Carl Weber - Baby Momma Drama

“What’s up? I saw your sister walk out of here with those dresses. If you need clothes, boo, you know all you gotta do is ask.” He gave me that big smile of his.

“I know. It’s just that she gave those dresses to me,” I lied. “And now she comes over here taking them back just because I’m pregnant. I hate her, Travis.” He looked at me with a frown.

“I guess your sister’s not the good soldier I thought she was”

“She’s not. She’s a real bitch, and I don’t want her in my house when I’m not here.”

“Okay, but I want you to forget about that for a while. I told you before, I’ve got a surprise for you.” He smiled. I grinned. Last time Travis said he had a surprise for me, he asked me to marry him.

“What kind of surprise?” I started jumping up and down like a kid, I was so excited.

“A big surprise. A real big surprise. Now go get Maleka so I can show it to you.”

When I got back to the living room with Maleka, the front door was open and I could see Travis was standing by his truck, holding my pocketbook.

“Come on,” he yelled.

“Where we going?”

“Don’t worry about that. You’ll see when we get there. Now, get in.” I got into the truck and Travis helped Maleka into her car seat. It took me a while to get my seat belt around my belly, but I managed. When I was all settled in, Travis handed me a black scarf.

“What’s this for?” I looked at him strangely.

“It’s a blindfold. I told you this was a surprise.”

“This had better be good, Travis.” I smiled at him as I tied the scarf over my eyes.

“Don’t worry, it is. It’s big. Real big.” He checked the scarf to be sure I couldn’t see, then pulled off.

I knew he wasn’t lying when he said the surprise was big. Whatever he was up to, he was really going all out to keep it a surprise. I felt like a little kid who was waiting for daylight so she could run downstairs and see what Santa Claus had brought her on Christmas Day. We couldn’t have driven more than ten minutes when I felt the truck stop. Travis eased it into park. By now I was going crazy trying to figure out what he was up to.

“Can I take this thing off now?” I pleaded. Travis had jumped out of the truck and let Maleka out.

“Not yet.” He opened my door, grabbed my hand, and guided me out of the truck. “Steph, I love you, and what you’re about to see is the first step to showing you how much I really love you and Maleka.”

“Okay, okay. I love you, too. Can I take this thing off now?” I was going crazy. I couldn’t take it anymore. He was telling me my present was right in front of me.

“Yeah, you can take it off.” I reached up and ripped the blindfold off, and what I saw left me speechless. I turned to him with my mouth wide open.

“Is that for me?”

“It’s for us. Me, you, Maleka, and the baby. Merry Christmas, baby” I couldn’t help it. I started to cry. Travis had done a lot of things for me the past few years. He’d paid for me to go to nursing school, paid for Maleka’s day care, and brought groceries every Friday when he left the base. But this was more than I could have ever asked for.

“Do you like it?”

“Do I like it? It’s everything I ever wanted.” I was standing in front of a brand-new white colonial house with burgundy shutters. It wasn’t huge, but it was just what I’d always wanted.

“I’m serious, Steph. If you don’t like it I can always tell them we don’t want it. I haven’t signed all the papers yet,” Travis chuckled.

“Don’t you dare! It’s perfect” I turned around and took my man by the waist, planting a giant kiss on his lips. “I can’t believe you bought us a house! I can’t wait to tell Big Momma. When can we move in?”

“We close in about a week. I figured you’d want to have Christmas dinner with all your family at our house this year.” My face burst into a smile, then a frown.

“We can’t have Christmas dinner here. We don’t have a dining room set-”

He cut me off. “We don’t have a lot of things, but I guess that’s why Visa was nice enough to send me this new gold card.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out the card. He looked at Maleka, who was running around to the back of the house. “We’ve got a little more than a quarter acre. Think we have enough room for a swing set?” Travis laughed and I joined in. He made me so happy. I felt like a queen.

“Travis?” I said softly.

“Yeah, babe?”

“I don’t think I can ever repay you for the things you’ve done for Maleka and me.”

“You already have repaid me. You’re having my child, remember?” He smiled. So did I.

“I know we’re having a baby together, but I wanna give you more. I wanna-”

He cut me off. “You really wanna give me something that I’ll always cherish?”

I nodded.

“Give me her.” Travis pointed in the backyard at Maleka. “Let me adopt her, Steph. Let me give her my name so she has the same last name as her siblings”

“You mean that? You really wanna adopt Maleka?”

“More than anything in the world. Hey, she already tells her friends I’m her dad.” He smiled.

“You know what? Now I know why I love you. You’re the sweetest man I ever met. I love you, Travis Thomas.”

“I love you too, Stephanie Johnson.” I reached my arms up and kissed my man. No matter what, I was never gonna let him go.

I drove into the jam-packed parking lot of the Ramada Inn and decided to park across the street at the Waffle House. It was ladies’ night at The Copper Mine, the small club in the basement of the Ramada, and it looked like everyone in Petersburg was out to have a good time. Everyone but me, that is. I wasn’t in the mood to party. I didn’t even know why I had let Joe talk me into meeting him at the club. But he told me it was time for me to get out of the house, so I finally agreed. I had been bored and lonely since Monica and I split. For five years I had spent my Sunday nights in Chesterfield, having dinner with Monica and her family. Now I had nothing to do but sit and imagine Jordan in my place at their dinner table.

God, I missed Monica. It had only been ten days since the gun incident, and I was lost without her. All I could think about was getting back with her. I tried leaving messages on her beeper. I even tried calling her folks, but she never responded. The only sign I had that she was even alive was that all her clothes had been taken out of my house one day while I was at work. She didn’t even leave a note. She just left her key on the table by the front door.

It defied all reason, but I was still deeply in love with that girl. Even after all that went down, if she had walked up to me and asked me to take her back, I would have. I realized she had her faults. Hell, so did I. But she had been a part of my life for too long to just let it go. Once I parked my car, I sat for a few minutes to get myself together before meeting Joe at his usual booth inside the club.

Joe was a big, six-foot-five, three-hundred-pound, light-skinned man with handsome features and a bald head. He moonlighted as head of security for the club to supplement his income as a dispatcher for Petersburg’s Public Bus Corp. Joe loved his job at the club. He hired members of the Nation of Islam’s FOI, and their mere presence kept the crowd under control. All Joe had to do every night was sit in his booth and watch the dance floor. It left him plenty of time to play mack daddy. It always amazed me how much play he would get, too.

“My main man, Dylan! What up, brotha?” He smiled, patting my back with his huge arm.

“I’m doing ah‘ight, Joe. How you doin’?” I forced a smile as I took a seat across from him.