Chapter Two
Trallis McDaniel
People always assumed they knew me and that was their first mistake.
They assumed I didn’t have problems or I was the problem.
They looked at the lashes, the hair, the body, and the long red nails and decided I had never struggled a day in my life.
They saw confidence and called it arrogance.
I didn’t correct them. The less people knew, the safer I was.
I waited until the gym doors closed behind the last member at midnight and locked them up so the cleaners could start working.
I pulled my phone from my bra because it was the only place I trusted it to be.
I would never leave it in my purse or my locker.
A thief knows where thieves look. If someone were to steal from either of those places, everything they took could easily be replaced.
What was in my phone was more valuable than the five-thousand-dollar Louis Vuitton purse, the two-thousand-dollar wallet, the six-hundred-dollar pink iPad, the three Dior Lip glosses, and the Charlotte Tilbury pressed powder foundation.
I unlocked the screen, and my thumb moved across it quickly.
There were two unread messages. One from , and one from Chase Fraud Prevention.
I smiled and went through each message. Today was productive for me.
The funny thing about stealing was how easy people made it.
It was no wonder that the most common type of identity theft was financial identity theft.
People handed over their information to strangers every day without realizing it was scary.
They left receipts in the ATMs with account numbers and bank balances.
Left their cards sitting on the counter at McDonald's after they got their coffee because they were in a rush and trying to talk on the phone.
They used the same passwords for everything and only changed them when the system prompted them to.
Motherfuckers gift-wrapped their identities and handed them to strangers.
I just happened to be smart enough to unwrap the package.
I read the Chase notification, then deleted it.
I then went over to and read the shipping notification.
The packages would be delivered to the hub box tomorrow.
By the time Sandra Nash woke up and realized she had ordered six hundred dollars’ worth of electronics, everything would already be sold.
Life was beautiful.
“What man has you smiling at your phone like that?” Shelly startled me, causing me to slightly lose my grip on the phone.
I fumbled and dropped down in a squat, managing to clasp it between my hands before it could hit the hardwood floor.
Shelly stood in front of me, holding a bottle of disinfectant spray.
“Girl, don’t sneak up on me like that. You scared the hell out of me.” I tossed my hair over my shoulder, locked my phone, and placed it back in my bra.
“It wasn’t like I tiptoed over here; I was walking normally.
You were just so into whatever that man was telling you that you weren't paying attention to your surroundings. Do better,” Shelly snapped.
She put on her perfect little sweet girl act in front of the customers, but I could see straight through her. I knew that she was a menace.
“I’m always aware of my surroundings, mind your business,” I quipped.
“Whatever you say,” she saluted me.
I pointed at her with my long fingernail a few inches away from her face. We stared at each other, eye to eye, like the shit was about to get ugly.
A few seconds later, we both started laughing.
“That’s workplace harassment,” she shrugged. “You were asking for it,” I smirked as I walked over to my side of the desk and began to straighten up the paperwork.
“Did the new girl sign up?” Shelly asked from over my shoulder as she began to type loudly on her keyboard.
The woman from earlier looked like she carried sadness in her purse the same way most women carried lip gloss.
She looked like she needed a hug, to be fucked, and needed her ass kicked.
She looked like life had beaten her ass, and she didn’t even bother to swing back.
“Yeah, NY’Airy. She signed up and paid for six months.
She has the highest-tier plan that comes with a personal trainer.
She asked me to pair her with a woman trainer, but I can’t wait until she sees that I paired her with Co.
She was rude to him today, and he’s going to run her ass raggedy tomorrow morning. ”
Shelly smiled, “Co will be good for her, I like her.”
“Of course you do,” I chuckled, thinking about how NY’Airy was staring at Co like she wanted to suck his dick until she realized he was married.
Suddenly, she went cold and started treating him like he was a fat bald nigga that worked at Church’s Chicken.
Most women saw a wedding ring and treated it like a challenge. NY’Airy looked at it like a stop sign.
“Why are you acting like that’s a bad thing?”
“Because you like everybody.”
“I do not like everybody”
“You cried when we fired the janitor,” I told Shelly as I rolled my eyes.
“His name was Kevin. He has four children and a pregnant wife at home.”
“His horny ass doesn’t have any business fucking somebody's daughter and knocking her up with that many children. No wonder he was stealing protein powder with his freaky ass.”
“He was struggling,” Shelly crossed her arms. “If he had gotten one more chance, maybe he could have changed.”
I chortled before replying, “People don’t change, they adapt. If we gave him another chance, he would have found a better way to steal.”
My phone vibrated before I could say another word. Based on what time it was, I didn’t have to look to know who it was. We had been at this for a year. I smiled before I could stop myself.
“There you go smiling again, that man better have some good dick, you are about to break your face,” Shelly threw shade.
“He doesn’t have good dick, he has amazing dick,” I whined.
“Well, don’t sound so down about it. Great dick is a good thing, right?” she questioned.
“Great dick is a disaster when it’s attached to the wrong nigga.” I told her honestly as I typed my password into the system and clocked out. Before she could reply, I grabbed my purse from beneath the desk, slung it over my shoulder, and pulled my phone from my bra.
“See you tomorrow I’m going to get my back cracked,” I cheered.
She laughed loudly as I walked out of the gym and to my car.
The red Mercedes G-Wagon AMG 63 was being paid for by Shelton Ames, a dead man who used to be a faithful member of Brick hit the push start and put my purse in the seat next to me. I opened the text message, and it read:
MARRIOTT 4875, Wesley Dobbs. ROOM 817.
TWENTY MINUTES.
We’d usually meet at the Hyatt. I wondered what made him change the location as I put the address into my GPS and pulled onto the street.
Midnight on a Tuesday had traffic as light as a feather.
The GPS put me at the hotel in fifteen minutes.
I turned on SZA’s song, "The Weekend" and put the volume on full blast.
It reminded me of him and me.
“The feelin' is reckless, knowin' it's selfish, knowin' I'm desperate,” I sang loud and off key as I thought about the way he stuck his tongue in and out of my pussy slowly.
The man had a tongue like a Glock with a switch.
He flicked it faster whenever he felt me cum and left me squirting all over the place.
“I don't care as long as you here by 10:30, no later than. Drop them drawers, give me what I want,” I yelled loudly as I humped the air and imagined I was riding his dick. I hadn't lied when I told Shelly that a great dick attached to the wrong nigga was a disaster. He wasn’t my man, and he wasn’t available.
He served one purpose in my life. He was just fun, no expectations, no promises, and no feelings.
Except lately my heart fluttered whenever he was near.
I’m cumin. I texted him back when I made it to a red light.
Three dots appeared immediately, and he replied.
You always come.
That smug bastard was right. The other niggas I was entertaining didn’t make me cum like he did, so I cut their assess off. We had been at this for a year, and his feelings hadn’t changed, but mine had grown.
Somewhere between the expensive hotels, late-night creeping, and the way he fucked me like he hated me and loved me, I had fallen in love with an unavailable man. I made myself available whenever he summoned me.
I hated loving him.
Life had taught me that love always costs more than you planned to spend. I thought about my mother and my heart sank. The first time I used someone else’s credit card information it was for her insulin. The card had come in the mail to our run-down apartment.
I was fourteen years old and I knew that the right thing to do was to cut it up and throw it away. I told myself that I would. I only put it in my pocket so I could remember to get rid of it. Then my mother sent me down to the pharmacy to pick up her medicine.
She was too tired to get out of bed. She worked two jobs to provide for us and pay her never-ending medical bills.
She told me to get the money out of her purse.
The only thing in her purse was a crumpled ten-dollar bill.
I assumed that would be enough because I was fourteen and she knew I didn’t have any money.
I walked down to the pharmacy and went up to the counter.
I gave the pharmacy tech her name, date of birth, and address.
The clerk told me that the price of insulin had gone up and it would be forty-three dollars and thirty-five cents.
I knew that my mother didn’t have more money than what was in her wallet.