21. Izael
IZAEL
“So, what you gonna do with all this space, son?” my pops asked.
My brother, Rashad, Jaylen, and Pops had come over for game night. We were watching the Crawford and Canelo fight tonight that everyone had wanted to happen. We were excited that it was finally going down.
I decided to host a fight night at my house since this would be the first time anyone had come by to see my new crib. I sent a text to Tahj and invited him as well, but he hadn’t replied.
“Live in it. What you mean?” I asked as I leaned back on my couch in the theater room and took a sip of my Macallan.
“Son, you’ve got five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a kitchen, dining room, living room, office, library, den, family room, a theater room, and a game room,” he explained.
“Not to mention all that outdoor living space his ass got. Nigga, what you need with an Olympic-size pool and an outdoor kitchen?” Rashad asked.
“Listen, I ain’t mad at the big homie. Shiiid. We ’bout to burn on that grill while we ballin’ on that nigga’s regulation-size court out there,” Jaylen chimed in.
“Nigggaa! Y’all asses are extreme. That pool ain’t Olympic size, and that ball court ain’t regulation size,” I remarked.
“Damn near,” Rashad stated.
“It’s sixty by ninety, not ninety-four by fifty,” I replied.
“Either way, why you need all this space, son?” my father repeated.
“For a family. I do plan to have one someday, a growing one at that, and I don’t want to have to move again because we outgrew our home,” I stated.
“The way your ass is going, you ain’t ever getting married,” Rashad remarked and got up to grab another beer from the bar.
“How you figure?”
“Your ass can’t keep a woman. Cee-Cee dropped your ass like a hot potato because you was in love with Chè, and now, she’s dropped your ass because why again?” Rashad asked.
Jaylen shook his head. “He does have a point, nigga.”
“I’ll tell you what you need to do,” Pops stated.
“Pops…”
“What?” he asked when I gave him the look.
The look was the one where I twisted my lips, angled my head sideways, and gave him a serious side eye.
“You ain’t the one in the position to tell nobody about keeping a woman. Shit, to be honest, that’s the reason I don’t believe in all this relationship happily ever after shit anyway. You couldn’t keep Mama, and I tried, and I lost…twice.” I emphasized my words by holding up two fingers.
“They say the third time’s the charm,” Jaylen asserted in a teasing manner.
“Nigga, fuck you.”
Jaylen chuckled.
“Seriously, son. I’ve got a good woman,” Pops remarked.
“ Had a good woman. I still, to this day, don’t know how you and Mama fell apart. Y’all shit was on lock. And if you couldn’t make it work, then who the hell else can? And don’t talk about that little teenager you got in your house that you impregnated either,” I replied snidely.
“Staci is thirty-six.”
“Twenty-five years your junior,” Rashad remarked when he returned and plopped back down on the couch.
“Y’all need to get over that bullshit,” Pops demanded and pointed at Rashad and me.
“I think y’all hating on Pops if you ask me,” Jaylen said.
“Ain’t nobody ask you, nigga,” Rashad and I replied simultaneously.
Rashad shook his head and shrugged.
“Your mama and I weren’t as tight as we should have been. I know to y’all, it looked like we had our shit together, and you’re right. Your mama was a good woman. I fucked up on a few occasions.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, and Rashad mugged my father.
“I cheated on your mother three times. She hung on in there the first two times. It happened once when you were just a year old, Rashad. Then it happened again when she was giving birth to you, Zae. She forgave me both times. But that last time…I knew that it was too late. I had been doing good all those years, and we were in a really good place. That last summer that you went to camp, Zae, and Rashad got a job for the summer, I fucked up.”
“How?” Rashad demanded.
“She found out that I was cheating again. It wasn’t just cheating this time, though. It was a full-fledged relationship.”
“With who?” I asked.
“Carney James.”
“Wait. My old babysitter?” I asked in disbelief.
Carney had watched me from the time that I was six until I was ten. When I turned eleven, Rashad and I convinced my parents I could stay home alone whenever Rashad wasn’t there.
“Yeah. We had been involved for almost two years, and Amanda found out when she came home early to surprise me. She knew I was coming off the road. I had gotten home a few hours earlier than she expected, and I thought she would be at work. I had Carney over, and your mom came home and caught us.”
“Fuck! You gotta be shitting me,” Rashad stated.
I had my hand over my face in disbelief, trying to blot out the thought that a babysitter I adored and who Rashad was crushing on had been smashing my pops. I didn’t know who my pops was anymore. All these years, I thought he was a stand-up dude. I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees and mugged Pops.
“Nigga, do I even know you?” I asked.
“My point is that when a relationship goes to shits, it’s usually because one person did something wrong. It wasn’t just because it fell apart without any fault. If you’re giving your all to that woman and she’s doing the same, y’all should be just fine. Relationships don’t go to hell for no reason at all. Stop being scared and open your heart up to love that girl the way she deserves to be loved.”
“I do love her the way she deserves.”
“What happened when that love didn’t let you tell her the truth upfront? What happened when she had to learn about you sabotaging her efforts at that job? Why didn’t you ever ask her about the write ups she’d done on that restaurant?”
“What’s that got to do with my love for her?”
“It’s you giving your relationship its best chances for success. It’s you opening the conversation and leading Talia in transparency. It’s you showing her that you trust her, and she can do the same.”
“Well, damn, Pops. When you put it like that…” I mumbled and rubbed the back of my neck. “Honestly, after that Cee-Cee fiasco, I didn’t think our relationship could withstand another hit.”
“No wonder she told me that I was too young. She was screwing an old ass nigga,” Rashad stated.
“Nigga, what?” I questioned and mugged Rashad.
“I tried to get with Carney, and she told me that I wasn’t old enough.” My brother’s brain was still stuck on dumb shit.
“Nigga, when?” I asked.
“The summer when she stopped watching you.”
“Nigga, yo’ ass was what? Fourteen?”
“Still,” Rashad stated and mugged me.
“How old was she?” Jaylen asked.
“Twenty,” my pops answered.
“Damn, she was too old for you,” Jaylen replied.
My pops snickered.
“And jailbait for your old ass,” he told my Pops.
“Still can’t believe you cheated on my moms,” Rashad stated.
I knew he wouldn’t get over it as easily. I was pissed, too, but I couldn’t hold something over his head that happened twenty-one years ago.
“Why didn’t we ever know this?” I asked.
“Like I said, your mama was a good woman. She didn’t bash me in front of y’all or anything. She simply told me to get my shit and get out. I did what she asked, and by the end of the summer, she had rented out the other house where y’all moved to.”
“Yeah, and you moved back into the old house. Why?”
“When she cooled down, she let me know that she didn’t want to stay in that house full of my lies and betrayal. The most important part was that she didn’t want you boys to have to get used to two new houses. Then she said she didn’t know where all Carney and I had been fooling around at, and she didn’t want to sit somewhere…Well, you get the picture,” he stated when my eyes bucked, and Rashad looked like he threw up in his mouth.
The doorbell rang, and I got up to answer it. I checked the security camera on my watch as I jogged upstairs and saw Tahj on the front porch. I turned off the camera on my watch and headed to the front door.
“The fuck you do to my sister?”
This nigga snapped the minute that I answered the door.
“What the fuck you talking ’bout, nigga?” I opened the door wider for him to step inside.
“What the fuck did you do to make Chè cry?”
I closed the door and turned to face him with my arms crossed over my chest.
“You mean the same way you did not too long ago and didn’t even wanna speak to her? I ain’t got no problems clearing things up with Talia if she’d take my phone call.”
I’d known yesterday when I stepped around the corner at BBBG magazine and saw her that my ass was in trouble. The longer I withheld the truth, the harder it had become to tell her. And just as Cee-Cee predicted, she found out another way and had been understandably upset.
“Nigga, I told yo’ bitch ass a long time ago don’t fuck with my sister. In fact, I told all my niggas that. You thought I was playing. Just because you the homie don’t mean you get no fucking pass, Izael! Now, you done fucked around and got her all fucked up and wondering if she should head back up the road to Atlanta! You fucked around and caused her to back out of her dream job! What kinda fuck shit is that?”
“Wait. Did she tell you that?”
“Nah, she was at my mama’s house crying today. She told her about that shit, and I walked in and heard what happened. You know how hard she worked for this shit! Yo’ ass on some serious bullshit, bitch ass nigga!” Tahj stepped closer to me.
“Nigga, I ain’t gonna be another bitch ass nigga up in this muthafucka. I’on give a fuck how you feeling about ya sister and me. Ya punk ass ain’t about to run up in my shit disrespecting the fuck out of me,” I shouted as I took a step closer. “You got one more time to let that shit fly out your mouth, Tahj, and we ’bout to bring this muthafucka down! On God, I’ll tear it down and build a parking lot.”
“The fuck yo’ bi?—”
“Tahj! Izael!”
That was Pops’ voice behind us. We looked toward the stairwell where he stood in the doorway, and Rashad and Jaylen peered out the doorway from behind Pops.
“I ain’t having that shit out of the two of you. Y’all grew up like brothers, and you’re better men than this. As black men, we’ve got the whole muthafuckin’ country with targets on our black asses already. The last thing we gonna do is turn on each other too. Not on my muthafuckin’ watch. Before I let y’all go out like this, I’m gonna put a cap in ya asses. You hear me?”
When we didn’t say anything, my pops put that bass in his voice and yelled, “You muthafuckas hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” Tahj and I both mumbled with our hands crossed in front of us and our heads bowed, looking like those badass little boys we used to be whenever we got in trouble.
Tahj used to go to my pops’ house with Rashad and me some weekends when we visited him.
“I know this nigga fucked up a good thing. That’s what I was just down there talking to him about. And I know he crossed boundaries with you getting with Talia the way he did. But let’s keep it real. Get out ya muthafuckin’ chest for a minute. Admit that if you had to choose a nigga for her, who else would it be but him—a nigga you know that will take care of and protect her the way that you would?”
“Except he didn’t protect her. He sabotaged her job.”
“You need to hear the whole story. I bet you don’t even know it, do you?” Pops challenged.
Tahj’s jaws were puffed out, and his nostrils flared as he shook his head.
“You might wanna sit your hot-headed ass down and listen then. Get y’all ignorant asses down these steps. Got me ’bout to miss this fight over this bullshit,” he griped.
We started walking toward the steps, but Pops stated, “And make him give up his damn keys too.”
“For what?” Tahj asked, still heated.
“No drinking and driving,” Rashad stated.
“I ain’t planning on drinking,” Tahj replied.
“We didn’t either, but still…” Jaylen shrugged his shoulders.
“Nigga,” Pops grumbled and mugged Tahj.
He nodded, pulled his keys out of his pocket, and handed them to me. When we headed downstairs, I put them in the lockbox with everyone else’s. Pops had a strict no drinking and driving policy. He lost his baby sister and her husband when a drunk driver hit her car. That shit still fucked with him. It had been seven years, but he still missed her like it was yesterday.
Since I was serving drinks, everyone would spend the night at my house. Them niggas talked shit, but this house was large enough not only for them to sleep over tonight but also everyone would have a separate bedroom to sleep in. The house was fully furnished, thanks to Talia, who helped me pick out my furniture.
I missed her in my bed. I missed her in my arms. I missed her in my damn soul. I needed and wanted her in the light and the dark. Hell, she was my light in the darkness, and she lit the paths for my troubled soul.
We sat down, and I told Tahj the story I had already shared with the others.
“Damn, nigga. Why you didn’t say that shit?”
“You ain’t been talking to a nigga.”
“Y’all was unknowingly all in each other’s space fucking each other up. We gotta fix this shit, G,” Tahj stated.
I leaned across to where he was sitting, and we dapped it up.
“That’s the shit I’m talking about,” Pops stated and reclined in the recliner as he turned up the volume for the boxing match.