Hooked!: A Contemporary, Multicultural Romance by Yuwanda Black Page A

other, there was no one to come home to in
this massive house either. She’d moved from her chic, one-bedroom loft in
midtown to this suburb on the outskirts of Atlanta – all in anticipation of
marriage and eventually, motherhood.
     
    But
alas, it wasn’t to be.
     
               
After a year of being engaged, she’d pressed Omar to set a date, especially as
they had gone into debt ‘together’ for the house. But he’d consistently put it
off. When she’d given him an ultimatum of either setting a date or ending the
relationship, she never dreamed he’d choose the latter. He told her that he
loved her, but wasn’t ready for marriage.
     
    “So
when do you think you will be ready?” she’d asked.
     
    “To
be completely honest, I don’t know,” he’d responded.
     
    “A
year, two years?” she’d pressed.
     
    “Like
I said, I just don’t know Kammille. I love you. I really do. But I’m just not
ready to take that step yet.”
     
    As
they’d been together for four years, she was sure it was a case of cold feet, and
told him so. “Honey look, every guy is afraid to give up his freedom I suppose.
I’m a little scared too, believe it or not. I’m sure it’s just a case of cold
feet.”
     
    And
that’s when Omar had dropped a bombshell, one that she knew she could never
recover from. “I’ve been thinking about this ever since I proposed Kammille. In
fact, to be completely honest, the second I asked you, I wanted to take it
back.”
     
    Kammille
stumbled backwards as if he’d sucker-punched her. She remembered how it had
taken him almost a month to give her a ring after he’d asked. And he’d only
done that after she teased him about being engaged, but with no ‘rock’ to show
off to her girlfriends. She remembered thinking that she cared less about the
ring itself; it was what it stood for that meant the most to her, that she was
taken -- taken by a man who cared enough to let the world know he wanted her to
be his wife.
     
    “It
has nothing to do with you,” he’d rushed to explain. “You’re everything a man
could want. It’s just …”
     
    “I’m
everything a man could want … except you; except the man I love who is standing
in front of me,” Kammille had said.
     
    Omar
hadn’t responded to that. The next morning she’d asked him to move out.
     
    She
recalled what Liza had said to her about Omar soon after their breakup.
    ***
     
    “I
told you about getting mixed up with guys who don’t have good credit.”
     
    “Just
because somebody doesn’t have good credit, it doesn’t make them a bad person
Liza. And besides, that had nothing to do with why we broke up.”
     
    “I
didn’t say anything about it making him a bad person, Kammille. I just said men
like that are bad marriage material. And indirectly, bad credit says a whole
lot about a person, in my opinion.”
     
    “Like
what?” Kammille had asked.
     
    “Well,
for one, it’s a clue as to if a person knows what they want out of life. Omar
definitely didn’t know what he wanted.”
     
    Kammille
furrowed her brow, confused at her partner’s reasoning. But, she kept quiet.
     
    “I
don’t mean to be harsh Kammille, but you mean to tell me that after four years
of being in a relationship with you – and a year of being engaged to you --
that he wasn’t sure that’s what he wanted. I mean, y’all were living together
already. It’s not like he was in for a big surprise. But he backed out, which
says to me that he had no clue as to what he wanted from your relationship. And
when a man doesn’t know what he wants, he’s likely to do all types of stupid
crap -- like lose control over his finances and lose control over his sperm.
This makes him non-marriage material in my book. I don’t care how fine he is,
how much money he makes, or how nice he is. If he can’t control those two
things, then those are deal breakers for me.”
     
    “Now
you are really going off on a tangent. What do you