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Isa was bothered. What had started as a way to help her sleep at night had become a routine that helped him rest his weary soul. In Aria’s bed, he found peace. He didn’t feel the need to sleep with one eye open. Their connection, although not sexual, had affected him. She had gotten under his skin.
“Plural, Isa. The bitches in your phone. I don’t play the back or the side or the front. If a nigga can’t make me his only, I remove myself. I replace you.”
“You don’t get to ask questions about who I keep time with. Which is not him, by the way. I don’t shit where I eat, but even if I did … you don’t get to trip on me and run up on me with the rah-rah. I don’t belong to you.”
“To come home to you. When I’m done mobbing. If you were there at the end of the night to take some of that off my soul. I think about you, Ali.”
“You’d have to marry me, boy,” she said, shrugging. “That’s the only time a man can come and go in my life as he pleases. He’d come with a ring and a last name, and I’d pop that shit for him whenever he wanted, however he wanted, wherever he wanted.”
“I ain’t getting on my knees and shit, Ali. You said that’s what it takes, so that’s what it takes. Let’s go.”
“You want to marry me so you can have sex with me?” she asked. “I want to marry you because I hate yo’ ass,” he responded. He pecked her lips, then set her down on her feet.
“That’s your homegirl. Got me buying the whole fucking cow just to get some milk.”
“You’re going to break me, aren’t you?” she asked. Isa shook his head. “Nah, Ali. I ain’t gon’ never do that,” he said.
Aria was young. A fourth-year undergraduate with a fetish for bad boys. She didn’t need Prince Charming, she didn’t need romantic. This courthouse and the spontaneity of it was enough for her, but the notion that he wanted to give her more, that he wanted to try to give her a standard that he thought she wanted was enough to make her heart swell. She didn’t want to change him. She didn’t want to grow him up. She didn’t want a man in tailored suits and a briefcase in hand. She wanted the shooter. She wanted the man that would pull triggers behind her, that was so tatted up that he had to turn
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“The fact that you’re willing to do it like this tells me this ain’t a mistake. I ain’t shit, probably won’t ever be shit, when niggas speak my name they gon’ remember one of two things. That I’ll shoot the shit out of a nigga and that I get money around this bitch. I’m good with that. It is what it is. I wasn’t trying to change a thing, then I stepped into that small-ass college club and saw you. You fuck me up, Ali. Make me feel like if I look at you too long, a nigga can touch me because I get weak like a mu’fucka. You’re better than I’ll ever be. You make me look like I’m worth something …
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Morgan Atkins put up a good front for everyone, but he knew her, and the sadness he saw in the windows to her soul was undeniable. The hurt he had put on her had changed her. Scarred. By him. Morgan’s eyes told the story of their tragic end. The caption read, There’s no place like home.
“I don’t even know who I am anymore, Meek.”
“This. London. It’s not me. It’s a great life, but it doesn’t feel like my life.”
“So why stay? Why pretend like that’s what you want?” Meek asked,
He was my brother. I followed him into a lot of wars. Some we won, some we lost, but it was the Ls that made us men. The three of us were rocking for a long time before he died. He ain’t have a lot coming up after his pops got sent away. His mama didn’t give a fuck. I used to sneak breakfast sandwiches and shit out the house for him, to take to school for him. My mama used to beat my ass because I would lose pairs of sneakers and shit, but I wasn’t losing them shits. I was giving them to bro, because he ain’t have shit. If I had a dollar, he got half of that shit. Different mothers, nobody-ass
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“You not on that no more. Fuck that. Whenever you feel fucked up, you hit my line. I don’t care how late it is. I don’t care if you’re halfway around the world with that corny-ass nigga. If you feel like that, you call me first. You call me so I can listen. I won’t judge you. I’ll just listen so you can get it out. Can you do that for me?”
“I don’t fuck for free, Isa. You’ve got to pay me in emotion,” she whispered. “Men are cheap, and the price of admission was too expensive. Until you. Until now. Is this for real? Me and you?”
He might have been the first one to pop her cherry, but she was the first to feed him hers. Fair exchange wasn’t robbery.
Aria didn’t know how she’d gotten sucked up in this type of man, with his hood colloquialisms and his gun-toting, multiple-women-having, aggressive, leave-a-nigga-leaking mentality, but she was all in. She was stuck. She only hoped he didn’t leave her with a broken heart in the end.
“I pay attention, Mo. I’ve known you for years. I know not to serve the queen no bullshit.”
He was hard, but not hardened, thuggish, but not damaged, and motherfucking fine.
“I have friends that I keep time with. No girlfriend, though, so explanations aren’t necessary. When I pull up, I show them a good time; when I pull off, it’s over. No promises made, no expectations to maintain,” he said.
“I’m really not. I don’t know where you get that from. I’m a single man. I enjoy women, but I’m not a bad dude. I play my role, they play theirs.”
“I’ve never lied to a woman a day in my life. That’s not my thing,”
“I don’t know if I’m welcome inside, Mo. Everything ain’t kosher with Ethic. The nigga don’t forget a face or a motive. My motives weren’t always good.”
Ethic’s protection could border on controlling,
“I know who he is,” Ethic deadpanned. “Why is he in my house? Why are you in his possession?”
“He’s my friend, Ethic. He’ll be where I am sometimes.”
Alani was the leash on Ethic’s gangster. She kept it in check. Kept him reeled in, because if she let him off it, he wandered out the yard—and when that happened, it was dangerous for everyone. So she kept him on her porch, loving him, so he wouldn’t be provoked to do harm.
Ahmeek nodded in full understanding. Ethic was displeased with his presence, with his relationship with Morgan—whatever it may be—and he had been warned. Fuck up and there would be repercussions.
“I’ve never held my tongue for a nigga a day in my life, but a nigga like his tongue. I’d like to do a few more things with it before Ethic rips it out.”
“Most people would be sad about having a daughter who’s deaf. I love it. I connect with my baby so much, but I also know what it feels like, so I can pour all the confidence into her in the world. I can do things that my parents missed and that Ethic missed because he couldn’t fully understand how I felt inside.”
“No, I’m a lucky mom. I just want to do the very best job I can with them because they were made out of love.”
Morgan grabbed the handle of the wagon and pulled Messari as she walked next to Ahmeek. He wrapped his free arm around Morgan’s shoulder and pulled her toward him, kissing the side of her head before releasing her.
“It’s friendship, Mo. It’s an apology. It’s a blessing.”
“I don’t really do easy, Ahmeek. Calling is easy. Texting is easier. I’m with the face-to-face. I need to see your eyes when you tell me something, so I can see if it’s bullshit,” she said. He heard her resentment. It wasn’t caused by him, but it was certainly aimed at him. Morgan didn’t trust people … men in particular, and he knew why.
Ahmeek had spoiled her all day. Yara had found a new sucker. Ahmeek’s heart melted as he bent to pick her up.
Always you too. Never I love you too, because she didn’t want to lie. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him, but the type of love Bash was expecting, she couldn’t reciprocate. She wouldn’t ever be able to.
Everything happens for a reason. If he was supposed to be here, he would be here. He was no good for me. He wanted to hurt me. God, how could he have wanted to hurt me when all I wanted to do was love him? I was such a fool.
A friend who accepted who she was. A friend who didn’t try to change her.
“Nothing feels extreme with him. No highs or lows … just average … I’m coasting in the middle lane.”
When she had given 100 percent of herself. She no longer did that. She would never do that again. She didn’t trust anyone enough to ever give them all of her. That’s how you ended up hurt. She wouldn’t invite heartbreak a second time around.
She couldn’t blow up her entire world by admitting that the twins were Messiah’s flesh and blood. She wasn’t lying. She was omitting, and she would have to be comfortable with that.
Mo would never allow herself to be submerged in something as deep as love ever again.
Meek looked down at her. He was struggling to keep this thing friendly, to keep it about her, but she was so fucking pretty, so alluring … putting need into the atmosphere, a need he was more than capable of filling, but he was fighting the urge because she didn’t belong to him.
Proximity made them vulnerable. They couldn’t be regulars in each other’s lives because lines would get blurred. They were already blurred. Morgan was crossing all types of boundaries, but Meek smelled so good, he looked even better, and he made her heart race.
Meek gave her butterflies.
“If I had met you first, would you have broken me? Would you have torn my heart out my chest?” she asked. “I won’t kick dirt on my nigga name. He loved you, Mo. I don’t know what I would have done, because it wasn’t me. That was then. This is now. All I know is what I want to do now.”
She expected a kiss to her lips, but instead … a gentle peck to the tip of her nose. Her nose. Of all the places he could have indulged in … her nose. It was the sweetest place she’d ever been kissed. It wasn’t sexual. It was appreciative. It was endearing.
