Chapter 8
Pastor Sharpe and I finally got together and finalized the contract that would make Faith in Harvest Christian Church the first exclusive client of Emerald City Auto Body & Repair . That was a wild ass turn of events. A brother like me that started off boosting cars as a young cat had been contracted to be the official auto body and repair shop of a mega church.
I planned to celebrate later with Julianna but not before I met up with Langston for lunch. We met up at Le Cocoa Café , because I had a taste for soul food.
The smell of savory goods, seasonings, and warmth hit me in the nostrils as soon as I pulled open the door to the restaurant.
“Welcome to Le Cocoa Café, ” the bright-eyed hostess said as I approached the podium just inside the doorway.
I could see Langston was already seated at a table by the window.
“Thanks. I see my guy is already seated.” I gestured in his general vicinity.
The hostess gave me a practiced grin. “Okay. Great. Please take a menu.” She handed me a menu. “Your server will be with you shortly.”
“Thanks,” I repeated before heading toward Langston.
He watched me approach with keen eyes. I was sure he was curious as to why I’d asked him to meet me.
“What’s up, Doc?” I offered my hand as soon as I reached the table.
We exchanged dap.
“I can’t call it, homie.”
I took the chair across from him.
“It smells good as hell in here,” I commented, picking up the menu.
“It does.” He studied me. “You don’t look like you’re dressed for working on cars today. What’s going on with you?”
“Shit, life is good. I just finalized the contract to be the official auto shop for one of the largest churches in the city.”
“Get the fuck outta here! Congratulations are in order.” He gave me dap again.
“Yeah. Who would’ve thought that little delinquent teenager would have a business legit and legal enough to do business with a house of the Lord? The entire situation is so fucking wild to me.”
“Nah, Gianni got you away from KG because he knew you were destined for bigger. I love to hear this shit.”
The waitress came over and took our orders.
“What’s up with you?” I asked him, taking a sip from the iced water in front of me.
“Business is the same. It’s always the same. Acquiring product. Moving product.”
I nodded. Langston had taken over for Gianni upon his death. The Hill family was in security. The Outlaw family was in weapons.
“Now that the niceties are out of the way, I’ll tell you why I asked you to holler at me.”
“Cool. Speak your mind.”
“I’ve been hanging out with Julianna for a minute. We started off as homies, I guess you could say. Things have…transitioned. And I want you to hear it from me before you hear it from Jia or Jianna…or hell, anybody that’s not me. Julianna is mine. I know you’ve looked out for her since she was a little girl, since you got together with Jia. And I know that since Gianni passed, she’s been your responsibility. I wanna let you know that you can relax. I’ve got her now. She’s my responsibility.”
Langston looked genuinely caught off guard. “Wow. I did not see this shit coming. You and my Short Cake? Wow.”
I stayed silent and let him work it out in his mind.
“Short Cake, that’s my baby. She has a special place in my heart. She’s been hurting like a motherfucker since Gianni passed. She’s been floating in the wind, and none of us have known how to pull her back in…how to bring her back to us.”
I nodded.
“You love her?”
“It’s a little soon for that.” I was honest with him.
“She’s fragile. I don’t want to see her end up hurt. That would fuck me up then I would have to fuck you up. I don’t know if it’s worth it for a fling. I?—"
“Come on, bro. I wouldn’t even have brought this to you for a fling. You know me better than that.”
“I know you haven’t been serious about a chick since Emerald.”
“And now, I’m serious.”
“You’re for real about Short Cake?”
“She’s mine.”
We locked eyes, both of us unwilling to back down.
He conceded first. “I appreciate the way you handled this, Nico. I’m not her father. I get that you didn’t have to run this through me, but I appreciate that you did. I’ve known you as a real one since we were shorties. You’ve always been solid, and I wouldn’t expect anything less of you in your dealings with my baby sis. Take care of her.”
“That’s my word.”
* * *
The smile on Julianna’s face as she walked out of her townhome and toward my truck made me smile. She was so fucking pretty, but it was more than that. It was probably the fact that she looked genuinely joyful, and I knew for certain that her joy was hard-won.
I jumped out and met her at the bottom of her stairs with a hug and a kiss to the most sensitive point on her neck.
“Damn, look at you. You’re gorgeous.”
“Thank you.” She managed before a giggle stole her voice. “You’re handsome yourself. And I’m so proud of you. Look at you, securing contracts and making an even bigger name for Emerald City Auto & Body. Congratulations.”
I pulled her closer before letting my hands drift down to her juicy ass. I squeezed tightly.
“Thank you. You gonna show me exactly how proud of me you are later on?”
“You better know it.” She broke our embrace. “Now, put my bag in the trunk, and let’s go celebrate you.”
I took the familiar overnight bag from her hand then held the passenger door open so she could settle herself inside. After dropping the bag in the trunk, I climbed into the driver’s seat.
“So, where are we going?” She probed.
“You’ll see when we get there,” I told her. Then I offered her a distraction. “How was your day?”
“Uh, I spent the day on YouTube University, trying to teach myself some more decorating techniques. Spoiler alert…that was a fail.”
“You don’t want to find an in-person program and enroll?”
“Well, at first I was scared to waste the money because I’m a ‘start-stopper.’ So, there’s that.”
“Yeah, but this is something that you really love. You’re not stopping, lil bit. It’s okay to invest in yourself.” I sighed. “You like baking and decorating cupcakes and cookies, and not only that…you’re good at it. Enroll in a program. Your first semester’s on me. And if you decide to quit, you won’t have wasted any money.”
“I’ll have wasted your money, Nico. I can’t waste your money.”
“I have more confidence in you than you have in yourself. I don’t think you’re gonna quit. I think you’re gonna enroll in a program, get inspired by everything you don’t know, and start to love baking and decorating even more. Prove me wrong.”
“Nico.”
“One semester. If you lose interest, you lose interest. You’ll have to find something else you like, but give it one semester.”
“I’ll think about it.” She sighed. “What’d you do today beside secure the bag for Emerald City? Not that getting the contract with the church wasn’t enough.”
“After I wrapped up my meeting with Pastor Sharpe and his team, I had lunch with Langston.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Good.” I paused briefly. “Before you hear it from him or one of your sisters, our conversation was about you.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. “What about me?”
“I told him that I was taking you out of his purview.”
She giggled. “Oh, so you’re taking me off his plate? He doesn’t have to worry about me anymore because you’ve got me?”
I shook my head at her teasing. “Pretty much.”
“How did he take the news? Langston thinks I’m his daughter or his baby, baby, baby sister. Like the baby sister that’s just out of diapers. He’s almost more protective of me than my daddy was. What did he say to you?”
I shrugged my shoulders nonchalantly. “He trusts me. He was cool with it.”
She turned in her seat so that she could face me. I felt the heat of her gaze boring into the side of my face.
“He said those exact words? He said, ‘I’m cool with it.’ Wow.”
“He didn’t say those exact words, lil bit. He said what he said, and the gist of it was that he’s cool with it. Like I said, he trusts me to take care of you.”
* * *
“What is this place, Nico?” Julianna was practically hanging out of the window as I pulled into a park outside of Savor, Flavor & Mingle .
There were couples walking into the door as I turned off the ignition.
“Is this a sip and paint?” She was gleeful. “I’ve always wanted to do a couple’s sip and paint.”
“Noted.” I nodded my head. “Nah. I signed us up for a couple’s cooking class.”
Her pretty face lit up even more.
“Get out of here! That sounds like so much fun.” She watched me curiously. “How are you single, bro? You’re so fucking dope!”
“Damn.”
Her words made me grin my ass off. They were unexpected, but even more than that, they were sincere.
“I’m serious, Nico. You give full-body massages, you’re ambitious, you know what a date is supposed to look like, and the sex is otherworldly? Who are you?” Her voice dropped. “And how did I get so lucky?”
“Let’s go before you get something started in this truck, and we don’t even make it in here for this date.”
I walked around to the passenger side and opened the door for her. We walked into the building together, stopping at the front desk.
“Hello,” a blonde with a slicked back ponytail said, her smile bright and friendly.
“Hey,” I replied, while Julianna looked around the space. “We’re here for the cooking class. It should be under D. Hill.”
She checked her list. “Oh, here you are.” Her bright red fingernail tapped my name on her list. “It’s down this hall and to your left. There are aprons on the shelf when you walk into the room. Just choose a workstation, and the class will start promptly at seven.”
“Thanks.” I took Julianna’s hand in mine, and we walked toward the classroom. “Hey, there’s something I need to tell you about this cooking class.”
“Do we have to cook naked?” She guessed.
I couldn’t do anything but laugh.
“You’re a clown.” I chuckled. “You’re silly as hell, but I swear that I fucks with it. Do you really think I would be able to concentrate on cooking if you were naked? And do you think I would be able to keep myself from killing every dude in here for staring at you? Nah, it’s not no damn naked cooking class. It’s a cannabis cooking class. Everything we make here is gonna be infused with cannabis.”
“Seriously? Even better!”
* * *
“It was like a six or seven course meal, Ms. Russo,” Julianna said to my mom.
It was the Saturday after the cooking class. My mother invited Julianna and me over so she could make a celebratory dinner for me. She was beside herself with glee that Pastor Sharpe had selected my shop as the church’s official vendor.
“Seven courses?” my mother questioned.
“The meal started with a green salad that we doused in a cannabis infused vinaigrette. Then we made spinach and artichoke dip with marijuana, a chicken and rice soup with a cannabis infused dumpling, an infused pasta with shrimp dish, and for dessert, we made cannabis infused caramels and lemon squares. Everything was so good.”
“Infused with bud?” My mother’s face was scrunched up in disbelief.
Julianna looked confused.
“Bud is what my mom and them called weed back in the day,” I explained.
“Oh,” Julianna said. “Yes. Infused with…bud…so much bud.”
“Nico got you high with his little outing, baby?”
“So high, Ms. Russo. Umm, and then he took me home, so I could sleep it off.”
“She’s lying, Ma. You know I wouldn’t let her…eat all that weed then send her home. She’s trying to hold you. She doesn’t want you to know that she spent the night at my place. But we ain’t do nothing because we were both as high as the sky. Plus, we thought we could touch music, and our tongues felt furry.”
My mother roared with laughter while Julianna mean mugged me, but I didn’t care. My mother already liked her. She didn’t have to work to win Bianca over. Bianca was already giving her the googly eyes and envisioning outings with her future daughter-in-law. I could see it on her face.
“Julianna, we have to have a girls’ day out one day, and you have to take me there.”
“We should.” The smile on Julianna’s face was big as hell.
I thought it was cool as hell that she liked the idea of hanging out with my mother.
“We’ll make Nico the designated driver.”
“Yes,” my mother agreed. “And the designated financier.”
Julianna cracked up.
“Y’all are both talking like that would be a punishment or something. I don’t mind driving y’all or paying for y’all to have a good time.”
Julianna glanced at me briefly before whipping out her phone and pulling up her calendar. I sat back watching them in contentment as they discussed dates, and availability.
“Aye, Ma, Julianna brought something for you.”
Julianna jumped up from the table. “I sure did. Nico made me leave them in the living room with my coat. Let me grab them.”
While Julianna was out of the room, my mother turned to me. “Nico, I know you don’t want to hear this, but you better not let that girl get away. She’s smart, and of course, she’s as beautiful as they come.”
“She is.” I nodded my agreement.
“But she has this…light about her. Her spirit is so bright, and her sense of humor…I know you say she’s been dealing with grief, but underneath all of that, I can tell that she’s a happy person. Life with her would be good, son. She’s the type that could be your partner and your best friend. I really like her.”
“I really like her, too,” I admitted despite myself.
Not that I wouldn’t admit my feelings for Julianna. I had just admitted them to Langston. But you couldn’t tell Bianca stuff like that because she had the tendency to run with it. She would never stop talking about it. But with Julianna, I didn’t mind her talking. I didn’t mind the fact that she was trying to push us together.
Bianca clapped her hands like a toddler and cheered in her chair.
“Stop that,” I chastised jokingly.
“Nope. She makes you happy. I can tell. Your spirit is lighter.”
I couldn’t tell her that my balls were definitely lighter because Julianna’s ass was insatiable. She liked dick, and I liked giving it to her. I didn’t think I’d ever been as sexually compatible with anybody as I was with Julianna.
“Julianna and I are definitely a mood.”
Julianna reentered the room carrying the cupcake carrier that seemed to go everywhere with her.
“Umm, Nico told me that you have a sweet tooth, but you’ve been dealing with some complications with your diabetes lately. So, I started practicing with ‘diabetic friendly’ cupcake recipes.”
I heard my mother audibly gasp, but my attention was on Julianna. She pushed a few strands of hair behind her ear, and the gesture was endearing. She was still nervous about connecting with my mom when the connection was already made. I figured it stemmed from the way the women treated her after the rumors went around about her as a teenager. She expected older women not to like her. What she didn’t know was that my mother had experienced similar treatment from older women. They were kindred spirits.
“Oh, baby.” My mother gushed. “That was so sweet and so thoughtful of you.”
“Your son wouldn’t let me make you a dozen?—”
I cut her off. “Hell no. Because you,” I pointed at my mother, “would eat the whole dozen.”
“Nobody asked you.” She waved me off.
“So, I made you four. I?—"
Bianca was out of her seat and hugging Julianna before she could even get the rest of the sentence out.
I nodded while watching the two women who meant the most to me connecting. Julianna needed all of the acceptance that my mother was giving her, and my mother needed to feel like one of her sons was on the right track.