Chapter 25 #3
“Wait, Chase, man! Don’t hurt me!” he pleaded as his eyes ballooned.
“Nah, let that nigga hit you! We can sue!” The third one piped in, ready to pull out his phone for a viral moment. Amaya quickly snatched it from his hand.
“You sound stupid! You’re really dumb enough to incriminate yourself by filming y’all in the house with all these lil’ ass girls?” The girl with the crazy looking hot pink lip gloss on sucked her teeth.
“And Brooklyn, you know better! In here with these damn boys! Where is your mama?”
“My parents had a date,” she huffed and rolled her eyes.
“Oh, yeah. She gon’ hear from me!”
“Nooo! Please!” Brooklyn begged. “Please don’t tell, I’ll do anything!”
“Oh, I’m definitely telling! Your hot ass ain’t have no business inviting these senior citizens over here!
Anything could have happened to y’all!” Brooklyn groaned and stomped her feet in that annoying kiddie way that reminded me that their asses were too young for all this shit.
I turned back to the one I had hemmed up against the wall.
“Lil’ nigga, you better not ever let me hear about y’all doing some shit like this again!”
“I won’t,” he groaned, legs still dangling in the air.
“Now, y’all get the fuck outta here!” I snapped.
“Man, you ain’t the one who invited us! We ain’t gotta do shit!” One of the other ones said. I laughed. If I had to lay hands on every last one of them, I would be more than glad to.
“What the fuck is going on?” A voice from the front door caused everyone to turn around to see a short, curvy woman and a big nigga.
He may have been a couple inches shorter than me, but he could have been a lineman on any given day.
I assumed that they must have been Brooklyn’s parents, which was good because this shit needed to end quickly.
“Bianca, girl… Kadence called me and asked me to come get her because Brooklyn invited these grown ass boys over here and it made her uncomfortable. We came to get her and found Lil Niggaz Wit Attitudes and they got outta pocket when we told them they had to go,” Amaya explained.
Her parents looked over at her with rage in their eyes.
I didn’t have any kids, but growing up with my own Black own mama had me all too familiar with that look. She was in trouble.
“You said you weren’t going to tell!!!” Brooklyn wailed, like she knew she had an ass whooping waiting on her.
“Girl, I never said that!” Amaya quipped.
“I-It wasn’t just me! Kadence and Olivia were in on it too! We planned it together.”
“I did not!” Kadence yelled. One look at her attire compared to the other girls made it obvious that she was ready for bed, not a hookup.
“Why the hell are y’all still standing here!
?” the man barked as he grabbed the remaining two boys by their collars and escorted them towards the door.
I took my cue, tucking his lil ass up under my arm like a duffel bag and carrying him to the door.
Once they were deposited on the front lawn, I guess they realized that they didn’t really want this smoke and tripped all over themselves to jump in that Altima and get the fuck out of dodge.
The two of us stood there in silence as we watched one taillight disappear out of the neighborhood.
“Hold up,” he said softly before turning to me. “You! You’re Chase Andrews!” The nigga started holding his chest like he was about to pass out and I prayed that he didn’t. Carrying the lil dude was easy, but I didn’t know if I could get his ass back in that house.
“I am,” I admitted with a guilty shrug.
“Gotdamn! Nigga, what you doin’ in New Dawn? Did they really give you forty mil? Aye, can you sign my jersey?!”
“I’m here visiting a friend. Yes. And Yes,” I answered back.
“Ohhhh,” he said, his eyes wide with realization. “You here with Amaya, huh?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “But, we kinda keeping this low, so please don’t say anything.”
“Nah, I won’t say a word, man. I swear!”
He put his scary face back on so we could walk inside, but once he passed his daughter, he immediately scurried to the back to grab his jersey for me to sign.
After giving them the full run down, they made Olivia call her parents and give them her own teary confession, and we headed out.
Kadence begged us to take her back with us, but Amaya declined, saying that her daddy would have a fit if he went to pick her up in the morning and she wasn’t there.
The broken look on Kadence’s face had me ready to try and plead her case, but I followed the directions so we could take her back home.
Thirty minutes later, Kadence and I sat in her living room looking at each other awkwardly as Amaya and AJ argued loudly in the other room.
“AJ, what the hell is your problem?”
“She didn’t call me!” he argued back.
“Duh! You always overreact! She’s afraid to tell you certain things! Some things are just easier for her to tell me!”
“You don’t think that finding out that my twelve-year-old was in a house full of damn near grown ass men is reason to crash out?”
“Oh, it absolutely is, because I crashed the fuck out too!”
“Amaya, what the fuck did you do?”
“I tried to smack the fuck out of them old ass boys!” Kadence and I both chuckled under our breath “So yes, you have every right to be upset, but you’re mad at the wrong person.
She did exactly what she was supposed to do, just like we taught her.
She’s twelve and has her head on straighter than most adults I know, my ass included.
If you want her to trust you, you gotta show her that you won’t fly off the handle for no reason.
” The whole house fell silent as we held on, waiting for his next words.
I knew Kadence had to be nervous as hell because I felt like I was in trouble.
“You right,” he huffed.
“I’m sorry, what?” she asked. I could already see her tucking her hair behind her ear with that smart ass expression on her face.
“Aight, you got it. I said you right. I ain’t sayin’ it again.”
The two of them walked back in the room so abruptly that Kadence and I both scrambled to find something to cover up the fact that we were just sitting there eavesdropping.
“Yeah, so, if you needed to google something really quickly, exactly how would you do it with the flip phone?”
I damn near choked on my own tongue because why was everybody on my head about this damn phone?
“I just… use my tablet. If it’s urgent, I’ll just call someone.”
“Oh…” She nodded. “Well, I think that’s very noble of you—doing your part to help save the planet. I make my dad recycle all our recyclables, but I’m not giving up my phone.” Just like that, her old soul was back.
“I respect that,” I said with a chuckle. AJ and Amaya shared a knowing glance before we headed out. Amaya was uncharacteristically quiet for half the ride, and I was just about to ask her what was wrong before she answered it for me.
“This is why I can’t just move to L.A.,” she blurted out with a sad ass expression on her face.
“What? Baby, I never—”
“I saw your face earlier. You want me out there, but I can’t just leave home. My people are here, and they need me… and I need them.” My body went rigid as I reached over and grabbed her hand.
“Hold up, are you trying to leave me right now?” The words hurt coming out.
I could instantly see all the plans that I had for us dissolving into thin air.
My first reaction was to drive that fucking truck until we either hit the West Coast, or came up with some sort of compromise, but I realized that was, in fact, kidnapping and probably not the best idea.
“No!” she answered quickly, making my whole body relax. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying that if me not moving is a dealbreaker for you… then I understand.”
“No, it’s not a dealbreaker.”
“It’s not?” she squeaked in disbelief.
“Toni, I told you that you ain’t getting away from me that easily. We’ll make it work. If I can handle the snoring, and the fact that you’ll bust down a burnt ass steak, this ain’t nothing,” I promised, kissing her fingers.
“Okay,” she whispered, letting out a sigh of relief. “So, we’re… good?”
“We’re more than good,” I promised her.