“Then one day a teacher of mine showed me that I could get all of the things I wanted without selling drugs. There was another side of the coin; one that I had never been exposed to. And as long as I stopped thinking that this was the only world for me, I could get away from it.
“And then one day my brother destroyed it,” he said, not speaking as if he was describing the loss of a dream, but just the facts of a story. “He had me start selling drugs at my new school and once I became the school’s drug dealer that dream ended.”
Vanessa looked at him sharply. “He was the one that had you do that?”
He looked at her then. “Remember those bruises that I always had?”
“Oh my God…” The black eyes, neck bruises, swollen lip…
He shrugged. “I got my ass kicked more times than I want to recount. But the reason that I’m still a drug dealer has nothing to do with Tino.” She grew quiet. “It has to do with my brothers and sisters. Vanessa do you have any idea where my brothers and sisters are?”
She shook her head fearfully because this tragic tale of Scotty’s life was hard for her to hear. In her innocence she had never conceived of what he’d had to endure in order to be that unmoving force that seemed to always be in her corner while no one had been in his.
“They’re all living together with my sister’s grandmother.” He slowly took her hand again, touching her for the first time since he began his tale. “About a year after you left, my mother took a turn for the worse.” He wouldn’t detail his mother’s drug addiction and illness that would eventually lead to the discovery that she had contracted the AIDS virus. His mother had always been too strung-out to care for any of them and suddenly she was not able to even care for herself. The state had informed her that they had a place for her to recover and asked if there was someone that could take her children…
“It was only a matter of time before we would be placed in foster care. There’s too many of us to keep together so we would have all been separated. ” He couldn’t imagine Erica and Elijah not being together. They were twins and as much as they fought, they were each other’s best friends. And poor Ginger couldn’t be taken away from everything that was familiar to her; brothers and sisters—and even a horrible home, because that was still all she knew. She would never come back from that and because she was just the autistic child of a junky prostitute nobody would care.
“So I went to visit my sister Beady’s grandmother. I asked her if she would take my little brother Tyrone who was also her grandson and she agreed. Then I asked her if she would take Ginger but she said no.” He stopped talking. “So I begged her. I begged her to take us all and I promised that I would take care of everyone and that she wouldn’t have to spend any money on us because I would take care of that too.”
Vanessa felt her eyes sting and she had to force herself not to cry. She was haunted by the fact that she had been safely with her grandmother while Scotty had needed her, while he was trying to figure out where to live. She bitterly cursed the death of her mother once again, but this time not for her own loss but for the loss of what could have been.
Scotty looked out into the distance as if he was reliving the events of the past. “She didn’t believe that I could do it.” He met her eyes and they were unflinching. “But the next week I brought her enough money so that she couldn’t say no.”
Vanessa wanted to shake her head in denial at what he was insinuating. “Scotty are you saying-”
He looked at her and his expression was hollow. “I became a drug dealer so that I could give it to her to take the kids.” He shrugged. “She already had guardianship of Beady so it was just a matter of her putting in a request to take custody of all of us.”
“That’s horrible, Scotty! I can’t believe that this woman allowed you to go out like that just for her own greed!”
He shook his head. “No…it wasn’t like that. She literally couldn’t take us all on. She only lived in a 2-bedroom apartment and was on a fixed income. Taking Tyrone would have been a financial and physical burden but what I asked would have been impossible. So I had to make a way. It wasn’t Miss Gloria that took care of us. It was me that took care of her and them.”
She squeezed his hand letting him know that she understood. He had been stuck in a situation that had caused him to make a huge sacrifice. She did get it…yet this was the type of thing that sent people away for years, regardless of the motive.
“By the time she got guardianship of us all she had enough money to rent a house. Phonso and I were also under her guardianship—at least on paper, but we stayed in Winton Terrace. We stayed where the money was.” To Scotty there was no right or wrong; there was just reality. Miss Gloria needed the money and his siblings needed a place so he made sure they got it. “When I got busted Phonso kept it going.”
Vanessa mulled over his words as they walked hand in hand, approaching the party once again. Having lost so much in her life she understood the lengths one would go through to preserve their family, but there was something that she just had to ask. “And are you going to stop?” Is this the life he wanted to lead?
He stopped walking. “Vanessa, I don’t want to be this person. I don’t do drugs, I don’t like drugs…” he didn’t even like being around the shit. Drugs had destroyed his mother and had turned his brother into the devil. “But this is the only way that I know to take care of us.” He stared into her eyes and she looked away. “Vanessa, this is not my life, okay? I won’t do this forever. But I have a lot of people to take care of. If I stop right now then Beady is the only one that’s safe; she’s graduated and in college—which she pays for, not me. But there’s still Erica, EJ, Ginger, Ty and now Miss Gloria.” He pointed to himself. “I’m not even twenty-one. I don’t know how else to take care of them all!”
“Scotty!” She said sternly. “You will go to jail. This will not last. Period. I’ve only been back here one day and I can already see that everybody knows you, Scotty. They know what you do. They know who to go to in order to get what they want-“
“Vanessa-“
“If you get busted now we’re talking prison, not just juvie-!”
“Baby, listen to me.” She stopped and swallowed back tears that threatened to spill from her eyes. “I’m not addicted to this life. I’m not going to be a forty-year old hustler! I have a plan.” He looked at the people close to them and inhaled a deep breath and then quieted his voice. “I have a plan for my future. And it’s not this.”
After a long while she nodded, filled with conflicting emotions. Was she asking him to sacrifice his family? Was there anything in the world that would force her to sacrifice hers? All she knew is that she didn’t want this life for Scotty and as much as she wanted to be with him, she didn’t want it to be a part of hers. She cared about him…she more than just cared about him. But she felt sure that as long as he made a life in this dangerous world that he would only end up another victim. She just didn’t think she had it in her to watch someone else that she loved end up another victim of the streets.
Scotty took both of her hands and turned her until she reluctantly looked at him. “Vanessa, please don’t give up on me. I want more than this. I want to be more than this. I know that we are probably a million miles apart right now. But there is something that connects me to you that I have always felt. I don’t know another person on this earth that makes me feel the way you do. I’m not a knight in shining armor but I want to take care of you, I want to be there whenever you feel lonely, whenever you’re afraid. I want to …” His voice had been coming in a rush and he paused and slowed down. “I just want to love you. Can I just love you? I just want to have something for once in my life-”
She couldn’t take it any longer. She needed to be in his arms. She needed to hold him and to show him that she got it, that she knew that this wasn’t what he wanted to be. She swung her arms around his neck and held him close.
Scotty closed his eyes and inhaled her clean fragrance. His
arms went around her and he held her as close as he could. Vanessa was hope and promises and everything that he had nearly forgotten that he had wanted to achieve.
The tears finally spilled from her eyes and she kissed him. Not her first kiss, not even her second, but the only one that had ever made her dissolve into a puddle of raw emotions. When Scotty’s tongue swept across her lips she screamed internally, although only a whimper escaped her. She pulled his head to hers and then parted her lips hoping that his tongue would slip between hers…and it did!
Scotty shuddered and then pulled back slowly, breaking the kiss. “Vanessa…” He placed his hands on her shoulders and urged her back. He had never wanted to take a woman as much as he wanted to in this very second and he didn’t know if he could control that. Vanessa didn’t need to think that his interest in her was only about fulfilling a sexual need. True, he needed her, but on so many more levels than just sex.
Vanessa felt drunk from that kiss. It was the only way that she could describe it because she had never felt anything like it. She could not have imagined that placing her lips on someone would send sensations spiraling through her body like electrical jolts. If Scotty’s hands weren’t firmly on her shoulders then she thought that she just might have slipped to the ground in a boneless mass of nerve endings.
He loved the look on her face; hooded eyes, parted lips. He wanted to see such a look on her face each and every morning. When he felt calm enough to do so, he placed his arm around her shoulders and they walked back to the party.
She looked at him, needing to ask one last question but afraid to do so.
“What about Tino?”
Scotty took a long time to answer. “I have no idea. I haven’t seen him since the last night that I saw you.” He looked at her and there was a chill to his grey blue eyes. Every person had a certain expression that you never wanted to see cross his face and this was Scotty’s look. “We fought. I won. He was told to leave and to never come back.”
She relaxed again, knowing that she would probably not ever have to see him again. And then she smiled to herself because she was here with Scotty and for a moment everything was perfect.
He felt the tension leave her body, which caused it to leave his own. “Let’s go back and tell your friends that we’re going to split. We can get some dinner because I haven’t eaten yet,” he smiled at her, “plus I’m dying to see your hair flying in my convertible.”
She suddenly remembered something and gave him a pointed look, which caught him off guard. Uh oh… “Oh yeah, who was that girl riding in your car yesterday?”
He suppressed a chuckle. She was cute as hell when she was trying not to look jealous. “You saw that?” She tried not to frown but couldn’t help it. If he thought that she was going to take a number in line behind any other girl then he had another thing coming! “That was just Erica.”
Who in the hell was Erica, she wondered hotly.
“My sister, Erica. She was visiting some friends and I picked her up to take her back home.”
“Oh,” she said feeling foolish. But she would have to let him know that she wasn’t wired like that and-
“Vanessa,” he said, his voice low but firm. “Let me make something very clear. I want you—and only you, as my girlfriend, my woman, my partner…my lover. Okay?” He waited tensely for her to agree.
She bit her bottom lip lightly. There was no choice in the matter. This was everything that she had always wanted and she could only go forward. “Okay.” She grinned. “Okay.”
Chapter 23
~2 months later~
“What are you waiting for?!” Jalissa hollered.
“Him.” Vanessa replied. The girls were in Jalissa’s bedroom, sitting Indian style on the bed. Aunt Callista was grocery shopping and they had the apartment to themselves.
“Just tell him that you want to do it!”
“Shhh!”
“Nobody’s here.”
Vanessa sighed tensely. “I’m not going to tell him that I want to do it. He already knows.”
Jalissa smirked and leaned forward. “Ooo! Y’all be messing, don’t y’all?!”
Vanessa blushed. Jalissa always wanted to talk about sex…well fucking. But for Vanessa, what her cousin described was far from what she experienced with Scotty. They hadn’t made love—well not really. But sometimes her body would explode when they kissed. And whenever he pushed against her she felt him—it. She wanted to touch it but she was scared. She wanted to see it although she knew what one looked like. She’d seen Mr. Johnny’s, of course his was more than likely a different color than Scotty’s…Vanessa blushed again.
“I mean…we mess around, but he stops when it starts getting really…intense.” She twisted a strand of hair nervously and tried to control the heat rising in her cheeks. Once Scotty knew that she was a virgin, it had pretty much sealed her virginal fate.
“Okay, I’m going to tell you what I think. I’m pretty sure that he wants to wait until my eighteenth birthday so that he can make it like this romantic celebration. You know he has all of these secret plans for my birthday that he won’t tell me about, but I’m pretty positive that’s on the list.” She gnawed her lip as her eyes lit up. “I also think that he has something else planned. I think he’s going to propose to me on my birthday…”
Jalissa jumped up off the bed and squealed happily.
“Stop!” Vanessa laughed. “He hasn’t asked me yet! What I’m thinking is that he wants to make it into a romantic encounter where he takes my virginity as I become promised to him.” Her voice had taken on a dreamy tone.
Jalissa bounced back down on the bed. “But did he do or say something that made you think it? Because he could just ask you now—ugh! Why does he have to wait?!”
She laughed at her cousin. “What do you mean wait?! Girl we’ve only been dating for two months!”
Jalissa rolled her eyes. If you counted the years that they had been crushing on each other then technically they already had years invested in their relationship. Jalissa’s new big desire was to be a part of a big beautiful wedding where she was the maid of honor. She was already mentally planning it. She wanted an all white wedding with Vanessa in a big white dress. She wanted the ladies in waiting—their gang of course, all wearing black catsuits—that part she would have to probably talk Vanessa into, but it would be like a fairy tale. They could do The Hustle down the aisle! She just hoped that they could wait until after she had her baby.
In the past Jalissa had often times been jealous of Vanessa, but not any longer. Her cousin was a little on the jive side. Long hair was something that she could weave onto her head and she preferred her thick body to Vanessa’s any day. Besides, even though she was happy that Vanessa and Scotty had finally hooked up, he was still a simple-ass white boy.
“He did kind of make some hints,” Vanessa continued, leaning in close to Jalissa. “One day we were just sitting on his couch watching television; hugged all up on each other,” she smiled to herself. “And he started talking about how nice it was going to be when we could do this every single day. And then he just kind of stopped. I said, ‘Everyday?’ and he said, ‘That’s the plan.’” Jalissa clasped her hands in excitement.
“Oh my God…you are getting engaged on your birthday!” Jalissa concurred and then her smile fell away as reality set in. “You’re about to marry a drug dealer. Cuz…you sure about this?”
Vanessa fell back on the bed and looked at the ceiling. It was one thing when she was Scotty’s girlfriend, but she wouldn’t be the wife of a drug dealer. For that she already had an idea, but she couldn’t share it with Jalissa just yet. It involved her trust fund and that is something that she had never even told Jalissa about.
“Don’t worry J, I don’t plan on marrying a drug dealer.”
Jalissa was just about to ask her if she was going to make him get out of the business when they heard the front door open and aunt Callista yelled up the stairs for them to help her with the groceries
. They went downstairs and helped put everything away while Callista began a familiar complaint about how much money it cost for hamburger meat, and how broke she was, and how she didn’t know what she was going to do when the baby came.
Vanessa decided that she would tell her aunt what her plans were with some of her money, without telling her directly about the trust fund. “Aunt Callista, I can help out some. My mama left me some money that I can get when I turn eighteen.”
Callista gave her a wide-eyed, innocent look and suddenly Vanessa knew without a shadow of a doubt that her aunt had already known about the trust.
Jalissa just smiled at Vanessa in appreciation but shook her head. “I just want you to be my baby’s godmother. We don’t need anything else-“
Callista quickly began talking over her daughter. “Oh honey, that would help out so much! You don’t know what a relief it is not to have to worry about these things.” Her eyes swung to Jalissa as if they could throw darts at her. “This girl has no idea how expensive a baby can be. That little bit of a check that Jalissa gets ain’t good for nothing! And the baby daddy ain’t shit.” Jalissa was staring at her mother like she was crazier than normal. “I just don’t want my grandbaby going without like the rest of these little babies in the projects.”
Jalissa looked confused. “Mom, we don’t really need any-“
“We need a better place to live!” Jalissa rolled her eyes and put the cereal in the pantry. “Vanessa…I hate to ask,” aunt Callista said, “but do you think you could help us out with a bit of money so that we can move out of here? Girl this area has gotten so dangerous! This is no place for the baby, and we really should move out before the baby comes-“
Vanessa’s mouth parted as she tried to find the words to explain. “I can’t touch the money until I turn eighteen. Only my grandmother can because she’s my guardian. And well…you know how she can be…”
Scandalous Heroes Box Set Page 53
