Page 13 of Butterfly 6, Phase 1

“You had a choice to spend your last days with someone, and you chose her,” Morgan could barely get the words out, she was so short of breath. Pain was sucking up all her air. Every notion she had of her place in his life went out the window. Apparently, I wasn’t shit to him, she thought.

“It was never a choice,” Messiah said. “You think Ethic was letting me breathe after what I did? I couldn’t stay here. He wasn’t letting me anywhere near you!”

“So now Ethic ran you out of town? Okay,” Morgan signed, nodding like she had complete understanding of the situation. “Guess he chose Bleu to run with you, too, huh? Does he know he’s the reason you abandoned me?”

Morgan’s sarcasm struck a chord of panic in Messiah, because it was her calmness that signified her detachment. Morgan was highly emotional. She flew off the handle often. He knew how to deal with that version of her. The passive aggression detonated a bomb inside him that left him scrambling to process her reaction.

“You have no idea how hard it was for me to even build enough strength to want to live without you. You left, and I wanted to die. I tried to die behind you, and you were off with Bleu. While I was growing your babies, you were fucking the bitch you told me was your best friend. I thought it meant something to have your babies. I thought it would honor you. No matter how it ended, I remembered how it began, and I just wanted to honor what we made.”

Messiah scoffed. “You thought it honored a nigga so much you let another man claim my seeds as his own,” Messiah’s snarky comment sent Morgan to a trillion. “There’s only so much you can play victim, Mo.”

“Victim? Messiah, fuck you. I was a single mother with twins. You left me to do it on my own! What did you expect?!” She was back to signing because she was close to screaming, and silence was the only way she could mitigate her rage. She would kill him if she gave this feeling a voice. The way he had her seeing red had to be unhealthy.

“You wouldn’t have had to do it on your own if you had told me you were pregnant. Cuz I been doing the math, shorty, and it’s telling me you knew before I even blew town. You knew, and you didn’t say one word,” Messiah signed back. “I been letting you have it, but you half to blame for this shit. You the reason why my kids don’t know me. Tell me I’m lying?”

Morgan’s silence. Her stillness. It was evidence of her guilt. “I wanted you to stay and make it right for me. I wanted you to fight for me. I thought you were Mizan’s brother. You had a gun to Ethic’s head. I had no idea who you were. I needed you to love me enough to make it right. All of it. I needed you to explain how you went from feeling like the safest place on earth to the most dangerous. I just wanted you to make sense of it for me. Had you done that, I would have told you! I begged you to explain. I begged you to look at me and remember what I meant to you. You looked at me like I was nothing that day. You saw me fall apart. I had no shame; out there looking like a fool for you, and you saw all that, and you still left. I needed you. I prayed to God every night for months that you would just come back. I screamed out your name like a crazy person. I thought about you all day, hoping you would just…” Morgan threw her hands up in exasperation because she was desperate for him to hear her now, the same way she had been desperate for him to hear her cries back then. “To just…”

“Just what, shorty?” Messiah asked.

“Just feel me, Messiah!” She seethed. “I wanted you to feel my heart break inside your chest because I swear to God, I could feel you hurting somewhere. You weren’t close, but you were right here,” she whispered, placing her palm to her chest. “I was on my knees trading favors with God, negotiating years off my life, even if I had to make the deal with the devil, just to bring you back. I went to Bleu, and I begged that bitch to tell me where you were. I begged her, and there was some real cocky shit in her stance. I felt it then. I asked her straight up if she was fucking you. She looked me in my face, and said no.”

“We weren’t…”

“You’re a liar!” she hissed, cutting him off. Messiah couldn’t get a word in. “I expect a snake bitch like Bleu to lie! I expect a bitch that’s plotting on my man to lie to me! But you were mine. You were with me in that apartment at State, in between those sheets.”

“I know, shorty. I was,” he said shamefully. He never thought his love for Bleu would live in the same world as his love for Morgan. They had collided, and the impact was deadly. He hadn’t ever regretted a single moment with Bleu until now. Seeing the way it sucked the air out of Morgan, watching the glow fade from her eyes, and hearing the disappointment in her tone, it all made him realize how selfish he had been. He hadn’t meant to be, but still, here they were.

Morgan was crying so hard she couldn’t breathe. She sucked in air and snot as she wiped her eyes stubbornly. “The promises you whispered in my ear, the hugs that lasted for hours, the possession, the obsession, the confessions we shared. YOU WERE MINE!” Morgan signed hopelessly.

“I still am,” Messiah signed back. He was offering himself; it was all he could do. He was ashamed of the way he had broken her down. He didn’t know how to defend himself because his truth didn’t align with hers. His intent didn’t override the damage he had inadvertently caused.

“No, you not. I don’t even know who you are,” Morgan whispered. “You looked me in my face and told me she was just your friend. I lost pieces of myself carrying these babies for you. I thought you were dead, and you were living and breathing, giving my time to Bleu,” she scoffed. “I gave you life, and all you do is suck the life out of me.” Morgan bawled one fist and tapped her open hand with it as she spoke. “It’s blow after blow with you. Lie after lie. Secret after secret. You’re too underhanded, Messiah. The shit never ends. It hurts so bad with you, I can barely remember what it feels like when we’re good, Messiah.”

The guilt in his eyes twisted her gut. It was an overwhelming emotion to hate someone you used to love. It angered her because Morgan hadn’t given Messiah up by choice. He had forced her hand. His deceit, his treachery, his dishonesty, and most of all, his abandonment had left her no choice but to choose differently. He had destroyed them. Every special moment they shared, every intimate memory, was tainted, and with him piling on new hurts, her bitterness was overflowing. Messiah wasn’t a man who took scolding well, but he was silent as he absorbed her words. Guilt could form no rebuttals. “How does that not make you sad?” she asked, aloud, defeat lacing her tone. “We used to be so in love.”

“It fucks me up, Mo,” Messiah uttered. “Because I remember everything. I can’t hate you. Even the parts I want to hate about you, I love. The worst days with you are better than my favorite days with anyone else,” Messiah replied. “I won’t run down your bullshit, because you really flawless out here. You could have told me you were pregnant, but you right, I should have known. I should have looked at my baby and known, because I know you, Mo. I know every inch of you. The home I made inside you, shorty, you right, I should have known. The shit we were doing in my bed every night,” Messiah said, “Type shit that only leads to a baby. I fucked up. You fucked up. I can’t be mad at that. You supposed to make mistakes, so that you learn, and you’re doing all that. I’m supposed to be right by your side, and I’m missing it. I love your fuck ups. I love your bad choices. I don’t give a fuck who you been with since I left, who you’ll be with if you never take me back, shorty. It ain’t shit you could do to undo the knot we tied. I remember that apartment. Do you? Cuz we left our hearts in that bitch in the safe, and you out here acting like it’s in your possession to give away to the next nigga. I’m the only one with the key. Do you remember what happened between those walls? I’d live my whole fucking life with you and my kids in that bitch and die a happy-ass nigga if you would just love the devil in me, like I love the devil in you. Okay, I fucked up with Bleu, but it was after I left, shorty. Nothing happened during you, ever, and that’s on everything I love.”

“On everything you love? That’s supposed to mean something?” Morgan asked, scoffing. “You’d have to actually love something for that to hold weight.”

Messiah sucked his teeth and waved her off. “A’ight, shorty, you ain’t even in the zone to hear me, so I might as well hold my cards.”

“No, tell me. I’m listening. What do you love? It’s a serious question because I’ve never seen you treat anything or anybody good. Anything or anyone good in your life, you betray. You plotted on Ethic. You had a bitch and a baby hidden away while telling me I was your girl. You embarrassed me in front of our friends and acted like I wasn’t shit to you. Then disappeared. Now, there’s this Bleu shit. So, make it make sense for me. You stopped fucking with the bitch with that baby and left me to go to Bleu? You beefing with Meek like he’s just another nigga in the streets. So, who do you fucking love? Who do you give a fuck about besides yourself?” Morgan asked.

“You, mu’fucka! I did all that and through every action, every bad mu’fucking decision, after every regret, I still love you! You still fucking with my nigga, a nigga I’d die for, and I still ain’t counting your flaws the way you lining mine up. I ain’t keeping score cuz it don’t fucking matter. Ain’t shit you can do to make me not fuck with you. As mad as the shit makes me, I still see the girl who was afraid to speak when I look at you. You out here having your way, doing what you want, and splitting my fucking chest in half. You ain’t no angel, shorty. You give a nigga hell; I just love the burn,” he signed.

His answer floored her, but she wondered if he would feel the same if the hell he spoke of was by her design. Their love burned like fire because he had set the blaze. He dealt with her reactions to his disloyalty. Her every decision had been a countermove to something he started. If she betrayed him blindly, without warning, and without regard, she wondered if it would still feel like a love he was willing to endure. He might not like her actions, but he could easily explain them. Even the circumstances that he disagreed with, he knew he had forced her into. Morgan was an “I-won’t-start-it-but-I’ma-finish-it” type of girl, and this was round three of some Mortal Kombat-type shit. She was ready to finish him.

There would have never been a Bash if not for his abandonment. If he really dug deep, Messiah would admit that not even Ahmeek would exist as anything other than a friend if Messiah hadn’t disappeared from her life. He had abandoned Morgan, and she had reacted. He had removed himself, so she had made peace the best way she knew how. The solace she had found in his best friend was due to a void he had left in her soul. He regretted every single moment that had led them to this point. She just wished she could see past the pain. She wished she had goggles that could see through the trauma he had left her with to recall how good he had been to her before shit went south. Now, when she looked at him, all she could recognize was resentment.

“I don’t know who you are anymore,” Morgan whispered. “And I don’t want to keep going tit for tat. You fucked with Bleu, knowing I was suffering without you. You had to know I was hurting, that I was yearning for you, that I was confused and alone. You didn’t know I was pregnant, but you knew you were my world, Messiah. You knew, and you still fucked that girl. I mourned you for two years. I didn’t just move on. Meek wasn’t an act of betrayal. Meek is what happens when time moves forward…”

“Fuck that nigga,” Messiah stated coldly. Messiah lost all empathy when it came to her and Ahmeek. Bash, he could fathom. Ahmeek made him sick to his stomach.

“No, fuck you, and Bleu, and the mystery bitch with the baby I lumped up. Where she at, Ssiah? Huh? You real mad about who I’m involved with, but you still got me in the dark about so many things.” She saw his guards go up. He shut down right at the mention of the things he couldn’t reveal.

“Fuck it, Mo. Leave the shit alone, shorty. You got it.”

Morgan scoffed and focused on their daughter. “Always evading shit when it’s your turn to tell the truth,” she spat. “Let’s just focus on Yolly. Our daughter needs you. Messari needs you. I’m slowly realizing that all I need are my kids. Needing you is like playing Russian roulette, and I can’t risk pulling that trigger.”