Movement behind her caught my attention and when the door to the shop opened, my expression softened when I saw who was strolling in. My shoulders relaxed as the tension left me. I felt my dick began to swell in my jeans. Never in life had any woman ever had that kind of effect on me.
It’s her.
She walked inside with her eyes low and then looked up, searching the back before her eyes landed on me. A smile began to creep up on her face once she saw me standing up front and, for a moment, I forgot Brisha was even there. When she cleared her throat, I was quickly reminded.
“Oh, I get it,” I heard her say.
I watched as her pupils trailed from me to the woman standing behind her, near the door. A harsh chuckle escaped her lips.
“Yeah, I definitely get it now, Ink. I guess it’s on to the next bitch… that’s how you move.”
Brisha’s nostrils flared and her eyes filled with rage. My chest tightened as I glanced around my shop at the potential customers looking at the artwork on the walls showcasing my past work. The bitch was about to cause a fuckin’ scene and it was my fault for even walking down there to talk to her in the first place.
“You need to get the hell out of here. I got work to do.” I kept my tone low and tried not to look at Sage standing behind her.
“So you fuck me and then treat me like this?” she said, speaking through her teeth. “This must be about your wife, huh? You didn’t think I knew ’bout her? Well, I do. Is she the bitch that got you treatin’ me like this? Everybody knows you only with her because of your daughter. From what I heard, y’all don’t even sleep in the same room together.”
I clenched my jaw. God knew I didn’t have time for that shit.
“Ink?” Indie piped up from behind me. “Should I call—”
I waved a hand to stop her from speaking. “Nah, I got this.”
With cold eyes on Brisha’s face and my jaw tight, I kept my tone low as I spoke to her—not like Ink the tattoo artist of the A, but Infamous Ink, the nigga who had earned his name by running the Chicago streets. I wasn’t that man anymore but, every now and then, I had to bring a piece of him out.
“Yo, listen to this. I been trying to be nice to yo’ dumb ass but you don’t know how to respect that shit. I’mma tell you this once and after it’s said, I ain’t gon’ repeat myself again. Don’t bring yo’ ass down here no more with this shit. Trust me when I say, I don’t give a damn ’bout you and if you want to know you how much I mean that, I ain’t got no problem with showing you.”
By that time, Brisha’s eyes were so wide, they could’ve doubled as dinner plates and her skin was as pale as a sheet.
“As for my daughter,” I continued, “Mention her one mo’ fuckin’ time and it’s a wrap for you. They’ll be zippin’ you up in a body bag and takin’ ya ass to the morgue so ya moms and pops can identify you. Now, play with it.”
As if frozen by fear, she stood completely still; frozen into place as I glared down at her. I didn’t need her to say a thing; one look told me that I wouldn’t have to deal with her coming around anymore.
“This is the last time I’mma let you play me, nigga. I’m done with you,” she spat. She was trying to save face, but I let her have that. The fact that I didn’t respond only pissed her off even more.
With her hand lifted, she pointed her finger close to my face and said, “You’ll miss me when I’m gone. Have a nice life.”
I couldn’t even respond to that. The bitch was delirious. After giving me head and one fuck in the bathroom of a club, she had the nerve to have an attitude about the life of a nigga who wasn’t even hers. She wouldn’t have even been tripping so hard if I was any other random man in the city. Like I said, that celebrity shit wasn’t for me.
After Brisha made her exit, Sage stepped forward cautiously with her brows raised as she looked at me. From the look on her face, I knew she’d heard everything.
“Let’s walk outside,” I said before giving her a chance to say a word.
Taking the lead, I walked to the door and held it open as she stepped outside. Once there, we stood in front of each other and I waited in silence for her to speak. The crazy part about it was that I was nervous like my girl had caught me creepin’ or some shit. She wasn’t my girl, I barely knew her, but there I was, ready to explain something that wasn’t actually her business anyway.
“Your wife?”
Her tone was low. With her arms folded in front of her body, she cut her eyes around us, glancing over the busy streets. When they came back to me, there was so much emotion in them that I couldn’t help but feel guilty.
“She’s lying, right?”
With my head lifted, I ran my hand over my mouth before lowering my eyes.
Damn, I thought, looking at her. She was beautiful as fuck and it was making the conversation that much harder.
“Lyin’ about what?”
“Your wife,” she fired back, her eyes seeming more green than brown in her anger. It fascinated me. I swallowed hard, taking a moment to weigh my words before I spoke again.
Normally, I didn’t go for chicks like her. She wasn’t my normal type. I grew up in the hood and I had a thing for hood-ass chicks that could be the Bonnie to my Clyde. True shit. My type was the kind of woman who knew how to roll a blunt, help me smoke that shit, and then fuck until we fell asleep. That’s the kind of girl Tami was; in fact, she was rolling a blunt when I met her.
We both grew up in the same hood, were birthed by the same streets. When I came up in the dope game, she was right along with me. I cooked my first pie in her crib and, being that her pops was a low-level hustler back in the day, she told me a lot about the game. We had puppy love. When it was time for work, we worked hard but when it was time to play, we fucked even harder.
Growing up, I always knew that Tami would be my wife because I’d never loved any woman like I loved her. I figured there was no point in wasting time, and I bought her a ring with all that money I’d hustled up. We got married in the courthouse when we were fifteen years old. Our parents happily gave us consent because they didn’t give a damn about what we chose to do with our lives as long as they didn’t have to pay for any of it. I didn’t have a dollar in my pocket and no home to put her in but neither one of us cared. We came from nothing and had nothing but each other. In our young minds, that was enough.
But all that changed when she changed.
The more I made a name in the streets, the more I had to be in them, which left her home alone more than she wanted to be. She started to become suspicious and paranoid, complaining that I was running up in random hoes when I was actually putting in work to build a life for the two of us. Eventually, I got enough of her shit and told her that I needed a break.
During that break, she ended up fuckin’ around with my enemy, a slimy nigga by the name of Dolla. When I heard she got pregnant by him, that shit almost killed me. I would’ve gotten over it but my stash spots started getting robbed and Kale found out that Dolla was behind it. He suggested that Tami was the one giving him all the information he needed about how I ran things in order to come at me, but I couldn’t believe that she would betray me like that.
I put word out that I wanted Dolla dead. My lil’ homies ran up on him while he was in his car one night and lit that shit up with bullets. With the windows tinted, they had no idea that Tami, who was eight months pregnant at the time, was in the car with him.
Something about seeing a baby fighting for her life because of some shit that I’d put into play crushed me. With Tami in a coma, her baby’s father dead, and her baby girl fighting to survive after I called the hit that almost ended her life, there was no one to be there for the baby but me.
Tamiyah was six months old when I was told that Tami would probably never recover from her coma. Since we were still legally married, by law, I was Tamiyah’s father and I happily took on the responsibility. By then, I couldn’t see living my life without my daughter. She wasn’t biologically mine, but I was
the only father that she knew.
Once Tami recovered unexpectedly, she tried to take Tamiyah away from me, said she wanted a new start in a new place, but I wasn’t having that. I moved to Atlanta and bought a house so we could stay under one roof but there was nothing going on between the two of us; we didn’t even share a room.
I was single in my mind, so I acted like a single man. I never brought up getting a divorce to make it legal because no relationship ever became serious enough for me to want to deal with the drama that would follow. Now, with Sage standing in front of me staring with unspoken accusations of my doggish ways in her eyes, I wished I’d gotten all that over with.
“It’s not a lie. I do have a wife but it’s not what you think.”
“Oh my god… not again. Why does this always happen to me?”
She placed her hands over her eyes and blew out a breath.
“I’m not with my wife like that,” I continued on, hoping it would make a difference. “She does her thing and I do mine. The only thing we have between us is a daughter. We got married young on some stupid shit. That’s all.”
My words were met with skeptical eyes, judging and mocking me at the same time.
“Am I supposed to believe that? If you don’t want to be with her, why don’t you get a divorce?”
I raised my arms and laced my fingers together as my palms rested above my head. That was the question everyone asked me.
“I’ve tried to cut ties with her more than a few times. And the next thing that comes out her mouth is how she will move across the country and I’ll never see my daughter again. I’ve never met a woman who I wanted something real with, so that legal shit never mattered.”
“She threatened to move your daughter away from you? Who would do that to her kid? What a miserable bitch!”
I wanted to agree but I knew better than that. Tami and I had our issues but she was my daughter’s mother and, personal shit aside, she was one of my closest friends. I wouldn’t disrespect her.
“She doesn’t have anyone else and she’s scared. I’ve been in her life since before she could walk. We fell in love when we were young and then, when she thought she was losing me, she made a mistake that she could never bounce back from. The threats are her way of trying to make me stay. She thinks that one day, I’ll love her again.”
“Well, will you?”
I leveled with her hazel eyes and spoke with all sincerity.
“Nah.” I shook my head. “Loyalty means everything to me. The second that she proved she wasn’t loyal, everything that I could have felt died. I will always respect her because of our history but I could never go back to someone who would betray me. Ever.”
I watched the beautiful woman in front of me, wondering what was on her mind as she looked down at her feet, thinking to herself. I waited because I knew that once she collected her words, she would share them. She was a woman who didn’t hold much in. She led with her feelings and I picked up on that, even though she tried to play it hard.
“I’m not anybody’s side chick,” she said finally. “I deserve more than that.”
I frowned. “I’m not tryin’ to make you no side chick.”
She gave me a pointed look and I could almost read what was on her mind. How could I say that when only a week ago, I had my finger in her pussy while inking my name on her thigh? As soon as I went there in my head, I felt my manhood swell in my pants. When she dipped her eyes to my bulge, I was caught.
“Make no mistake about it,” I began, speaking honestly. “I want to fuck you. Anybody who says they don’t is a gay ass nigga.”
Somehow, my words were able to soften her up. She bashfully dropped her head and tried to hide the smile curving her lips, but I saw it anyways.
“But I won’t go there with you until I have my shit together. That’s why I told you not to wait for me the other night at the club. I got a lot going on in my life and I don’t want to bring you into that until I get all that together. Until then, I don’t mind bein’ your friend.” I took a step closer to get her attention and then smiled. “I mean, if the offer still stands.”
She rolled her pretty eyes to the sky and then laughed.
“There was never an offer. I told you that I’m not friendly.”
“I can’t tell…” I licked my lips, thinking about the scent of her womanhood on my upper lip after that night at the club. “You may not have asked me to be a friend, but you’ve definitely been acting friendly.”
Another laugh escaped her lips and I smiled at her. I couldn’t ignore the chemistry between us. For a nigga who didn’t like talking, she had me doing a lot of it. It came easy, too, like holding a conversation with her was a natural thing. Right then, I knew she wouldn’t be just any other female to me, and I made up my mind to treat her different than the ones before. Maybe it was a good thing that she had standards and that I wanted to respect them. It would give me the chance to get to know her without sex coming into play.
“What brought you out here? I know you ain’t stop by because you wanted to pull up on a nigga.” I shrugged. “Although I wouldn’t complain. I expected to see you sooner.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh? How did you know you would see me at all after I left the club?”
“God’s been answering my prayers so far when it comes to you,” I replied with a shrug. “I guess I figured He would keep it going.”
The smile that followed could’ve brought a grown-ass man to his knees.
“I was wondering if I could get a consultation with you… on another tattoo,” she said in a quiet voice. She spoke like she was unsure of the words that were escaping from her lips.
My brows shot to the sky. “Word?”
She nodded and gave me a long look before pulling out a folded piece of paper and then unfolded it slowly. Once opened, she held it up to reveal a photo of a phoenix flying out of the flames. I got excited looking at it. The colors, the depth of talent that was needed to create such a work of art… it was a challenge that I was more than ready to accept. I was fully engaged.
“That’s gonna be a long session,” I told her, speaking simply, not allowing my voice to show how amped I was at being able to get the job done. “Where you want it?”
“On my back,” she replied with certainty and a steady tone, like a woman who knew exactly what she wanted. I could respect that.
“When you want to get it done?”
“As soon as you have an opening.”
I looked at my watch. I’d finished my last client for the day and was supposed to be on my way home. Being that Tamiyah was with the sitter because her mama was out hitting the club, I was more than ready to leave, but by the time I got there, she would already be in bed.
“It’s your lucky day,” I told her. “If you don’t mind staying after hours, I got some time to start it tonight. I’ll do the outline and get you on the schedule next week to color it in. Cool?”
She smiled her response and then nodded her head.
“Cool.”
10
Sage
* * *
Ink said that the outline for my tattoo could take a couple of hours.
Was two hours too soon to fall in love with someone? How about one? I couldn’t say whether there was an answer to that but, the facts were, he was only about halfway through outlining it and I felt a way that I had never experienced before. I didn’t want to say it was the ‘L’ word… or maybe it was the ‘L’ word. You know, the other one.
Lust?
I couldn’t be sure but all I knew was I didn’t want the night to end.
“How did you start doing tattoos?”
Hugging the back of the chair with my arms, I looked at the images of his work on the walls while listening to the buzzing sound behind me as Ink outlined the tattoo on my lower back. We had been talking nonstop since he started. About random things, mostly, but I’d enjoyed it. So far, I knew how old he was, where he was from, and how much he loved Atlanta but hated bein
g in the spotlight. He knew about my family’s business and how nervous I was to be running it now that I’d completed my degree. He even knew my favorite things to do and favorite foods to eat. It was small talk, but it felt like it was the beginning of something real.
“I always liked to draw. As a child, my moms would beat my ass for scribbling shit on the walls at the crib.” He chuckled and I joined in, trying to suppress my laughter as much as I could so that I didn’t mess him up. “When I got older, drawing on the walls turned into me spray-painting shit on buildings, signs and streets… I almost got picked up the cops one time after getting caught spraying graffiti. I stopped all that once I started hustling but, when I got locked up, I did tattoos in the pen to pass the time. I was good at the shit and went back to it when I decided to go legit.”
I frowned. “Hustling? You sold drugs?”
Although Ink looked like he knew his way around the streets, I was shocked to hear someone admit something like that in casual conversation.
“Yeah… hell yeah. Growin’ up the way I did, seein’ the things I’ve seen, it’s almost an expectation that you have for your life. I didn’t see any other way. It wasn’t until I had my daughter that I put that shit to rest and started Official Ink.”
That was admirable. My heart swelled and I felt my body respond to his words. A man who loved his daughter enough to sacrifice his normal way of life to take a different and better path? I was impressed. If he could love his child like that, imagine how he could love a woman.
“Why did you go to prison?”
The buzzing behind me stopped for a few seconds before starting up again. I felt like it was a fair question; plus, he was the one who had opened the door for me to ask once he mentioned it. I wanted to know and I didn’t want to assume that his history of selling drugs was the reason for it. However, the longer he delayed in answering me, the more unnerved I felt.
Addicted to You Page 5
