This Christmas

Resentment.

Paris. [ face in mm, but I'm 95% sure y'all know what Lauren London looks like. ]

"Paris?"

Shit. I tried to get my shaking under control and wiped my face with the sleeve of my Victoria's Secret hoodie. I cleared my throat and hoped to God that my voice didn't crack. "What do you want, Khalil?" I snapped.

"I got you something, baby. I'm sorry." His voice sounded so sweet and soothing that I almost believed him. But I knew better than to believe it.

"No, fuck you and your sorries!" I screamed at him. "I'm done with yo' ass, leave me alone!"

He banged on the bathroom door. "Paris, you can't hide in there forever," he said calmly, but I knew to take it as a warning. "Whenever you decide to stop acting childish, you can come out and get what I got you." His footsteps growing quieter and quieter let me know I was alone again... only for the moment.

I sank onto the bathroom and tried to calm down again, but looking at the blue, purple and black bruises on my body once I rolled up my sleeves only made me burst into loud, ugly tears again. I knew that every time he got me something, it came with a price. Khalil's bitch ass liked to hit women, and my dumb ass let myself become one of those women.

I never tried leaving because I thought that as long as he didn't swing on me like I was a nigga and fuck around and hit me on the face, I'd be okay. As stupid as that sounded, I was making excuses because outside of him, I had no place to go. I wasn't in college (not like I wanted to go, anyway), I didn't have a job, and singing in night clubs from time to time wasn't making me no money.

Money was what ruled the world. I had figured that out in middle school, when bitches picked on me for wearing slightly outdated clothes while they wore expensive shit my grandparents weren't gonna buy me, like True Religion and Nike. And I had also figured out that it was all about your body, back in elementary school when I got teased for being fat but got chased after as soon as I hit high school because I was considered 'thick'.

I don't know when it happened, but the lightbulb went off in my head and I put two and two together, that if I gave some of these boys the time of day, they'd do stuff for me. And that was true - by junior year, my closet was filled with the newest and most expensive shit that I could rock on my own without my grandparents getting suspicious. I had lied and said I had a job, and they just left it at that. I had wanted to tell them the truth, but I didn't want to disappoint them.

I guess more than anything, they didn't want me to end up like my dad and become a parent at a young age. Dad was in his early twenties when he got with my mom, a mixed girl hardened by the streets. Dad was a suburban nigga tryna be street, and I think by the time she figured that out, she dipped. She wasn't meant to be tied down by anything - kids, a man, but it happened anyway. Out of all her four kids, I'm the oldest, and I'd get left in charge of my brothers while she went out to go fuck random niggas, or out to do drugs. Eventually she got her shit together, married a man and moved to Minnesota with him, but she left me with Dad and that was that for awhile. She still called, but as I got older, the frequency of them came from occasionally to not at all.

By the time that happened when I was about 8 or 9, I'd happily found a new family in Dad's relatives. Pawpaw had four brothers, and out of those four, three of them had kids. But most of them were all so much older than me, they were all Dad's age. Pawpaw's second youngest brother, Uncle Isaac (technically, he was Great-Uncle Isaac, but that was too many syllables) had two kids- a son named Isaiah, and a daughter named Ivory who was around my age, so of course we became cool quickly.

I'd loved Ivory so much for awhile. Though she was older than me, she never treated me like an annoying younger sibling, but talked to me like we were the same age. She didn't tell on me when I said cuss words in front of her, and genuinely listened to me when I told her about what was going on at school. Aunt Kimberly and Uncle Isaac invited me over whenever they were doing something fun, so I had become like her little sister after awhile.

But then came the resentment. When I was fourteen, I'd slid into hating her. By that time, I'd noticed that she had everything I ever wanted, and just how unfair everything was. Her parents were together and up until a year or so before the divorce, they were happy. I'm pretty sure that after Dad got a paternity test and found out I was really his then he went to court for custody of me, my parents never saw each other again. Ivory had cute clothes that she didn't have to get from boys, and she was smart, too. Bitch had won at life while I came about everything with a struggle, shit was unfair.

She didn't know about how I'd started hating her, so she didn't know why I stopped trying to see her outside of family reunions. And though she was the closest person to me at one point, there wasn't no way in hell I'd tell her about what Khalil was doing to me. That'd be just another advantage she'd have over me, and I wasn't having that. So I'd decided that whenever I decided to come around and see her, I'd fake like everything was okay, like I was doing better than her. Since she was in college, I knew her ass was broke or almost there, so I'd just flaunt the material things I did have.

I loved Ivory, and wanted to see her happy. Truthfully, I hoped she was doing good. But a bigger part of me wanted to be doing better than her in every way possible, and desired more than anything for once to have her jealous of me instead of the other way around. I'd only have one chance to find out how she was, and I'd only have one chance to show off how I was doing - that stupid Christmas thingy. Bitches like me don't do mountains and shit, but who knew when we'd all come together again?

Exactly.

I scrolled through my recent calls from over the past few days. 12 of them were from Khalil, 5 were from this dude named Marcus who'd been trying to get with me for years. Talm' bout some, 'he love me'. Yeah, okay, whatever nigga. I finally found Ivory's number, then hit that 'call back' button. "Ivoryyyyyyy," I sang when she picked up the phone.

"Paris?" She questioned.

"Yes, it's me. So yeah, um, I decided to come to the Christmas thingy," I said, popping my lips.

"Okay, that's good..." she said skeptically, like she ain't believe me. See, shit like this gets on my nerves. "You sure you changed your mind for good?"

Duh, bitch! "Yeah, jus' text me the address and I'll clear my schedule for whenever you tryna do the thing."

"Well, it's an all-week typa thing, you got enough time for me?" She asked.

"Hmm, I guess. But that was it, and I'm, uh, busy, so I gotta go. Bye." I hung up on her as soon as I could instead of indulging her in a conversation. When I hung up, memories of her trying to make the remainder of my fucked-up childhood good came rushing back to me and I felt bad, but I don't know why. I don't wanna hurt her or nothing, this ain't no fuckin' Tyler Perry movie. I just wanna make her jealous. That's all I ever wanted.

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A.N. - Paris is such a... complex character, so that's why I gave Paris her own exclusive chapter that I'm positive most of the other characters won't get. I hope you guys liked this one, it took awhile of writing to get this to you quickly. There may or may not be an update tomorrow because I have an essay due on Wednesday I haven't even started on yet, so I'll be working on that on Monday and Tuesday night.

1) How do you feel about Paris?

2) Do you feel sorry for her at all? Hell, is she even worthy of pity to you?

3) Do you think her intentions are bad, good, or maybe a little bit of both?