Chapter 19 Fabe
FABE
“Hello?” Aaliyah’s voice pressed through the speakers in my car.
I laughed. “Don’t answer the phone like that.”
Giggling, she replied, “I mean, you just left.”
“I’m just making sure you straight and that you put the alarm on.”
I had convinced Aaliyah to come hide out at my crib.
We had been officially living together for a few days now.
We had expected it to be a strange transition from going from nothing to living together so soon.
But, like the feelings between us, it just flowed naturally, which let me know that she was mine for real.
She looked good as hell in my house walking around in those tiny shorts with that big booty eating them, while cooking and cleaning.
Despite all the chaos around us, we had been in a happy bubble since New Year’s Day.
Now that the holiday was over, I had to go back to work, though. I hated to leave my baby in my crib all by herself, and I had been hounding her about being safe and watching her back.
“I did,” she pressed. “Why are you so worried? He’s still in the hospital, and he doesn’t even know your exact address, right?”
“Nah, he doesn’t. He never gave a fuck about anybody else to come out and visit. He always hated driving out to the burbs.”
Aaliyah sucked her teeth. “Sounds like Rah.” Then she sighed and there was the same tension in the conversation that always showed up when the subject of Rah came up. “I still can’t believe Solae tried to kill him.”
“Hey, you never know what really happened. I’m taking what my father said with a grain of salt.”
“Have you reached out to the kids?”
“I tried to, but of course Solae’s family don’t want no parts of Rah’s family. And I can’t blame them. Supposedly, Rah called DCFS with a bogus claim against Solae and they had taken the kids the day before Christmas.”
Aaliyah gasped. “What?! Oh my God.” Then she let out a sadistic laugh.
“What?” I inquired.
Still laughing angrily, she explained, “He told me that he went to see his kids on Christmas. So, this further proves that he was with that chick that sent me that picture.” She shuddered in disgust. “I can’t believe I was with a person like that.”
Getting off the expressway, I told her, “Yeah, he put on a good role for you.”
“He sure did. But now that I know the type of person that he really is, I can understand Solae trying to kill him. I can’t believe he killed Carlos. I hate I missed his funeral, but I couldn’t risk being around Rah’s family or friends.”
“You did right.” Then I asked, “So, what are you going to do about the house, since it’s in your name? Rah said he’s going to let it go.”
“Luckily, we were approaching the end of the lease, so the landlord was cool with me ending it early.”
“You’re not going to get your stuff?”
“I took everything of value that I wanted. Anything else is a reminder of Rah that I don’t want or need.”
Just as I was about to tell her when to expect me home, the baby started crying.
“A’ight, let me let you go so you can feed my nephew-son.”
Aaliyah kissed her teeth again, but she couldn’t help but laugh. “Would you stop calling him that?!”
I was cracking up.
“It isn’t funny,” she whined.
“It kinda is. You know it is,” I teased her, still laughing.
“Bye!”
“Love you too,” I taunted her, but I meant that shit.
“Whatever.”
Still laughing, I hung up just as I pulled up to my trap house.
“Fuck,” I mumbled under my breath as I peeped Jackie walking towards my ride.
I had been avoiding her since me and Aaliyah reacquainted, but I figured that I would bump into her at some point.
She stood in front of my ride, clutching a cup of Starbucks in one hand and a Gucci bag in the other.
Her breath fogged in the cold, curling from her nose with every exhale.
Her light brown eyes were glaring at me.
If she wasn’t so full of herself, I would have admired how good her curves looked, even in the knee length Moncler coat.
For a short girl, she was stacked like a brick house.
She even had her natural kinks all over her head in a huge, brown fro.
With her chocolate skin and that hair, she looked like a goddess.
Her appearance was pretty but, unfortunately for her, a dude like me measured beauty from the inside out.
“Hello, Fabil,” she hissed as I climbed out.
I cringed, always hating when someone called me by my government name. Jackie knew that. That’s why she was standing in my pathway with her arms crossed over her chest and that fucking smirk on her face.
“Jackie,” was all I said as I passed her and kept walking.
She was on my heels, as I knew she would be.
“Really?” I could hear her spit behind me as I approached the house.
I hated that she knew my routine. She knew that after the holidays, I would be getting right back to the money and would be at my spot.
“You’re just going to walk away from me?” she hissed as she forced herself between me and my security gate. “Where have you been?”
I took a deep breath, trying to keep myself from losing it. “I told you, I had a lot going on with my family.”
She sucked her teeth. “And? I’m supposed to be your woman. I wanted to be there for you. I had to spend the New Year alone.”
“I told you that I was at the hospital with my brother.”
Her eyes narrowed at how cold and nonchalant I was being. “I wanted to be there with you.”
“That wasn’t necessary, Jackie. I wanted you to have fun for the holidays.”
“And I wanted to be with my man,” she snapped as her hands went to her hips.
Oh shit, it’s about to go down.
I could see her getting more pissed off by the second. She was about to explode. I knew that I needed to dead this situation before she acted a fool.
I started to scratch the top of my head, what most men did when they knew they were about to bust a woman’s heart wide open. “Look, Jackie...This isn’t working for me.”
She looked shocked. Though I knew she had heard me, she pressed me to have the nerve to repeat myself. “What did you just say?”
“This arrangement…It isn’t working for me.”
“How isn’t it working for you all of a sudden?”
“It’s not all of a sudden. I’ve told you plenty of times that you were moving too fast. I never told you that I was your man and we’ve only been fucking for six months.
It wasn’t appropriate for you to be at the hospital with me when my brother is damn near dying.
You’ve never even met my family before.”
That was all facts, but the raw truth was I had been waiting too long for Aaliyah to take her from one toxic relationship to another. So, Jackie had to ride out.
She shrugged dismissively with a smirk. “I’ve met your brother.”
“When I took you to his club to have a drink and you wanted to leave five minutes later because it was ‘too hood’ for you,” I reminded her as I stuffed my hands into the pocket of my jeans to keep them warm.
She groaned, rolling her eyes. “That place was full of hood boogers in the middle of the ghetto, and you know it.”
I chuckled sarcastically and told her, “Look, Jackie. We just aren’t meant to be together.”
“Is it another woman?”
Even though another woman did have my attention, Jackie was so full of herself that she couldn’t possibly comprehend a man not wanting her for any other reason.
“What would that matter if we aren’t in a relationship? Get over yourself, baby.”
“Fuck you, Fabil!” she spat as she turned on the heels of her red bottoms. As she stormed towards her car, I admired her body and beauty for the last time.
I managed to get out, “Have a good day, Jackie,” with a taunting chuckle, just before she slammed the door of her Benz truck.