Chapter 25
Pops woke me up Sunday morning with a phone call, telling me we were having a meeting at the club. As comfortable as I was, I dragged myself out of Nas’s bed, hit the shower, and met my father in Atlanta.
The fact that Pops was calling a meeting on a Sunday of all days meant something.
It was early, BLVCKJVCK had a whole day ahead before it opened at ten this evening.
The chairs were stacked on top of the tables and most of the lights in the Club Suite were off.
With Pops nowhere in sight, aside from his car being parked in the lot next to Cesar’s, I knew he was up in his office.
Sure enough, I found them there seated in front of Pops’s large black lacquer desk.
“What up?” I greeted Cesar with a fist bump and gave Pops a hug before rounding the desk and taking the seat there.
In the plush leather chair, I felt like a man.
Younger me always got excited when I got to travel with my father during the summer to Miami or Los Angeles.
I got to trail my father and watch him work, watch him own the city as he walked into any building and was instantly rewarded respect.
All of that intrigued me, but what really made me feel my blood rushing, was going into every private office his clubs held and taking a seat behind the owner’s desk.
I was a tall kid, but the massive chair took a lot more than my stature could ever fill.
Not anymore.
The chair had always been a symbol of my father’s reign and power. Something that inspired me and made me look up to him in awe. Even now, with him still owning BLVCKJVCK, I loved sitting behind the desk. Feeling important. Feeling like Pops’s son.
“Was you asleep?” Pops wanted to know as he studied me as I took my seat.
“Yeah, but it can wait until tomorrow.” Some Mondays I’d sleep in, and others I’d get my ass up and take myself to Phat Fitness. “What’s up?”
Cesar faced my father as well, giving him his total focus.
A smile turned one corner of Pops’s mouth up as he eyed me first. “You were right.”
I didn’t get it. “About?”
“You haven’t heard?” Pops grabbed his phone from the edge of the desk and began swiping through it. “It seems your Battle of the Sexes Night went viral.”
Pops held his phone out for me and Cesar to see.
He’d found some blog, the CelebriTea, and the headline read out It Goes Down in the A!
There was an article with photos, and Pops scrolled past all that to click on a video embed from Twitter of Paisley and me up on stage.
Paisley had just played “Unloyal,” and the women were singing along word for word, a move that had almost killed me until I responded with “I Don’t Fuck with You. ”
There was a clip of Jackie Boy performing as well and the crowd reacting with love.
Pops was proud as he shut his phone off and set it down. “Your mother stumbled across that.” He tipped his head my way. “You were right.”
“Always bet on Eazy, Pops,” Cesar remarked.
I could only agree. I never lost.
Pops saw it my way as he nodded along. “I’m starting to see that. Anyway, I called this meeting—this very short meeting—because I was scrolling down this blog and stumbled across a local rapper. You guys know of a Glocc?”
Cease looked at me as I looked at him, both of us breaking into the same smile and soon laugh.
Glocc was the latest up-and-coming rapper from the A.
Everyone loved him, he had his street shit for the men, and he’d just put out a collab with Tiffany Thomas called “Hold Me” for the ladies.
He was a good mix of old T.I. and Jeezy with a distinct gruff like the late Pop Smoke. Straight ATL with it.
“Yeah,” I said as I sat up and chuckled a little. “Glocc up next for sure.”
Pops eyed me and then Cesar. “Think we should book him for a show? Get ’im now before the price goes up? Or is it a potential safety hazard?”
Some rap dudes didn’t know how to leave the street alone, making them liabilities for hostings. Glocc was a little different. He didn’t profess to be a gangster or killer, but that he lived and seen a lot. It made him a safe bet and relatable.
“Nah, Glocc cool. He ain’t the shooter or nothin’,” Cesar joked.
“Yeah,” I co-signed. “That’ll be a moment.” My mind worked fast when it came to putting together events for the club and already a smooth idea hit me. “We tryna do a weekend date or a Thursday theme?”
Pops’s brows pushed together. “What theme?”
“Homecoming.” I opened my hands and gestured around us. “This is Atlanta. Glocc got the city on lock. We went viral for a little friendly spar. We get Glocc to do a show? We’ll break him easy.”
Glocc was still releasing mixtapes and building a buzz with his team. He wasn’t yet signed, he hadn’t completely blown up, but one post from the CelebriTea and the Barr, the biggest hip-hop page online, and it was over.
Pops scratched at his head. There was a reason he came to me and Cesar. He didn’t know a thing about this new generation of music. If it wasn’t Marvin and Whitney, he was out of the loop.
“You sure?” he asked, peering into my eyes.
“You can bet on me,” I assured him.
From there, there was no questioning it. He reached out and tapped Cesar’s shoulder. “All right, let’s make this happen.”
Cesar sat back in his chair and began obsessing over his phone, no doubt reaching out to Glocc’s people.
Pops came back to me, a gleam in his eyes. “How’s Nastasia?”
It was kind of growing to be a routine, but I hadn’t meant to stay the night Saturday.
After our dinner with her family, she’d reached a break-through with her father, something evident with her red swollen eyes when she came out from talking with him.
Nas had held my hand all the way back to her house, and despite her assuring that things were okay, I didn’t want to leave her.
When I’d stopped by after BLVCKJVCK, wanting to see how she was doing, I found the front door unlocked and Nastasia was sitting cross-legged at her coffee table eating leftovers.
One look at her adorable, sleepy face and the sight of her feast, and I knew I wanted nothing more than to sit beside her for the rest of the night.
“She doin’ good, we just had dinner with her parents last night,” I said.
Shock washed across Pops’s face. I could tell he was still somewhat skeptical about my intentions with Nastasia and if this were real or a fling. “That’s fast.”
All of what we had was fast. But it felt so natural at the same time. “Yeah, but she and her father weren’t on the best of terms, so I went for moral support. They liked me though.”
Pops drummed his fingers on the desktop. Cesar glanced at me and then at Pops, curious as well. He didn’t stay long before getting up to make a phone call and step outside. Pops watched him go and turned back to me.
“What’s the value of a dollar, Eazy?”
This again. “Four quarters, Pops.”
He laughed a little and shook his head. “But you like her, though, huh?”
I hadn’t been in a relationship in years, so the fact that I wanted one at this pivotal point in my prime said a lot.
My mind drifted back to the first weekend I’d spent the night at Nas’s place. We woke up in bed, and stayed there for a good duration of the day. She laid against my chest and I reveled in the feeling of her being there, smelling good, being mine.
Nas raised her phone above her head and mine and snapped a quick shot of us, winking at the camera and puckering her lips a little.
It was cute, but she tucked the photo away and didn’t rush to post it.
We didn’t follow each other online, something we never really talked about or came up.
I knew a lot of women who wanted that exclusivity, but Nastasia hadn’t nagged about it.
“You not tryna post me?” I teased into her ear.
She peeked up at me. “No. We know we’re together, the rest of that doesn’t matter.
” She gathered her phone and marveled at the photo of us.
“Everything doesn’t need to be uploaded to social media anyway.
Think about how easy life was when we were growing up.
We were happy before all the cameras, filters, lights, and pretty captions. ”
In the simplest terms, social media wasn’t real, but we were.
“Nas amazing,” I said honestly. “Like you said, this is happening fast, but we just connect.”
“Good. She seems like a nice young woman,” Pops said. He didn’t add on and I appreciated it. Although, before, I would’ve been pressed to change the subject, but I wanted Nastasia and there were no games to be played, so I wasn’t going to front for my father.
As if she could sense us talking about her, my phone rang, and when I dug it from my pocket, I saw Nastasia’s name and number flashing across my screen.
“Here she go now,” I said.
Pops checked his own phone and stood up, going out after Cesar to give me a moment to talk to Nastasia.
“Hey,” I said as I picked up and sat back in my chair.
“Where are you?” she demanded to know, not returning my greeting or giving me one.
“Just having a quick meeting with Pops and Cease. Is something the matter?” I almost sat up, but she was firing off at me again.
“I won’t make this long,” Nastasia started off, sounding clipped and to-the-point.
“I’m out with Ali and Oisin, but when I’m done and you’re free, you are mine.
I’m coming over to pick you up, and then I’m taking you out shopping to buy you something nice to wear, after that we’ll grab dinner, and then I’m taking you to your place and I’m fucking you. ”
I blinked, pausing and having to run her response through my head a few times. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not repeating myself,” she let me know, her tone not letting up. “Are our plans understood, yes or no?”
Arousal was quick to take over as I felt myself becoming hard at what this was. She was flipping the script and taking control, and the thought of watching her do it made me sink into my chair and breathe.
“Yes, ma’am,” I told her. “But I thought you were going to make some more of those spinach lasagna rolls?”
“You really liked them, huh?” Her act dropped just an ounce at the mention of the dish she’d made a week ago.
“Hell yeah, they was bussin’,” I said.
“I’ll make them tomorrow night then. Tonight, we’re going out on me, and don’t try any of that cheap shit either,” Nastasia instructed.
This side of her was entirely stimulating. “You gon’ fuck me?”
“And you’re gonna like it.”
My lips formed an O shape. “Can I fuck you back?”
“No, you may not. You’re going to lay there and take this ride.”
I winced at the sudden reality of the very real distance between us. She was over forty minutes away in Belmont and I was in Atlanta. I needed to see all this shit she was talking face to face. “I’m not sure I can handle all this. You have no idea how fucking hard I am right now.”
“Good, keep it up for me, because tonight, that ass is mine.” With that statement, she had hung up and let her authority be known.