Chapter 7 #2
The back exit dropped us into the alley behind the building.
As soon as I was outside, I pulled the fresh night air into my lungs and felt every single thing Champ had put on my body.
That pain hit me all at once now that the adrenaline was starting to drop.
My ribs were the worst of it, something in there either cracked or close to it.
That nigga Champ wasn’t no easy win. The nigga worked my ass overtime.
My jaw on the left side was swollen. Eye tightening from the cut above it that the butterfly tape wasn’t gonna hold much longer.
I wasn’t going to no hospital. They were gonna tell me what I already knew and charge me for it. I just had to let my body heal on its own. The money I got was worth every minute in that cage though.
Gutta came out right behind me still hyped, still talking, the bag on his shoulder and a grin on his face that wasn’t going nowhere anytime soon.
“Forty thousand dollars my nigga. You know what that do to your name in these circles? Champ ain’t never been put down before tonight. Not one time. And you dropped his ass in five rounds.” He shook his head. “The underground gone be talking about this for years.”
“We need to count that before we do anything else.”
“These niggas know not to play with me mane! The shit you just did to Champ won’t be shit compared to what I’m gone do if I have to come back around here.”
I almost smiled at that. Almost. “You ain’t changed.”
“Why would I?” He dapped me up and we came around toward the front of the building to get to where he’d parked two blocks over.
The crowd was still spilling out the front entrance, people everywhere, conversations loud about what they just witnessed.
I kept my head down and moved with purpose because I wasn’t in the mood for the celebration and the people who wanted to be close to the win now that it was over.
I had somewhere to be and something to handle.
I had forty thousand dollars in a bag, and thirty of it that needed to get to Tavarus before that clock ran out.
But then I heard her voice.
“Xavier.”
I stopped, people knew not to call me by my government.
Nobody called me that. Not out here. Not in these circles. The only people who used my government name were my moms and Brielle. Neither one of them should be standing outside this building right now.
I turned around.
Brielle was leaning against the wall just outside the front exit with Simone standing beside her.
When I turned around she pushed off the wall and took a few steps toward me and stopped.
She looked different up close than she had from across that basement.
Up close I could see that something was heavy on her mind, it was sitting on her face that hadn’t fully settled yet.
Like she was still processing something.
Gutta locked in on Simone immediately. I saw it happen in my peripheral. His whole energy shifted in a way that was unusual for this nigga. It was enough that if you didn’t know him you’d miss it completely. But I knew his ass. And he was on her trail bad.
“Simone.” He said her name like he was tasting it. “You looking good as hell standing out here.”
Simone looked at him sideways. “Boy.”
“You know I’m for real. You ain’t had no business leaving the house looking that damn good, unless you planned to leave here with me.”
“Gutta.” I said it without looking at him.
“I’m just making conversation cuz. Damn.” He leaned against the wall next to Simone and said something low that I didn’t hear, and she laughed in spite of herself which meant Gutta was gonna be insufferable about that for the next two weeks.
I looked back at Brielle.
She had her arms crossed, not in a closed off way, more like she was holding something in.
She looked at my face — the swelling, the cut, all of it — and something changed in her expression that she pulled back before it fully showed.
I knew her, and I knew the look she held was sorry and fear mixed together.
“You good?” she asked.
“I’m standing, so yeah. You can say that.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s what I got right now Bri. I don’t know what you want me to say. You know me, and you know I’m gone always do what I gotta do. This was just some moe shit that I just had to do.”
She nodded slow like she was accepting that even though she didn’t fully want to.
Then she was quiet for a second and I let the quiet sit there because I didn’t have anything to say.
The street around us was loud with people leaving the fight, cars pulling off, music coming from somewhere down the block.
We were standing in the middle of all that noise in our own separate quiet.
“I wasn’t expecting that,” she finally said.
“What you mean?” I asked confused about what she was even talking about.
“I mean—” She stopped and took a breath and started again.
“I’ve heard people talk about you for years.
Everybody in the town and towns over knows your name and what you do.
I mean, I know what they say about your hands.
I’ve seen you fight as a kid countless of times.
But hearing about it and actually standing in that basement and watching you in that cage as a grown man, it is not the same thing.
” She looked at me straight. “I couldn’t move, Street.
When that last punch landed and that man hit the floor I literally could not move. ”
I didn’t say nothing.
“You could’ve died in there,” she said and her voice dropped just slightly on the last part and that drop was what got me more than the words. “That man has knocked out almost everybody he’s ever faced and you just walked into that cage like it wasn’t nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing. You see I’m good out here. You don’t really know me like I thought you did baby girl.”
“Stop. Stop downplaying things!”
“Bri—”
“I’m serious.” She took one step closer and lowered her voice.
“I see you. Okay? I don’t know everything that’s going on with you right now but I see you and I need you to know that.
” She held my eyes when she said it. Not performing, not making it into a moment.
Just straight. Direct. The way Brielle had always been with me when she wanted me to actually hear something.
That shit touched me in my chest in a way I wasn’t ready for. I didn’t know what to do while we were face to face after all this time, standing in front of a building at midnight beat up with forty thousand dollars in a bag twenty feet away from me.
“I’m good Bri. Thanks for caring. I didn’t even think that you cared about a nigga no more. The way you always disappear for years at a time,” I said. Quieter than I meant to.
She looked at me for another second like she was deciding whether to push or let it go. Then she let out a slow breath and that small tension in her shoulders dropped.
“You hungry?” she asked. She dropped the subject to something lighter.
That caught me off guard. “What?”
“It’s almost midnight and I know you ain’t eaten.
I remember when you first started that street fighting stuff, you told me that you never eat before a fight.
I remember that.” A small something crossed her face when she said it.
A flash of all those years of knowing me that neither one of us talked about.
“There’s a spot on Riverside that’s open late. Me and Simone was gonna go anyway.”
I looked over at Gutta and Simone. Gutta was still talking and Simone was still pretending she wasn’t amused by it and losing that battle steadily.
I looked back at Brielle.
Every logical part of me said I needed to get that money counted, put away and get in contact with Tavarus’s people to set up the drop and then handle the three niggas from the alley who were still very much on my mental list. They had to know that what they did wasn’t forgotten and wasn’t gonna be until I personally addressed it.
But Brielle was standing in front of me after having waited outside a grimy underground fight venue just to make sure I was standing and asking me if I was hungry. That shit was really all that mattered right now.
“Yeah, I could eat.” Was my response.
Something in her face shifted. Small. Quick. Gone before it fully showed up. “Okay.”
She turned to tell Simone and I stepped back toward Gutta who was already looking at me with the most entertained expression I had seen on his face in a long time. The nigga was really feeling Simone and he knew damn well, she didn’t go for niggas like him.
“Don’t even think about it. Get it out your head man. That’s a good girl.” I said low.
“I ain’t even did nothing, nigga.”
“You was thinking something loud as hell.”
“I was thinking we bout to go eat with two bad ass women at midnight after you just knocked out the most feared nigga in the underground and everything in life is good as fuck right now!” He picked up the bag and put it back on his shoulder.
“I don’t see the problem. Worry about Bri stuck up ass, and I’m gonna focus on Simone.
Cause what you don’t know is, good girls love hood niggas. Don’t be fooled.”
“Just come on.” I shook my head.
We fell in behind them and I watched Brielle walk ahead of me talking to Simone and something came over me.
It was a feeling I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Not peace exactly. Something closer to it than I usually got.
I guess that I was just content at the moment.
Which made me nervous in a way that not even the thirty thousand deadline, the three men in the alley hadn’t made me nervous.