39. Rico #2
“Brodie,” Reem angrily chuckles. “You know, if I was on the same shit you on, I’d put a hot one in ya gut off GP. But unlike you, I give grace ‘cause everyone was put in an impossible position. And unlike Nut, I recognize why niggas keep shit to themselves.”
Nut sits up straight, spreading his palm on his chest. “Now why am I in it? Secrets always come out, Dub. Clearly, right.”
“Right… Ty, Fredo and I were the ones who shot up the Center that one time.”
“The fuck?!”
“Nah, I don’t believe it.”
“Nigga, you shot at me?!” Set reaches behind him before he realizes he’s unarmed. Turk stands when he does, holding him back, but Reem stays seated, almost conflicted at the bomb he just dropped.
“Why y’all do that?” I ask, though a niggling feeling in the back of my head makes me queasy.
Then Reem turns to me, his eyes soft. “We was chillin’, drunk as fuck.
Fredo ended up telling us what you did for us.
Ty was tweaking, and next thing I know he shooting at Tiny and Set in front of the Center.
” He turns back to Set. “We stopped him before he could clip you, and then when he woke up he ain’t remember shit.
Me and Fredo decided to just keep it to ourselves. ”
“What the fuck he talking about, Rico?! You told these niggas to shoot at me?! So all y’all niggas plotting on me? Huh?!”
Tell him, Rick.
My gaze shifts to Nut, like he’d have all the answers. He leans back in his seat, giving me the floor, curiosity lighting his eyes as well.
“You niggas, boy. We really ain’t–”
“I fucked Tiny.”
The air is sucked out of the room immediately.
Ty-Ty was eighteen when the Center got shot up as Set and Tiny were leaving out the front.
Tiny got hit in the leg, but Set was unscathed.
Niggas was on lockdown for months, and ultimately, there were no leads.
Ty-Ty and Reem were among the soldiers putting in work.
Fredo wrote me about it, worried, but once again, he kept the real reason to himself.
Maybe Nut is onto something foreal about this secret shit.
I clear my throat, and meet Set’s shocked stare.
“I fucked her twice. Once when I was fifteen, so me, Fred, and Ty could get out from under her when the time came. One more time when I was seventeen, when Reem got put on. Bitch gave me the clap, and I gave it to Wynter, which was why she stopped fucking with me.”
He starts shaking his head before I’m even done talking, his ears and neck turning red.
“Nah.”
My head jerks back. The fuck does that mean?
“Yo ass lying.”
I’m out of my seat immediately, pushing Reem out of my way as Set pushes Turk.
“Fuck you and that weird ass bitch. I bet she was suckin’ yo sick, too,” I taunt. Gaining momentum, I throw a wild punch at him before Nut gets in between us. He pushes headgear into my chest before moving me away from the middle of the circle.
“Yo nose already crooked, nigga. Here. I’m glad I prepped for this!”
Shad is handing Set boxing gloves a few feet away. He never takes his eyes off me. Rage I’ve only seen a couple times drowns in those creepy ass gray eyes of his, and I’m torn between stating the obvious or picking at him more.
That nigga really called me a liar.
“No head shots, Set!” Nut calls out. The others clear the area, and I knock my knuckles together so that my gloves are on correctly.
“Fuck that,” Set spits. He stomps toward me. “And fuck you.”
I swing again, but he blocks it, sending a powerful haymaker into my side.
My fist collides with the side of his face. He blocks my knee, then grabs my legs and lifts me up before laying me out on my back.
The wind is knocked out of me. I sway from side to side, trying to catch my breath, before someone sits on me.
Set appears in my line of vision, eyes wild and red and glassy. His ungloved hands curve around my throat, and he squeezes hard, cutting off the little air I was getting.
“Lying ass nigga,” he grits, bearing his teeth. “The fuck you lying for? That shit ain’t fuckin’ happen! She ain’t touch you!”
Nut throws his arm around Set’s neck, but he’s not budging. These fucking gloves keep me from grabbing at his wrists.
This bitch ass nigga really gon’ kill me.
I try to tell him it did happen. That bitch did take advantage of me, and I wasn’t the only one.
But something in the way his eyes glaze over makes me think he knows I’m not the only one. And he knows firsthand how Tiny would wield the power Set himself helped her build.
Set’s nails scrape my skin off as Nut finally drags him off me. He pulls him all the way to the wall, pinning him there with his forearm as he heaves and struggles to get back to me.
My neck burns as I finally pull off these fuck ass gloves, and when I tap where his hands were, my fingertips come back stained with blood.
I should kill this nigga. Snow would see this and think I did some weird shit. The idea grows more and more when I tell the others to leave us alone. Set drops to the floor as Nut pulls a protesting Shad out of the room, since he was the only one who doesn’t listen.
His good hand covers his eyes, while his other arm rests on his knee.
I don’t think he’s crying though. And when I finally crawl over to this nigga, I see I’m right.
My breath is back. I can snap his neck and buy myself thirty seconds before my other niggas avenge him.
Instead, I just collapse next to him, on my stomach.
“I’ve lied to you about a lot of shit, but you gotta know I would never lie about that.”
“Is that why you been on bunk? ‘Cause of Tiny?”
My head lifts when his voice cracks. He won’t meet my gaze, closing his eyes instead and rubbing them with his fingers, almost stabbing into his lids.
“I’on know what I did. Racked my mind for months…
I don’t really think about back then. I don’t try to.
But for months I’ve been combing over every interaction we’ve ever had Dub.
Every single one, going back to elementary school.
Back when I followed you and Fred and Nut around the playground ‘cause I thought y’all was the coolest niggas.
All the way up until this last time you went to Belize.
How many skits have we ran? How many times, just me and you, we politicked about bullshit, played the game, shit, just chopped it up.
I don’t get you, Rico. And I don’t get why you wouldn’t tell me if she pulled some shit like that on you. ”
“And what the fuck was yo lil’ ass gon’ do if I told you the bitch who was raising you was fucking half the hood, including yo underaged crew?”
“Kill the bitch.”
Set finally meets my gaze, and like always, we both crack a smile at the same time.
He sighs, leaning his head back against the wall.
“Did she ever—”
“Nah,” he says quickly, shaking his head.
“She tried though. Once. I was like eighteen, drunk as fuck, and I felt like she was touching me weird, so I pulled my shit and aimed right between her eyes. Told her if she ever touched me like that again I wouldn’t hesitate.
Next morning, she blamed it on the alcohol, and I…
let it go. I mean, I knew about Gee and shit, but fucking you at fifteen?
Nah… she needed to die. I wish I killed her then. ”
“Yeah, me too. Dirty pussy bitch fucked my whole shit up with Snow.”
“She knows it was her?”
“Man, now she does. I told her in Belize, and her dumb ass gon’ tell me she fucked Pooh. Had me shooting at my damn daddy ‘cause she petty.”
We both chuckle. “Yeah, Wyn is petty as fuck.”
Silence settles in heavily, as different things I feel like I need and want to say start shuffling in my mind. It would be a lie to say I just hate this nigga. The shit I feel for Set is way more complicated than labeling it as hate, or even jealousy and envy.
Fred is loud in my head, beckoning me to lay it all on the table, but of course my tongue twists at the thought of being that vulnerable with this nigga.
How would he even understand? If I started at the beginning.
A nigga like Set can never understand a nigga like me.
It’s why there’s a rift in the first place.
You figured it out for Snow. You can figure it out for Set.
My stomach twists, and instead of obliging Fred, I blurt, “How can I tell you some real shit and you don’t even let niggas call you by ya real name?”
He sits up, meeting my gaze as I lay back down on the ground. My neck is on fire, which helps push me further. I’m not gon’ be the only muthafucka in here confronting shit.
“B the only one who call me that.”
“‘Cause she the only one who wasn’t around. By the time she showed up, you wasn’t drinking no more, only smoking weed, and out the game.”
“And I was fuckin’ with Wyn,” he adds. To my credit, I hold his glare, even as my chest squeezes.
“On my mama, Rico… I ain’t know shit about you and Wyn. She even told me about her ex, but she told me he was dead.”
Petty ass Snow. “Would you have shaded off if I did?”
He doesn’t reply right away, his stormy eyes averting to the ground. I wait for the lie to come, even though it’s only us. Set prides himself on his loyalty, and even though the silence is damning, I don’t expect him to admit what I know.
“I’on know,” he finally replies, his voice so low I barely miss it.
“The shit with Tiny… I felt like I needed someone, and Wyn was the logical choice. I mean, I ain’t ever had issues getting bitches, but Wyn always been different.
The way shit was, I can’t say for real I would have shaded off, and you don’t know how much that bothers me foreal. ”
“You always been obsessed with being this upstanding ass nigga,” I sigh, pulling my arms beneath my head.
My back prolly gon’ be fucked up in the morning, but I’m not too worried about it right now.
“Always on some ‘What would Boog do?’ type shit like he ain’t back door his brother.
Get off ya high horse.” I tamper down my smug grin.
I’ma have to get the tapes to the cameras in this room later to relive this.
“One of us gotta have morals, Luney.”