Chapter 2 #2
“Cay, this is my intrusive ass twin, Reminisce,” I grumbled, stepping in front of her and mugging his ass.
“She already knows who I am. I wasn’t just about to walk in her spot without her knowing me. The fuck I look like? You?” His eyes traveled around her living room before they landed back on her. “It’s nice here.”
“Duh,” I responded, taking a seat on the sofa to look through the notifications on my phone. Apparently I had quite a few.
The whole time she laughed and I didn’t like that shit at all. I was jealous, some shit I wasn’t used to when it came to anybody.
The ringing of her phone in the distance had Caya leaving me and my brother in the living room. I mugged the shit out of him, and of course he laughed. Reminisce knew how to get on my nerves like no other.
“You like her, huh? Lil cute ass.”
“Why’d you show up over here?” I purposely didn’t answer his question but instead asked one of my own.
“’Cause I had to see what was up with you. You don’t do sleepovers. But you've been over here twice in the last week during sleeping hours. I had to check and make sure my baby brother was cool.”
I laughed at his aggy ass. “Bitch, you’re only a minute or two earlier. I ain’t your baby brother. Your baby brother is walking around here oblivious to the fact that you’re his brother because you and G wanna wait until after his fight.”
He grimaced. “He has a fight coming up. Hell nah we ain’t about to fuck up his concentration with this.”
I understood where him and G were coming from, so I went along with it. Indiri needed to focus for this fight.
“Ay, Cay, get dressed. We are going to breakfast,” I called out, eyes still on my brother.
“And how do you know I don’t have something to do?” she rebutted.
“’Cause you don’t.”
“Damn, she ain’t fucking with you like that. Yep, you just over here sleeping. No extracurricular activities.” Rem smirked, the grimace from a few seconds ago had disappeared.
“Because we’re just friends. Rennix, tell your twin we’re just friends so he can stop whispering loudly in my house.” Caya walked into the living room with a cup of coffee.
“Just friends?” He looked so confused, like she had spoken a foreign language to him.
I grinned. “Yeah, friends. Me and Caya don’t want the same things yet.”
“Yet my ass.”
Rem laughed. “So, since this your friend, I’m invited to breakfast too, huh?” He was fucking with me and I knew it.
“Yep,” she tossed over her shoulder, leaving the room at the same time I told his ass no.
“Cool. You telling her to get dressed, you need to be getting dressed as well. Looking like you just woke up.” He was completely satisfied with himself while I wanted to jaw his ass.
“’Cause I did. Take your ass on.”
“Nah. We're going to breakfast, and since that’s your friend, I’m thinking I can probably see what’s to that.”
“Don’t make me jaw you in here, Rem,” I threatened.
He chortled. “Exactly. Friend, my ass. You can’t do that friend thing, and you know it. Don’t sign up for something that’ll have me bailing your ass out.”
“Really funny. But for real, what’s up that you came looking for me?”
He shook his head. “Dead ass just being nosy.”
“Nah, yo’ ass is bored. What, Pynk ain’t hit you up?” I asked, referring to his on and off again girlfriend from back home. They had the most toxic situation. When I looked at them in the same space, I knew I made the best choice in staying by myself.
“Hell nah. I’m through with that shit. I can’t keep going back and forth about the same shit.
It’s either she trusts me or she doesn't. Then, on err’thing, I don’t trust her.
How are you pregnant one minute and ready to have it, then the next you are not?
Nah, I’m straight. Yo’ friend got any friends? ”
“Yeah, but that’s Kinga’s baby mama.”
“Damn, for real. Wait. This is shorty whose face you were all in at the Donuts opening, ain’t it?”
“I wasn’t all in her face. Fuck outta here.” I waved him off, knowing damn well he was right. The first night I met Caya, I said fuck everybody who wasn’t her and kept her fine ass close the whole night. When I laid eyes on her, it was an obsession at first sight.
He laughed. “Yeah right, but that’s her, ain’t it?”
I nodded.
He rubbed his hands together. “This shall be interesting, friend.” Of course he was mocking the friend part. He wouldn’t be Reminisce if he didn’t.
He and I talked for a few minutes longer before he headed out and I went to shower in the same washroom Caya had pointed me to the other day.
Reminisce was right in a sense. This shit was bound to be interesting.
I had never been the type of man out here befriending chicks and spending time with them.
I got what I wanted and kept it moving, no blurred lines or promises.
I knew what I wanted and I made it clear every time.
However, this time I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just fucking here.
After my shower it didn’t take me too long to get dressed and meet her in the living room.
She was already waiting on me, dressed in some shit I knew would keep me bricked up all morning.
Caya was shapely as fuck, so anything she put on had that affect.
She had on a jean skirt with a dangerously high slit and a flooding ass graphic tee.
Her hair was pulled into a bun on top of her head and she didn’t have on a lick of makeup.
Shit was sexy, even when my eyes landed on the tribal type tattoo that traveled up her leg and disappeared under the skirt.
Rem was so fucking right… This shit was gonna be interesting.
“How did you find out about this place?” Caya sat next to me in the round booth, chowing down on the saturated French toast. I’d brought her to this breakfast joint Jade put me on a few weeks ago.
“Does it matter?”
“Probably.” Her lips parted, welcoming the forkful of eggs she was now about to inhale. “How does a non-Chicagoan find out about a gem like this… unless another Chicagoan introduced the non?—”
“Ask what you wanna ask me, baby.”
She squirmed at me calling her baby and I smirked.
“I did. I asked how you found out about this place.”
“And I asked if it mattered, to which you replied probably. Why does it matter, Caya-baby?”
“Because, don’t be bringing me somewhere one of your hoes brought you.”
The expression her face housed had me wanting to laugh so fucking bad, the moment was too serious. Had she been any other girl I would’ve checked that shit in the door, but with her I didn’t. I couldn’t. I fucking avoided it.
“Nah. My sister brought me here, but I’ll be glad to tell her about the food.” I winked.
“Oh.” She sorta pouted with those lips I wanted to kiss so fucking bad. Shit.
“So, you like doing hair and shit?”
Her face lit up. “Always have. Even when I was a kid, I used to braid all my Barbies’ hair. It was always my favorite part. One day I wanna own a shop.”
I nodded. “What’s stopping you?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I kinda just got complacent with the studio. It pays the bills, takes care of my baby, and I have a good, steady clientele. I lost sight of the dream and got lost in survival mode.”
“You sure you ain’t just scary?”
She laughed. “Maybe some of that too, because I can’t afford to fail.”
“Are you good at what you do?” I asked, grabbing the bacon from her plate. She’d asked for turkey but they brought pork by mistake. The server corrected it, but they never took the pork back.
“Damn good.”
“Then you got this shit.”
A small smile filled her features. “How do you know that?”
“Because I do. You can’t be out here doubting yourself. That’s wicked work, mama.”
She laughed. “What about you? What made you open a strip club and pastry shop in one?”
“The fact that it’s never been done before. I’on much like to be doubted, ’cause now more than ever I’m determined to make some shit shake.”
“And that you did. I hear Donuts is one of the city’s hidden gems for nightlife. Something about poles and pastries makes the world go wild.”
I laughed because I had seen those exact words in an article recently. I didn’t know who came up with it.
“Is it everything you’ve dreamt of?”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“Being a business owner.”
I shrugged. “I never dreamt of it, Cay. I just knew I needed a change of direction and the only thing I could do was make sure I never worked for anybody, ’cause that’s not my shit. I’on take orders well.”
She smirked. “You don’t say. What’s your sign?”
“For what?” I was momentarily confused.
“Astrology. As a matter of fact, let me guess.” She then put her finger to her lips like she was deeply pondering.
“A Taurus?” she finally responded, bringing a chuckle to my lips.
“Nah, you close. I’m a Gemini.” I watched as shock filled her features.
“When is your birthday?” she then asked.
“June twenty-first.”
“Impossible… because so is mine.” She looked astonished, which made me laugh.
“How old are you?” she asked. I could never put my finger on it fully, but from the first moment I looked at shorty, I had been intrigued.
I didn’t know if it was her chill to a mill nature or the fact that within seconds she could come off so nonchalant that you questioned if you existed.
She had me intrigued from the first moment I looked at her, and now sitting across from her, I saw it.
Her eyes were indeed the window to her soul.
They housed questions, dreams, contentment, unconformity, and every necessary component to get lost.
“Rennix, did you hear me?” she asked, peering at me for an answer while I was looking at her with obsession. Shit.
“ Yeah, I heard you. I’m twenty-eight. You?”
“You’re not supposed to ask a woman her age.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s an insult.” She wrapped those thick ass lips around the straw. Shorty was two mimosas in and had fully warmed up this morning.
“Are you insulted?”
“No.”
“Aight then. Now slow your ass down on them mimosas before I be carrying your little ass up outta here.”
She giggled. “I can hold my liquor, Rennix. And plus, this is just champagne with a bunch of orange juice.”
“Mhmm. Why are you in therapy?” I asked the question that had been burning in my mind since she told me she was in a healing stage the other night.
She tilted her head to the side, confusion evident. “How do you know I’m in therapy?”
“Some of your jargon. Not to mention the fact that you told me you were in a healing stage. What put you there?”
She nodded. “Accepting what was given to me rather than what I deserve. A deadbeat father that in turn made me a deadbeat magnet. Believing that all lost souls attracted lost souls, rather than realizing I attracted lost souls because something in me was kindred with them. I want more for my son, so I gotta do better.”
I nodded. “My pops is a drunk. Been that way his whole fucking life from what I understand, but what I could never understand was why my moms kept laying down with his drunk ass knowing who and what he was. Growing up I never got that, and in turn it made me look at her a way, because even after him it was another bum. Lady kept a man who either wanted to go upside her head or talk to her foul. So believe me, I get it.”
Her hand found my arm as she nodded, seemingly sobering up. “Is he in your life?”
“Hell nah, well he pops in from time to time. The last time he popped up was to tell me he was dying and had two other kids and a possible out here.”
“Damn. How is your mom?” Her grip on my arm let me know she was genuine and I didn’t know how to take it at first, because I wasn’t used to sharing things like this with anybody. I said Rem was the emotionally constipated one when deep down I knew it was me.
“She died a few years back.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. At least she ain’t getting her ass beat down here no more.” I shrugged it off as she scooted closer to me, wrapping her arm in mine.
“We are friends, right?”
“Why do you ask that?” I quizzed, looking down at her.
“Because you don’t gotta do that for me. If we are friends for real, you can say whatever and it’ll never make me look at you any different.”
“Bet.” I didn’t know how to respond to that, so that was my only response.
Breakfast was good and the conversation was different for me.
I wasn’t used to spending time getting to know a woman, but she seemed to really take this friend shit to heart.
For now I didn’t know how to handle that.
Only time would tell. After we left the restaurant, I drove toward her crib because as much as I would’ve liked to spend more time in her face I had to get into my business.
I hadn’t been called but I still liked to be on site handling my business.
When I pulled up, I felt her eyes before I looked at her. “Thank you, Rennix. I enjoyed breakfast.”
Her smile was contagious, so I smiled too. “Good.”
“Alright b?—”
She was about to get out of the car, but I stopped her and grabbed her arm, pulling her back toward me. I was a passenger in my body as my hand went from her arm to her neck, pulling her face closer to mine.
“Renn—” she started, but I was already speaking.
“That ain’t how we say goodnight or goodbye.”
By then I felt her pressing her neck against my hand to get closer. Her lips against mine feeling like they belonged created some shit in me I damn sure wasn’t used to. Need… and the realization of unfulfillment.