Rah
“Now her dumb ass don’t wanna answer the phone.”
I mumbled angrily to myself as I ended the call and hopped in the Mustang. Solae had been blowing my phone up. Of course, she was calling at a bad time. I was with Aaliyah at Junior’s first doctor’s appointment.
It was cool that she didn’t answer, because I didn’t feel like being bothered anyway. She had had an attitude since last night. Her attitude coupled with mine was a recipe for another argument.
Everything was coming down on me real heavy. I was feeling stressed as fuck and couldn’t figure out what lie I had told to cover up the other.
Moses had been blowing my phone up because of what happened with the run I had him make for Carlos.
Now, I was in the hole with Carlos. Moses was also hounding me about that dumbass meeting at Interscope that I made up.
Not to mention, by it being the holidays, I was being pulled in so many different directions by the two different families that I had with Aaliyah and Solae.
They both felt like I should have been obligated to be around just because it was Christmas.
I felt obligated to be in the streets doing me.
It wasn’t my fault that they chose to have a bunch of babies. They made that choice, and that choice had nothing to do with me.
I thought everything was coming down on me real heavy, but the ton of lies that I had been piling up came crashing down when I made it home.
As I pulled up in front of the house that Solae and I shared, my phone started to ring.
I looked down at it and saw that it was Felicia again.
Laughing, I sent the call to voicemail. Then I hopped out the ride.
Before I could make it to the sidewalk, my text message notifications were going off.
I glanced down at the screen and saw the beginning of a few hateful messages from Felicia.
Felicia had a lot of attitude and a smart mouth.
Yet, she had been rocking with me for years.
Even after she found out about Solae, she kept fucking with me whenever I chose.
But she was a hothead. She always cursed me out for not being with her how she wanted me to be.
She was always sending me hateful four–page text messages.
She filled my voicemail with messages about me not being shit.
She was a fucking headache with some good pussy.
That’s why I bent down on her every now and then.
I walked up the gangway as usual to enter the house through the back door. The gangway was filled with smoke that seemed to be pouring from the back of the crib. It smelled like something was burning, so I ran towards our backyard.
When I got back there, it looked like I had run up on a scene from a movie. Solae’s face was illuminated by the fire that she stood above as it burned high flames in the barbecue grill on the back porch. Her eyes were red, and tears were streaming down her face.
“Solae, what’s goin’ on?!”
As I jogged up the steps of the back porch, she backed away from me like I was Satan, when she was the one that looked possessed.
“Get the fuck away from me!”
I jumped at the sound of her voice. I saw the kids peering out of the back window. I looked into the barbecue grill and noticed my clothes and shoes inside. Small bits of green paper flew in the air around us like fireflies.
“Is that my shit?!” I ran towards her, but the fire was too high to get to her. The smoke was thick enough to choke me. She stayed behind the fire. It was protecting her from me, and she knew it. “What the fuck is wrong with you?! What are you doing?!”
“No! What the fuck is wrong with you, Rah?! Who is she?!”
“Man, you are crazy as fuck!” I shook my head in disbelief as I walked back down the steps to escape the excessive heat of the flames.
“Who is she?!”
“Who is who?!”
“Aaliyah! That bitch’s house you’ve been at! Is that your baby?!”
Fuck!
All kind of thoughts were flying around in my head, like my money was flying around as it burned in that fucking grill! I wondered how she could possibly know about Aaliyah or the baby. I had been real careful, so I thought.
The quickest thing I could think to say was, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The bitch that lives in Beverly! That house I watched you use a key to go in and come out of carrying a baby earlier today!”
I shrugged it off dismissively. “Girl, that’s one of Carlos’ side chicks!”
“Stop lying!!”
Her voice bounced off the houses surrounding us.
It flew through the cold wind and smacked me in the face with a hard punch of reality.
She was standing on the other side of the fire giving me an icy stare that was way colder than the twenty–degree weather that we were standing in.
She was only wearing jeans, a tee shirt, and gym shoes.
I imagined that she was so angry with me that she didn’t even feel the freezing temperatures.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” She was trippin’ for real if she thought I was about to tell her anything. Those tears didn’t mean shit to me.
“You’re lying, Rah!”
“You didn’t even ask me. You just burn my shit up assuming that I did something wrong?”
“I know you did.”
“You’re so fucking dramatic! Stop overreacting!”
She lost the last piece of control that she had left when I said that. Her mouth dropped so low that it damn near fell into the fire. “Dramatic?! You’ve been cheating on me, cheating on our kids, and I’m the one being dramatic?!”
She looked at me like she was pleading for me to just see what I had done and how I hurt her. She wanted me to be sorry, for me to acknowledge her hurt. I could see that if I had only done that, it would have made her feel just a little bit better.
I wasn’t moved; this was her fault. She needed to stay in her place and mind her own business. Then she wouldn’t be in this predicament, and she wouldn’t have this hurt look on her face.
“What you think I did is your own imagination! Those tears are your fault!”
She was so shocked at how dismissive I was that she lowered her guard. I took that as opportunity to approach the house, but she soon found her courage again.
“No! Go back to her house!"
I didn’t have to put up with this. I could very well have turned around and went to Aaliyah’s crib.
She would have welcomed me with opened arms and legs, a wet mouth, peace and quiet, and even a plate, if I wanted it.
I’d spent every other night away from Solae and the kids, lying and blaming my absence on work.
But now, just because she wanted me out, I wanted in.
Nobody told me no.
“You can’t keep me out of my house.”
“You’re never here anyway!”
Elijah and I caught eyes. Even on the other side of the window, I could see his tears.
“Let me go talk to the kids.”
Solae laughed insanely. She sounded possessed with anger. “Yo’ ass ain’t never at home, but now you wanna be here?!”
“Fuck this,” I mumbled as I walked towards the steps. I was going to get in that fucking house just to prove to Solae that she didn’t run shit; I did.
Out of nowhere, the grill slammed against the wooden porch. Solae had kicked it over. The metal crashed loud against the steps. Clothes, shoes, coal, and burned bills fell against the steps, some of it still on fire.
“Man, you trippin’!” I jumped back to avoid the flying burning objects. “I’m going in the house to get my shit.”
“You ain’t got shit in there, homie. It’s burnt or bleached, bitch; including that money I found.”
My eyes fell out of my face. I thought she was just burning random money that I had in drawers, not the robbery money that I moved from Aaliyah’s house to here.
Solae laughed, watching my misery with a wicked smile on her face.
“Yeah, nigga. That money you had stashed in the closet is gone.”
I was sick and didn’t hide it. I felt like she had just set my future on fire and burned it alive because she literally had.
She was so content to see me devastated that I just walked away disgusted. I actually felt pain. She had turned on me. She had deliberately deceived me with a smile on her face. She’d hurt me on purpose.
Little did she know I was going to get her back for that shit.
I was going to have the last laugh.