.
“Steve?”
He smiles down at me but doesnt say a word.
“Steve? You brought me to see a doctor?”
My throat tightens up and I know I’m about to cry again. I have not been to a doctor in years. I haven’t had insurance. I’ve been praying for a chance to get a check-up and this man…for my birthday…he..he…
I’m bawling now.
He shakes his head at me.
“Waterhead. You gonna cry like that all day?”
I laugh. “Shut up! You know I have to release my emotions. I’m a Cancer. I appreciate this so much Steve. You have no idea.”
“Yes, I do. Now go ahead and get undressed. I have more planned for you today.”
The ‘more’ Steve mentioned, turned out to be the biggest, most excellent gift that I had ever gotten.
At 1pm in the afternoon, Steve and I walked into an office, hand in hand and sat down with…
A dentist.
He showed me books and plans and explained procedures.
Then he deep pressure cleaned my teeth and did some heavy work, fillin in a couple of cavities and pulling one tooth out.
I was slightly embarrassed but Steve didn’t seem to mind. He sat there texting or emailing or whatever he does when he’s on his phone.
My mouth was numb as we walked out together.
“And he says I can get them all straightened out with veneers after I finished getting the cavities filled! He’s gonna fix my chipped teeth too! I can’t believe it, Steve! My smile is gonna be PERFECT. Well, almost perfect because I want to keep my overbite but I want everything else to look way nicer!” I told him while holding a paper towel to my lip to catch the saliva dripping down my chin.
“You’re already beautiful, Baby Girl,” Steve says. “This is just gonna enhance it a little.”
As soon as we step into the car I decide to thank Steve…
I move toward him and give him a sloppy kiss on the lips and then my hand moves to his belt buckle.
“No.” he says firmly.
“What do you mean?”
“Tee. We’re not doing this now. I know you want to thank me, but you don’t always have to thank me with a sexual favor. That’s not why I’m with you. I here because I want to be.”
“What?”
“You ain’t a hoe, Tee. I didn’t pay for your time.”
“What the fuck you mean by that?”
“I’m sayin…Why is everything all about sex with you?”
“Cuz it is!” I pop my neck.
“No, it’s not. You’re not a sex machine. That’s not all you can do. Do something else.”
“Fuck you, if you got a problem with it, then don’t come around. I don’t beg you for shit. I’m doing this to please you.”
“Yeah, babe, but look. I pay attention and I do things that please you the way you like to be pleased. Yeah, I like head. Who doesn’t. But have you paid attention to how I really like to be pleased? If you stop thinking I’m some young cat with his brains in his balls, and really pay attention to how I like to be pleased, you’d see that all I want is, I just want to see you smiling and talking to me. I just want to hear your voice. That’s all I want. You don’t have to go all out with the whip cream and the acrobatics and shit all the time, Tee. You don’t have to try so hard.”
“I wanna go home,” I tell him.
He sighs. “I hate when you do that. You can tell me what you like and how you like it but when I tell you something, you ready to run.”
“Take me home,” I demand.
“I’m not finished with your birthday.”
“Fuck my birthday. Take me home!”
“You being a brat, right now. I’m not interested in this right now. Don’t play with me.”
“Take me home NOW!”
Steve clenched his jaw and his grip on the steering wheel tightened. I rolled my eyes at him and turned away, staring out the window. He doesn’t take me home, instead he drives me to my favorite place from high school: Captain Crabs.
I gasp. “Who told you about this?”
“I’ve been stalking you since you were 9.”
He orders a jumbo bucket of crab legs and I almost DIE when I smell the oily garlic as they hand the bucket to us.
“I’ma fuck this shit up!” I announce proudly.
Steve laughs. “Damn..you’re so different. I like that shit.”
“I bet you do. Where are we going to eat this?”
“This pier down the street,” he looks over at me and shakes his head. “You’re a trip you know that? A real BRAT. Sometimes I wanna…” he wrinkles his brow and shakes his head at me. “But then….you look at me with those eyes and man..I just wanna empty out my wallet in your lap.”
“So you’re saying all I gotta do is…look at you?” I laugh.
“You’re a gold digger…” he says and pinches my thigh, smiling over at me.
“Diamonds, baby. Diamonds. I’m worth it,” I say.