by La Jill Hunt
“Thirsty much?” Sierra teased. “And where the hell have you been? We were swamped out here ten minutes ago.”
“I was in the back taking care of paperwork. You know it’s almost the end of the month,” he replied.
“Well, you can go right on back there and finish taking care of it. We got this out here.” Sierra rolled her eyes at him.
A moment later, the guy walked up and stood right in front of me and held out a cracked iPhone. “Do you guys fix screens? My phone isn’t insured, and my homeboy told me I could bring it here.”
I looked at the severely cracked phone and said, “We do. Wow, what did you do? Throw this?”
He laughed, and I glanced up. Our eyes met, and I was caught off guard by how he was looking at me. He had the prettiest teeth and sexiest smile I had ever seen.
“Yeah, something like that. I was watching the game, and I guess I got carried away when my team won.”
“Well, I would hate to see what would’ve happened if they lost,” Sierra told him.
“Let’s just say it’s a good thing they didn’t,” the guy said then asked me, “So, can you fix it?”
“I can’t fix it, but we have a technician who can. This phone is really damaged, though. How long have you had it?” I kept looking at the phone.
“About two years,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to upgrade, but haven’t had the time, I guess.”
“Well, I can go ahead and help you with that,” Dante offered.
“Nah, I think I’ll just get it fixed for now, and then get the new Samsung when it comes out next month. Don’t you think that’s a better idea?” His eyes never left mine.
“Well, I’m an Apple girl myself, so I’m a little biased.” I shrugged, trying not to seem intimidated by his stare, which I was. “You don’t like your iPhone?”
“I do, but I was just considering trying something a little different, that’s all. Sometimes you gotta change it up. Know what I mean?”
“I definitely know what you mean,” Dante said as he reached for the phone that I was holding. “Change is always good. I have a Samsung myself, and I love it.”
The guy looked over at him and said, “She has a point, Team Apple has been working fine for me.”
“Good choice.” Sierra laughed, and Dante rolled his eyes at her as he walked off.
“Our technician is booked for the day, so you’d have to leave it until tomorrow evening,” I told him.
“Damn, I can’t go that long without a phone.” He exhaled. “You got a loaner phone I can use in the meantime?”
“I’m sorry, we don’t. Do you have an old phone maybe you can use until we get this one fixed for you?” I suggested as I finally stopped looking at his sexy face to notice his fly outfit. There was no doubt about it; this dude had swag, from the red Polo sweater to the jeans he wore that fit him perfectly—not too tight, not too baggy, and damn sure not falling off his ass. His hair was thick, wavy, and cut into a nice fade, and his thick beard was well groomed.
“You know what? I do. I forgot all about that phone. Thanks.”
“No problem. Let me go ahead and get some information from you, and we’ll get you squared away,” I said. I pulled up the customer information screen on my computer and asked him for his phone number. At first, he didn’t answer. I looked up and saw that he was still staring at me. “Um, I need your phone number to pull you up in the system.”
“My bad. I know I keep looking at you. Are your eyes green?”
It wasn’t the first time someone had questioned, commented, or mentioned the color of my eyes. But there was something about the way he asked me that set off a spark inside of me.
“No, not green. They’re hazel,” I said.
“They’re beautiful. Reminds me of this song ‘Caramel’ from back in the day: five-five, with light eyes, smile like the sunrise,” he said, causing me to blush even harder than I already was.
“I think it’s five-five with brown eyes,” Sierra corrected him.
“Same thing.” He laughed, then gave me his number.
I typed it in and pulled his account up in the system.
“Okay, Mr. Parker, is it?” I said, looking at the screen.
“Bilal,” he said. “Bilal Parker, that’s me.”
Damn, even his name is sexy, I thought. “All right, Bilal Parker, the estimated cost of the repair is one fifty, unless we find something else wrong other than the screen.”
He took out a wallet and opened it. I couldn’t help noticing the amount of cash he had. It had to be at least a thousand dollars. He took out two hundred-dollar bills and passed them to me.
“Here you go.”
“No, you don’t pay until you pick it up,” I told him.
“Oh, okay. So, you’re gonna call me?” He raised an eyebrow at me as he put the cash back in the wallet.
“Huh?” I said.
“When it’s ready tomorrow. Are you gonna call me?”
“Oh, yeah. The tech will give you a call once it’s ready, or if they find something wrong that needs fixing,” I said, embarrassed that I had misunderstood his question.
“Well, I appreciate your help—uh, I didn’t get your name.”
“Kendra,” I said, handing him a receipt.
“Thank you, Kendra,” he said, taking the slip of paper from me. “I’ll see you when I come back.”
“Thanks for choosing Cell City. Enjoy the rest of your day.” I delivered the closing statement we were supposed to give all of our customers but usually didn’t. I know it sounded corny as hell, but it was the only thing I could think to say to him.
“You enjoy yours too, Caramel—I mean, Kendra. Damn, you would make some pretty babies with those eyes of yours,” he said just before turning to walk out the door.
As soon as he was gone, Sierra didn’t waste any time stating, “That nigga was fine as hell! Oh my God. Why didn’t you shoot your shot, girl? You shoulda got his number, Kendra.”
“Well, I did, technically,” I told her, holding up his phone and the order form for the repair.
“You know what I mean. Clearly, he was digging you. Quoting corny-ass song lyrics and shit,” she teased.
“That was cute,” I told her.
“And you’re just as corny as his ass ‘Thanks for choosing Cell City.’ Your ass ain’t said that to a customer since your first week of training.”
We both laughed loudly, and Dante came from the back.
“Y’all need to calm down up here. This is a place of business, and we need to remain professional,” he said.
“You’re just salty because old boy was Team Apple and not interested in trading teams.” Sierra giggled.
“Both of you can go to hell,” he said.
“Now, Dante, that’s not very professional of you to say,” I told him.
In typical Dante fashion, he smacked his lips, rolled his eyes, and returned to do whatever it was he was pretending to do in the back of the store.
“One thing for sure: ol’ boy can definitely get it,” Sierra said.
“You’re right,” I agreed.
“What? I know you didn’t just say that, Miss Purity, with your virgin ass.” She looked just as shocked by my statement as I had been when I made it. “I thought you were saving yourself for someone special.”
“I am.” I looked down at the computer screen and said, “Bilal Parker.”
“Even his name is sexy,” Sierra said.
“True, but sexy or not, I’ve seen dudes like him all my life, and I can definitely spot a dope boy when I see him. And you know I don’t do dope boys. Bilal Parker is the last dude I’ll be giving anything to.”
Bilal
“Damn, B. Where the hell you been? I been calling you all damn day!” Dell yelled as soon as he opened the front door.
“Man, my phone is all fucked up. I had to take it to get fixed. It should be ready tomorrow,” I told him.
“Why you ain’t just fix it yourself?”
I followed Dell into the living room, where he was in the middle of playing Madden and eating pizza.
“It wasn’t something I could fix.” I sat in one of the oversized chairs in the living room and peeed into the open cardboard box on the table with one remaining slice.
“Don’t even think about it,” Dell warned me, picking up the piece of pizza and biting it. Once he had chewed it to the point to where he could talk, he said, “You can break Firesticks, damn near hack databases, and install all types of fucking software, but you can’t fix a cell phone?”
“The screen was cracked.” I shrugged. Had I really wanted to, I probably could have just ordered the parts and fixed the phone myself, but I really didn’t feel like going through the hassle, so I just took it into the store.
“Nigga, why didn’t you just buy a new one? Them shits only like five, six stacks.”
“And it only cost one fifty for me to get it fixed. Man, what’s the big deal?” I laughed. five or six stacks was no money to Dell, who made ten times that in a month, but in my mind, five or six stacks meant half of my rent or two months of car payments. A new phone wouldn’t set me back, but I just wasn’t trying to spend it if I didn’t have to.
“The big deal is that I couldn’t reach you, cheap motherfucker. That’s what.”
“Man, the only reason you was calling was to talk shit about the damn game, which, by the way, we won,” I told him. “Pay me my money.”
“Shit.” Dell reached into his pocket and took out two crisp fifty-dollar bills and threw them at me. “Take your change, chump. Maybe you can put it toward buying a new phone.”
I picked up the money, which had landed on the floor in front of me, and put it in my pocket. Dell had always been a sore loser, even as a kid. When we’d be playing ball in the park, he was the one who would get mad and take his ball so that no one else could play if he lost. His poor sportsmanship didn’t just end there. Dell and Marlena, his girlfriend of the past five years, had been engaged five times, because whenever he got mad, he would demand that she give him the ring back. I guess she had gotten used to it, because the last time he got down on one knee, she accepted the proposal, but not the ring.
“Where is everybody?” I asked. It was Friday evening, and usually, Dell’s crib was the hangout spot for his brothers and cousins when they got off from work.
“I don’t know. But I need you to take a ride with me right quick,” he told me.
“Ride where?”
“I gotta pick up a package from D-Lo, and he needs to holla at you.”
“Man, please. You know D-Lo ain’t tryna holla me. That dude don’t even like me ever since that shit between me and his cousin Fee went down,” I told him.
“Ain’t nobody thinking about that shit. This is business.” Dell laughed. “D-Lo know his cousin is a ho. He ain’t tripping about that. This is business.”
“I hope it’s business for real, because I ain’t got time for bullshit, D, and you know I don’t fuck with everybody for real.”
“And I do? Come on. You know me better than that, and if I’m sending business your way, you know it’s gotta be some decent money I’m putting in your pocket. Especially since your ass need a new phone.”
I smiled at Dell. He’d been my best friend since we were in third grade. He was smart as hell, and we both graduated from high school with honors, but Dell had always been drawn to the drug game and all that came with it. I went to community college and studied computer science; he studied street narcotics. After I completed school, I worked tech support for a software company for a while but quickly realized that sitting behind a desk eight to ten hours a day wasn’t something I enjoyed at all, so I found something that suited me a little better and paid a lot more. With Dell’s help, I started my own legitimate, legal business and had been successful ever since.
“You know D-Lo ain’t got no real money, though.”
“I wouldn’t say that. He ain’t pushing as much weight as I am, but he got some cash flow.”
“I can’t tell,” I said. D-Lo was only known to sell dime bags to high school kids. Based on where he lived and the car he drove, he wasn’t making no real money as far as I could see. But I trusted Dell, and if he said D-Lo was legit, then I had to go with it.
“Just talk to the man, that’s all.” Dell shook his head at me.
“Fine, and for the record, I appreciate all the business you send me, even D-Lo’s broke ass.” I laughed.
“A’ight, let’s roll.”
Dell and I got into his Escalade to head over to D-Lo’s raggedy-ass house across town.
“Where’s Marlena?” I asked, noticing her Audi sitting in the driveway.
“Ain’t nobody thinking about that girl,” Dell said. “She got mad and went to stay at her sister’s house, so I went and got my car.”
“That’s her car,” I reminded him. “You gave it to her for her birthday, remember?”
“That was before she started acting stupid.”
“Aw, hell. Trouble in paradise again? What did she do now, buy skim milk instead of two percent?” I teased. “No, wait. She probably folded the towels the long way instead of in half.”
“Fuck you. She had the nerve to snap on me because some chick said long time no see to me in Walmart the other day,” Dell said.
“What chick?”
“Don’t matter.” The way he said it let me know that Marlena had a good reason to snap. Dell loved her, but he also had a weakness for other women.
“Damn, Dell.” I laughed.
“Whatever, and when is the last time you even had a girl? I damn sure can’t remember.”
“I get women all the time, and you know it,” I told him, somewhat offended by his comment. It had been a minute since I had been in a relationship, but I got ass when I needed to. I had been so focused on starting my business and my busy schedule that a girlfriend was the last thing on my mind. There was also the fact that I hadn’t really met anyone that caught my attention—until today. I thought about Kendra, the pretty girl from the cell store.
“I ain’t talking about pussy from randoms, either,” Dell said knowingly.
“Why are we even having this discussion?” I asked. “We’re talking about how you’re gonna get your woman back.”
“What makes you think I want her back?”
“Because I know you better than anybody on this planet, and you love her.”
Dell shrugged and said, “I do love her.”
He was about to go into details about who the girl was when we turned into D-Lo’s neighborhood and pulled into the dirt driveway in front of his house. His raggedy Impala was sitting out front, along with an old Chevy Blazer riddled with bullet holes. A couple of guys were sitting on the porch, playing dominoes and drinking.
“Man, make this quick,” I told Dell when we got out of the truck.
“I will. This ain’t gonna take long at all,” he told me, reaching under the seat and taking out his 9 mm. I touched the waistband of my pants, making sure my own pistol was intact, and we both headed inside. I may not have engaged in the same line of work as my best friend, but I knew better than to roll out and not be strapped up in case something popped off.
“What’s up?” Dell spoke as we got to the front door.
“’Sup,” one of the dudes said without looking up.
“What’s good?” The other one nodded.
Dell tapped on the door and opened it at the same time. I followed, and we entered the smoke-filled living room. I damn near caught a contact high before I even made it completely inside. I scanned the room but didn’t see D-Lo anywhere.
“Where this nigga at?” Dell asked.
“I know you ain’t asking me,” I told him.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” a female voice asked.
Dell and I both turned to see Fee, D-Lo’s cousin and one of my former randoms, standing in the doorway. My first thought was that this was some kind of setup, especially when I noticed Junie
, her baby daddy, standing behind her.
“What’s up, Fee? We here to meet D-Lo,” Dell told her.
“D!” Fee called out. “D-Lo!”
D-Lo came walking down the hallway. He was a short, stocky guy who always wore sunglasses whether it was night or day and whether he was inside or out. “What the fuck are you calling my name like that for?”
“These clowns are here to see you.” She rolled her eyes at me.
“Clowns? What the fuck?” l snapped. She wasn’t calling me a clown when I was fucking her a couple of months ago while her baby daddy was locked up.
“Chill, Fee. They here to talk business,” D-Lo told her.
“Business? Not with him, I hope.” She pointed at me. I knew she was still salty because, for some reason, she really had it in her head that we were going together, although I told her time and time again I was only interested in the ass she was offering and nothing more. There was no way in hell that was going to happen. Even if I was interested in having a girl at the time, it wasn’t going to be her hood ass.
“You need to listen to your cousin and chill out.” I laughed.
“And you need to shut the fuck up,” Fee snapped.
“Yo, D-Lo, you need to handle that shit,” Dell warned.
“Fee, chill out, for real,” D-Lo told her.
“Whatever, D-Lo. Don’t act like you wasn’t just in here talking shit about Dell the other night. And you swore you wouldn’t ever fuck with this nigga because he—” She stopped when she realized Junie was listening.
“I think we need to go ahead and leave,” I told Dell.
“Naw, it’s all good,” D-Lo said. “She’s gonna shut the fuck up.”
“I doubt that,” I mumbled.
“Yo, who the fuck is this nigga?” Junie stepped to me.
“You definitely don’t wanna do that,” Dell told him.
“Junie, man, chill,” D-Lo said again.
“They’re right, man. You don’t wanna do this.” I shook my head.
“Fuck you.” Junie took a step closer.
“Son, I’m telling you this ain’t the dude you wanna try,” Dell told him.
“Man, ain’t nobody thinking about this dude. You warning me about him when you should be warning him about me,” Junie said. “Ask about where I’m from.”
