Chapter 11 #3
Have you ever gone from chasing a motherfucker to helping them hide bodies and blowing their backs out?
Life was real as fuck out here for a nigga like me and I had enough on my fucking plate, but one thing I wasn’t about to do was leave shorty in no jam.
So, the moment she pulled the trigger I was thinking about how we were about to get that body out of her business.
I mean I had already locked the door and was moving in her direction when she out of nowhere shrugged her shoulders and let that shit ride.
Her face was blank and everything, which made it obvious that she had done this before.
So, I had to know what was up, and about three moonlights later was when I finally caught up to her and she told me what it was.
Then one thing led to another and we ended up in her bed.
Things happened. The messed-up thing is Luna made me want to know more about her.
More about why she was the way she was and most if all how she came about.
She didn’t talk though; it was like she seldomly allowed me to get a peek at who she was under this dark facade then she’d put that wall back up.
We never talked for long, because the physical desires always took over leaving us both breathing hard as fuck minutes later.
It was odd, because I found myself stuck in the middle of wanting more and telling myself to calm the fuck down and be grateful that the attachment in this was minimal.
That was probably fucked up, but it was what it was, it had to be …
right? Plus, I already had some other shit on my plate that I needed to handle.
I stared at the dashboard watching the time continuously blinking in front of me. I hated meeting people in my car, it always left me waiting on a motherfucker to pull up. Nobody was ever on time to car meetings; somebody was always caught in traffic.
While I waited for my meeting I pulled my phone out to message my sister. Me and shorty needed to talk, because she had been keeping to herself lately and I wasn’t feeling that at all. I dialed up her number then put the phone on speaker, before I dropped it in my lap.
“Good morning, Knox. How can I help you?” She sounded like she was somewhere moving around.
“You at the shop?”
“Where else would I be at this time of morning?” she countered with annoyance in her tone.
“Don’t get flippy with me. I got beef with you; it isn’t the other way around.”
She laughed. “Beef about what, Knoxx?”
I was about to get in her ass, but the sound of someone trying to get in the car with me stole my conversation. I looked up to see who it was, then hit the locks and focused back on my sister. “I’m in the city. I’ll be over there to see you in a few. I need to handle something right quickly.”
After I hung up on my sister, I focused on shorty who had just gotten in the car.
This shit was becoming too much of a habit and she was too comfortable hitting my line.
It wasn’t that I didn’t fuck with her because I did but her profession was a complication for me.
I couldn’t go out like that and she knew it, but that didn’t stop her from beating down my line when she was in those nostalgic moods.
She had made a choice and so had I. There wasn’t anything left between us.
“You’re a hard man to get in touch with.” Her voice filled my eardrums and the space around me.
“That’s because I told you what it was with us, Miranda. I’m not trying to be bothered wit—”
“You say that, but I can see it in your eyes that you’re just as happy to see me as I am to see you. I miss you, Knoxx.”
“Don’t miss me, shorty.” I stared straight ahead because she was right.
I did miss her. Just not enough to land myself in some mess behind her.
I started fucking with Miranda after I was finished fully with Rae.
I didn’t expect to feel her the way I did, and I damn sure didn’t expect to find out that she was the fiancé of the fucking DA and a fucking ADA herself.
I stayed in the muddiest of fucking waters.
She laughed. “So, you don’t miss me?”
“Doesn’t matter if I miss you or not. This shit is bad for business. Now why am I here?” I needed to get straight to the point of this meeting before my ass ended up getting drunk off her in here.
“Regardless of how you feel about me I’m still very much in love with you.
That’s why I’m here to tell you to take a break on the freights.
Too much has come up missing and now there’s a special task force that has been assigned to looking into it.
The next freight is going to be a set up off that south line going North.
And before you ask it isn’t my case, it’s his and that’s why I don’t have all the information. ”
I nodded my head. “Good looking out.”
She nodded, then seconds later she crawled out of my car and got into the back seat of her own. Miranda kind of snuck up on me and now I couldn’t get away from her. I couldn’t rid my life of her because she proved more useful every time I looked at her.
By the time I pulled up on my sister she was in the back office stuffing her face. Shorty was so enthralled by what she was eating that she didn’t even know I had come in until I knocked on the counter that I was leaned against.
“So, you were just going to stand there and watch me eat?” She still hadn’t stopped eating. She was still gnawing on the breakfast burrito.
“Yeah, I didn’t see no point in interrupting yo’ meal.”
Now she was laughing. “What’s up, Knoxx?”
“I could ask you the same thing. Where the hell have you been lately? I asked pops and he said you’ve been out there by his crib more than your own. You got something you wanna tell me, shorty? I mean I already know what’s up with you and North, but I feel like I’m missing something.”
“Things with he and I are pretty serious an—”
“I knew that much from the night at the hospital with Surah and from the day your ass was in the hospital. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Well if you let me finish my sentence then I will. Now can I finish?” She mugged me.
I nodded. “The floor is yours and don’t bullshit me.”
“I didn’t plan to. I’m pregnant, but I haven’t told day yet and I’m re—”
“With what? A baby.” I looked her over and tilted my head to the side’
She laughed. “No, a cub. Of course a baby, asshole.”
I shook my head, because of all the things I never expected her to be telling me that she was pregnant with another baby. She was a great mother, but she always said she never wanted anymore kids and that Ssiah was it for her. “I thought you didn’t want any more kids.”
“I didn’t and this just happened. Yes I’m on birth control, but that point 1 percent obviously had a mind of its own.”
“How did North take it?’
“Better than me. He wanted it when I wasn’t sure what I wanted.” She shrugged her shoulders.
“What did you want?”
She laughed. “Complex question for this stage of my life, but the simplest answer I can give you is to be happy. I don’t want to look up years down the line and realize that I’m living in regret or unhappiness. I want to be happy with the person who makes me the happiest and vice versa.”
“So, does he make you happy?”
“As fuck.” She smiled just saying that.
“Then what is the problem, shorty?”
“There isn’t one. I’m just by nature an overthinker. Do me a favor and don’t tell dad, I’m going to tell him this weekend when I drop Ssiah off.”
“Yeen gotta worry about me spilling those beans, baby girl. I haven’t even spilled my own.
At least you plan to be with the person that you procreated with.
I can’t stand Rae’s ass and by the grace of God they don’t rent out semi-trucks, because on my mama I would've flattened her ass with all eighteen of those wheels.”
My sister burst out laughing. “Not all eighteen, Knoxx.”
“Shit not only her, but Miranda’s ass too. I’m tired of females at this point in my life, yo.” I was so serious.
“That’s because you don’t like to be alone. You probably need to go see a therapist or something because it’s always a female. Matter of fact, where is Luna? Did you fuck that up? My girl has been missing in action.”
“Her ass too, but she’s dealing with some personal shit right now. And fuck that I do know how to be alone.” I disagreed with that statement.
“How? There was Rae for fucking ever, then Miranda, then the chick over at the bank. Then the realtor who helped me find this place, then also the news cas—” she was prepared to go on and on, but I had to stop her right there.
“Alright I get it, but if I get a therapist I’ma end up fucking her too so that would be a waste of my time and a breach of ethics for her.”
“True.”
My sister and I talked for a while longer, before I went about my day with a heavier mind than I started out with.
Maybe she was right, I didn’t know how to be alone, but with all these people on the earth why be alone?
The problem is I kept putting myself in muddy situations because I was attracted and attributed to fucking with the wrong females.
I liked bitches who were unavailable, so I didn’t have to be bothered for too long, but they could keep a nigga company when needed. Damn, Ommy was right.
Instead of keeping my heavy ass mind I ended up at my father’s ranch.
If it wasn’t Ommy then it was him who could talk some sense into the reckless thoughts of my mind.
Sometimes I wondered what I’d do without either of them in my life.
They spoke reason when I had none and made sense when I was void of that as well.
“What made you speed this way, son?” he asked.
I had walked into the horse stable and he was with his favorite girl. Sweets. He probably loved this horse just as much as he loved me and my sister. “How do you know I sped?”
“I just got off the phone with your sister. She said you’d just left her shop.”
I nodded with a smirk. “What’s with your girl, old man?” I was referring to the horse to change the budding subject. He was about to ask me what was wrong, so to avoid that I focused on the Arabian Steed that stole his heart the moment she trotted onto the ranch about three years ago.
He looked at me for a while before shaking his head. He allowed the subject change for now. “Day one hundred and something of the gestational period.”
I threw my head back in surprise. “I thought you said you’d never allow it to happen?”
“I did, but you can’t control the nature of a mare. Just like I can’t control any of the things you or your sister do. I can be present and always ready to help you out of your situations, but you have to live your own life and experience it your own ways.” He continued to brush Sweets' hair.
“Raevan is pregnant.”
He turned around and looked at me before shaking his head. “And what does that gotta do with you? I mean unless you couldn’t leave well enough alone and kept mes—”
“It happened a few times and nothing was serious,” I started to explain.
He stood up straight and looked me over before looking out into the distance.
I could tell he was disappointed, maybe not about the kid but about who it was with.
He knew how things were with Rae, especially because after she left me I spent about a week on his couch as well as Omyia’s.
“Apparently it was serious enough for you to make a baby with her, right? Kids are a big deal son, especially when it’s with a woman who has no problem coming in and out of your life.
” I could tell in that moment he spoke from experience and that rendered me speechless, because Rae in a sense was like my mother.
She was in and out of my life like a fucking revolving door.
“You think I need help or something? Like mama’s choice to leave us is affecting my ability to be alone.”
He chuckled. “You must’ve talked to your sister about it already.”
I nodded my head.
“Sounds like a woman’s point. But it’s the truth. What are you talking about getting some help? Are you going to go to therapy or something?” His expression soured.
“Yeah, I mean I hav—”
“You shouldn’t have to talk to somebody to heal yourself. It takes for you to do the groundwork from within to get to the root of the problem. Deal with it yo’self, son. That way you’ll always know how to deal with your own problems.”