3. Reasoning
Reasoning
Ihad a connecting room in a tucked-off hotel out the way that Jada put me on to. I had the windows covered up, and my niggas knew Islah was not supposed to know where we were at.
I did do my girl right tho’ and let her have a room to herself to sleep with the door open, where me and my niggas could watch her. I took a chance and got Joe to buy a bunch of medical shit, along with some needles and fishing wire, and went into the other room to wake Islah up.
“Aye,” I said, tapping her on her foot.
It took her a lil’ bit to roll over, and I was still tapping her foot when she kicked at me.
“Stop fucking touching me,” she responded low, her voice sounding sleepy and sexy.
I smiled at her. It was a new day, and I wanted us to start over.
“Come on, let’s get this shit done.”
I limped into the other room. The wounds was fuckin’ with me more than before; my niggas was fucked up too. Islah followed behind me slow to the other room and saw that I had everything set up.
I laid some towels on the bed where she could work on us and brought a light over so she could see. I took my shirt off and lay on the towels while I watched her walk further into the room.
“What is all of this?” she asked.
“Everything you need to fix us up,” I responded.
Islah walked over to the bags I had sitting on a lil’ table and looked through them with an attitude. She then walked around, looking at me and my niggas’ wounds, not sayin’ shit to none of us for a few minutes.
“Gio, what the fuck you expect me to do? I am not a fuckin’ surgeon, and this shit that you got is not gonna help with shit. You need a doctor.”
Carlos, Frog, Joe, and Kev all nodded their heads.
“We told him that shit already,” Carlos stated.
I looked over at Carlos and cocked the gun at him.
“Nigga, shut the fuck up.”
I then looked over at Islah, pointing the gun at her.
“This is what you have to work with, so get to work.”
Islah looked at me like I said something that she didn’t understand, but instead of responding, she pulled the shit outta the bag and set it all out on the table.
I tried not to watch her as she cleaned the tweezers and the needles, but it was hard not to. She looked good even when she was mad. I realized that she had been wearing the same clothes for a few days.
I got up, letting her set up, and pulled Carlos off to the side.
“Aye, I’ma send you a list, go to the store and grab Islah some clothes and shit to shower with.”
Carlos looked at her, then back at me.
“Gio, what the fuck are you trying to do?” he asked.
“I am trying to make her comfortable.”
“For what? Are you gonna let her go? What is the endgame with this shit?”
I paused for a second and took a deep breath. I was tired of it being a question about what the fuck I wanted.
“Islah just need some time. She is going to remember what we had and how I am the one for her.”
Carlos laughed under his breath.
“And what if she don’t? What if something crazy happen, like I don’t know…she has her own mind?”
I sucked my teeth and walked off from him.
“I don’t care about that. I’ma send you what I said.”
I lay back on the bed and looked at Carlos. He nodded and walked out the door, and I sent him a text of what shit to get for Islah, even included her favorite meal and some flowers.
A few minutes passed, and Islah was finally set up. She made herself a tray and brought over everything she needed, with some gloves on.
“Are you ready?” I asked her.
She nodded. “I have no choice, right?”
I laughed. “You are right. You don’t.”
She rolled her eyes and brought the light closer to her. She looked at the open wound on my legs and got as close as she could to it.
“Is there a bullet in there?” she asked.
“Yeah, get the shit out.”
Islah slightly looked up at me, then shook her head, looking back at the wound before reaching behind her, grabbing a bottle of alcohol. She took that bottle and squeezed it all into that damn hole, making me scream out in pain.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!” I yelled out.
Islah tried hard to hold back her laugh, but she couldn’t.
“What do you mean? I had to clean the area.”
I stared at her for a long ass time, waiting for my heart rate to slow the fuck down.
“Don’t do that shit like that again!”
She smiled slightly and picked up the tweezers.
“Nigga, you asked me to do this, I didn’t want to.”
I lay back down, and she took the tweezers, digging them in the hole, making me clench the sheets in my hands. Every now and then, Islah would look up at me, but wouldn’t say anything to me.
“I miss feeling your touch,” I said softly.
She didn’t respond, just jabbed the tweezers in me deeper.
I don’t know how much time passed. I was too busy screaming for her to stop and clenching sheets, but after a while, she pulled two bullets outta me and stitched the hole up.
“Thank you, now get my niggas straight.”
Frog was the first to come over to the bed and push me out of the way.
“Listen, ma’am, I don’t know all that’s going on with y’all, but please stitch my shit up, and look at my ankle.”
Islah nodded, not sayin’ too much as she moved through my niggas, taking bullets out and stitching up the ones that needed it.
She was almost done with Kev when Carlos came in with the shit that I asked him to buy. I took it from him and took it into Islah’s room.
Carlos walked over to her when she was done with Kev and told her what he wanted her to look at. She looked at that nigga—really all them niggas—with care. She was gentle, she cared, she even held a conversation with them a lil’ bit, but me, I got the cold shoulder.
I went into her room and set the lil’ shit up I got for her and waited for her. In my head, I went over everything I wanted to say to her and reminded myself to watch my tone. Once I was done, I walked back into the other room and saw that she was done.
“Iight, is that all you needed from me? You gonna let me go now?”
I tilted my head at her.
“Why did you think I would be letting you go?”
“Because I did what you needed, and it’s nothing else for me to do,” she responded.
I shook my head. “You are not going anywhere but in the other room. I got something for you.”
She folded her arms across her chest.
“I don’t want shit in that other room. I just want to leave.”
The air in that room was thick. All them niggas was looking back and forth at us, and she was embarrassing me.
“Islah, I need to talk to you in the other room,” I said low, softly, trying to control my tone.
She looked me up and down.
“No.”
That was all she said.
I laughed it off.
“Come on, baby girl, I got something in there I think you would like. I am trying to make this shit better.”
“Make it better by letting me go,” she fired back.
I walked over to her and yanked her by her arm into the other room, damn near tossing her on the bed, slamming the connecting door closed behind me.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I asked her. “Do you want me to be the nigga I am right now?”
“You don’t have to be this nigga! You are choosing to.”
“Nah, Islah, you are making me. You have made all this shit happen, lil’ do you know.”
“Lil’ do I know?” she fired back. “Gio, I don’t want to be here, and I don’t want to be with you! You took me from my party; you brought me here. I don’t even know where the fuck I’m at!”
I took a pause, wanting the energy in the room to calm down, and I changed the subject.
“Listen, Islah…baby girl. I am trying to make the best outta this so we can get back on the same page.”
Islah laughed as she looked over the room.
“So you think putting me in a room with you and your niggas watching me is gonna fix us?”
“Nah,” I shot back. “I bought you a few fits and the body wash and shit that you like to take a shower. I bought your favorite food and some flowers. I wanted us to talk.”
Islah walked up on me; the look in her eyes was not the Islah that I knew.
“I need you to understand this and get it through your skull. Gio, I don’t love you.
I haven’t loved you in a while. I love—I am in love with somebody else.
You taking me hostage, buying me shit to wash my ass and a meal that I don’t even like anymore with some cheap ass corner store flower is not gonna change how I feel about you.
You are a nigga that cheats, and I will never spin the block on you.
I am happy with who I am, with who I am with, and that is not going to change. ”
I looked her up and down. “Where that nigga at now? You think that nigga loves you that fuckin’ much? I am proving to you that he don’t, and when he don’t come looking for yo’ ass, and all you have is me, I want you to think about this conversation.”
I walked over to the door that connected the rooms and opened it as she laughed at me. As I walked to the other room, closing the door behind me, she yelled, “Love is going to kill you, like I told him to do!”
I opened that door back up fast and walked over to her, snatching her up by her arm again.
“What the fuck did you just say?!”
She laughed at me again. “You heard what the fuck I said. Love is going to kill you, like I told him to do.”
That shit killed me faster than any bullet could. That nigga had my baby brainwashed. I had a lot of work to do.
“You can think that all you want, baby girl. I’ma make sure you never leave again.”