Arris, Jayme & Dyani (D-Ville Projects #9)

Chapter 1

Arris

I exhaled and stretched my neck one way then the other before taking a step back and looking at my handiwork.

I felt like it was just yesterday when I was putting a crib up for my little boy to have when we brought him home from the hospital and now here I was putting up his big boy bed. That shit was insane to me.

I was doing my best to act aloof but honestly it was killing me inside a little bit to realize Jayme and I had brought Blake home four entire years ago.

“You good?” Jayme’s voice came from the doorway and I looked back at her.

She was a hundred times more beautiful now than she’d been when we met.

She had her naturally curly hair pulled back in a large claw clip.

She’d dyed it a deep shade of red that went well with her medium brown skin and beautiful brown eyes.

She was wearing sweatpants and a plain black T-shirt tight enough for me to make out the little barbell rings of her nipple piercings.

Jayme and I had pretty much grown up in the D-Ville Projects. We both lived on the second floor and would catch the bus with all the other kids from the projects. I’d known she was special even as a stupid ass kid and I’d made her mine when we were just thirteen years old.

Jayme had watched me grow from a boy to a man and I’d watched her grow in return.

She’d been there when I was jumped into my gang and started repping those same projects we lived in.

She was there when I started drawing and eventually tattooing, through my first apprenticeship and my first real job having my own room in a tattoo shop.

I’d watched her practice doing hair on herself and any person willing to let her.

I watched her do hair in her house and other people’s homes too, making house calls at outrageous hours to get paid and now she had a chair in an actual shop.

We’d been down bad for each other and had our son at twenty-four. Our relationship survived another three years before we split, but Jayme knew I had love for her. That could never be questioned. We’d known each other almost our entire lives and had spent more time dating than just being friends.

Our breakup had been mutual.

There wasn’t any big break up or blowout or anything.

Shit just started changing gradually. I’d been tattooing and hanging out with the gang more.

She’d been doing her own shit. We were both growing and learning ourselves, raising our son and trying to navigate adulthood.

Somewhere along the line, we stopped learning each other while we were learning ourselves.

We’d gotten complacent. I could admit I definitely had, but that wouldn’t have helped anything.

Neither of us were the same people we started dating over a decade ago and we deserved that clarity.

Shit. She deserved it and apparently it was going well because she had a live-in girlfriend she’d been with for over a year now.

“Yeah. I’m straight.” I gave her a small smile and held her screwdriver out toward her.

“You’re lying.” She laughed and I shrugged before I couldn’t stop myself from letting out a little snicker. “Are you going to cry or what?” she teased.

I didn’t even dignify her with a response.

“Man, climb your ass in his bed, Jayme.” I gestured toward it and slipped out of the way.

“Why do I have to get in? You probably didn’t even put this shit up right.” Jayme rolled her eyes but made her way toward the bed.

“If I didn’t, we’re about to find out and I’m not gon’ lie. I’d rather you fall through the bedframe than Blake any damn day.”

Jayme sucked her teeth but didn’t comment. She climbed into the bed that replaced his toddler bed and plopped on her ass. She leaned one way, then the other before lying down and looking at me. She propped her face on her hand.

“I think our boy is going to be alright.”

“Alright. Cool.” I exhaled. “You need anything else looked into while I’m here?”

“Nope.”

“Good because I’m not—” I paused mid-sentence when my phone rang with the specific tone I assigned to DP members.

I saw it was my best friend Darryl and rejected his call. That nigga called me all the time for nothing and I wasn’t trying to hear about the dumb shit he had going on with his constant rotation of women.

Darryl and I had been jumped into the Douglasville Projects gang when we were both young and stupid. We’d known of each other before that but hadn’t been close until becoming members.

He was the godfather to me and Jayme’s son, and even though he didn’t take a lot of shit seriously, the oath he’d taken to me and Jayme was one of the few.

“Damn. This shit looks good.” A voice from the doorway pulled my attention from Jayme.

I glanced back at her on-again, off-again girlfriend Reena.

“Thanks.” I looked back at Jayme. “You sure you good?”

She didn’t get a chance to respond before my phone rang again. I saw it was Darryl again and immediately picked up. I rejected his calls frequently and he usually left it at that or shot me a text message. The fact that he’d called again was a little bit worrisome.

“Hold up. It’s D.” I didn’t wait for her response before I answered. “What’s up?”

“Ay, I need a favor,” he said.

“Well hello to you too, mothafucka,” I scoffed.

“My bad.” He laughed. “But look, this is serious.”

“Yeah, okay. What do you want?”

“Look—”

“Skip the explanations, excuses, and background story and just tell me what you need, nigga.”

“I need you to pick my sister up from the airport.”

“When?”

“She lands in two hours.”

“And what the fuck am I supposed to do with her after I pick her up?”

“Man, just get her something to eat and drop her at my spot. I’ll be home in a few hours. Suleem has me taking care of some shit. I can’t just skip out because Dyani’s flight got delayed a few hours. That shit ain’t my fault.”

“Yeah, alright. You owe me one but I’ve got you.”

“From the cradle to the casket.” He threw out our gang’s saying and I chuckled but repeated it anyway like that shit was second nature.

“From the cradle to the casket.”

“I’ll send you her flight information and I appreciate it, bro.”

“Yeah, alright.”

I hung up without waiting for a response and shoved my phone back in my pocket.

“Everything okay?” Jayme asked.

“Yeah.” I didn’t elaborate. “You sure you don’t need anything else?”

“I’m sure.”

“Alright. Cool. I’m heading out. I’ve got to do some shit for Darryl.”

“Of course it was Darryl.” Jayme rolled her eyes but climbed to her feet. “Thanks for putting this shit up so I didn’t have to.”

“Any time.” I closed the space between us. “If anything changes and you need me, call me.”

“Trust me. I will.”

I gave Jayme a one-armed hug then dipped out since Blake was out with his aunt and her two kids.

I headed home, double checked that I didn’t have any tattoos scheduled, took a shower, and ran through quick household laundry then headed back out.

I still lived in the D-Ville Projects even after all these years. I just moved from my parents’ spot to my own. The building had been renovated in that time and renamed Meadow Glenn Apartments but the ten story complex that housed the DP gang would always just be D-Ville projects to me.

The complex was a good mix of gang members and everyday working class people with the top floor being home to the two leaders of the gang. I saw a few DP members on my way down from the third floor but didn’t stand around talking for too long.

The drive out to Diamond Falls International Airport was longer than I expected. The traffic was insane, so by the time I made it to the designated pickup zone, Dyani should have already landed. I pulled up in front of the nearest door and scanned the people exiting the airport and walking around.

As close as I was with Darryl, I’d never met Dyani.

He was the older of the two and had dipped out on their parents when he was young.

He’d been a runaway when he made his way out here to Diamond Falls and fell into the gang.

The two of them hadn’t reconnected until a year or two ago when he’d flown home for his mom’s funeral.

I was actually shocked that she was out here to see Darryl at all.

I snatched my phone from my cup holder and gave him a call to see if I could get him to either describe what she looked like or give me her number so we could decide where we were actually going to meet.

The call rang until it went to voicemail.

I hung up, sighed, and let my eyes scan the walkway again.

I tried to call Darryl a second time. He didn’t answer so I went to our text thread.

Then I did a double take when someone tapped on my passenger side window. I looked over. It was a woman that I assumed was Dyani. I wouldn’t say I saw the family resemblance but she and Darryl had the same brown hair that looked lighter while the sun was hitting it. I lowered the window.

“Hey.” She gave me a quick little wave. “Are you Arris?”

“Yep.” I gave her a single nod then climbed out to help get her bags in the car. “Nice to meet you.” I offered my hand as soon as I was close enough.

“Nice to meet you,” she echoed.

We shook hands and I took that chance to really take her in.

She was pretty. She was an inch or two taller than Jayme with deep brown skin and eyes and microlocs about three or four inches longer than shoulder length.

She had them halfway pulled up in a little bun at the back of her head and a pair of glasses clipped to the front of the T-shirt she wore.

I opened the door for her and loaded her bags into the trunk on my own.

As soon as I pulled off, Dyani was shifting in her seat.

“You good?” I checked.

“Yep.”

“Alright.” I glanced in my rearview mirror and switched lanes. “Darryl said there was a good chance you’d want to get something to eat. You have any idea what you want?”

“Not a clue.” She scoffed. “Do you have any recommendations?”

“If you know what kind of food you want, I’m sure I could pick out a place that has it.”