Chapter 14 Goon #2
She was so frazzled, her ass shoved her laptop back into the tote bag. “What am I supposed to say? How do I even act around her? I’m not even dressed properly.” She went on, panicking about what she was wearing.
“I know Menace is a little touched, but he never taught you how to greet people?” I joked with her, and she smiled. “Ah, a smile.”
“It’s a nervous smile, Gerald. How many women do you bring to meet your mother?”
I shrugged. “Too many to count.”
She shoved me and then rolled her eyes. “We’re just friends, so there’s no need to complicate things.”
“Who you trying to convince, Ms. Lawyer?”
Pinching me, she narrowed her eyes at me. “Stop calling me that.”
“Tell me why.”
“Cause my name is Zoya, but don’t call me that either.”
Licking my lips, I looked over at her. “What you want me to call you? Baby?”
She couldn’t hide the way she was blushing in the passenger seat. I watched as she quickly tried to look out the window, pretending she wasn’t bothered. The shit was so cute because that wasn’t something normal for her.
“Leave me alone, Gerald.”
I laughed, as I pulled onto the block. Everybody was outside enjoying the weather. You had the old heads that were sitting on the stoop with a paper bag that concealed their Colt 45, while their cigarette sat housed between two fingers, and they talked shit amongst themselves.
The young niggas were posted up outside the corner store, some sitting on the ice chest outside the store, smoking weed, and shooting dice, while hollering at whatever shorty passed their way.
Unlike the old heads, their blunts were tucked between their lips, hanging from the side of their mouth, or was tucked behind their ear while they blew on the dice and tossed them into the circle of men holding cash in their hands.
Like I knew she would be, my mother was a few houses down, her chair parked in front of the stoop.
She held a plate of food with foiled covering the top of it, while she ran her mouth.
Her loud boisterous laugh could be heard as I double parked on the block.
Everybody in this neighborhood looked out for my moms.
She knew everybody from the young niggas on the corner to the old heads across the street.
They all respected her and knew how the fuck her sons were coming behind her.
When we lost my little cousin, they all pulled together to bring food and whatever was needed for the family.
As a kid, the elders would look out for me and Khaos whenever my mother was working late.
I knew I could get food at Ms. Shirley’s house, or Ms. Pam was going to tell me to pick my pants up.
Back then, you had a village, and they weren’t afraid to bop you in the back of the head and then tell your mother.
New York City was a melting pot of different cultures, races, and people, however, the Caribbean community in Brooklyn was something bigger.
It didn’t matter which island you came from; we all looked out for one another. We all talked our shit about which flag or island was superior, but when it came down to supporting one another, that was what always mattered the most to us.
“She’s right there.” I pointed, as she was playfully slapping a friend, while they laughed about something.
There was something beautiful about watching my mother smile. She didn’t do it often when I was growing up. There was never anything to smile about when you were a single mother of two hungry ass boys.
You start to forget what laughing felt like because you were in survival mode. Moms was always trying to be the light to the darkness that loomed over us. As long as she heard a laugh or saw a smile from her boys, she was good.
In her eyes, she didn’t need to laugh anymore. Being a mother and providing for her boys was all that consumed her. That was all she was put onto this earth to do, and she did that shit with one arm pulled behind her back, while life continued to toss haymakers at her.
Zoya looked at my mother and smiled. “She’s beautiful. You resemble her a bit.”
“Think so?”
“The smile… you both share the same smile. Why didn’t you tell me that your mother was in a wheelchair?”
“I don’t tell my business… that shit is earned.”
“And I earned knowing this?”
I paused. “I don’t know, Zoya… did you?”
Killing the engine, I got out and walked around toward her side. Her childish ass pushed the lock back down when I grabbed the door handle. Swiping my hand near the handle, the doors unlocked.
“I’m alright here… you can do your family thing.” She tried to get out of coming to meet my mother and her friends.
“Goon!” I heard that familiar voice and saw Kim walking down the block with a black plastic bag, and a brown paper bag peeking from the inside of it.
I already knew she had copped her a bottle and was about to sit up with her hoe ass friends on the next block.
“What up, Kim?” I nodded at her, and she smiled as she continued to walk toward me. “I’ll be back.”
I tried to close the door and Zoya shoved her foot out the door. “You stay right here.”
She was jealous.
I chuckled because getting that reaction out of her was a turn on. It let me know that all the chasing I had been doing wasn’t for nothing.
Boobie was feeling the kid.
“Why?”
“Gerald,” she hissed.
“You want me… come get me, Boobie.” I started down the block, and looked back at her, as she continued to shoot daggers with her eyes.
Zoya didn’t realize that I was the kind of nigga that did whatever I wanted. She couldn’t control the shit I did, and although I would never disrespect her with Kim, if she wanted to let these bitches know that this dick was hers, she needed to claim that shit.
Kim smiled, as she leaned against the mailbox, looking past me. “What you getting into tonight?”
“Heading out of town.”
Her attention wasn’t on me in the least. I turned to see what she was looking at and saw Zoya walking slowly down the block toward us.
She wore a pair of oversized gray sweatpants, Asics, and a black bra top. Her Louis Vuitton purse was across her, as she walked with her hands in her pockets. Zoya was such a fucking boss. It was how coolly she walked toward us, like it was no sweat off her back.
Kim dug in her plastic bag and pulled out an ice cup from the corner store. She leaned it on top of the mailbox that was covered with graffiti tags on a postal sticker. I watched as she continued to look past me at Zoya, as she opened up the pint of Hennessy and poured some into the ice cup.
I felt my baby’s presence next to me, as Kim put the lid on her cup. “Hey. I’m Kim, me and Goon go way back,” she greeted, taking a sip of her drink.
Zoya slightly smiled. “Hi. Always nice to meet a friend… Are you the way back kind of friend that he grew up with, or the kind that he fucked before?” Kim choked on her drink, and I had to pat her back because she was choking so hard.
Meanwhile, Zoya was standing with her hands still in her pockets, waiting for a response. “Since she’s choking, Gerald, you fucked her?”
“Zoya, what the—”
“No worries… I’ll let you tell me when you’re done here.” She turned around, hands still in her pockets, and walked back toward the car.
Kim was still choking, as I hit her back with a little force. “What the fuck, Goon?”
Zoya was leaned on the front of my truck with her phone in her hand, waiting for me. I looked at Kim, and she was still shocked that those words had left her mouth.
“Be careful out there tonight, Kim.”
“So, we’re not going to talk about your girl and how she pressed me? Since when you mess with bitches like that, Goon?”
Although Zoya was black, you could tell she hadn’t been raised like me and Kim.
She didn’t come from the hood. I didn’t take away the fact that she may have struggled once upon a time when she was younger, however, she didn’t know or understand the same struggles that me and Kim faced coming from the neighborhood we were from.
“Watch your mouth, Kim.” I warned her.
I didn’t give a fuck how she felt about the question Zoya asked, she wasn’t about to sit and call her a bitch in my presence. “Oh, so this is the one that has you acting all new?”
She didn’t say it like she was jealous, more like hurt because I corrected her about Zoya. “Never acting new. I been moving different, Kim. You know that shit… can’t afford to move how I used to move.”
“So, fuck me.”
“It’s never fuck you, unless you do some shit you can’t come back from. You already knew I was moving different… Kim, you didn’t want this.” I reminded her.
We weren’t about to do that jealous friend bullshit when Kim wasn’t thinking about me.
After I told her what I wanted, and she let me know she wasn’t ready for that.
I respected that and we kept shit sexual between us.
It was Kim who helped me realized that my wife would enter my life when I least expected it.
Then Zoya Caselli walked into bookings with her fine ass.
Taking a slow sip of her drink, she looked past me again. Zoya was now on the phone, never paying us any attention.
“Yet, she gets to meet Ms. Sharon.”
I looked at Kim’s ass, confused. “Fuck you talking about? How many times have you met my moms?”
“As your friend, Goon.”
I already decided that I wasn’t going back and forth with her. “You wanted me to tell her that you let me cum in every hole, Kim? That’s how you wanted me to introduce you?”
I could tell the exact moment that chill rolled up her back. “Not even like that.”
“Be careful out there, Kim. Take yo ass home the minute they start acting stupid.” I warned her.
Kim was a grown ass woman, and I couldn’t control what she did, or who she hung with. All I could do was tell her to be careful and not to get mixed into whatever shit her friends were into.
It was easier said than done for Kim, because she had this magnetic pull to the streets, and the niggas that ran them.
Reminder: Character previously mentioned in Capri 3.5 (Keyshawn)