by J Peach
“Ah, fuck!” he said as he felt me releasing all over him. Then his lower body jerked as he came inside of me. “Fuck!” He grunted as he held me to him.
My head lay on his shoulder as I panted, trying to catch my breath.
We both lay there in silence for a minute until his ringing phone interrupted us. I was glad it did because that gave me a reason to leave. I just hoped he stayed on the phone long enough for me to make my getaway.
I pulled him out of me and sat on the seat. “Answer it,” I told him as I grabbed my sports bra and pulled it on.
He pulled the phone out and looked at the screen. It stopped ringing and he looked at me. “Syn, why you playing so hard to get? Why won’t you fuck with me?” He asked.
My mouth opened then closed as I thought about what I was going to say to him. But before I could get my thoughts together his phone rang again.
He looked at the screen and let out a breath. “Give me a sec, i’ight?” He didn’t wait for me to respond as he answered the phone. “What’s up, Chris?” His face turned into a frown. “Fuck, yo give me a minute and I’ll be there, i’ight?”
As I stared at him, I was reminded of the reasons why I couldn’t like Parker. He was a hood. Even though his money was good, I would never go there with him outside of the club.
A hood wasn’t shit. All they wanted to do was make you fall in love with them, which I did, fuck you, did that too. They wanted to get you hooked on that shit, I’m not a crack head, then try to pimp you, I can’t be no one’s hoe but my own.
I doubted Parker was any different. “I gotta go, just pay me the next time you see me,” I told him. I really needed to get away from him because all I could think about was that kiss. My eyes slid to his lips and immediately I wanted to kiss him again.
“Yo, hold on right quick,” he told his caller, then he pressed a button on the phone and looked at me. “Damn, that’s how you gonna do this?” He laughed as he reached in his pocket, pulled out a stack of money and start counting bills. “I’ll give you yo money, Syn. So you ain’t gon’ fuck with me—”
“I did just fuck you,” I took the money from him, not bothering to count it. I slid it into my sports bra. “Thank you, baby, it’s always nice doing business with you.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I’ll catch you later.” I opened the door and quickly left, not even bothering to wait on a response. I was out of the truck and hauling ass to my car.
I grabbed my keys from the driver’s seat where I left them and jumped in. Once the car was started, I quickly pulled off.
When I made it to the highway, I slowed down. My teeth gripped my bottom lip and I tried to erase the kiss from my mind, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how amazing and soft his full lips felt on mine. My head shook, I reached into the ashtray and grabbed the blunt I had rolled earlier. I lit it, I had to get my mind right.
I can’t like Parker.
I had to remind myself of two things. One, because of my mom’s bullshit, when I was younger I’d dated plenty of Parker’s. Two, I didn’t mix business with personal. And the moment I moved things from the club with him, I would’ve been doing just that. Mixing business with personal. Combining the two was never a good thing, which is why Parker never got my real name or the chance to really get to know me outside of club walls.
All he knew was Syn and that’s all he was ever going to know. Who I was outside of Red Light didn’t matter.
Chapter 4
Angel
I pulled into the Color Doors and drove to the back. I parked in front of my place and just sat there. That two and a half hour drive was tiring. Even though I smoked half the blunt filled with loud, my mind wouldn’t stray from Parker. If anything, it only made me horny all over again.
I wanted to call him just to see if we could have a quickie. Instantly, I started laughing at that thought. I didn’t even have his number to call his ass. I turned off my car and leaned back in my seat. My teeth sank into my bottom lip and my eyes rolled before a laugh slipped from my mouth.
“I would actually pay that nigga for his dick this time. And if I was him, I’d charge my ass a lot. My nigga got some good dick,” I talked to no one but myself.
My eyes slid to the mirror and I looked at myself. My eyes were red and low, a smile covered my lips. I had to admit that I was most definitely a beautiful chocolate female. My own eyes stared back at me, slowly causing my smile to leave. No matter how beautiful I thought I was, my eyes never changed. They held nothing but color, they were always void of all emotion when I was alone. I felt so empty.
My phone started to ring, I looked away from the mirror and grabbed it from the passenger seat. Leon’s name popped up on the screen and I rejected the call. I wasn’t about to concern myself with him at that moment when I already knew what he wanted.
Sex.
What other reason would he have to call me at almost six in the morning?
I reached in the backseat, grabbed my duffle bag and got out of the car, making my way to my place. With my keys in my hand, I went to push the key into the hole but the door creaked opened without the use of my key. What the hell? How the hell did this happen? My head tilted to the side as I slowly reached into my bag for my .380. Taking the safety off, I pushed the door open and slowly entered the house.
I stood in the living room quietly for a minute, trying to see if I heard any sounds. The place was completely silent, letting me that know no one was in there. That’s when I flicked on the lights and my heart dropped. My living room was trashed. My couch cushions had been tossed onto the floor. The mail I had on my end tables had also been thrown around and the drawers were hanging open. The lamps that sat on both tables were now gone. My brows rose as I glanced at the fifty inch flat screen TV that was surprisingly still mounted to the wall.
Having seen enough of that area, I quickly ran to my room. My dresser drawers were open, the little jewelry I had sitting in a tray on top of the dresser was gone. The clothes in my closet that were once on hangers lay haphazardly on the floor, but there were a lot of my clothes missing.
“What the fuck?” I yelled to myself as I looked to my other dresser. The forty inch TV that once sat on it was gone. I looked at my bed and saw that the comforter was no longer on it. “No, no, no, please no.” I mumbled to myself as I lifted my mattress. “Oh, my God!” My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach and I felt like I was about to get sick.
The eighteen thousand dollars that I had been saving for the past few months was gone. “No!” I flipped the mattress completely off of the bed, hoping it had only been moved, but the money was gone. “This some fuckin’ bullshit!” I yelled, kicking the bed. As I looked around at the stuff that had been taken, it wasn’t hard to figure out that a crack head broken into my place and took my shit!
As the realization hit me, Kelley, my momma, immediately came to mind. The day I was leaving for Indy, she’d come by asking to borrow some money, money I refused to give her. She knew I wouldn’t give her ass shit, hell, I wouldn’t even let her ass in the house. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t even spit on her if she was on fire.
I realized then that there was really no telling how many times she had probably been in my house while I was gone. “Oh, my God!” I didn’t even care about the little shit that was taken. All I needed back was that money. “I can’t believe this shit!” Tears fell from my eyes. No matter how hard I tried, it seemed like I couldn’t catch a break. I’d worked so hard to do everything for myself only to have shit like that happen to me by the one person who’s supposed to love and care for me.
A laugh left my mouth as more tears fell from my eyes. That bitch didn’t know how to love shit but a pipe. That’s how I got into dancing in the first fuckin’ place, trying to live and take care of the both of us. Doing her fuckin’ job.
Stripping wasn’t something I thought I’d ever get into. But growing up in the projects with a drug addicted mother who would sell me for a hit and an absentee father that I did
n’t know left me no choice. The need for money had become desperate and I knew it was bad when we were threatened to be evicted from the projects.
At fifteen it was hard to find a good job with the fucked up economy, McDonalds wasn’t even trying to hire a bitch. I was desperate. We had less than a month to come up with the money, well, I did. My mom was too far gone in her addiction to care. I’d usually get help from whatever guy I was messing with at the time, but those relationships never lasted.
With my desperate need for money, I quickly became an easy target for those types of hoods. I was fifteen and broke. We were a few weeks away from being evicted and my mother couldn’t keep money. It always found its way into some dealers pocket and then into her veins or nose.
There was one dealer, Martell, he took to me like the others. Only difference with him was he wasn’t a small time slanga. No, Martell had his shit together. He had businesses, one of which was a strip joint called Juicy Peach. He also owned a few Barber Shops in Gary, Hammond, and Crown Point, Indiana as well as a night club out in Chicago, Illinois.
Like the others, though, he wanted something for helping me. So I sucked and fucked him and that turned into yet another failed relationship. After our relationship ended, so did my job. Even though things with Martell didn’t end on good terms, he always looked out for me if I really needed him. But it was never for nothing, that help always came with a price.
Thinking about prices brought my mind back to money. The money that had been stolen from me wasn’t mine, but his. Martell’s. I had been saving that money to pay him back for helping me pay half of my college tuition for the year. He had given me twenty-thousand dollars. I was well on my way to repaying that twenty thousand, all I’d needed to earn was another two thousand more, which I had earned at the club the night before. Martell was expecting the money back later on that day just as I had promised him.
“I gotta get that money. I’m going to kill that bitch!” I didn’t bother trying to clean up my place, I needed to find my momma. I left my room and then left my house. After I locked my doors, I hopped in my car and headed to Delaney projects. If she had my money, that’s where she was and that’s where she had it.
***
I pulled into the run down projects I hated so much. So many memories from my childhood came rushing back. Instantly, my stomach churned and I wished I could forget it all. But I couldn’t and my mind let me know that as it replayed things I wanted so badly to forget.
There had been plenty of times when money ran out and my momma needed her fix. She would always send me to the dealer to get her rocks. Whatever they wanted, no matter how disgusting it was, as long as she got enough to last her for the day, I had to do it.
I was nine the first time she made me have sex for a hit. She came and got me from school one day and told my teachers she was taking me out for lunch. I remembered it like it happened yesterday. There was a blue truck waiting for us when we walked out of the school. Before we made it to the truck, she stopped us in the middle of the walkway and squatted down in front of me. Her shaky hands stroked the sides of my face as she tried to give me a faint smile. My momma was never nice to me, so for her to try and form a smile made me feel like something bad was going to happen.
My momma expressed how she was sick and going to die without her medicine. She said she needed me to do her a favor, but I had to be a big girl. She said I had to do whatever the man asked me to, otherwise he wasn’t going to give her the medicine she needed and she was going to die.
Regardless of how bad off my mother was, she was still my momma and at nine years old I didn’t want her to die. I told her I would do what he wanted. That was the first time I remembered her ever saying she loved me.
It wasn’t until after we got into the truck that I saw Mark. He was a heavyset, brown skin man that sold drugs in the projects. My momma sat in the front with him, whispering to him as he drove us away from the school. I couldn’t make out what she was saying due to the radio and I really wasn’t paying attention.
We ended up in an alley surrounded by a lot of abandoned houses. My momma stayed in the front seat and Mark came and got in the back with me. Once the door was closed, he asked me to take off my jeans. I looked at my momma, she smiled at me and said, “It’s going to be okay, it’ll only hurt for a second.”
Scared couldn’t begin to describe how I felt, but I remembered that if I didn’t do what I was told, she was going to die. I didn’t want her to die so I did what he asked me to. I took off my pants and he helped me with my underclothes. Once I was undressed, he sat me in his lap before he passed my momma a baggie with some powder in it.
That was the first time she sold me for a hit, but it damn sure wasn’t the last. After that, I started to despise her and I no longer looked at her as my mother. She was Kelley to me, someone I hated. From then on, I wished and prayed that the next time she needed her medicine she actually did die.
Sitting in my car, my head shook as I tried to clear my mind of those thoughts. Then I drove to the circle and parked a few houses down from Smoke’s spot. I got out of the car and made my way to his house. I knew my search wouldn’t be hard because everyone knew who Kelley was.
Like most crack heads, she needed her fix and she would rob you with the quickness then start a hustle with your shit for her next hit. Bitch would even try to sell yo shit back to you. I knew she would do it from personal experience because she’d done it to me a hundred times over. That’s why it didn’t surprise me when I realized she was the one that had robbed me.
Now, her finding my money was a first because I usually didn’t keep it in the house. I always had my money in the bank. This time, though, with me working two different jobs and going to school, I didn’t have time to make a bank run so keeping it at home was convenient. Plus, it wasn’t going to be there long. However, it was there long enough for her to find it and steal it. I was fuming.
I knocked on Smoke’s door hard, as if I was the police. His screen door rattled loudly as I hit it with the palm of my hand. Suddenly, the house door swung open and a pissed off looking Smoke pushed the screen door open.
“Why the fuck you beating on the door like you fuckin’ stupid? What the fuck do you want?” He snapped at me.
“Smoke, don’t fuckin’ yell at me,” I pushed past him and walked into his house.
“Angel, what the fuck you want?” He flopped down on the couch, pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it.
“Have you seen Kelley’s ass around here lately?” I asked him, pacing around his living room. I knew he didn’t have no damn fiends in the house, but he knew where their asses would be.
“Slick Kell? Yeah, her crazy ass been out here. Shid, she was at the spot with the rest of them fiends. Why, what’s up?” He asked, getting comfortable in his spot.
I knew that bitch was out there. “Can you come take me to the spot, please?” I knew for a fact that those crack heads moved from one abandoned house to the next every other week. I didn’t have time to be searching all over to find it.
Smoke let out a heavy breath.
“Fuck it, Smoke, just tell me where the fuck it’s at. I need to find her ass before she leave again.” I was starting to get even more pissed off.
“Damn, chill. I’m fuckin’ with you. I’ll take you, come on.” He got up and led us to the door. “What she do to you?” He asked as we walked out the house.
“That little bitch broke into my fuckin’ house and took my shit,” I snapped, not intentionally meaning to fuss at him, but I was pissed that the bitch took my money.
“Damn, how you know it was her?” He grabbed my arm and pulled me into the opposite direction.
I had started to walk ahead of him and didn’t know where I was going. “Because before I left she came to my house asking for some money and I told her no. I didn’t have shit for her ass. I get back this morning, my front door was open, my clothes and shit gone. I knew it was a fuckin’ crack head because the bitch
stole my lamps. Any other thief going for expensive shit. Her ass did snatch my TV from my dresser though, but other than that, nothing else expensive. I swear, Smoke, I’m about to kill her ass. And she stole my damn money!” I ranted to him as I started to speed walk past him once again. “Where the hell is the house?” We hadn’t been walking that long, but I was becoming impatient.
“Right here,” he pointed to the brick house. I started to walk towards it but he stopped me. “She ain’t in there, tho’,” he pointed toward the courts.
Sure enough, there stood Kelley surrounded by a few males and females. A duffle bag hung from her shoulders, opened. She pulled out a shirt and was showing it to a girl. That bitch had lost her whole fuckin’ mind. I took off running towards her.
“Kelley!” I yelled at her as I made it close to where she stood.
She looked at me with wide eyes before she snatched the shirt from the girl and stuffed it back in her bag. “Hey, baby. I’ve been looking for you,” she smiled wide, showing off her yellow teeth.
I punched her straight in the nose. “Don’t fuckin’ baby me, Kelley! Give me my shit. Every fuckin’ thing you took from my house, give it to me now!” I snatched the duffle bag from her and opened it. All my clothes were in there, but I wasn’t bothered with that. I pulled everything out the bag looking for my money, it was the only thing that mattered.
It wasn’t there. “Kelley, where is my money?” My hands shook as I stared at her.
“Bitch, you gon’ hit me? I’ll fuck yo little black ass up out here,” she yelled at me. “You disrespectful little hoe! I ain’t got yo shit and if I did yo ass ain’t getting it. Bitch, that’s my back support for taking care of yo ungrateful ass,” she said as if she really believed a child was supposed to reimburse its mother. “Little black bitch,” she touched her nose with the back of her hand, catching the blood from running into her mouth. “Oh, you made me bleed? I should beat yo ass.” She looked at me as if she really wanted to hurt me. “Angel, you better get yo ass on home now.” She waved me off and made a grab for the duffle bag.
