Chapter 3 #2
“But you know Rei is a lightweight. Her ass can barely handle a shot of Don, and you give her a fuckin’ pill?”
“Sereia is a grown ass woman. She don’t need you babysitting her, bitch. Damn,” Alani snapped.
I sat there quiet, while they talked about me as if I wasn’t sitting there.
Eyes barely opened, watching the nigga across the room.
My old nigga. Chevelle. He looked nice. Better than he did when I saw him two weeks ago.
Through his dark tinted Cartier glasses, I could tell his eyes were on me too.
Shit, any time I was in the same room with him, Vellz was fixed on me.
It was me who usually paid him dust. Vellz and I hadn’t been together for almost two years.
We were on and off since I was fourteen.
At twenty, I decided enough was enough and when I broke up with him that time, I was done.
He didn’t cheat.
Didn’t mistreat me.
Didn’t disrespect me.
I was just tired. Tired of him being in and out of jail.
Tired of his low ambition. Tired of the block.
Tired of the same ol’ shit. Things with Vellz didn’t progress.
We were at a standstill because he was at a standstill.
He was trapped. Planted in a hood that didn’t truly give a fuck about him.
Loyal to a game that had never been loyal to him.
He was a true product of his environment.
The typical ass drug dealing, weed smoking, Don Julio drinking hood nigga with low ambition and only a couple of dollars to show for after years of hustling.
It didn’t and wouldn’t work because I’d always wanted more.
Anytime I would talk about him getting a real job and moving out of Brickhaven, he would tense up.
He’d start stroking his thick beard. His eyes would widen, and he’d look off, talking about ‘shiiiit, ain’t shit else out here baby.
We home.’ And that shit use to irk the hell out of me.
While most young couples argued about bitches, we argued about ambition.
Vellz wasn’t a bum ass nigga. He was just hella low vibrational and me, as a high vibe ass bitch, couldn’t take things too serious with him.
He always brought me down. I wasn’t content with sitting on my ass, getting drunk and high.
I wanted more out of life. And while my current situation didn’t reflect that, it was true.
With a deep breath, I looked away from him and tossed my head back against the couch I was sitting on.
Couldn’t believe I was as comfortable as I was.
If I weren’t high, I would have never sat down.
I wasn’t a bougie bitch, but Mookie threw hella parties and the very couch I was sitting on had definitely been fucked on my multiple people—probably at the same time.
I was too out of it to give a fuck about that though. I was cruising. Cruising on cloud nine. But when G Herbo’s Went Legit came on, I sat up, waving my hands in the air. Meech loved this shit.
I bobbed my head and yelled, “Every day some new shit! Beefin’ with my bitch right now but life still lit!”
“See? She good,” Alani said, waving her hands in the air too, rapping along with me.
The party went crazy. Everybody started rapping with G Herbo. Seemed like Mookie turned the volume up louder too.
I pushed up from the couch and danced around in place, bobbing from side to side, rapping along with the music with tears rolling down my face, spitting that shit with my whole chest like I wrote it.
While I was in my zone, crying tears I didn’t want to cry in an apartment full of people, I felt a pair of hands slide across my waist. I opened my eyes just as Vellz leaned in to whisper in my ear.
“You lit,” he whispered, his thick beard tickling the side of my face.
Lazily, I smiled. “Something like that.”
I surveyed his face, eyes landing on his full bottom lip. After swiping tears from my face, I threw my arms around his neck and leaned in. “You smell good.”
“You look good,” he shot back. “Fuck you doin’ here, Rei?” He swiped his thumb underneath my eye, catching a tear I missed. “Crying and shit.”
Vellz and I were together for years and he’d only seen me cry three times. Once after my momma died, again after my daddy was sentenced to life in prison for killing her, and now… over Meech, at a party full of people I didn’t care for.
I moved away from his touch with a light laugh. “I’m cool. Would be better if we left, though.”
His eyebrows shot up, surprised and as I expected, he bit down on his bottom lip, moving his hands over my waist, caressing me.
I swallowed and let him. I didn’t fuck with Vellz like that.
Hadn’t fucked him since I broke up with him.
When I was done with someone, I was done with them.
Him and I might’ve had a little back and forth back in the day, but when I was finished, I was finished.
Vellz tried to spin the block a couple of times, but I shut his ass down every time. Eventually, he stopped.
That was months ago and I was relieved. The fact that I was approaching him on some fuck shit, letting him touch on me in a provocative way attested to just how fucked up my head was.
Well… My head wasn’t fucked up. I was sad.
I was very fucking sad. And I hated to admit it but being in Vellz’s arms felt good.
The familiarity of it all felt like… home?
Comfortable. Familiar. Safe. Good. I knew that if I left with him, he’d make me feel good.
He’d do for me what the pill and the blunt hadn’t really done.
I would be in ecstasy. Feeling something other than pain and sorrow.
That’s what I needed. The numbness? It was nice.
Refreshing a little but I wanted to feel good. Hadn’t felt good in days.
“Shit, come on then,” Vellz said, wearing a smirk, pressing his body against me. His dick was on brick.
“Cuz,” said Lakeland. “What you doin?”
I looked over at her and shook my head with a giggle. “About to go.”
She squinted with her mouth turned up in a frown. “You sure about that?”
“Uh huh.”
“I could’ve sworn you was done with this nigga. Don’t be out here makin bad decisions, cousin,” Alani said, frowning.
“Shut yo’ ass up, Lani,” Vellz said after sucking his teeth. “She smooth, cuz, I got her,” he continued, talking to Lakeland.
My eyes met Lakeland’s as I licked my lips, in need of another water. “What? You said I was doing too much. Now I’m about to do a little less.”
Lakeland shook her head, frowning. “A lil’ less? Bitch, the absolute most.” She stepped in between Vellz and I. “You really about to leave with this nigga?” She whispered.
We locked eyes for a second before I shrugged.
I was leaving with Vellz. The party was cool.
It was a nice little change of scenery. I mean, it did what I needed it to do.
Kept me out of the apartment. But my mind…
it still wandered off to Meech. Being with Vellz, regardless of our history and me cutting him off, would give me the type of comfort a blunt and a pill couldn’t give me.
If I had to sleep at that apartment tonight, I wanted it to be in a pair of familiar arms after a couple of orgasms. Might’ve been a bad decision but in the moment, I didn’t give a fuck.
“Okay cuz,” Lakeland said with a sigh.
I snatched my purse from the couch and slid it over my head, across my chest. Vellz went from gripping my arm to interlocking his fingers with mine, locking our hands.
As we maneuvered through the thick crowd, he said a few muffled words to people, gesturing towards me.
Through hazy vision, I noticed the looks on their faces.
Looks of ‘aww Sereia and Vellz back together’.
A couple of niggas eyed me up and down with disappointment, mad they hadn’t gotten their chances yet.
Tuh. Vellz had to be painting some type of narrative.
Acting like we were back on like we were before, gloating, purposely talking too long, gesturing toward me, probably telling muthafuckas he needed to get me home, playing the role of a caring boyfriend. Fuck out of here.
When we got outside of the apartment, the stench of weed smoke grew stronger.
Would’ve been nice to be hit with a calming gust of refreshing, calming nighttime air.
The kind that made you close your eyes, smile, and bask in it.
But that was something we never got here.
The air at The Woods was polluted with either the smell of heavy weed smoke, crack, shit, old exhaust pipes, or that pungent stench of piss.
“I see you nigga,” said one of the niggas sitting at the stairs we had to walk down.
“You already know,” he gloated. I didn’t need to see his face to know he was wearing that cocky smirk I hated. The one he put on anytime I retracted and got back with him after a couple of weeks.
He held my hand the short walk to his old school Monte where he opened the car door for me.
Something Vellz had never done. Only reason he opened it tonight had to be because I was buzzing hard as hell and he didn’t want me to fall on my ass.
After he got in, we took the short ride to the other side of the complex where I stayed.
He talked the whole way there, talking about Meech and how he wanted to reach out but didn’t know how I would take it.
He had a guilty conscious. The crazy part about him not calling was that I didn’t expect a call from him.
I hadn’t sat up thinking like oh, Vellz fake as hell for not checking up on me after my brother died.
I didn’t think of him at all. So, the apologies and the guilty conscious meant nothing to me. Vellz could have saved that shit.