When We Were Young

Chapter Thirty five

A/N: Why can't Odell and Desireé just be like Odell and Novie like seriously 😩😔...

Desireé POV

"Why he so mean?!" Zee cried as Odell left the house.

"I don't know. Don't worry about him okay? I'm sorry that you had to see that baby. Listen to me, I'm gonna tell you something really important," I sat down next to my daughter at the top of the stairs. "You listening."

"Yes," she nodded.

"You don't ever let anybody, any man disrespect you, okay? What just happened that's not okay, that's never okay.  You're beautiful and strong and you're a queen. Nobody should ever talk to you in a way that doesn't build you up. You understand?" I looked at her seriously.

"Yes," she nodded.

"And if they don't what you gonna do?"

"Smack em?"

Shit. That was my fault.

"No," I shook my head, "it's not okay to hit people, mommy was wrong for that, but you should leave that person alone."

"Okay, I gwet it," Zee nodded and climbed in my lap before snuggling close to me.

"He weally gon take me 'way fwom you?" She asked fearfully.

"No nobody's gonna take you away from me. I promise." I squeezed her close to me and kissed her hair.

~

Odell POV

I was waiting for my Uber to come get me from in front of Desireé's house when I realized I still had her book in my hand. I thought about throwing the shit away but decided against I opened the book to a random page in the middle, not thinking anything of it.

~

I have a confession to make: I lie.

I've lied before, and before I die I'm probably going to lie again, but it would be a lie if I said I'm lying right now.

You've lied too.

Another thing we have in common.

Why do we lie? Really why do we lie? It's simply a fact of life: lying is bad. Everyone knows that. So why do we do it?

Lying can serve many purposes: protection, evasion, humor, the list can go on. We lie to other people, people we care about.

'Yes this meatless tofu lasagna is wonderful honey.'

'No, that dress doesn't make you look fat.'

I don't care about those lies. I don't, and neither do you. We don't care because your wife knows that she's fat and her cooking sucks. I care about the real lies.

What is a real lie?

The lies we tell ourselves. I think those are the real lies. The lies you put  in your own head when you're trying to convince no one but yourself of what wrongs you didn't do, or what words and actions didn't bother you.

Those are the lies that scare me.

We tell ourselves that those words didn't hurt, or that that look didn't bother us.

But those words did hurt, and that look did bug you. I got one today and it bugged me too.

Why?

I had a friend. A best friend, we told each other everything. We were each other's everything. It's an amazing feeling to have someone who just... gets you.