by J Peach
“Damn, what the hell she want?” Meka mumbled to herself. “Come on, sweetie.” She went to help me up.
“Just give me a sec and I’ll be out there. Okay?” I just didn’t feel like moving at all. I wanted to go home and go to sleep forever.
“Alright, take your time and I’ll try to find you something else to eat.” She laughed.
Once she left, I just sat on the floor, not knowing what to do besides pray that I wasn’t pregnant. If I just so happened to be, what was I going to do? Tell Parker? Hell, we both had fuck’d up childhoods. What would we know about raising a baby? What if he didn’t want it? Would he even stick around long enough to find out if I was really pregnant? I knew what Meka said, but she couldn’t really know that. She could only think what she thought Parker would want or do.
How could I be that careless not to use condoms after all these years? To make multiple slips like that wasn’t something I would do intentionally. God! I took a deep breath, getting myself under control. I had to pull myself together. Sitting on the floor crying wasn’t going to change the mistake I’d made.
I pushed myself off of the floor and wiped my eyes. I had to get myself together. Just like every other mistake I’d made and got through, I knew I’d get through that one no differently. Turning on the water, I cupped my hands under the faucet and took a drink. I cleared my throat and mentally shook myself. I was trying to get my emotions in check. I then flushed the toilet and washed my hands. Once I finished, I left out the bathroom.
“I’m just happy he’s coming home, if everything goes as planned,” I heard an unfamiliar voice say.
“Bitch, ain’t he in jail because of you? Do you think he’s going to be welcoming once he’s sees you? Hell, I wouldn’t be, I’d be trying to kill your ass.” Meka laughed.
“I don’t know, I haven’t talked to him. He won’t talk to me or see me. His friend keeps me posted on everything that’s going on with him,” she groaned. “But his ass bet not try no shit like that. We always go through this bullshit. This the first time he actually had to sit in jail behind it, though. I just hope everything goes fine and he can come home,” the female sighed stressfully.
I stood in the hallway, not in a rush to be seen by Meka especially after I broke down in front of her the way I did.
“Don’t you get tired of the whole back and forth thing? The cheating? Calling the police? All of it?” Meka asked her seriously. “I don’t see how you continue to do it, I would’ve been done,” Meka told her.
“It’s tiring, but I love that man. We’ve been together ten years strong. I’ve put in too much time and effort to just give up and walk away from him like that, only to have the next bitch replace me. No. I’d kill both their asses before that shit happens.” The female expressed with a sigh. “Hopefully, once he gets home he’ll change. I don’t know.”
I let out another deep breath and then walked into the kitchen. The female’s back was toward me. Meka turned in my direction and smiled.
“How you feeling?” She asked.
“I’ll be okay.” I walked further into the kitchen.
“Lexi, this is P-Nut’s girl, Angel.” Meka introduced us happily. Despite my inner turmoil, I laughed at her. She just seemed so happy.
The female turned in my direction with a smile and her hand stretched out until her eyes fell on me. Her body tensed up and a scowl covered her face. “What the fuck is this bitch doing here?” She snapped, jumping off the stool like she was about to get buck.
My head tilted to the side as I stared her up. I didn’t know why, but she looked so familiar. I just couldn’t place her face. Regardless of that, she was not going to disrespect me. “Bitch? Any other day I’d stoop to a bum bitch’ level, but since I’m in someone else’s home, I’ll be the lady and do the respectable thing. I’ll give yo dusty ass a pass this time.”
I couldn’t stand a rude ass bitch. With the way I was feeling at that moment, I would literally fuck a bitch up just to let off some steam.
“A bum bitch? Really? Hoe, my whole outfit cost more than your life. You trashy, low class, hood rat, prostitute little bitch.” With every word she spat out, she took a step toward me.
“Lexi, you need to chill the hell out. If you forgot, my son is in the other room so be respectful of that. And as I told you, that’s P-Nut’s girl. Be respectful of that as well because the way you’re coming at her, I don’t like that shit at all. So sit the fuck down in my shit or get the fuck out, your choice.” Meka stepped between us and pushed Lexi back.
Even the voice started to sound familiar to me, I just couldn’t place it.
“Meka, don’t come at me like that, especially not for a bottomless hoe. Remember the young bitch from the projects I told you Martell was fuckin’?” She didn’t wait for Meka to respond before she continued. “This the little bitch he’s been fuckin’ for years now.”
The moment Martell’s name left her mouth I knew she was his girl. A heavy sigh left my mouth and I rolled my eyes at her. “You’re still pissed about that? Girl, get over it. Martell was a mistake I made when I was fourteen and believe me, I knew nothing about you,” I informed her. “When I found out he had a girl, I broke things off with him. Now please, go sit your trashy ass down. I’m trying to be respectful in this house, but you’re not going to keep on coming at me like you are,” I told her calmly before walking around her to the stool she was just sitting in. Then I sat down on it.
“You were fourteen fuckin’ with Martell?” Meka facial expression turned to one of shock.
I shrugged, about to answer, but Lexi cut me off. “Yeah, the little prostitute was. Don’t try to make it seem like you don’t fuck with him no more. Bitch you’re the reason he’s locked up!” She pushed me hard in the back, causing my chest to hit the counter. Lexi grabbed my hair from behind and yanked me hard off of the stool. Before she could hit or kick me, Meka knocked her down.
“Bitch, what the fuck I just tell yo ass? Huh? Matter of fact, get the fuck out. I don’t give a fuck what she may have done in her past, you not going to fuckin’ touch her, not while I’m right here,” Meka let her know. “You getting mad and popping slick because of some shit yo man did! Bitch, please! Miss me with that bullshit. You just heard her say she didn’t know shit about you and when she found out she left his ass alone—”
“Bullshit! She never stopped fuckin’ him! Why the fuck you think he locked up, Meka? I caught his ass with that bitch at their little secret love spot he keeps just for them! But you gon’ jump bad with me, Meka, behind this hoe? Bitch, you’ve been knowing me for years and this how you gon’ do me?” Lexi flipped out. “Yo ass ain’t shit either. That’s okay, both you bitches better watch yo’selves.” Her hard glare turned to me. “Especially you. Bitch, I promise you I’mma kill you painfully.”
I laughed at her threat. “I’ll be waiting. Or we can just step outside now and handle this,” I offered, walking toward her until Meka stopped me. “Nuh-uh, Meka, I’m good. I wouldn’t fight this old ass bitch in yo crib, but I’ll step outside with this old granny looking bitch.”
I looked her over and laughed. She looked like an old ass wrinkled grandma. “I see why he was cheating on yo old ass. Bitch, all that makeup caked on yo damn face ain’t gon hide them wrinkles.” I walked around Meka and started for the front door. “Come on so we can get this shit over with.” With the way I was feeling, I needed to relieve myself of some stress and I was about to take my shit all out on her old ass.
Meka yanked my ass back hard. “No the fuck you are not. Angel, chill out! Yo ass ain’t about to be fighting her,” she mugged me and then looked back to that old ass hag. “Lexi, go. Gon’ get out,” she told her.
“It’s cool. And I’m gone for now. Bitch, you just watch yoself, tho.” Lexi glared at me.
“I will, bye.” I waved while smiling wide at her.
After that she turned around and walked out of the house, slamming the front door behind her.
Once she lef
t, I turned to Meka. “I’m sorry about that, I was not trying to pop off in your house. And I wasn’t trying to come between you and your friend.” That was the last thing I wanted to do, especially behind some bullshit like Martell. Now if we were at Parker’s crib it would’ve been a totally different story.
“We were associates, not really friends. Lexi is a snake and will slit your throat with your own knife, so watch out for her. Seriously, that bitch ain’t wrapped too tight,” she warned me. “And believe me, if this neighborhood wasn’t so strict, I would’ve went out there and beat her ass for you. We don’t have that type of rowdiness out here. And we black, too? Everybody was going to jail, including La’Var,” she laughed, passing me a sandwich. “I figured something light would be good. See if you can hold that down.” Meka played with the butter knife as she seemed to be in thought about something.
“What is it?” I knew it had to be about something Lexi had said.
“Look I’m not the type to judge, understand that. So however you answer my question, I won’t see you any other way than I do now. We all have our past and secrets,” she stressed that matter.
“Okay,” I picked up the sandwich and took a bite of it.
“Were you really only fourteen when you started talking to Martell?” She asked.
I nodded my head. “Yeah, I was. And we also had a place where we would meet up and be together,” I shrugged.
“But you were only fourteen. Martell had to be pushing thirty at the time. What did your folks think?”
I put my food down and shrugged. “Yeah, he was twenty-nine when we started messing around. My momma didn’t care and my dad wasn’t around so,” I shrugged again. “I seriously didn’t know about her at the time and when I saw them together I broke things off with him. Later on, he did tell me who she was and then turned around and begged me not to cut our thing off. But I did.” I told half the truth.
I did cut Martell off, but once I needed him for something it started right back. That was how I learned that you never gave something for nothing. Any favor I needed from Martell, I would have to have sex with him to get it. That was how our thing continued.
“Did you tell Parker about Martell?” She suddenly asked, looking a bit nervous.
“No. I didn’t know they knew each other so I didn’t think it was important.” I didn’t feel the need to talk about my old flings with Parker for the simple fact that it was before we started dating.
“Well, you should tell him before Lexi do. It’s no telling how she might spend that story. And it’ll be better if he heard it from you.” The way she said that made it seem like Parker was going to be pissed.
I didn’t understand why, but I did get nervous given the fact that I had met up with him a couple months back. Even so, I kept my composure and started asking questions of my own. “So Parker and Martell are cool?” That’s the only reason I could think of as to why he’d be mad.
Her head shook. “Once upon a time, yeah. A few years back, when Martell was cheating, Lexi decided she wanted to piss him off and hurt him by fuckin’ one of his friends. She tried Parker, but he wasn’t having that and brushed her off. So she went to Tone, one of their friends. Him being the drunk idiot he was, he took the bait and slept with her,” Meka began.
“Lexi and Martell got into it,” she went on, “and she started to brag on how good Tone was, you know. Martell then went over to Parker’s spot where Tone was and started some shit. Parker’s dumbass ended up telling him that Lexi wasn’t shit but a hoe who was trying to fuck him and that caused them to get into a huge fight. It just got stupid real fast,” Meka filled me on part of Parker and Martell’s history.
“Then Lexi recanted and said they drugged her and raped her. Martell’s dumbass believed her. But I don’t think he really did, I think he just used that as a reason to beef with him. Truth be told, he didn’t like that he wasn’t getting all the money Parker was. Martell had strip clubs and houses, but he started to lose most of those with his tax fraud and all of that bullshit.” She let out a heavy breath a she looked at me. “So yeah, it’ll be best if he heard it from you.”
“After all that, why keep talking to her?” That puzzled me. There was no way a female was about to lie on my people like that and still be around me.
“You know that saying, keep your friends close and enemies closer? That is what the situation was. Parker wanted me to be friendly with her and make it seem like it was nothing.”
A groan left my mouth. I didn’t have time to be pulled into no petty ass bullshit between two crazy ass niggas and an unstable ass bitch. No matter what, I seemed to always find myself in the mix of some bullshit from my past.
Chapter 15
Parker
“P, I don’t know about this. Something just seems off about this whole mothafuckin’ thing.” Chris glanced at me as he drove to the warehouse where we were supposed to be meeting Mook.
My head nodded while I took a deep pull from the blunt. Chris wasn’t the only one who had doubts. As I started to think on the past couple of days, I ain’t know why, but something about this whole situation just wasn’t sitting right with me.
It wasn’t strange that Mook called me to get some work. Whenever he needed to get his hands on something he would call me despite his nigga Martell’s issue with me. For the most part, Mook was about his business, his hustle was his life. And once Martell got locked up, he didn’t have the easy access to a connect like his boy did. So he had no other choice but to come to me.
The first time I sold him some work he seemed cool about the deal going down. This time, though, there was something off about him. Chris picked up on his shaky vibe and wouldn’t do business with him, so he called me to come back to Springfield to see what was up. I had to admit, I thought Chris was just being paranoid, but once I started talking to the nigga about what he wanted, that nigga indeed seemed shaky. Hell, his whole mothafuckin’ order didn’t add up.
The cost of the work he was asking for was more than what I knew he could afford. Unless that nigga had come into a lot of money, there was no way he could pay for all that shit. But for him to ask me specifically to be at the drop, something was off.
“P, you hear me?” Chris asked, turning down the radio.
I rubbed my chin and nodded. “Yeah, I hear you.” I dumped the ashes into the tray and leaned back in my seat.
“What you think? And don’t tell me you think this shit is good?” Chris pressed. He had been talking on this shit since I touched back down in the city. My nigga wouldn’t shut up about the shit.
“N’all, it ain’t good, but shid, I don’t know what it is. I wanna find out, tho’.” I told him.
Regardless of the bad feeling I felt about the shit, I wanted to know what the bad was. If a nigga was that ballsy to try to fuck me over and thought shit was going to be cool, that mothafucka was dumb as hell. Even so, I wanted to see how it played out and if it went how they thought it would.
“Yo ass would want to. It just ain’t Parker to turn away from some shit. You have to be the dumbest mothafucka to walk head first into the bullshit,” Chris snapped as he took a pull from the black he was smoking.
That shit had to be fuckin’ with my nigga bad for Chris to be bitchin’ the way that he was. “If you know this, why you steady talkin’ about the shit? Shut the fuck up and drive.” I pulled on the blunt hard and then pulled my hat over my eyes.
“You being stupid, Parker. The logical thing to do right now is to turn this bitch around and go home, but you wanna walk into that bullshit knowing something fuck’d up about to happen? Come on, my nigga, you know this shit ain’t right.”
Chris was right, I knew exactly that. But I couldn’t just walk away, I had to see it play out. “Chris, just drive. Or do you want me to drop yo ass off somewhere and I drive my gotdamn self?” I asked him just as my phone started to ring.
“Nigga, fuck you! Yo ass know I’mma ride with yo dumbass regardless of how fuck’d up it is.” He took
the blunt from me and hit it.
“I knew you would, so I don’t know why you always whining like a little bitch,” I laughed at him as I answered my phone. “Yeah?” I normally wouldn’t carry a phone with me, but since I’d been fuckin’ with Syn, I made the exception to get a burner just for her and Meka.
“You not busy right now, are you?” Meka asked.
I knew it had to be something if Meka was calling. She never called me when I went out on business. But since I left Syn back at my place, I had been hitting my sister up regularly to see how shorty was doing. “N’all, what’s up?” The line grew quiet for a while and that caused me to sit up in my seat. “Meka, what’s good?” Now I knew it had to be something serious because Meka never hesitated to talk to me.
“Okay, Lexi came by here today and she recognized Angel. They got into it and she threatened her. P-Nut, you know how Lexi gets down. I don’t trust her ass not to do nothing, she was so pissed when she left here earlier.”
How the fuck would Lexi know Syn? But for that crazy bitch to threaten her? If there was any female I knew that made a threat and actually followed through with the shit, it was that crazy ass bitch. “Where Syn at now?”
“I took her back to your house. She was tired and wanted to go home. Her day was pretty eventful,” she sighed stressfully.
“What’s that about?” I didn’t like the sound of that. “Meka, just tell me what the fuck you wanna say.” I snapped at her. I wasn’t one for beating around the bush. Give it to me straight and uncut and I’d deal with it. That prolonging shit was starting to piss me off. I had other shit I needed to do at that moment.
“I think she’s pregnant,” she blurted out.
My brows furrowed in confusion. “Who?”
Again, she sighed. “Angel, you dumbass. Who else would be pregnant that I’d tell you about? Damn,” she fussed at me.
“Why you think that?” I didn’t think she was pregnant. Syn wasn’t acting shit like Meka did when she was pregnant.
“Parker, she has all the signs. The morning sickness, the mood swings, the frailness. That’s why I’m telling you, because of the mood swings. When I told her I thought she was pregnant, P-Nut, she literally broke down crying hard and she started to hyperventilate. Angel was scaring the hell out of me. She was crying, saying she didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what the hell to do either, shit,” she told me.
