4. Abril
“Girl, I would’ve walked down that aisle and whupped his ass,” Kamaia Jones stated.
“Nah, she did good. That nigga wasn’t worth the bail money we would’ve spent getting her out,” Nina Peoples countered.
“Shiid. The hell he wasn’t. I would’ve whupped his ass and hers.
How the fuck you gon’ give another bitch my wedding plans, scheming ass, ho ass nigga!
” Yamika Burroughs, my best friend, snapped.
I loved her to death, and most people thought I was hell on wheels, but my bestie was no joke.
She was the real deal and didn’t mind putting hands on anybody who crossed her or her loved ones.
All three women were my ride or dies and had been since middle school.
I couldn’t have asked for a better set of friends.
A year had passed since that fateful day when my life had changed.
I had felt the depression descending on me again like the setting sun.
Yamika coordinated everyone’s schedule so they could rally around me today and keep my spirits up.
My ex, Devon, got married last year on a Friday afternoon on today’s date.
When I finally gathered the courage to call him a few days later, he sent me to voicemail and ignored my texts.
I didn’t hear from him until three weeks later when he attempted to apologize and tell me how he was tired of me needing space.
He had forgotten that he was the one who started the “needing space” bullshit.
He had stated he wanted to live his life and start building his family. I called him on that, because he was obviously screwing around with that bigheaded heffa before I asked for space.
“Should’ve snatched that dress off that heffa,” Yamika declared.
“And that crunchy ass wig,” Kamaia chimed in.
I laughed so hard that tears poured from my eyes. I gripped Yamika’s shoulder, who sat beside me. “I love y’all down. Y’all some real OGs for real, though.”
“Girl, always. Wish like hell you had called us for that shit. Betcha they’ll be on Maury in two years trying to figure out who that baby belongs to,” Yamika professed.
I scrunched my face up. “What baby, Yams?” I asked, calling her by her nickname.
“Girl, the one she had to already been carrying for that nigga to marry her so fast. Bet it ain’t his.”
I laughed again and shook my head at my best friend’s foolishness.
“You know that nigga was shooting blanks. He did you a big one for real by doing that shit. You don’t need to be tied down to no old ass nigga who can barely get it up, let alone shoot da club up,” Yamika stated.
Everyone fell out laughing at that one. Devon was thirty-three, eight years my senior.
“So, what are you gonna do, boo?” Nina asked, pouring us all another glass of sangria that she had made earlier.
“About what?” I asked with the glass halfway to my lips.
I was mid-sip when she answered. “Your wedding theme and colors.”
I spit the Sangria out.
“Damn, Bri!” Kamaia screeched as I wet her pajama top.
“My bad, boo.” I jumped up and grabbed some paper towels and handed them to her. “You can go in my dresser and grab yourself another top.”
“Or I can just walk around in my bra on your balcony and hope your fine ass neighbor and his friends see me,” Kamaia countered.
I rolled my eyes. “Please. Speaking of trifling ass niggas, do not bring that man up.”
Yamika had seen him and his friends when she was visiting last weekend, and she couldn’t stop talking about them. I was over him after our initial encounter, his first week here.
“Best way to get over a nigga,” Yamika commented.
“Is to get under something bigga,” Nina finished and slapped hands with Yamika.
I rolled my eyes. “Maybe that worked at twenty-one and twenty-two, but not at our big ages. It’s time to grow up and not put up with trifling ass niggas anymore.”
“Girl, please,” Kamaia stated. “We’re only three years out from that twenty-two. That shit still applies,” she professed, coming to sit back on the floor with the three of us in her bra and pajama shorts.
I rolled my eyes and pressed my lips together when loud music poured from next door. I tried to ignore the music, but it kept going.
Kamaia jumped up and started shaking her ass along with Yamika. Nina lifted one eyebrow and thrust her thumb toward my neighbor’s apartment. “Do you have to put up with that all the time?”
“More than I care to admit,” I lied. Truthfully, this was only his second time doing it, but the last time, it hadn’t been this loud.
I was just over the man. Everything about the fine ass man irritated my soul, from his cocky, arrogant attitude to that BDE he carried around like the sweltering summer Georgia heat.
I poked my tongue into the side of my cheek and inhaled a long breath before I popped up from my seat on the floor.
“Where are you going?” Nina asked.
“To tell him to turn that mess down. It’s after nine at night.”
“Girl, let that man have his fun,” Yamika ordered as she twerked against Kamaia.
I rolled my eyes. “No, ma’am. I don’t pay a grip in rent to be living in the hood, and that’s exactly what he’s bringing.”
I strolled out of my apartment, forgetting that I was wearing my Betty Boop night shorts and tank top. When I stepped into the coolness of the hallway, I took a few steps to my right and rang his doorbell.
When he didn’t answer after several long seconds, I banged on his door. It took another minute before he finally answered.
“Hey.” He greeted me with a cool smirk as he pulled a glass of what appeared to be lemonade to his lips. My heartbeat raced as I clamped down on my teeth, adding pressure in my jaw. He was so damn fine, but he irritated my very soul. “How can I help you, neighbor?”
“You can turn that noise down. It’s after nine.”
His eyebrows scrunched down. “It’s a Friday.”
“In a nice, quiet, upscale apartment building where we pay for amenities like peace, security, stability, and luxury. If I wanted to live in the hood, I would’ve moved there.”
He frowned at me. “For real? That’s all you got?”
My jaw grew tense as I planted my hands on my hips and stared him down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t care. Some people are trying to get some rest.”
“Is that why your friends are peeking their heads out your doorway, giggling?”
I turned my head in the direction he pointed and rolled my eyes at my girls before frowning at them. They hurriedly closed the door, and I turned my attention back to the object of my irritation.
“I said some people. I never said me,” I remarked smartly with an intense gaze and a smirk on my lips.
“Yeah, a’ight. Chill, baby girl. It ain’t that deep.”
He closed the door on me, and fury rose inside of me as heat warmed me from the crown of my head to my feet. This wasn’t over.
“What’s up?” Yamika asked.
“We plot and we wait.”
My dreams were filled with images of July Maxwell. I couldn’t shake the six-two, cocoa-brown man from my mind. Those hooded nut-brown eyes framed with curly, long lashes followed me everywhere.
It was seven in the morning, and my girls and I were armed with pots and pans. I was ready to reenact the scene from a popular reality show. When I nodded my head, my girls started clanging the pans against the balcony railing, and I banged my pots and pans together.
Rather than spouting the words from that show, I shouted out, “This is my place, and I live here! Payback is the sweetest revenge!”
My girls giggled their hearts out, but they kept the racket up alongside me.
The apartment to my left was empty, and the one underneath me was temporarily empty because the residents were out of town.
I wasn’t worried about waking anyone else up.
But Mr. July Maxwell was in for a rude awakening this morning.
My balcony was right outside of his, and I knew that the window closest to me was his bedroom window. We kept the racket up until, slowly, the black bedroom curtains pulled back, and his puffy, half-closed eyes peered out at us.
He pulled the curtain back further and stood in front of the window, mugging us. My girls shrieked the moment our eyes lowered.
“That nigga’s mama named him perfectly,” Kamaia hissed.
“Mm-hmm. Nothing’s hotter than July,” Nina muttered beside me.
“Heffa, if you don’t jump on that, I will,” Yamika warned.
My next-door neighbor stood in his bedroom window in all his beautiful, cocoa, naked glory, big dick energy realized and all! The muscles in his tatted arms and legs flexed, and his dick jumped. I whimpered. A small smirk tilted those full, heart-shaped lips as he smirked at me.
Oh, God!