“Hey, I’m a man and I’m telling you that some of us are garbage. They will tell a woman anything to get their way.”
I chewed on the end of my pen.
“Didn’t he move in that day?” my brother asked.
“Yeah. He said he was depressed and thinking about death and—”
My brother snorted.
“You think he lied about his aunt?”
“I don’t know. All I’m saying is that when you first met him...in a club, by the way—”
“I know. I know. Meeting a guy in a club doesn’t usually work.”
“It never does. When a guy is in a club, he’s trying to have sex. He’s not thinking, ‘Oh, where art my queen? Where art thou woman I will love forever?’”
I laughed even though I was becoming sick to my stomach.
My brother continued, “Then, Tyson meets you and is telling you he loves you in two weeks. Not long after, he’s trying to move in with you. Thank God you held out and stood your ground. It only took him saying someone died to get his lazy ass in there.”
Rob wasn’t a fan of Tyson. He’d met him once and had concluded that he was a dog. He didn’t need any evidence of it. Apparently, Rob was some sort of douchebag whisperer—he could sniff them out and see the bullshit in their eyes.
And upon meeting Tyson, Rob’s only response was, “Drop him.”
If I kept it real with myself, Rob’s dislike of Tyson was the beginning of our downfall. If my family didn’t like the guy I was with, was he really the man I wanted to be with? And if I was being even more truthful, Tyson’s best friend Logan was the other reason I’d started feeling unsatisfied.
That was where the guilt really came in.
One should never lust after their boyfriend’s best friend.
Don’t even think about Logan.
Still in bed with my eyes closed, I caught Tyson’s footsteps as he must’ve walked away. He sounded like he was in the closet again.
Why is he being so weird? What the hell is he writing?
It could’ve been a novel. But why not say something? I wouldn’t have forced him to show it to me, until he was ready or whatever.
This is so weird.
Low sounds of paper unraveling and scribbling sounded in the room. At least ten minutes passed. And then a few thumps, the closing of the closet, and footsteps going away.
He whistled some happy tune. His footsteps hammered on. The bathroom door screeched open and then closed.
I opened my eyes.
Five minutes later the shower went on and I got up from bed.
What is he doing in the closet every morning? Forget it. I’m finding out today.
The shower continued to groan from the bathroom. My phone vibrated on the end table. I ignored it, rose from the bed, and walked over to the closet.
I opened the door and looked inside. The only thing that appeared disturbed was Tyson’s shoe boxes. He was a Sneaker Head and had a big collection, packing my closet.
Keep it real, Mia. You really want to break up with Tyson to get your closet space back.
Boxes took up every inch of the little walk-in closet. There must’ve been about thirty boxes of sneakers, stacked here and there, on the floors and shelves. There were more in my kitchen pantry and then ten more boxes piled by my bookshelf in the living room. There were all types of Air Jordans—one pair had been signed by the legend himself. Tyson had 1989 Reebok Pumps, a pair of Nike Cortez in the first orange box which was apparently important. There were several pre-1986 Air Force Ones. And it went on and on—lace-less Pumas and a pair of Adidas with a person’s face on the tongue, Converse Chuck Taylors and even some Yeezys designed by rapper Kanye West, which he actually hated, but kept them because they could make him a profit one day.
How do you not have your living situation handled, but have over fifty pairs of sneakers, probably each worth a thousand or more?
And my small one-bedroom apartment was already packed with my stuff. My cooler and freezer bulged with a variety of fillings, frostings, and layers, precisely labeled for certain events.
But I couldn’t put my mind on Too Sweet . All I could do was stand in the closet and wonder what the hell Tyson did in it every morning.
That’s it. I’m going to check. I don’t care.
I pushed up a few of the boxes’ tops and peered inside. For the past few weeks, I’d been playing James Bond and trying to figure out where he hid the notebook or whatever he wrote on. I had to be quick. He took short showers. I checked several boxes in the middle, since I’d already gone through the ones on the top. There was nothing but sneakers.
This time, I tried a different strategy. I checked the boxes closest to the corner in the far back. One had no sneakers, but four notebooks lay inside.