Page 35 of Lease to Love

Then he blocked my number.

This bitch dumped me with an emoji.

Not a conversation. Not an explanation. Not even the basic human courtesy of a period at the end of a sentence.

A little punk ass peace sign.

The comments flew by so quickly I could barely read them.

Hundreds of strangers offering their funky-ass opinions about me despite knowing absolutely nothing about me.

I had thought Ayo getting exposed for cheating would hurt his popularity.

I really had.

He wasn't exactly famous, but he had enough followers to make a little money off sponsored posts, fit checks, gym videos, and whatever else people were willing to pay him to point a camera at himself doing.

He hadn't done the whole my girl, my girl, my girl thing online, but he'd never exactly hidden me either.

People had seen me in his stories.

He called me babe whenever he needed me to adjust his camera.

He never corrected anybody when they commented things like your girlfriend is so pretty or y'all are cute.

I'd assumed that meant something. Apparently, it didn’t.

Still, I'd expected some backlash.

Maybe a few thousand unfollows. Maybe people would drag him. Maybe he'd have to spend a couple of weeks pretending to have learned a valuable lesson about accountability.

Instead, his numbers had gone up.

Way up.

In the weeks since the breakup, he'd made more content about me than he had during our entire relationship… And people were eating it up.

And Keeya the Side Bitch was sitting in the background, skinning and grinning like she'd won the damn lottery.

And wearing my goddamn chain.

"Don't get me wrong," Ayo leaned back on the expensive-looking couch he was sitting on, "shorty was cute."

"Like a puppy," Keeya interrupted, smiling like she'd said something clever.

Bitch, fuck you too.

"Aye chill!” he said, still grinning, leaning toward the camera. “Honestly, it's my own fault. What am I gonna do with a bitch who does puzzles and coloring books and shit?”

That one landed differently.

The bitch part barely registered, but the puzzles? The coloring?

That hurt. Those were mine.

The little pieces of myself I'd never considered interesting enough to show anybody.

I spent all day surrounded by people. Customers. Suppliers. Neighbors. My damn mama. Everybody needed something from me. My brain was always running—numbers, fabrics, designs, inventory, bills, appointments, deadlines.