Chapter 2
Tavion ‘Tank’ Briggs
Temptation in Plain Sight
“Can I just get the keys to your car, so that I can wait inside? I don’t know anyone out here, and I’m lowkey ready to go,” Renee said to me, with her hand out, so that I could drop my keys in it.
Renee was someone that I was dealing with at the moment.
We weren’t in a relationship or anything, but we fucked around.
It wasn’t one of those things where I was playing her, stringing her along, and feeding her with a bunch of lies because the two of us had an understanding of our shit.
What we were doing right now didn’t come with any attachments, or any kind of commitment.
A nigga could walk over here right now, and look at her, and ask her for her phone number, and I couldn’t get mad because we weren’t in a relationship.
Vice versa. She couldn’t get mad if a woman approached me right now either, trying to run game.
I met Renee about five months ago. She worked as one of the waitresses at an upscale lounge here in Miami.
People hear waitress, and they might assume that she was struggling for money, but that wasn’t the case.
The lounge that she worked at was called Aura, and it was in Brickell.
Aura was an upscale lounge, and when you went there, that wasn’t a spot where you would see a lot of young, street niggas that’s beefing with another crew, and their ready to shoot up the spot.
Aura was a spot where people with class, and money would chill at.
On any day of the week, you could walk in there and run into your favorite athlete, rapper, or movie star.
If not that, you’ll run into a hood famous nigga like me, that had just as much money as your favorite rapper.
Aura is where I met Renee. She was my waitress that night.
I’ve always had a thing for dark- skinned women, so when she came to the table, introducing herself, I immediately found her attractive.
Even with that, I had no intentions of trying to put down on her and see what she was talking about because I’ve only been in Miami for a little over six months, and hopping in a relationship with a woman wasn’t the kind of timing that I was on right now.
I was on a hunt for success, trying to put more money in my pocket, and I knew that women could be a big ass distraction, but just like a man, always thinking with the wrong head, I fell for all that game she was putting on me that night.
She kept coming to the table with shots, giving me compliments, and she was bold with her shit, telling me that she liked what she saw, and she wanted to explore her options with me.
I loved a woman that was bold. Something about a woman standing in front of me, looking me in my eyes, and telling me what she wanted out of me. That did something to me. I gave in, and we exchanged numbers, and we’ve been fuckin around with each other ever since.
It wasn’t my intentions to bring her with me today to June’s little girl’s party though.
I was handling business today, and Renee wanted to roll with me, so I let her.
These days, I was so locked in with the goals that I set out for myself that I’d completely forgotten about the party until June hit me earlier, reminding me about it.
No time to really stop and get a gift, so when I pulled up, I found Free, and I put a stack in her hand, telling her to get Liberty whatever she wanted.
June was my nigga from way back. Me, and June went to grade school together.
I was born and raised in Miami by a single mom.
My mom was originally from Alabama, but she moved to Miami when she was nineteen.
She had me by the time she was twenty. Growing up, I would spend the school year in Miami, but in the summer, I would go to Alabama, where my grandma and my pop- pop was, along with the rest of the family that I had out there.
Even though I was born, and raised in Miami, those summers that I would spend in Alabama with my grandparents, had really shaped me into the man that I am today.
Shit, my pop- pop instilled so many lessons in me, taught me how to be a man, and I knew that it was his teachings that taught me how to hustle.
When I say hustle, I’m not even referring to selling dope, even though I had my years where I messed around with that too.
I’m mainly talking about just finding a way to make a dollar.
My pop- pop used to always tell me that as long as I had hands and feet, that I should never have to be in a position where I didn’t know how to make money.
I had a dad in my life, but that nigga wasn’t consistent.
With no disrespect to my mama when I say this, but the kind of parent that he was to me was based on my mama giving him pussy or not.
If he couldn’t get that out of her, then the nigga wouldn’t come around, and do his part.
Bitter ass nigga that allowed personal issues that he had with my mom to get in the way of his parenting.
My dad was older than my mom. When she had me at twenty, he was already twenty- four, and you would think that with him being a little older than my mom, he would have been wiser, and mature, but that wasn’t the case.
My mom left Alabama right after high school because she was chasing a better life.
She felt like her opportunities out there weren’t going to be as big if she moved down here to Florida.
She came out here with a home girl, who had family here, so they were staying with her home girl’s aunt.
My mom enrolled in culinary school because she wanted to be a chef and have her own soul food restaurant one day.
She met my dad within three months of her moving to Florida, and within a few months, she was pregnant with me and had moved in with him.
I had a close relationship with my mom, so she’ll often tell me about some of the shit that she endured with my dad.
Never any physical abuse, but he was a serial cheater, and he was mentally abusive towards her.
She endured that shit for the first three years of my life because she wasn’t working, and she’d taken a break from school because she didn’t have anyone to watch me while she would go to school.
My dad was always on the move, hustling, so it wasn’t like he could watch me during the day.
My mom would tell me how my grandparents were always in her ear, telling her to just come back to Alabama with me because she had a lot of help that way, but she refused to do it.
It’s almost like she had to prove a point to them.
Prove to them that it was all worth it, when she decided to pick up, and move to Florida.
By the time I was four, my mom went ahead, and put me in school, and she was able to enroll in culinary school again, and at night, she would work at a restaurant as a waitress.
It’s like my dad didn’t want her to be able to do better for herself because he figured that when she wasn’t working, and she was solely depending on him, that she would stay, and she would endure the shit that he was putting her through.
If she found a job, and went back to school, he knew that the chances were higher of her leaving, and that’s exactly what she did by the time I turned five.
She was able to move into a one-bedroom apartment, and it was just the two of us.
The nigga wouldn’t help her with shit. For years, I watched my mom slave, working at different restaurants, just trying to get her experience in, so one day she could have her own restaurant.
She would sell dinners out of the apartment that we lived in, and seeing my mom bust her ass like that, that was the sole reason I started selling dope by the time I was a junior in high school.
I had it made up in my mind that I had to be the man in her life that was going to get her out of the fucked-up situation that she was in, even if I had to risk my freedom to do it.
I can laugh about it now, but I still think about the time my mom found a half brick of cocaine stuffed at the bottom of my dirty clothes hamper.
Man, she fucked me up so bad in my bedroom that day.
I remember her taking the wooden broom and beating my ass with it.
If she didn’t fuck me up enough, her ass had my grandparents come down to Miami, where my pop- pop fucked me up again.
He instilled so many lessons into me as a little boy, telling me not to get caught up in the drugs, and the violence that happens in Miami, and I would swear to him that I wouldn’t do it, but I fucked around, and I got hooked into that shit, and it didn’t matter how much they fucked me up because now the love for the money was there, and no beating that they could put on me would have me turning away.
I moved dope in the streets from the time I was seventeen, up until I was twenty- eight.
I’m thirty- five years old now, and that life was behind me.
At twenty- seven years old, I remember being in the hospital room with my pop- pop, watching him as he fought in his last final days of multiple sclerosis, and he looked me in my eyes, making me promise him that I would get out of the streets before it was too late.
I remember him telling me that the only way he would sleep peacefully was knowing that I wasn’t out here risking my freedom.
I was a stubborn ass nigga. My mom said that it was a trait that I’d inherited from my dad.
Nothing had been able to get me out of the streets in the past, but looking down at my pop- pop, the man that raised me, the man that damn near taught me everything that I knew, I had to grant him his wish.