Chapter 6
DUKE
With a sigh, I dragged my hands down my face, watching Mahogany pull out of the parking lot.
She was heated. And me? Shit, I was doing what I thought would help.
Trying to lighten the mood but that shit was a fail.
She wasn’t with it. Honestly, it felt like me and my jokes only made things worst. I couldn’t for the life of me understand what the fuck she was so mad about anyway.
To me, therapy was straight. The only thing we talked about today was the obvious shit.
Why we were there and the beginning. And from where I stood, the beginning was the best place we’d ever been in our relationship.
It might’ve sounded crazy, considering we got together when we were teenagers, but love was easier back then.
Life? Not so much. But my baby was a lot easier to love and hell, I felt like I was too.
My phone rang, pulling me out of my thoughts. Turning the car on, I shifted it in drive and then answered my nigga Cecil’s call.
“What up doe?” I answered.
“What up doe, nigga? You pullin up?”
“Pullin up? Pullin up where, fool?”
“I told you he didn’t check the group chat, nigga. I told you he didn’t,” said my other boy, Leland, in the background.
“Tank crib.”
“On a weekday? You niggas wylin’,” I said with a laugh.
“Here this nigga go,” Tank complained. “Boy got a curfew and shit. He gotta ask mommy if he can come out.”
They laughed and I said, “Fuck y’all. It’s the principles, bitch. I got work?—“
“Boy act like he the only one with a job and shit,” Cecil cut in. “Pull up, nigga. Just for a couple hours. We tryin to get a game goin and I’m not playin with Bubba’s fat ass.”
“Fuck you, bitch,” Bubba, Tank’s cousin, huffed in the background.
Shit, cards and liq didn’t sound too bad. There was nothing waiting for me back at the crib besides silence, an attitude, and probably a conversation I didn’t want to have anyway.
Me, Leland, Cecil, and Tank all grew up and went to school together.
We played ball at Osborn High School and neither of us had played professional.
Lee was in tech, Cecil worked at Chrysler, and Tank was still on street shit.
It worked for him, so I didn’t knock him.
Shit was dead end to me. I got in and got out right after.
I tried it after NeNe had Aubry and quickly found out that the street, hustlin’ shit wasn’t for me.
I still liked the hood though. It was home despite staying in the suburbs.
The hood is where I felt most comfortable so any time they called about cards or shooting dice, I was with it.
“Let me hit you back in a lil’ bit?—“
“Told you niggas he gotta check in with mommy first,” Tank continued to joke.
“Fuck you nigga,” I said with a laugh before hanging up.
With a deep breath I braced myself for the tone of her voice that would greet me as soon as she picked up.
A dry yeah, or if she was distracted from hating me, she’d hit me with a hello.
Hell yeah, she hated me. At least that’s what it felt like.
There was no passion in our marriage. Used to be.
Mahogany was like that. I’d broken her one too many times, that at this point it felt like there was no going back.
Which was why despite the way I felt about talking about the past, I was with therapy.
Shit, something had to fix us. Seemed like my efforts weren’t.
“Fuck it,” I mumbled, stopping at a red light, before calling her.
“Yeah?” She answered.
Lightly I laughed. I knew her like the back of my hand.
“Cecil just hit me about cards. I’m thinkin’ about pulling up at Tank’s crib for?—“
“Oh, okay. What time you comin’ back?” She interrupted.
It was always “oh okay” when she was mad. Because I was in no mood for bullshit and tension was thick enough, I chose to ignore it.
“K. Love you.”
I hated that “k” shit too.
“Love you too,” I dryly responded before I hung up with another deep breath.
I could damn near feel my wife slipping through my fingers.
More and more every day and that shit petrified me.
I carried on like I didn’t notice or didn’t give a fuck, but I did.
Tremendously. I didn’t know what I would do if she left me.
Never in all of the years we’d been together had it really felt like she would leave.
These days the possibility of her doing so felt real.
Every time I thought about life without her in it as my wife, my heart raced, and I instantly began to sweat.
I’d never been afraid of anything as much as I was afraid of her going back to Mahogany Mills.
I wanted to do everything in my power to keep her where I needed her, but she wouldn’t allow me to.
Everything felt forced. To a point where shit, accepting it for what it was, was all a nigga could do.
So, despite needing to go home, rub her feet, and apologize about shit I’d already apologized a million times for, I decided to pull up on my boys.
At least then I would salvage the rest of my day.
Thirty minutes later, I was back in our old hood, off Six Mile and Mound, on Syracuse with the guys.
I stopped at Popeyes on the way and grabbed a shitload of chicken, fries, and biscuits, deciding to put something good on their stomachs too.
As soon as I walked in, Tank greeted me with a blunt I always declined.
I wasn’t a smoker. Never had been, but the nigga constantly passed me the blunt, talking about I needed it, dealing with Mahogany’s ‘mean ass’.
My baby got a bad rep but then again, she always had.
In high school, she was called mean and stuck up.
As an adult, she was bougie too. I didn’t give a fuck about what nobody said—I knew Mahogany through and through.
And regardless of what we went through, she wasn’t neither of those things.
Never had been. What we had going on in our marriage was what we had going on.
And even if she was a little bitchy and mean, didn’t I cause it?
A nigga didn’t even cry over spilled milk anymore.
I just wanted to be given a fair chance at cleaning it up.
“You good today too huh, brodie?” He joked as we slapped hands.
“Always, my baby,” I said with a laugh.
Because I had a full-time career, I didn’t pull up as often as I would have liked.
We made it a priority to at least link once a month.
Tank was the only one of us who had the freedom of ‘entrepreneurship’, so his schedule was flexible.
Construction kept me busy as hell, working anywhere between eighty and ninety hours a week.
So, on top of fatherhood, marriage, and work, I was rarely around.
Whenever I did pull up, I had to deal with the jokes about being on lock, but that shit didn’t bother me.
Niggas wished they could have what I had.
I sat the food on the table and a couple of seconds later, Tanks girl came from the kitchen complaining.
They’d been together for about as long as me and NeNe, except they broke up and made up so many times that you really couldn’t tell.
Their breakups weren’t petty neither. Both of them muthafuckas had been seen with different people and everything.
“I know damn well you ain’t bring no Popeyes up in here and I cooked!”
“Hey Charmaine, how you doin? My bad, I didn’t know.”
Of course I didn’t know—her ass rarely ever cooked.
Tank was big as shit because all the nigga did was eat coney.
In high school, he was smaller than me, but he was broke too though.
The minute that nigga started to see some good money from the drug shit he blew up—literally and figurative.
High key, I played it crazy every time I pulled up at his spot.
Tank was well respected in the hood but that didn’t make the nigga invincible.
I didn’t pray much but I felt like the prayers my grandma’s prayed back in the day still kept me safe.
“Hey my ass, coming in here with food,” She joked before giving me a one-armed hug. “I’ve been alright. You been alright, D? How NeNe and the kids doin? She don’t never come around.”
Charmaine was cool peoples, but she was the epitome of a hood bitch, of course NeNe didn’t come around.
She thought Char was cool but not cool enough to kick it with.
Mahogany would never beat those bougie allegations and that was alright with her.
She couldn’t stand anything that had to do with the slums. The minute we could afford to make it out, baby never looked back.
“They good. You know she stay busy,” I said, telling the truth.
They knew how busy she was had nothing to do with why she didn’t pull up in the hood, but no one said anything.
My niggas liked to joke about my wife but they knew that there was only so much joking I’d take, especially when it came to who she was.
I’d never played about Mahogany and never would.
She meant the world to me. Just took me a minute to truly appreciate her.
“She hirin’? Char ass need a job,” Tank joked. “All she do is sit around and spend my bread.”
“Nigga please. I got stuff going on too,” she defensively said, as if she was in competition with Mahogany or some shit.
I paid it no attention, grabbed the back of the chair and pulled it out, ready to play cards.
All I had were a couple of hours before I had to get back to the crib.
I said before ten and I meant before ten, for real.
These days my word was my bond. Back in the day, my word didn’t stand for shit.
But because I was trying to make up for past mistakes, I crossed every t and dotted every I. Did my best, at least.
“Hey Duke. Long time no see,” Char’s sister, Talia said. I stood, giving her the same one arm hug I gave Char a minute ago.