Chapter 31
“Hold on, Jue! I gotchu, nigga! Don’t let go.” Juelz's weight hit Sintonio like a freight train. His chest slammed into the ledge, knocking the wind out of him. Sintonio's fingers grasped the air, a desperate, clawing motion that felt like it lasted a lifetime. Fear splintered his heart.
If you ever wonder what a person’s soul feels like in your hands.
Just grab hold of somebody that you refuse to lose, because that type of weight isn’t regular weight.
It feels heavier than cinder blocks, heavier than the damn powder Juelz was putting up his nose.
It’s the pressing down of every mistake, every laugh, and every tear they ever shared, all pulling down toward the ground below.
Sintonio’s arm was dying for release, his tendons ready to snap like guitar strings, but he wasn’t letting go.
Not today. Because once you let a man fall, you go down with him, whether your feet are on the ground or not.
Sintonio’s voice ripped out of his chest, raw with a panic he’d never felt.
“I…got…you,” he wheezed, his face a terrifying shade of purple, his eyes bloodshot from the strain. “Try to hold on, Jue.”
Juelz was dangling. The wind whistled in the space between his feet and the pavement twenty stories down. He looked up at Sintonio, but his eyes weren’t filled with the relief of a man who’d been saved. They were hollow. Empty.
The afternoon sun beat down on the balcony, making the metal railing hot to the touch. Sintonio was stretched dangerously far over the edge, his boots skidding on the slick concrete.
“Pull!” Sintonio roared, a primal sound that started in his gut and tore out of his throat. Sintonio was losing his grip. Fast.
Mar and Kane scrambled to help with the rescue. Mar lunged forward, wrapping his thick arms around Sintonio’s waist and grabbing the back of his belt. Kane positioned himself on the other side of Sintonio, his hand locking under Juelz’s sweaty armpits, as they tried to pull him back up.
It took all of them. Not just their strength, but grit. Loyalty. They weren’t just pulling a body over the ledge; they were pulling their own reflection back from the edge of the world. Because if Juelz goes? A piece of every one of them dies on that sidewalk as well.
With one last hard pull, the three of them hauled him back up. The weight shifted all at once, and they flew away from the railing in a chaotic tangle of limbs and gasping breaths. Sintonio and Juelz crashed onto the concrete floor with a sickening, heavy thud.
The sound of Juelz’s head hitting the decorative stone planter was sharp, a wet, hollow crack that seemed to silence the city noise below.
Sintonio didn't let go. He stayed glued to him, his forearm pinned across Juelz’s chest, not to hurt him, but to anchor him to the earth, terrified that if he moved, he might still find a way to disappear.
“I gotchu,” Sintonio said over and over, his own voice shaking with the aftershock of the adrenaline. “I gotchu. You good, my nigga. You good!”
Juelz sobbed.
It wasn't the quiet, cinematic kind of crying. It was the ugly kind. The kind that tore through his ribs and left him gasping like he was choking on his own lungs. His dreads were matted with sweat and dust, his face a distorted map of salt and grief.
“Ahahkhaimehihthtop...” His words came out as a wet, garbled mess, muffled by the heavy fabric of Sintonio’s jacket.
Sintonio didn’t move, but he relaxed the desperate, choking grip he’d had around Juelz’s neck, shifting to a more protective hold. “Whatchu say, Jue?”
Juelz sat up straighter to breathe so that he could speak more clearly. “I said, I tried to fuckin’ make it stop,” he repeated. “I wanted all the pain to stop, y’all. I can’t do this shit, man. She really got me fucked up out here.”
See, Juelz was experiencing the shit they don’t tell you about when you're at the bottom. It’s not a place, it’s a feeling.
It’s the moment when that ‘tough nigga act’ dissolves, and all that’s left is a little ass boy that’s afraid of the dark.
Juelz finally realized that you can’t kill the pain without killing the man, too.
He tried to turn the volume down on his heart, but all he did was almost mute his pulse for good.
Mar sat back on the concrete, hands on his head, staring at the bright blue sky with unseeing eyes. He was breathing so hard his chest was rattling. Kane was lying flat on his back, staring off into the distance, looking like he’d just seen a ghost.
For the next hour, the balcony became a sanctuary. Kane, Mar, and Sintonio sat out there with Juelz as he applied pressure to his head, still in a state of disbelief. “I’m fucked up out here, bruh. I can’t believe Tasha moved on like that.”
“Look at me, Jue, nigga.” Sintonio said, forcing Juelz to meet his eyes.
His pupils were still slightly blown, but the hollow look was fading, replaced by a deep, agonizing shame.
“You want her back? Then you fight for her. You think she gon’ come back to a nigga that’s snortin’?
A nigga that’s ready to jump because shit out here got hard?
Nah! That’s a weak nigga move. You betta than that, Jue. ”
Juelz’s lip trembled. “She gone, Sin. On top of that she fightin’ fuckin’ cancer. I hate she gotta go through that.” He slapped his chest, twice. “I ‘pose to be there with her. I ‘pose to be helpin’ her fight this. And it’s killin’ a nigga that I can’t be. It’s like I lost every thang.”
“You ain’t lost shit,” Sintonio corrected, lifting Juelz’s chin up. “You still got us, your brothas! And you still got your life. You gon’ get clean, nigga. You gon’ getcha shit together. And getcha girl back.”
Juelz closed his eyes, and a single, sober tear cut through the dirt on his cheek. “I'm tired, man. Tired of fightin’ for a bitch that don’t wanna hear me out.”
“I know,” Sintonio whispered, handing Juelz an ice pack for his head that Mar got out of the freezer.
“But the war just started, baby boy. You gotta keep fightin’ for her.
But first, you gotta fight for yourself nigga, and stop puttin’ that fuckin’ booger sugar up your nose.
” He reached out, his hand heavy on Juelz’s shoulder, kneading the tension there as he spoke. “You better than that, baby.”
They all agreed with him, but the silence that came after was different now.
Juelz sat there pondering on all the crazy events that had taken place in his life and how he needed to do better.
He knew the hardest part about being saved wasn’t the fall itself, but having to wake up tomorrow and live with the reasons you wanted to jump in the first place.
Mar broke the silence. “Nigga, this why I only deal with older hoes. These young broads do too much.”
Juelz laughed low, shaking his head. “Shit, I tried that shit too. I had to let Grandma go. Her old ass kept confusin’ me with her fuckin’ grandkids.
” He let out another soft chuckle. “Tappin’ me on my shoulder in the middle of the night ‘talmbout go pee-pee. Nigga, I was outta there before the fuckin’ sun came up. ”
They burst out laughing. The tension finally broke; it was nothing now but laughter that only brothers can share when they’ve stared death in the face and blinked. Juelz was coming down off his high. That close call with that concrete had sobered his ass up quick.
“Nigga, you lying!” Kane barked, slapping his hand against the concrete as he doubled over. “Grandma ass had that wee-wee on a schedule.”
Juelz let out a dry, ragged chuckle, the ice pack pressed firmly against the gash on his temple. “This a full-grown dick, nigga,” he said, his hand dropping to grab his crotch area as he looked at his brothers. “It's been a long ass time since a nigga had a wee-wee.”
“Yeah, you need to go in there and wash whatever it is you got, nigga,” Mar said, fanning the air. “You know you funky when you can smell that shit outside. Damn, Jue.”
The laughter ripped through them, a temporary shield against the crushing weight of the last hour. But as the laughter and jokes died down, the reality of the afternoon sun settled back over them.
This was something that they did on the regular. They knew how to turn their pain into a joking matter once shit got too heavy for them to carry. The humor was their bandage, yeah, but beneath the gauze, the wound was still deep and oozing.
Sintonio wiped his face, his expression turning sober as he looked at the dried blood stain on the rag.
“Aight, for real though. No more old hoes, and definitely no more railings, my nigga. We gotta get ya ass to the hospital for that gash.” He turned to face Mar, his expression serious.
“Nigga, you get the rest of that fuckin’ white girl outta this nigga sight.
You need to deal with that shit here on out. ”
Juelz massaged the back of his neck, agreeing, as a faint smile spread across his lips, admiring the brotherhood they shared.
He came to the understanding that when one of them was going through the fire, the others didn’t just stand by; they jumped into the flames to pull one through.
Juelz had lost his girl, his pride, and almost his life, but as he looked at his friends, he grasped that he hadn’t lost his foundation.
And as long as the foundation was holding? You can always build again.