Chapter 3: James

I’m a good person, y’all, and I really don’t mean nobody any harm. I just need to get that off my chest right from the beginning, because I know how people are out here in this world, honey. I’m black, gay, and proud of who I am, and some people can’t handle me being a straight-up, in-your-face type of person like Johnny’s phony-ass people who are at the center of this controversy in the first place.

I don’t understand why those people won’t simply leave us alone. Me and Johnny love each other and have been through so much to be together, y’all, that it doesn’t make any sense for us to be going through anything else. I was almost killed by one of Johnny’s own cousins, honey. Shot me down like an animal in cold blood, but I survived, like a cat with nine lives. You better believe I came back to Johnny after near death, so you know I ain’t about to lose him now. I’ll fight a bitch between two drops of rain for my man, honey, and walk through plates of hot iron and fire to be with him, too. I really want y’all to know how serious I am when it comes to my love for Johnny. So everything I tell you from this point on will make a whole lot of sense. I ain’t even gone lie, y’all. I did some crazy shit trying to hold on to Johnny. So if you hear about me slashing somebody’s tires, just know that it was love that made me do it. It was my love for Johnny, honey.

And I also would like to say up front that I’m very proud of Johnny and the fact that he’s a college student and making something out of his life. I’m not jealous of him at all. Baby, nobody knows better than me how...