Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 112755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112755 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Her complexion reddened as he looked straight through her.
“You’re focused on your goals now, and they’re positive for a change.” She swallowed.
“Definitely. So with all of that said, don’t tell me that I can’t give a woman what she needs. I choose if I will or won’t. It’s just that simple.” He leaned forward and took a taste of his wine.
“You speak like a Southern Black man that’s been raised in the projects, Legend. And then I look at you and can’t believe you sound like this. I’m sorry, but this shit is lightweight funny.” She burst out laughing, cracking up hard, and he couldn’t help following suit.
He shrugged. “Well, it is what it is. I sound just like my daddy. He spoke the same way. Even when he was speaking in Spanish. When we talk now, which is only every now and again, I can hear the similarities.” He ran his hand across his mouth and looked absently behind him, then turned to her again.
“You have a gun on you?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I saw the bulge.” His brow raised. “No! I mean, like, the lump on the side of your hip. I thought felons aren’t allowed to have guns?”
“We’re not.”
She looked at him for a moment, then picked up the remote.
“What do you want to watch?”
“I don’t care about this TV, baby. I’m just enjoying talking to you.”
“I like talking to you, too.” Running her fingers through her hair, she cocked her head to one side and studied him. He liked that, how she was looking at him as though she’d caught him viewing her in a different light.
“I want to go back to when you brought up loyalty the other day. What does loyalty mean to you?” She brought both legs onto the couch now, bringing her knees up to her chin.
“What does loyalty mean to me?” He contemplated the question for a bit. “Well, instead of giving you a definition, I’ll just tell you who I am as far as loyalty is concerned.” She nodded in understanding. “I’m loyal to my friends. I’m loyal to people who are loyal to me.”
“What about women? Relationships? You said you can be when you choose to be, but are you naturally?’
“Now, here we are again. You said you didn’t want that position in my life, so why do you care?”
“I don’t. I’m just curious.”
“Again, I’ve been loyal when I wanted to be. Faithful. Am I naturally faithful? I don’t think anyone is. It’s something we have to decide and then do, and stick by that.”
“How can you say that?”
“How can I say we’re not naturally faithful? Easily. We’re just not monogamous by design. That is a fairytale. If we were, men could only get one woman pregnant at a time, and women could only get pregnant by one man, and that would be the end of it. There are other animals in the animal kingdom that are designed for monogamy. We’re not one of them. Instead, you can literally have twins with two different fathers, and the strongest sperm survives to fertilize the egg. That means that one man’s sperm, can fight with another man’s sperm, if they both fuck the same woman during her fertile window. It wouldn’t be set up like that if we were supposed to never be with anyone else.”
“That’s not proof of that, Legend. It just means that if someone’s spouse dies, or there is a genetic problem with the person we’re pregnant by, then having more than one option to procreate increases our chances, as human beings, of still being able to populate the Earth with strong, viable children.”
“Nice theory, but not true. This one-woman, one-man shit is a big ass lie, propagated by religion and the government. It has its advantages, don’t get me wrong, but at the core of it all, we’re beasts. You. Me. Everyone. Sex is just as much for enjoyment as it is to continue the species. Some animals don’t even have orgasms, but we do. That means we’re supposed to experience this with many different people. Puritan views have muddied the waters. Turned sex into something dirty and bad.”
“Nah, I don’t agree with that.”
“You don’t have to agree. The truth isn’t disputable. I can only be deeply in love with one woman at a time, but I can have sex with multiple women and not feel a thing about it. Now, that’s just me, but I know it to be true for many others, too. We’re wild animals that have only recently, from a historical timeline perspective, been tamed. We eat, conquer, fight, shit, fuck for pleasure and for reproduction. Period. As a higher-rank elevated animal, we try to do things that will better us and society, so havin’ kids’, for instance, with a bunch of different fathers and mothers usually isn’t ideal. It can cause confusion. When I wanted to step out and cheat, I did that, too. When confronted about cheating, if I had, I never lied about it. Sometimes I was sorry about it after the fact. Most times I wasn’t. Honestly, it seemed the more I gave my heart to someone, the worse I got treated, so I stopped doing that.