Chapter 9
CHAPTER
NINE
SAVIOR
I sat in my office, drinking from the brown alcohol, watching the news as they covered the story about the body pulled from the lake.
I was pissed off and confused as fuck when Amil called me and told me to check the news.
I watched the shit in pure bewilderment.
Who the fuck killed Che? There wasn’t no way that shit happened like they made it seem.
Some shit was off, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I had too much other shit on my brain to be thinking about the uncertainties of Che’s death.
I was too fixated on the fact that I was about to be a father in less than a year.
I was in disbelief at first, but then a switch flipped, and the idea of my seed growing inside of Regancy had me smiling in the oddest of moments.
“Nigga, why are you in here smiling like a fucking psychopath?” Taurus’s voice made me look at him standing in the doorway.
“Damn, a nigga can’t be happy or nothing?” I asked.
“Hell nah, especially if he ain’t sharing the joy.” Taurus walked in and took a seat in the chair across from my desk.
I reached in my drawer and pulled out sonogram from Regancy’s visit. Then I slid it over to him and waited for the clowning to begin. Hell yeah, I had become one of those niggas who kept the sonogram just so I could pull it out, and that was just what I did.
He didn’t speak for a while. He studied the photo before a grin crossed his face. “My boy is finally growing up, and I’m about to be an uncle out here.” He smiled proudly.
I laughed because here this nigga was once again making shit about him.
“So you’re out here trapping now?” he asked.
“Hell nah. It just happened. I can’t tell you how the fuck I ended up here, but I don’t have one second thought about it.”
The knock at my door took my attention and put it on Mel who now occupied the space.
“Can I talk to you for a moment?” she asked.
I looked toward Taurus and nodded. Seconds later, I watched him stand to leave my office. My attention fell on Mel as she stood awkwardly in front of my desk. Shorty was paying attention to everything in my office before she looked at me.
“What do you need, Melanie?” I asked.
“She tells you to call me by my government, and that’s what you do, huh? You mus—”
“What the fuck do you want, and why are you here, shorty?” I asked because I didn’t have time to go back and forth with her.
She sucked her teeth like I gave a fuck. “I think I’m pregnant.”
A chuckle escaped my lips. “Fuck you telling me for? I wrapped it up every time I fucked, baby girl.”
“They don’t always work, Sav—”
My reaction to her news was the opposite of how I reacted to Regancy’s news. “A’ight, so what the fuck are you telling me for?” I had to catch myself before I got too deep in my thoughts.
“Because I want to keep this baby, and I—”
“I don’t want it.” I looked at her coldly. It was what it was. If she was indeed pregnant by me, then she planned that shit and trapped me. That was, if it was even mine. I was honest.
“But it’s a bab—”
I laughed. “Fuck outta here. Yeen showing, so it ain’t considered a baby. If you think it’s mine, get rid of it because I don’t want shit that ties me to you.”
“Is this all because of her? You must really care about her since you’re here trying to treat me like some basic bitch.” Her voice was beginning to carry.
For the first time, I thought about Regancy, and I knew for a fact that shit couldn’t get back to her.
My baby didn’t like drama, and I damn sure wasn’t about to let some shit like that fall in her lap.
“You heard what I said, Melanie. Don’t make me repeat myself.
” I was done talking to her about the shit.
“And if I don’t get rid of my—”
“Leave, shorty. Don’t play the what-if game with me, trying to beef up scenarios where you’d fuck ya self up. It is what it is. What? You need a few dollars to deal with that, or—”
“I can handle it myself,” she said aggressively. “I bet she doesn’t even know how much of a devil you are.”
I chuckled. “Make the right decision, Melanie.”
After she left, I got right back to my shit before Taurus walked back into my office.
“What the fuck was that about?” he asked.
“Nothing of real importance. Shorty just wants some attention, not knowing that all attention ain’t good.” I shrugged my shoulders.
He nodded and took a seat. “So you’re about to be a pappy, huh?”
I couldn’t hold the smile on my face when I thought about that aspect of my life. “Hell yeah. The Big Man above saw fit to make me a family man.”
“Fuck outta here. You made you a family man. I’m just glad you grew the fuck up, son,” he joked.
“Nigga, I ain’t ya son, old nutty ass nigga.
” We ended up talking a while longer before he called himself going to make Lane leave work, and I went home.
I didn’t sleep much last night, because all I could think about was impending changes.
It wasn’t just Regancy and lil’ mama. It was bigger than that.
Everything around me was changing and transforming, but I needed to get a grip on it.
I needed to make sure that everything was everything.
Right then, that probably didn’t make sense, but soon, it would.
It was dark by the time I made it home, and without a second thought, I was unlocking Regancy’s door instead of my own.
When I walked in, just like I expected, Regancy was sitting at the kitchen table with papers sprawled out on the side of her laptop.
When she turned and looked at me, I laughed because she had those thick-framed ass glasses on that she wore when she was reading.
I told her she looked like a fucking librarian one day, and she cursed my ass out.
“What did you cook?” I questioned as I leaned over and kissed her forehead and made my way into her kitchen. Somehow, that shit was routine for me.
“Spicy basil chicken. Your plate is in the microwave.”
I smiled because she thought about a nigga. I nodded and opened the microwave before closing it back and adding a minute. Then I turned around and looked at her. She was peering intently at the paperwork in front of her. “What are you working on?”
She looked up at me, then back down at the papers. “I’m thinking about opening a new business up. I was looking over my financial documents and a few loans that I could apply for in order to do that.”
I smirked. She was business minded like a motherfucker, and that was why her bar was doing so well.
It was plenty of nights I looked up, and she was there, in that space, making sure everything lined up and all that extra shit.
It was sexy as fuck to be in the presence of somebody who had the same work ethic as me. “In my territory?”
She laughed aloud just as my food went off in the microwave. “Why don’t you come over here and show me where your territory starts and ends? That way, I’ll purchase my next space all the way out of it.”
I chuckled and took a seat in the chair across from her. “Nope. I’ll invest though. That way, I’ll get my—”
The way she peered over her computer and the look on her face stopped my sentence.
She was looking at me like I said something profound when all I did was say what a nigga was supposed to say to his lady.
It was those moments with Regancy that let me know that I’d grown up.
The mere thought of me saying half the shit I said to her but back then would’ve had me putting a piece to my own head.
She had this goofy ass grin on her face before she shut her laptop and stood to her feet.
“Finish eating your food and meet me in the shower.” I swear the way she said that shit had me on brick and about to say fuck this food.
When I turned around to say something to her, she’d left the room.
It didn’t take me long to finish my food and clean up after myself before I found my way walking toward the back.
I stopped and peeked into Kale’s room like I always did.
She was asleep like I assumed, so I closed the door and went straight to Regancy’s bedroom.
It was dimly lit, and she had her soft ass music playing while the sound of her shower echoed in the background.
In the moments while I undressed and emptied my pockets onto her nightstand, I realized just how much I had grown attached to coming home to somebody damn near physically and mentally.
REGANCY
I walked along the beach with my hand intertwined with my daughter’s, just thinking.
She had been begging me to bring her to the beach since it was warm enough, so I got up and cleared my entire schedule for her.
Kale was extremely smart, but she was an overthinker.
So if something was on her mind, she would think on it and never ask about it unless we were alone.
I knew lately she and I hadn’t had much alone time, so it was my way of giving her that.
“Mommy?”
“Yes, princess?” I asked, glancing down at her.
“Do you miss home? You know, with Pop-Pop?”
“Yes. Do you?” I questioned.
She nodded. “But I like it here too. I love Bernard, Granny, Uncle Mil, Tete, Savior, an—”
“So what’s the problem, baby girl?”
“There isn’t one I don’t think. I just don’t know which home I love the most.” She shrugged.
“You can love both of them equally or one more than the other, but you’ll never have to choose.”
“Okay, but can we get out of this sand, Mommy? It’s getting between my toes.”
I laughed. “I thought you liked that feeling.”
“I was like seven, and I thought it was cool,” she responded, looking up at me.
“Girl, bye. You’re only eight.”
“And I’ll be nine next month. Wait, isn’t your birthday next week, Mommy?” Leave it to her to remind me that I was getting another year older when I already felt old.
“Oh shoot. You are gonna be nine, my little Leo. What do you want for your birthday this year?”