Miss Opportunity - Ch. 18.3

As Millsap dialed Daysha’s number, he reasoned that he was calling her to keep from giving in to the temptation of making Cami his one and only.

But that was only a half-truth.

The main reason Millsap was calling Daysha was out of fear. Cami had pleased him beyond his wildest dreams and now he was afraid of her. More specifically, he was afraid of the power she could have over him if he allowed it.

Millsap would not, could not allow another woman to have power over him. He learned that hard lesson countless times over the years simply by watching his manipulative mother in action.

Millsap first learned that lesson when he discovered how his mother seduced his father when she was a custodian at the college he taught at. How that seduction led to trapping his father into marriage when she got pregnant.

When Millsap was old enough to understand adult situations, he saw how his mother constantly bossed his father around. How she took advantage of Millsap Sr.’s kind heart by influencing him to borrow heavily when the money from his teaching salary wasn’t enough to feed her greed and materialistic urges.

Millsap had to fight hard not to downright despise his mother when Bonnie then divorced Millsap Sr. after he filed bankruptcy and came out of the closet all in the same day. Especially when she was partly to blame for the man being in those predicaments. It was Bonnie that drove Millsap Sr. to take out all those loans. It was she that brought women into their marital bed while they were together and encouraged him to explore his sexuality to the full. Well, he did…all the way into homosexuality.

As if that wasn’t enough, Bonnie then manipulated a teenage Millsap Jr. into making money the illegal way when his father could barely pay child support due to his persistent financial woes. Refusing to work another minimum-wage job, Bonnie made Millsap Jr. think that fast money was the only way they could continue to live in the manner that they’d been accustomed to with his father. She even had one of her brothers to take Millsap Jr. under his wing and instruct him in the way of the streets.

Ulysses Jones was a master in the ways of the drug game. Unable to achieve general status in New York due to all the competition, he’d come back down south, bypassing his home state of Kentucky, and set up shop in Georgia. He even stayed with Bonnie for awhile.

Muscular, dark-skinned with a booming voice, Ulysses commanded respect from his looks alone. His natural street smarts allowed him to ascend up the ranks quickly.

Ulysses could have been a general in the Enfield drug game, but he preferred the life of a top pimp instead and so switched occupations mid-stream. At the time of his death from a heart attack, he had a string of strip clubs in the tri-state area and over two hundred women on his payroll.

Millsap looked up to Ulysses as that strong father figure he always wanted. To please his uncle while he was alive, Millsap took the tools he’d been taught and ascended just as quickly in the drug game. To honor his uncle’s dying wish, he released all the women in Ulysses’ stable and gave them all seed money to start new lives if they so chose.

On a much smaller scale, Millsap also dedicated a Lil Wayne ringtone to his deceased uncle. That ringtone (Stunning Like My Daddy) signified his love and admiration for a man who was more like a father than an uncle to him. That ringtone was strictly used for those of his uncle’s caliber in the street game, drug or otherwise. Millsap still used it today for Mike-Mike and Franco’s incoming calls.

Yet despite the fact that he excelled in the game, enjoyed the money, and loved his status as a general, Millsap secretly hated the drug game. More specifically, he hated the way he’d entered it.

Millsap hated the fact that it hadn’t been his choice, his idea to become a full-time drug dealer. That he’d been subtly pushed into it by his mother. That he allowed such influence to occur in the first place.

Millsap also hated the fact that any hope of having a football career was stolen from him when he had to quit his high school team in order to become what Bonnie wanted him to be. Who cares that he actually didn’t mind being a hustler now, especially on the days that they counted those big bankrolls.

Since Millsap’s teenage ‘job’ mainly took up his night hours, he was still able to go to school during the day. Though he slept through most of his classes after being up all night hustling, he was so academically advanced thanks to his father’s influence that he passed all the tests anyway, securing him a timely high school diploma with the rest of his classmates.

Millsap went straight to college after graduation in order to please his father. But the lure of the streets, the fast money, and his mother constantly in his ear about how he was making more money than some doctors, about how too much formal education made a man weak, caused Millsap to drop out after his sophomore year.

No woman will ever control me again, Millsap mused determinedly, dialing the last digit of Daysha’s home number with relish.

When tonight’s date was sealed, Millsap finished cleaning up his kitchen, changed the bedding in the guestroom again, and then went to his bedroom to get some much needed rest. It wasn’t until he lay down on his untouched covers that it dawn on him where he’d slept last night.

In the guest bedroom!

Millsap never slept in the guest bedroom. That was where he had sex only. It was also where he left his sex partners when he was done with them. Millsap always, always retired to his own bedroom at the end of the night. He always slept alone.

Not so with Cami.

Millsap hadn’t wanted to be apart from her after they’d made such a powerful connection. He’d wanted to hold Cami in his arms and watch her sleep. Had wanted to wake up beside her in the morning light. So he’d stayed put. Now he regretted that decision immensely.

Cursing aloud, Millsap scolded himself for being so weak lately. First he relaxed his business rule for Cami. Now one of his house rules.

What next? Am I gonna marry the woman? Millsap mused, frowning at even the thought of Cami bearing his last name. She is ‘not’ wife material. She is only one-night-stand material.

If only his heart would agree with those sentiments.

As for his mother, Millsap was going to reduce her allowance and put her on a stricter budget starting today. No more would he jump through Bonnie’s hoops. Guilt or no guilt. Stroke or no stroke. No more would this man be a sucker for any woman.

© 2008 by Suprina Frazier


Comments

Subrina said…
Great job Suprina telling us about Milsap childhood and how he got into the drug game plus why he won't let no woman have control over him. Now I understand why he do what does.
Suprina said…
Subrina: Thanks, girl. I figured y'all needed that info to understand why that brotha does what he does now and why Millsap is going to do what he will in the future.

Suprina
Paula said…
I understand completely what Millsap went through and is still going through. I just hope that he understands that he cannot run from his DESTINY!
Suprina said…
Paula: That's the thing. He don't know that Cami's his destiny yet. Right now he thinks she might be his downfall. I can kinda understand that, too. After all:

1. Cami dated Bonz and look what happened to him.
2. Cami slept with E-Blade and look what happened to him.

Millsap don't even know about Cami's baby daddy, whose still in prison right now and ain't never getting out.

If I was Millsap, I probably be running away from her, too, at this point.

Suprina
Anonymous said…
How does one know that a person is their destiny?

It must be common for a man to want to control things - especially if he has been done wrong before by another woman?

I wonder.

God Bless
Joy
Suprina said…
Joy: I don't know how everybody else knows, but God told me concerning the man I'm with. As you know, He also told me that I got that man out of season, which explains some of the challenges we've had over the years.

So even if you do know that you're supposed to be with a certain person, you still have to hook up with that person at the right time or you're just opening the door for trouble.

On another note, remember that at the root of control issues is fear. Which means if a person has been hurt before, they're so afraid of getting hurt that way again (or at all) that they try to control everything and almost everyone in their lives. Sad, but so true.

Just my 2 cents.

Suprina

Popular Posts