I Ain't Me No More (23 page)

I immediately snatched my arm out of his grip. “Dino, you trippin'.”

“No, you trippin' if you think I'm going to let my wife leave out of this house in all this see-through crap. You're practically naked. Some of my boys might be out and see you. I ain't gon' let you embarrass me, running around looking like a stripper.”

“Oh, really? So that's how you feel now?” I was truly stunned by Dino's words. He'd never questioned what I wore before. Of course, this was one of the most risqué outfits in my closet, but still, I'd never seen him act so possessive. Was this the married Dino versus the “just kickin' it” Dino? I knew I had to get out of there before things got crazy, so I walked over to my everyday purse and started taking out the things I needed for the night and putting them in my white purse. I pretended as though Dino wasn't even standing there. I was just going to do what I needed to do and get out of there.

The next thing I knew, Dino yanked both my purses away from me and threw them across the room. My stuff went flying everywhere.

“Are you crazy? What has got you buggin', Dino, for real?” I marched over to get my stuff together. I was still determined to just get on out of there and enjoy my night.

“Did you hear what the freak your husband said?” Dino threw his big body in front of me. It was like a brick wall, stopping me in my tracks.

Now, Dino rarely got fly at the mouth like that. Again, I stared at him in nothing but complete shock. Who was this dude, and what had caused him to act this way?

“An outfit? You are really losing it over an outfit? Dino, seriously, I look good. No matter what I throw on in that closet, dudes gon' be checkin' for me regardless, so let's just keep it moving.”

As soon as I brushed by him and started to pick up my stuff, I once again felt Dino grab my arm. This time he slung me back so hard that I landed on the bed but rolled off onto the nightstand. The nightstand toppled over, and everything on it crashed to the floor.

“Are you crazy?” I shouted, shocked as all get out. I had never expected in a million years that Dino would ever, ever put his hands on me in an aggressive manner.

This mess was like déjà vu, only instead of Dub, it was now Dino. I didn't know what was about to go down. I was just glad Baby D was with my mom and not at home to witness it, but what I forgot was that there was still a witness.

“What is going on? Is everything okay?” Lori looked horrified as she stood in the doorway.

“Everything is okay,” I said, getting up off the floor and brushing myself off. “I just need to get my purse so we can go.” I tried to play the scene down, but Lori knew something was up. I could tell by the concerned look on her face.

“So you just gon' act like I didn't say anything?” Dino snapped.

I ignored him and just gathered the items I needed and shoved them into my white purse. “Come on, Lori. Let's go.”

“You can go after you change up out of that ho-looking outfit,” Dino said, jerking me by my arm and pulling me back into the bedroom and over to the closet.

“Dino, stop it!” Lori and I said to him in unison.

Our words fell upon deaf ears, as he bear hugged me and dragged me over to the closet and began pulling out random items of clothing. “You can wear this. And what's wrong with this?”

“Dino, stop it!” I cried, trying to squirm out of his arms. He had me in a death grip. I felt suffocated. All of a sudden I just started having flashbacks of Dub and all his abuse. I couldn't breathe. I needed to break lose at all costs. The next thing I knew, my hand rose and I decked Dino right in the face. Now he was the one who was stunned. He released me and then drew his fist back out of instinct. I looked at him with such fear. I thought he was going to lay me out. He was looking back at me with the same fear I had in my eyes. He, too, thought he was going to lay me out. That scared him. Dino knew as well as I did that he wasn't that type of guy.

Dub hadn't been that type of guy when I first met him, either.

Oh, no.
Was I about to create another monster? Why hadn't I just changed the stupid outfit? Maybe now that I was in a much healthier relationship than the one with Dub, the challenge was to accept boundaries.

I walked in the apartment after my night out with Lori, during which we did nothing but talk at the bar about Dino's and my fight. Dino was sitting there, waiting on the couch in the dark. I knew that might look bad to the average person, but I knew Dino. He wasn't sitting there, waiting to pounce on me. He was sitting there, waiting to . . .

“I'm sorry,” he wept.

He'd been waiting to apologize.

He got up from the couch and raced over to hug me. “Baby, I'm so sorry. I have no idea what got into me.” His shoulders were heaving up and down.

Is this big ole bear crying like a baby?
I asked myself. I couldn't get past all the tears, snot, and slobbering to get to the actual apology. “Babe, are you drunk?” I asked him.

“No. You know I don't get drunk,” he said, pulling away and looking at me like I was crazy for even asking that question.

I walked over to turn the lamp on. I looked around the room for any signs that he'd been drinking, smoking, or something. There was nothing. I looked at his eyes. They were red, but not from being high. They were just red and puffy from crying.

“The way I acted was uncalled for. I promise to never disrespect you like that again.” Dino walked over to me and put his hands on my face. “I can't believe I put my hands on my beautiful, precious wife.” And that was when he broke down again, squeezing me tightly in his arms.

I didn't know how to receive his apology. Heck, after Dub would hit me or yoke me up, he would never apologize, except for that first time he hit me, of course. After that, there were no apologies, which made me feel like I might have deserved the abuse. Dub would either force me to have sex with him or call me a bunch of vulgar names after he hit me. That was what I was used to. Not this heartfelt, wimpy stuff. Or maybe, just maybe, this was me and Dub all over again, only now it was me and Dino. Would Dino make a habit out of this until it became our new normal?

Did I like getting knocked upside the head? No. But I was used to a little more aggression than what Dino was displaying. For someone as big as Dino, who, by the way, had been getting bigger by the minute, he was acting real soft, which I had discovered was a major turnoff.

“Just tell me you forgive me,” Dino pleaded, wiping the snot from underneath his nose with his hand.

If it means you'll stop crying, then yeah, I'll forgive you.
I thought that in my head, but I didn't want to hurt his feelings by saying it out loud. Call me bipolar, not to make light of those who had actually been diagnosed with it, but sometimes I could snap off in a heartbeat, but other times I just wasn't up for the fight that I knew snapping off could sometimes lead to. So I just gave him a simple, “Yes, Dino, I forgive you.” I then headed up the stairs. “I'm drained. I'm going to bed.”

Dino turned out the lights and followed me up the steps. He got in bed, while I got my pajamas on and then climbed in bed after him. I purposely lay with my back turned to him. Then he purposely got close up on me and spooned me.

“I'm sorry,” he whispered, then apologized repeatedly, soft kisses landing on my neck following each apology.

Okay. Now, this was the Dub way. Fight and then be ready to have sex. This was what I was used to, but it wasn't what I wanted to do. So the same way I used to try to fight Dub off of me, I would do with Dino. Although Dino equaled about four Dubs, I'd been fighting all my life practically, and so I'd at least give him a run for his money.

“Stop, Dino. I'm tired. I'm not trying to do that tonight.”

“All right, baby. I understand.” He gave me one last kiss and then just rested behind me, still spooning me.

I waited for him to start kissing me again, to start rubbing up against me, something. Dub had never relented that easily. Dub had never relented at all. The next thing I heard was Dino snoring in my ear.

What? Just saying no to him had actually worked. I was both ecstatic inside and a little puzzled. Did Dino giving up so easily mean that I wasn't that attractive to him? That he could take it or leave it? Did it mean that I wasn't worth fighting for? Because all I knew at that point was fighting.

I didn't allow the battle to go on in my mind much longer before I fell off to sleep. Even then, my sleep wasn't interrupted by Dino taking from me what I had denied him. Was I dreaming? I had to be, because this had not been my reality. If I was dreaming, it wouldn't be long before somebody woke me up out of it.

 

 

“It is really jumping in here. There are way more people at this cabaret than there was at the last one,” I said as I looked around the rental hall.

The place was decorated with eight-foot-long tables dressed in black and red tablecloths. There were bottles of champagne in ice buckets at each end of every table, and candles served as centerpieces. This cabaret had a really nice ambiance going on, and the crowd was a slightly older crowd than Dino and me.

Dino had a cousin who would get together with him and a couple of his frat brothers and throw cabarets a couple times a year. We always supported him because the price was right, the atmosphere was right, the food was always on point, and drinks were included in the ticket price. And did I mention the DJ was on point?

“Let's find us a seat and grab a drink and some food before it's all gone,” Dino said, taking my hand and walking me around the room. “Hey, there go my peoples.” He pointed to where his cousin's wife was sitting, along with a couple other members of his family who I had met before.

We made our way over there and greeted everybody with a hug. Folks were already buzzing and feeling right, so Dino and I joined in the fun. We'd been there only about twenty minutes when one of our favorite songs came on.

“Come on, baby. You know I got to go show off my beautiful wife and her dancing skills.” Dino took me by the hand and pulled me out of the seat. He then placed his arm around my waist and escorted me to the dance floor.

Even if I wasn't the most beautiful woman in the room, Dino always treated me as if I were. He always did everything in his power to make me feel like I was. I guess that was why I never had any doubts about Dino's loyalty and love for me, never got jealous, never felt a need to check up on him, question him, or anything of that nature. He made me feel so loved and so special that he never gave me a reason to put his love and dedication toward me under a microscope. I wasn't consumed with thoughts of what he was doing or who he was doing it with. He made it his business to make me feel as though he and I were one. That I was the center of his universe. And even though he was younger than me, he was mature in years when it came to how he was supposed to make his woman feel.

Somewhere along the line, though, I guess I hadn't done the same by making Dino feel like he was the only man in the world.

“Y'all was out there cutting the rug,” his cousin's wife said when we returned to the table after dancing to a couple of songs. “Y'all look so cute together, so in love. Like the perfect couple.”

“We are perfect.” Dino smiled. “She's perfect for me, anyway.”

I lifted my glass of champagne and clinked it with his glass of soda. “Cheers,” I said, then joined him in the toast.

Before I could even remove my glass from my lips I heard someone say, “Helen, is that you?”

I turned to face the figure that was standing by the table.

“Girl, it
is
you.”

“Oh, my God! Franklin? Boy, I have not seen you since high school. Look at you.” I stood up from the table and leaned in to give my old high school friend a hug, while Dino sat there next to me. I didn't think anything of it. It was just a friendly hug with a pat on the back with an old high school friend. There were no sexual intentions involved on either part.

“Look at you,” he shot back. “Lookin' good, girl.” I was several pounds lighter than the high school version of me.

“Thank you.” I looked around. “Who are you here with? You got a girl? Married now? You know you was a playa playa back in school.” I winked and joked with him.

“Naw, I'm here with Brady and them.” He pointed to the back of the room.

I turned to see his running buddies from high school. They waved when they saw Franklin pointing and me looking back at them. I waved back with a big ole Kool-Aid grin on my face.

“You married?”

“I most certainly am,” I said, just as proud as I could be. I then turned to Dino. “Franklin, this is Dino, my husband,” I said, introducing them. “Dino, this is Franklin. We went to school together.”

Franklin happily extended his hand to greet Dino. I was shocked when Dino's usually lively, perky self didn't even bother to shake Franklin's hand. He just hit him with a head nod instead.

It felt like the entire room just all of a sudden stood still while Franklin's hand was left hanging.

Franklin cleared his throat at the awkwardness of the moment. “Well, um, I'ma go on and head back with my boys. I just wanted to come check you out.”

“All right, Franklin. It was good seeing you.” I slid back into my seat, embarrassed as all get out. It had been a couple weeks since Dino had embarrassed me in front of Lori, and now here he was, acting a fool again.

I tried to change the mood by lifting my champagne glass. “Let's toast again.” I held my glass up in Dino's direction.

“Naw, you cut off.” He pulled my hand down in a quick motion, causing the champagne to spill down my arm.

“What is wrong with you?” I cut my eyes at him and then took a couple of napkins that his cousin's wife was extending to me. I began wiping the liquid off my arm while his cousin's wife began sopping up the table.

“How are you going to cut me off when this is only, like, my second glass?”

“Because you're already drunk,” Dino said. “You must be drunk to sit here and hug some dude all up in my face. You got me sitting here, looking stupid in front of my peoples while you flirting with old boy—”

“Baby, cuz,” his cousin's wife interrupted, “it ain't her that got you sitting here, looking stupid. You doing a great job at that all by yourself.”

I couldn't help but chuckle when his cousin's wife and everyone within earshot burst out laughing.

“Forget this. We out of here!” Once again Dino grabbed me by my arm and pulled me up.

My poor arm had had enough. I had had enough. I didn't want any trouble up in there, so I snatched my arm away from Dino and just willingly walked out with him on my own. By the time I reached the car, tears were streaming down my face. As I got in the car, I knew exactly where Dino and I were headed. I was afraid that this was only the spark of something that could ultimately turn into an all-out inferno. I had been down that same path before. Only this time I wasn't sure if I could go along for the ride.