Chapter 21 #2
After we walked for an hour or so, I brought him back up to Navy and Don’s crib and went to shower and lay down for a little while. When Chef called and asked to have a drink, I knew he just wanted to get out the crib.
We never needed to talk.
All we had to do was nurse a drink and sit in each other’s presence. With all the wild shit we’ve done in the past, we never needed words. Sometimes you needed peace when your mind was chaos.
I’d like to say I was sane.
It was Khaos and Chef that had a mind filled with chaos, and unreleased tension. There was a time when I felt like them. My mind felt like mush, and I never cared about the consequences of my actions.
I still didn’t think of the consequences.
At least I didn’t go around looking for problems. The problems usually came to me, not me looking for them. Like Brenay’s fuck boy baby daddy. I didn’t ask that nigga to spit on my cousin.
He used his free will.
I used mine.
Now only one of us lived to continue using our free will.
The door swung open and Khaos came in on the phone. “I knew yo ass would be here… surprised to see you, old head.” He grabbed Chef’s head, and kissed the top.
The phone was still to his ear, as he put it on speaker and leaned across the counter and dapped Papa. “Fuck up,” I replied, still watching the news.
“Bitch, if yo baby daddy show up while you giving me head, I’m gonna beat his ass to Mirror.”
“By Michael Jackson?” Her ass had the nerve to reply.
Khaos looked at the phone. “Nah, bitch. By Justin Timberlake, and you know that song eight minutes, so I’m gonna fuck his ass up to the whole song, so you better tell his ass not to come straight home that day.”
“Dang, Kenneth, why you gotta act like that?”
Papa passed him a drink, as he turned in the stool, his back touching the bar. “Cause you still letting him touch you after I fucked him up last year. Who went to your son’s career day, Day?”
I turned my head, confused as to why this nigga went to career day. “You, Kenneth.”
“Exactly… when my dick lodged in your throat, his ass better keep circling the block until I’m done.”
His crazy ass hung up on her and then tried to tap into our conversation like the one he had just finished was normal.
“Why that song?” Papa stroked his beard, intrigued.
“Listen to that bitch and I bet you gonna wanna fuck somebody up to it.”
I hung my head. “Khaos, the fuck you here for?”
He laughed. “A nigga can’t hang out with his favorite Inferno Gods and Bredrin.”
My phone started ringing and I saw Boobie’s name come across my screen. She hadn’t called me since she arrived, which was two days ago. The protests and all the outrage had slowed down.
Kofi had gotten himself and his family out of the city as well. Cases had been pushed to the next week because of threats of storming the courthouse.
“What up, Boobie?”
“Hey Goo. What are you up to?”
“At the bar with Khaos, my uncle, and Papa,” I replied.
“Tell them I said hey.”
“Zoya said hey.”
“Wah gwaan, princess?” Chef replied and finished his drink.
“You well, Zoy?” Papa asked.
She laughed. “As in put up in a beautiful chalet with her OCD obsessed brother? I am as well as I can get.”
“Sis, what up?”
I removed myself from the bar and went in the back seating area. “How you feeling?”
“Missing Bando.”
“Just Bando, eh? He misses you too.”
Her laugh was my favorite sound to hear. Mostly because she didn’t do it too often, but when she did, the shit was like music to my ears.
That soft spa music they played before a massage.
Vybz Kartel at the start of the summer. Her laugh was all those things to me, and I wanted to keep making her laugh for as long as she allowed me to.
“Navy said you been taking him on walks.”
“You been overfeeding him, so getting that weight down.”
Zoya snorted. “He is always looking up at me with those eyes… how could I say no?”
“I know that feeling all too well.”
The line grew quiet, as I kicked my feet up on the tree stump in the middle of the chairs. “I’ve been watching the news, and it seems like everything has started to simmer down.”
“Seems like it… they always onto the next thing, which is Preston’s trial.” I reminded her, knowing that this was something she needed to reconsider.
“Yeah. How have you been?” I knew she was switching the subject, and I was cool with that for right now.
“Straight… keeping busy.”
“I cannot believe my birthday is almost here… feels like this trip has taken forever to come.”
“Excited to shake ass with your girls?”
“A whole lot of ass.”
“Stop playing with me, Zoya.”
She broke out into a fit of giggles. “Why you so pressed? Remember, dick without complications.”
“Yeah, I’m hoping that dick put something up in you too.”
“Told you getting pregnant is the problem… I’m about to act up.”
I shook my head. “Yeah… ight, Ms. Lawyer.”
“Now why you calling me that?”
“Not bout to call you Boobie… you wanna be Ms. Lawyer, right? Matter fact, let me hit you back… I need to check in on shorty.”
“Gerald, don’t fucking play with me.”
“My dear, there’s a lot of shit that I do… playing is never one of them. You want this space, so I’m giving that to you. I already told you what it was before. Don’t think I won’t make that chest hurt.”
“I’ll call you back,” she abruptly ended the call, and I already knew she had an attitude because I was playing the same game she started.
After not sleeping much and then hanging at the bar, I dipped out once it started to fill up. I pulled my bike in front of my mom’s building at the same time I saw my cousin getting out a dark tinted whip.
The same whip she had got out that weekend I took Boobie to Ashbourne. She didn’t look like death and looked fixed up, which surprised the fuck out me. Even being dressed, I could tell she had either gotten high or was about to go get high from how she fidgeted across the street.
Damn girl damn near glitched across the street like Penelope from Wreck It Ralph. I remained on my bike waiting for her to pass by me. “Who that, Nez?”
She jumped. “Huh? Goo, what you doing spying on me?”
“Not spying. Came to check in on my mother before heading home… where you coming from?”
“I’m grown.”
“You were grown when that nigga spit in your face, no?”
Inez waved me off, not wanting to give me any information on where she was or who she had just been with. “Goo, leave me alone.”
I followed behind her into the house and could tell my mother wasn’t here. If she was home, I would have smelled her cooking in the hallway. Inez stayed between my mom’s house and my aunt’s house.
Whenever she didn’t want to hear my aunt’s mouth, she stayed over here, and whenever my moms got on her case, she went back to her mom’s house. Inez got away with so much shit because she was the only girl, and she was forever threatening that she would disappear and never return.
They were so scared that she would make good on her threat that they allowed this. Allowed her to walk around unhealed and addicted because she lost her son. The excuse was fucking tiring because how long were we supposed to allow this shit to fly?
“Oh, Goo… can I borrow some money?”
“You say borrow like you gonna give the shit back.” I checked the pots to make sure she didn’t leave me something behind.
Her social ass wanted to be riding around, and I was in here with empty pots.
“Since when I have to pay you back?”
“You grown… forgot?”
Inez screwed her face up and folded her arms. “I can get money and don’t need yours. Whenever I do, you and Khaos get in your feelings and swear you’re rescuing me.”
I had to laugh to keep from losing my shit. This was my fault, and the only person I had to blame was me. I’d rather her ask me for money, knowing where it was going, than her be out there begging and fucking for it.
I was to blame.
It was a fucked-up logic, but it made sense to me.
“The fact that we care… this what you throwing in our face?”
Her arms still were folded, and she had this silly stupid ass grin fixed on her face. “I come around because of ya’ll… I cou—”
“Disappear then, Nez. It would fucking save us all the heartache… you see what you do to Aunt Maxine? She’s fucking skinny because all she does is worry about you.
She doesn’t sleep because I’m the first person she calls to go look for you when you don’t come home…
do you fucking see that shit or do you only see your pain? ” I roared.
Her bottom lip poked out and she looked away. “Fuck you, Goo. You want me gone… then I’m gone.”
Inez didn’t give a fuck about how shit was fucked with our family.
Maxine was so fucking skinny, losing hair, and she never slept.
The minute my mother told her that Nez wasn’t over her house, she was calling me and asking me to search for her.
I usually found her, but it was the fucked-up visual that lingered well after I brought her home.
No nigga ever wanted to see his baby cousin that way. I was sick of going to hunt for her, only for her to be ungrateful and always pointing the blame at us. I left my mom’s crib and went home to shower and sleep.
Inez had me so frustrated that I drove all the way to Manhattan ranting to myself. You know how crazy I probably looked talking to myself, head moving and shit on a motorcycle. I didn’t even say shit when valet complimented my bike.
As I rode the elevator up to my floor, my phone chimed. I ignored it because I wasn’t in the mood. When it chimed for the second time, I snatched it out my pocket.
Kimber: Stranger?
Kimber: Goon, we can fuck and not be together. Stop acting like this.
I stared at her text message.
Fuck.