Chapter 17
Two Years Later
I don’t know if Brielle and Simone planned this together or if God just has a sense of humor. But, both of them were due in March and standing right next to each other at our joint gender reveal that was being filmed and live-streamed. It was catered like a wedding reception.
Knowing those two, it was absolutely planned for them to have babies at the same time.
The venue was packed. Family, close friends, people who had been riding with us since before any of this looked like what it looked like now.
My mama was somewhere near the dessert table with my Aunt.
They had been laughing and crying on and off all afternoon both of their boys were having babies and their excitement couldn’t be contained.
Thats just what those two did when they were happy and today they were very happy.
I stood back for a minute and just watched it all.
Two years ago Mazi had a bullet in his arm, Gutta had a target on his back and Brielle’s father was still sitting at dinner tables pretending to be something he wasn’t. Two years ago Legal was still carrying twenty years of a secret he had promised to take all the way.
Now Veteran was doing life. BJ was doing life. Marcus had taken a plea deal and was gone. Tavarus had disappeared and nobody was looking too hard for him. I wasn’t asking questions I didn’t need the answers to.
Everything that had been sitting on this family was lifted.
And what was left was the lives that we always deserved.
A catered venue, pink and blue confetti bombs and two women who deserved every good thing they were walking into.
—
Gutta was impossible to be around today and I mean that in the best way.
He had been pacing back and forth since we got here.
Checking his phone. Adjusting his outfit.
Asking me every twenty minutes if I thought the smoke bomb was going to work right.
He had been a father, but this was his first time being there from the beginning.
This was my first time ever, but this nigga was more nervous than me.
This was a man who had never flinched at anything in his entire life and the idea of finding out whether he was having a son or a daughter had completely dismantled him.
Simone had come back to him less than a month after she walked out with that overnight bag. She hadn’t made it easy — Gutta would tell you himself that she had put him through it before she let him back in and he had taken every bit of it because he knew he had earned it.
But she came back. And when she did she came back all the way.
Amara was proof of that.
Gutta’s daughter spent more time at their house than she did anywhere else.
Sandra had worked out an arrangement that everybody understood.
Amara was five going on thirty-five and she had Simone’s whole heart from the first day they met.
Right now she was running around the venue in a dress that matched Simone’s outfit exactly because Simone always dressed them like twins, and Amara had lost her mind with excitement when she saw it.
Gutta watched his daughter run past him and the look on his face was of a proud father. Soft in a way that the streets never got to see.
That was fatherhood doing that to him.
I understood it more than I could explain.
—
Brielle found me near the back and slipped her hand into mine. She leaned against my shoulder and we watched the room together for a minute without saying anything.
She had disowned her family completely after the arrest. Every last one of them. Her mother. Her aunts and uncles. The cousins who had known her father for what he was and said nothing. She had walked away from all of it and hadn’t looked back once.
My mama had welcomed her like she had always been there.
They talked every day. Brielle went to Sunday dinner even when I couldn’t make it. My mama had started a routine of braiding Brielle’s hair on Saturday mornings and calling her her bonus daughter. Brielle cried the first time she said it and my mama held her and didn’t let go until she was done.
I had never loved my mama more than in that moment.
Brielle was still healing from what her father had done.
Probably would be for a long time. But she was healing inside a family that was real and that was full of love.
It was something that she had never had before and it showed in how she carried herself now.
Lighter. More open. Like something heavy had been put down for good.
I squeezed her hand.
She looked up at me and smiled.
—
My brothers were in the back corner being loud the way they were always loud when they were together. Now, they were states apart and hardly ever got to see one another. So when they linked up, they were a mess.
Mazi was playing linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys.
Home team. My mama cried for three straight days when he got drafted and had not stopped talking about it since.
He and Monte had stayed close since that night in that dark house.
I never asked for details about what happened after Gutta and Mazi left.
I just knew that Tavarus was no longer a problem and Monte was someone I would always look out for regardless of what it cost me.
Melo had been drafted to the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round and was averaging eighteen points a game in his rookie season.
My aunt and moms had attended every home game and most of the away ones for both my brothers, and still found time to be at all of my fights.
You would think that it was four of them instead of two.
My mama had three sons who were doing something good with their lives and showing her that her sacrifices weren’t in vain.
She had done that. Working double shifts before sunrise. Raising us alone in a house that was too small for everything she was trying to hold together. She had done all of it and here we were on the other side of it.
I was going to spend the rest of my life making sure she never wanted for anything.
—
The host called everybody together for the reveal.
Gutta and I stood next to each other with our women beside us and the smoke bombs in our hands. The whole room had their phones up recording.
I looked at Brielle beside me. She was bouncing slightly on her heels the way she did when she was trying to contain excitement and couldn’t fully hide it.
Her stomach was just starting to show and she was the most beautiful I had ever seen her.
I had been thinking she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen since I was thirteen years old.
Someone counted down from three.
We let them off at the same time.
Gutta’s side exploded blue.
Mine exploded pink.
The room went insane.
Gutta dropped to his knees on the floor right there in the middle of the venue and put his face in his hands.
His shoulders were shaking and Simone crouched down beside him and held him.
Amara ran over and climbed on his back not knowing why her daddy was on the floor but wanting to be part of whatever it was.
A son. After everything. Gutta was finally getting his son.
Brielle was jumping, screaming and hugging Simone. I stood there watching my girl be happy and felt something settle in me that had been unsettled my whole life.
A daughter.
My mom was getting a granddaughter.
I let that sit on me for a second.
Then I reached into my jacket pocket.
Brielle turned around from hugging Simone and I was already on one knee.
The room went from loud to a completely different kind of loud.
She put both hands over her mouth.
I looked up at her and said what I had been waiting my whole life to be in a position to say.
“I have loved you since I was a kid and I am not interested in loving anybody else for the rest of my life. I know some will never understand the bond, the love or my addiction to loving you, but I do. It’s always been you, and nobody else.
You complete me, and the fact that you’re having my baby, that completes my wildest dreams. I never thought we’d be here, and I want this forever.
Marry me please baby, and make me the happiest man on earth. ”
She was crying before I finished the sentence.
“Of course,” she said. “Yes. Of course. I love you so much and I thank you for choosing me. For always choosing me even when we both know that I ain’t deserve you. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life showing you how much you mean to me and have always meant to me.”
I put the ring on her finger, stood up and picked her up.
She wrapped her legs around me. I held her in the middle of that room with everybody we loved surrounding us.
In that moment, I thought about the little boy I was after seeing my father be murdered, carrying something that had finally been put to rest.
Long live Hood.
Without Hood, there never would have been a Street.
Everything I was, I was because of who he was.
All my life I had huge shoes to fill, but I walked in those muthafuckas proudly.
And I was going to spend the rest of my life making sure his legacy meant something and that the world wouldn’t forget it.
—
I still laughed when I thought about Kyla and what we briefly had. She was a good ass woman, just not the woman for me.
She had won her city council seat two years ago by eleven percentage points. She was good at that job and everybody in Dallas knew it. She showed up, she delivered, she was everything she said she was going to be. I was glad that she got everything she deserved.
She also had a one and a half year old son that people on social media kept saying resembles me. It was crazy that she was adamant about not wanting a kid, but still had one after we parted ways. Clearly, she did what she did just to spite me. When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
I had seen one picture.
I wasn’t going to say what I thought about it publicly.
But I was thinking about paying her a visit soon.
Just to see. Just to know one way or the other.
Because if there was a child out there that was mine I was not the kind of man who could know that and do nothing about it.
A part of me felt like she was standing on her word and if she couldn’t have things her way, then there was no way at all.
But another part of me wanted to believe that she was better than that.
She was too good of a woman to neglect her child of his father.
I hoped that she’d moved on and that she just so happened to get pregnant by her next man.
If I ever found out she’d deprived me of years that can’t be replaced…
let’s just say, hopefully she’s better than that.
I had learned that from Gutta.
Blood was blood and you showed up for it. No matter what it cost you.
That was a conversation for another day.
Today was for this. For the ring on Brielle’s finger and the blue confetti still on Gutta’s shoulders.
For Amara asleep in her granny and my auntie arms in the corner.
Mazi and Melo arguing about something across the room and Legal standing near the door with a glass of champagne watching all of it with that specific look on his face that meant he was thinking about Hood.
He caught me looking at him.
He raised his glass.
I nodded back.
I looked around that room at my family. The one I was born into, the one I had built and the one that was still growing.
I pulled Brielle close, kissed her temple and she leaned into me and we stayed like that while the room buzzed and celebrated around us.
This was the life.
This was all of it.
This was everything I ever deserved. Who would have thought that a troubled child from the hood would be the heavyweight champion of the world? This is a testament that nothing is out of reach, you just have to never stop reaching.
The end!