ONE
“I HATE I CAUSED YOU ALL THAT PAIN BUT I’VE MATURED.” YFN LUCCI
The weight of knowing was wild business. It was heavy and Nina didn’t want to carry big things anymore. Who said being an adult was fun?
The look on her mother’s face after the dinner ended remained etched on her mind. But it was the way her sister’s shoulders slumped before Nina walked away.
Nina was disgusted at how she treated Talia last night.
“What the fuck is wrong with me?” She howled as she sat on the floor of her shower after she’d made it home from her parents’ house.
She could only pray that Talia didn’t overdo it as a way to numb the pain.
Nina’s stomach curled. The night kept replaying over and over in her head like her favorite Anita Baker song. Although this time it wasn’t about angels because Nina felt like the devil.
She picked up the Glock that Jio left under the mattress.
He didn’t know that she knew where it was, but she did.
She also knew where the other four were too.
Nina was nosey, and anything that had to do with the man she was supposed to be staying away from somehow always found its way to her. She was well-versed in all things Jio.
The deadly weapon didn’t belong in her hand, but she didn’t care.
It was cold, black, and heavy. She knew with just one click, it could all be over.
The voices in her head and the judgmental looks from her parents on top of her sister’s screams… she couldn’t function.
Heavy is the head that wears the crown was more than just a saying to her. The pressure to perform and exceed had her down bad, on top of Jio being distant.
Her bedroom was dim and the curtains were halfway closed but from what she could see, it was most likely gonna rain and she sure hoped so.
Nina loved when the weather matched her mood. She was feeling beyond gloomy.
Normally, she felt peace when she was able to read a book and stay in bed all day, but she wasn’t willingly being a lazy bitch today.
She hadn’t moved in hours. Her eyes were swollen and her lashes were nastily clumped together as a result of dried tears.
Her lips were chapped, but she didn’t even have the energy to move her body a tad to grab her Chapstick that sat on her nightstand.
It was hard for her to inhale and exhale, but it was even more of a struggle to fight the urge to stay alive.
Nina was conflicted. It wasn’t that she wanted to die… she just couldn’t keep functioning in this way, so what other option did she have other than to take her life? It was the weak way out, but the life that she had wasn’t the one she wanted anymore.
“God, can we start over?” she whispered in between sobs.
She was grateful but she didn’t want the parents he gave her or the last name. She didn’t care about the generational wealth and everything that she was about to step into. Somebody else could have the title.
Her parents knowing about her relationship with Jio made her stomach turn in all types of ways.
The questions never stopped coming. Her mama wanted to know every single detail. The How, When, and most importantly, WHY.
“What do you possibly see in that…. thug?” Her words were laced with disgust.
Nina didn’t have an answer for them. She was too tired to lie and way too grown to point the finger back at Talia.
Her eyes kept glancing over to the gun, and soon, her fingers followed. They brushed against the cool metal. Nina was too pussy to pull the trigger. But in a weird way, she felt sort of okay knowing that it was there.
The voices were loud but they weren’t screaming just yet.
She heard the locks to her front door turning. The sound signified that her man had finally found his way to her.
She’d only called and texted a hundred times.
His communication sucked these days.
She didn’t bother to move to greet him. Back when things were sweeter between the two of them, aka the honeymoon stage, she would run into his arms and allow him to tongue her down in the middle of the living room. But those days were over.
His footsteps seemed slower and heavier than usual. She forgot that he was dealing with his own shit too. His brother. Nina now regretted sending all those messages, but he needed her too…
“Babe?” He called her name but he never came towards the bedroom.
She figured he was taking his time because he’d also had a long day and night.
A few minutes later, his voice interrupted the busyness happening in her brain.
“Nina?” His tone was low.
She looked up but her lips didn’t move to speak. She honestly didn’t think she could if she wanted to.
“You alright?” he asked, sounding just as defeated as she felt.
Jio opened the door further, it creaked as he stepped in. For a split second, his brain didn’t process the scene before him, but it was his baby sitting up in bed. She was looking too still for his liking. It didn’t even seem like shorty was mentally present.
He noticed the gun and wondered how did she even know where his gun was.
“This girl is so damn nosey,” he thought.
His entire body locked up, instincts firing all at once, but his feet were rooted to the floor like moving too fast might trigger her to do some shit that she couldn’t take back.
“…Baby?”
She blinked slowly, dragging her gaze toward him. Jio was staring at her deeply. He looked past the puffiness of her face and redness in her eyes. The way her body looked… deflated. Like whatever made her her had been drained out overnight.
“I wasn’t gonna use it,” she said hoarsely. Jio wasn’t greeted with a smile. In fact, he didn’t know the last time she freely offered him one of those. She didn’t bother to explain how she’d found the gun and why she had it so close. Jio was a smart man and could easily put two and two together.
He didn’t care that she didn’t plan on pulling the trigger, his concern was that it was in the bed with her to begin with.
Jio exhaled through his nose as he took steps to the bed.
“So why is it out?”
Nina looked back up at the ceiling.
“I just wanted it close…I NEEDED IT!” she admitted in that whiny voice that he liked only when she wanted some dick. Any other time it made his ass itch.
“Can you tell me why though?” His voice remained calm since hers was not.
Jio walked over slowly, eyes never leaving her hand as he reached down and picked the gun up in one smooth motion. He checked it out of habit. It was loaded as if it should’ve been off safety because in the line of business that he was in, he had to always be prepared for whatever, whenever.
He clicked the safety on before placing the gun on the dresser across the room. It was now far enough away and out of reach and away from her tempting hands.
He pulled a blunt from his ear and lit it with a lighter that was nearby on the nightstand. Jio pulled a few tokes with his eyes closed. He needed that as bad as truck drivers itched for a cigarette.
She was comfortable with the silence and it was another thing that he loved about her.
They could bask in each other’s presence and not have to mumble a word.
But when miss mamas got in yap mode, there was no stopping her.
Nina could talk his ear off anytime. He pulled her out of troubled thoughts when he asked, “Can you tell me what happened?”
If money could buy whatever he needed, Jio would gladly spend his last dollar on being able to read Nina’s mind since so much happened up there.
She sighed, moving her hair out of her face.
“They know.”
Her voice was riddled with fear yet relief.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist for him to understand the severity of the situation.
“How did they find out?”
Nina growled and the guttural noise that started in her gut scared the shit out of him.
She reached over and tried to claw his eyes out as she roared angrily, “BECAUSE YOUUUUUU TOLD YOUR LITTLE FUCKIN’ HOODLUMS NOT TO GIVE HER DRUGS!
WHY COULDN’T YOU JUST MIND YOUR FUCKIN’ BUSINESS?
WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?” The dam had finally broken.
Her voice was cold and it startled him because he’d never seen her act this way or talk so reckless.
Her lips trembled. “They know about you, Jio.”
“They fucking knowwwww,” she repeated, her voice cracking open.
Jio let her take her anger out on him because he knew that she didn’t have anywhere to put it. He wasn’t shocked, but he knew that he had to act like the victim too.
“Talia turned on me.” Her sister's name came out like betrayal. She had the nerve to say it as if their entire family hadn’t done the same to her.
Jio leaned against the wall and folded his arms.
“What they say?” he asked, rather than letting her know that her sister wasn’t in the wrong.
Nina pushed her body up slowly, wrapping her arms around her legs like she needed to hold herself together to keep from losing it.
“My dad kept asking me if I had lost my mind. If I knew who you were.” Her voice dropped into a mockery of him. “‘Do you know what kind of man he is, Nina?’”
She laughed but wasn’t shit funny.
“As if I didn’t.”
Jio’s jaw flexed.
“My mama…” Nina’s voice softened before it cracked. “She just cried and said over and over again that she was embarrassed and she didn’t understand how I could be so stupid.”
The room filled with the sound of her crying again. Her emotions were raw and uncontrollable.
Her fingers tightened against her arms.
“I turned my back on her,” she whispered.
Jio frowned. “What you mean?”
“I wasn’t there for her like I should’ve been and I know it. We all do...” Her voice trembled under the weight of guilt. “So maybe this is payback.”
“That’s not how life works, sweetheart,” Jio muttered under his breath.
But even as he said it his mind flashed to his own problems that had surfaced over the past twenty-four hours.
Gunshots.
Running.
His brother ducking behind a car.
All those vivid flashbacks caused him to clench his chest.
“Shit was wild man.”
The thought slipped through his head, loud and very much out of place.
Nina was still talking about her judgmental folks.