by Noire
She turned around and looked down and saw the flower girl of the wedding. She was a gorgeous little four-year-old and she was offering Jewelz a single long-stemmed white lily and a folded piece of a napkin.
“This is for you,” the little girl said shyly. Her pretty hazel eyes were big and round in her cinnamon-brown face, and suddenly Jewelz’s breath caught in the back of her throat.
“Thank you,” she whispered as she accepted both items from the little girl and quickly turned away. Rage burned through her damn blood. She had made a big mistake coming here. A big fuckin mistake!
With her head held down she gripped the lily in her fist and pushed through the crowd of happy people like all hell was scorching the back of her neck. Jewelz didn’t stop and she didn’t look up until she got to the church door, and then she burst out into the sunshine and allowed the tears to spill freely from her eyes.
$$$$$
Back in her high-rise hotel room in midtown Manhattan, Jewelz sipped from a glass of wine and stared down at the crumpled napkin in her hand. The words that had been written on it in black ink stared right back at her.
Although her past had been totally fucked up, Jewelz had done a lot with her life over the last five years. After claiming victory over cancer and triumphing once again, she had become reflective about the world around her and her purpose in the universe. It took a lot of time and self-discovery for her to not only let go of what had been done to her, but to also come to terms with the harm that she had done to others as well.
Jewelz thought a lot about her mother during that time, and she grieved for the woman she had never known in a way that she had never even thought was possible. Her mother might not’a been able to give her much during their brief time together, but she had made damn sure that her baby girl would always have her own dreams. And Jewelz had decided that there was no time like the present to start dreaming as big as she possibly could.
So she had gone back to school and gotten her GED, and then enrolled in community college where she graduated with an associate degree in computer science. She had a lot of lost time to make up for, so she figured why stop there? She had applied to NYU, and when she got accepted she majored in counseling so she could help other young girls who were scarred from living a life of pure hell just like hers had been.
Thanks to her days of rolling with the Zip ’em up Crew, Jewelz had stacked plenty of money in her safe and she didn’t need no regular nine-to-five. After thinking it over, she had decided to start her life all over again and keep it brand new.
Refusing to look back, Jewelz had moved out of the city and taken a job upstate as a youth counselor for victims of sexual trafficking. Five days a week she shared her testimony of struggle and triumph with vulnerable girls in the Empire State whose young bodies had been tricked out and their tender minds victimized, just like hers had been.
Taking a big sip from her wineglass, Jewelz stared down at the napkin she held in her hand. Twice she had balled that shit up and tossed it in the hotel garbage can. And twice she had changed her mind and dug it right back out again.
It took her a good minute, but she had finally unfolded the napkin and read what was written on it. She read the simple words over and over again, and when it was all said and done she had decided to go.
Old habits died hard, and the next afternoon she left Manhattan and drove through the old Brooklyn neighborhood with her eyes on scan. The streets were still the streets. Static could pop off at anytime so Jewelz stayed strapped.
She pulled into Brooklyn’s Canarsie pier and drove toward the ocean. Moments later she spotted him in the last row of the parking lot leaning against the bumper of his freshly waxed SUV. He looked like a boss in his Balmain outfit and kicks. Immediately her blood got heated and her lip poked out. Wearing her bitch face, Jewelz pulled into a spot about five cars away from him and then cut off her engine and stepped out looking stacked and sexy in her Brunella Cucinelli hip hugging summer dress that was straight from Neiman’s.
Cancer had slowed her roll but it hadn’t stopped her show. With her head on straight and a clean bill of health, once again her frame was curved and banging and her hair was long and thick.
Jewelz looked over at him and her heart thudded in her chest. It had been five long years since the last time she’d seen him and he definitely looked older and wiser and finer than ever before.
“Jewelz.” He flashed her that handsome crooked smile and said her name like it was a melody in a song that he had practiced singing every day.
“What?” she blurted out, her eyes cutting into him coldly as the memory of his betrayal rushed up in her throat.
The last time they were together she had cursed him out in a hospital room on Staten Island, just a few hours after she had zipped up Handgun Goody. Slick had walked into her intensive care room and cried real tears for the first time since that long ago day at his family’s funeral.
Clutching Jewelz’s hand he had begged for her forgiveness. He had told her just how wrong he had been, and promised that he would spend the rest of his life making it up to her.
But Jewelz wasn’t trying to hear none of that shit. She had been so beaten down and sick and outta her mind with rage and grief that she had cursed him out and threatened to have the nurses call the cops on him.
And now, Slick’s intense brown eyes stayed steady on her as they both stood there remembering the past. The passion in his gaze ate her up from head to toe like he was a starving man looking at an all-you-can-eat buffet. And then finally he spoke.
“What’s good, Miss Lady?”
His voice was smooth and sure, and all Jewelz could do was nod in response. About a year after she had cursed him out in that hospital room she had started receiving all kinds of stuff in the mail.
Expensive stuff. Jewelry, designer clothes, books, and even airline tickets to some of the faraway places that she had always dreamed of seeing. Slick had never put his name on none of it, but he didn’t have to. The packages came from an address in Switzerland, and they were full of all the fancy shit that she had fantasized about having when they were kids.
About six months after that his letters had started coming in the mail and they had really fucked her up. The handwritten notes had laid her heart wide open because they were filled with all the love that she had always wanted from him. The love she had always dreamed that he would give her from the heart.
“I wasn’t sure if you were gonna show up today,” Slick finally said, breaking the silence. “I really appreciate you for giving me this chance.”
“Oh, really?” Jewelz snapped. “Giving you a chance for what?”
Outta all the foul shit that had happened in her life, the one thing that had hurt her above all else was the look on Slick’s face the day he told her to get the fuck outta his crib. Jewelz had cried rivers of tears over the memory of the bitter words he had spoken to her that day, and even after five long years she still wasn’t over that shit.
Slick accepted her outburst without reacting. He knew what she was going through and he stood by patiently. Giving her a chance to work it out in her own way. Then finally he took a step forward and answered her.
“I want a chance to make shit right, Jewelz. A chance to show and prove what you mean to me, and what I’ve always had in my heart for you. I swear to God I never meant to hurt you. I was fighting real hard against my feelings all those years, and if I had just been honest with myself that night on Fulton Street I never woulda—”
“Nigga, please!” Jewelz smirked and crossed her arms over her breasts. “You can sing that bullshit song to somebody else because my shit is straight! I survived, Slick! It’s been five damn years, baby! Yeah, you shit on me over that lying bitch, but I took all your lil punches, rolled wit’em, and got right back up on my feet!”
He nodded quietly. “I know. You’ve always been strong like that, Jewelz.”
“Damn right. Because I always had to be!”
“But you don
’t anymore,” he said. “I’m here for you now. I’ve been trying to be here for you for the last five years! You were right that time when you said people change. I changed! I didn’t come back here for Wild Man, baby. I came back to this country for you! I came back to get you, Jewelz. So I can make all your dreams come true. I came back to take you with me to the place you always wanted to be! I came back so I could tell you right to your face that the only woman I ever wanna be with in this whole fuckin world is you!”
Jewelz smirked and shook her head. “Nope. I’m not feeling none of what you’re saying. It’s too much, Slick. And it’s too late.”
“Nah,” he said calmly. “It ain’t never too late. When Wild Man told me you were coming to his wedding all I could think about was seeing you. Like I told you in all them letters I wrote, I was wrong as hell about everything back then. And you were right. I did wrong and you did right. I shoulda listened to you, Jewelz. I shoulda believed you and trusted your word the way you always trusted mine. I get that now. And I’m sorry, baby. All those years I was scared to let you get too close to me, and for the past five years the only thing I could think about was what in the world I could do to get myself closer to you.”
Jewelz shook her head and smirked. “You really expect me to just trust you now, Slick? You think I’m that damn stupid? It sounds like you’re the one who’s living in the past now!”
His eyes stayed strong and steady on hers as he walked up on her and took her in his arms. He pulled her rigid body close to his hard chest and laid his cheek down on the top of her head.
“I know I hurt you, baby,” he said quietly. “And I apologize. But I can make it up to you, Jewelz. Let me make it up to you. Let me be that dude you need me to be. That dude you used to share your dreams with in the back of the closet and way up under the bed. That dude you know you can trust and lean on. I swear to God I’ll never let you down again. I swear on my mother. On our mother. I’m gonna make sure you dream forever baby. And that’s word.”
Jewelz pulled away from him. She stared down at the ground as the tears fell from her eyes. So much had happened between them. There was so much fuckin shit. So much pain, so much anger… and there was still so much…love.
Jewelz was caught up in her feelings. She had been loving on this nigga since before she could spell her own damn name. Lil Slick was the only man she had ever truly cared about. He was the only man her tender heart had ever ached for. But still. He had done her wrong and the pain... Oh, the mothafucking pain!
Slick reached out and pulled her close again, and this time she pressed her face to his chest and allowed herself to inhale his familiar scent. He smelled just like a Thunder Cats cartoon and those buttery grits his mother used to cook in the projects on Saturday mornings.
Slick lifted her chin with his finger and Jewelz sighed as she stared up at him. That cut on his cheek was now just a faded memory. His warm lips found hers and he kissed her with the need of a hungry man. His tongue was strong and probing. It found her need and ignited it into a raging flame.
“I love you, Jewelz,” Slick murmured. “I been loving you ever since I was a tyke, girl. And I’ma always love you. I promise you that won’t nothing in the world ever come between us again. You got my whole heart, baby. Believe that. My whole fuckin heart.”
Jewelz didn’t answer. Instead, she pulled away from him again and looked out at the waves as they lapped back and forth against the pier. This world was stranger than a muthafucka, she thought as she followed the path of the frothy water with her eyes. It was crazy how the same water that washed out to sea was the same damn water that eventually came right back home to kiss the shores.
And what was even crazier was how nobody had to tell that water to come back home. It came home because it was supposed to. Because it was meant to.
“Let me ask you something,” she gazed at Slick with a burning look and said, “Did you really kill that baby who was in the car with Hammerhead Goody that night?”
Slick stared at her with something unreadable in his eyes. And then he finally opened his mouth and said quietly, “No. I didn’t. Did you smoke Handgun Goody’s mother that night?”
Jewelz smirked. “I already told you. I gave that old lady exactly what she deserved.”
“Yeah? And what was that?”
“A hug. I gave her a hug.”
Ignoring Slick’s look of surprise, Jewelz walked over to his whip and peered into the open window of the backseat. The gorgeous little girl with the hazel eyes sat there playing with a chocolate-skinned doll baby who had a huge head and two long thick braids.
Jewelz smiled.
“Hi, Ma-Ma. You’re the pretty little angel who gave me that beautiful flower yesterday, right?”
The child nodded and grinned, and the distinctive features staring back at Jewelz hit her like a brick.
Suddenly it felt like a butcher knife was twisting in her gut. She glanced over at Slick, then looked back down at the little girl. Those hazel eyes on her were a cold reminder of all the shit that had gone bad between them. They were a reminder of all the pain, all the betrayal, all the heartache, and all the grief. Those eyes were a reminder of the love that had been stolen from her, and of every single good thing in life that she had missed out on.
But there was such brightness in those eyes. Such pure damn innocence that Jewelz found herself smiling and she couldn’t tear her gaze away. Maybe she could dream again. Maybe she didn’t have to miss out on anything after all. Maybe everything that she had ever wanted, she could still have it. Hell, it was all right here. Waiting just for her.
Jewelz grinned down at the little girl and leaned in closer to the window.
“Do you like the ocean?”
The child nodded again and suddenly the color of her eyes seemed so sweet and beautiful.
“You wanna walk down to the shore with me and put your feet in some of those pretty white waves?”
The little girl gave her another shy nod and Jewelz opened the car door and unbuckled her from the car seat.
“I like your cute purple dress,” Jewelz complimented her as she held out her hand and helped the little girl get outta the car. She reached out and touched the pink and purple bows that held the child’s curly ponytails in place.
“What’s your name, Ma-Ma?” Jewelz asked softly as the two of them walked past Slick holding hands and swinging their arms back and forth.
The child with the pretty eyes grinned real wide as she looked up at her.
“My name is Diamond Ruby Emerald Amethyst Moonstone Sapphire Williams,” the little girl said proudly. “But my Daddy calls me Jewelz.”
ALWAYS Follow Your DREAMS!
One Love, Noire & Reem Raw
THE END
Did you enjoy this movie in a book?
Then get your free download of
A Noire Original
ALTERNATE ENDING
to
EMPIRE STATE of MINE$!
Instructions:
1) E-mail a copy of your receipts for all 5 episodes of Empire State of Mine$! to [email protected]
2) When the Alternate Ending drops, we will send a link to your e-mail address
3) Click on the link and share the message on social media to get your copy of the Alternate Ending!
“I just finished reading Empire State of Mine$! by Noire and Reem Raw and it was dope! Highly recommended! Pick up your copy of this movie in a book today!”
