The Wrong Side Of Love 3: A Hood Love Story

by Charmanie Saquea

  “How the fuck she just gonna jump head first into some shit with another nigga, especially him, while she carrying my son?” Zeek spat.

  Joyce put her hands on her hip and looked at her son sideways. “Are you judging her? Because you really don’t have room to talk right now. Both of you are in situations right now, where to me Coco seems happy but you don’t look like you’re too quick to be getting out of yours,” she said, giving him a look.

  Zeek didn’t say anything because this conversation wasn’t going the way he wanted it to but he should have expected that. Coco was always making somebody turn against him. He didn’t give a fuck what anybody said, he wasn’t cool with Ishmael being around his girl or his son, period.

  Chapter Eight

  Zeek laid in the hotel bed texting his sister Payton. He was on his way to go get her so they could spend some time together since they hadn’t had a chance since he’d been in Cali. For the past two days, he had been staying in a hotel since he and Coco had been going at each other’s throats like they couldn’t stand each other and he didn’t want to stress out his son.

  “Damn about time,” he said when the bathroom door came open.

  “All you said was get up and get ready. You didn’t give me a timeframe.” Nina rolled her eyes.

  Zeek called Nina to California for two reasons. So she could stop asking him when he was coming home and because his baby mama wasn’t giving up no pussy. He was tired of Coco acting all funny or like she was too good so he called in the one person he knew would have no problems giving it to him how he wanted.

  “If I say get up and get ready, that means hurry the fuck up because we got somewhere we need to be, obviously,” Zeek stressed.

  “Alright, alright, damn. Just let me put my shoes on and I’ll be ready. Cálmate.” (Calm down.)

  Nina was actually happy to be formally meeting and spending time with someone in Zeek’s family. The only one she had technically met was his cousin Tariq but they weren’t formally introduced. Since Zeek didn’t want to leave Nina locked in a hotel room all day, he figured he would bring her along with him and his sister for today. He had already given Payton the heads up and he wasn’t worried about her trying to take Nina’s head off like Megan would. Payton would just ignore her ass like she wasn’t even there.

  Leaving the hotel, Zeek made his way to his sister’s townhouse. The whole ride there, Nina looked out the window in awe. She had been on a few trips to America before but California had never been one of her destinations. Everything out there to her was so beautiful.

  “Oh my gosh, Zeek, I love it out here!” she gushed.

  “Don’t love it too much because Detroit is home,” he told her.

  Nina didn’t reply verbally but she did have a pout on her face. She didn’t care what Zeek said, she was going to get her a home here in California. If he didn’t get it for her, she was sure her daddy would make a way.

  Zeek pulled up to Payton’s and blew the horn. She snatched her front door open and looked at him like he was crazy before disappearing back inside for a few and coming back out to lock her door. She climbed in the back seat of his truck and immediately started fussing.

  “Nigga, this ain’t 7 Mile, don’t be pulling up to my house and blowing and shit like you in the hood,” Payton told him.

  “Who the fuck is you talking to?” Zeek asked as he turned around in his seat and looked at her like she was crazy.

  “I'm talking to Ezekiel! Now turn your black ass around and drive this damn truck.”

  Zeek just smiled at his sister before turning around and nodding his head. Growing up, Zeek used to talk mad shit to both of his sisters but Payton was the only one who would give him a dose of his own medicine. She was Zeek’s shadow, wherever her big brother went, she always had to be.

  “Umm, you’re not going to introduce me?” Nina asked Zeek as he pulled out of his parking spot.

  “Nina, Payton. Payton, Nina,” Zeek said.

  “Girl, I saw you at court or whatever. I just didn’t know y’all were…you know,” Payton told her.

  “Anyway, where we headed first?” Zeek questioned, changing the subject.

  “Shopping, I have to get my TT Man some stuff,” Payton gushed.

  “Man, hell nah! That little nigga don’t need anything else. He already got a closet full of shit,” Zeek told her.

  “Well, excuse me. I didn’t know I needed permission to buy my nephew anything. Besides, what I buy him is going to be for my house when he comes over, asshole.”

  Zeek just shook his head. All these damn women in his life were going to have his son spoiled rotten and he hated it. He wanted his son to be tough, not a little ass mama’s boy. He didn’t have a problem with his son loving his mama because he was supposed to but he didn’t want him to be a wimp.

  Zeek sighed at the fact that he’d ended up at Beverly Center. One thing he didn’t do and wasn’t going to make a habit out of was shopping with women. The shit was tiresome and something he never saw himself doing.

  “Aye, don’t get crazy in this bitch. We’re not going to be in here all day,” he told Nina and Payton.

  “Boy, gone,” Payton waved him off.

  Zeek walked behind the women slowly as they went from store to store racking up whatever they could find. An hour into their shopping trip, Zeek’s phone rang. Seeing Coco’s name pop up on his phone, he really didn’t want to answer it but he went ahead and did so.

  “Yea?”

  “Where are you?” she asked, sounding as if she was in pain.

  “I’m out doing some shopping. Why, what’s up?” he asked.

  “I’m having contractions so Jay is taking me to the hosp…ahh!” she yelled into the phone.

  “Yo, Payton! Grab Nina, we gotta go!” Zeek yelled to his sister.

  “Nina?” Coco asked.

  Zeek hadn’t even realized that he had said Nina’s name until Coco repeated it. He had no intentions of letting Coco or anyone else in his family outside of his little sister even know that Nina was in California. Before he could even fix the situation, Coco had hung up on him.

  ___

  Zeek drove like a mad man to the hospital. He tried calling Coco back to see what hospital she was at but she wasn’t answering his calls so he had to call Jayliah and get the information from her. He could already tell this was going to be some more bullshit to add to the list he and Coco already had going on and he honestly wasn’t in the mood for it, at all.

  “What’s up, Jay?” Zeek said as he saw her standing in the hall.

  “Hold on, Daddy,” Jayliah said into the phone as she turned to Zeek. “Hey, she just experiencing what they call Braxton Hicks and she’s dilated to one centimeter,” Jayliah told him.

  Zeek stood there with a funny look on his face because he didn’t know what any of that stuff meant. Jayliah let out a chuckle because she’d forgotten that Zeek was a hood nigga that had never gone through this shit before.

  “She’s not having real contractions yet and she’s not in active labor. She’s in pre-labor and her cervix is thinning, preparing her for when it’s time to push,” she explained it better for him.

  “Oh shit, oh okay,” he laughed.

  “The doctors are worried and want to keep her because her blood pressure is high as hell and she swollen. They’re talking about bed rest until it’s time for her to actually deliver,” Jayliah told him.

  “Damn, that’s crazy. I’m about to go in there and check on her.”

  “Okay, you can send Quaid out here if you need to,” Jayliah told him.

  Zeek walked into the hospital room where Coco was hooked up to a whole bunch of monitors.

  “Look, unc, that’s the baby’s heart,” Quaid said excitedly as he pointed to a machine that was making noise.

  With a big smile on his face, Zeek walked over to the machine that was shooting out paper with little lines on it and he listened to the sound of his baby’s heartbeat. It was such a joyous moment for Zeek that
even when he looked up to catch the evil glare that he was getting from Coco, it didn’t wipe the smile from his face.

  “Little Q, your mama wants to holler at you for a second,” Zeek told him.

  “Okay,” Quaid said as he got up to leave the room.

  As soon as he was gone and the door shut behind him, Coco went in on Zeek. “You sent for that bitch? Seriously, Zeek?”

  Zeek sighed as he let his head fallback and closed his eyes. “Why?” he asked, finally looking at her. “Why does whatever I do with my wife matter when you got a nigga? You’re happy, remember? So why you worried about what we got going on?” he asked.

  Coco looked at him as if she couldn’t even find the right words to say to him. If she could have gotten out of that bed in her condition and slap the taste out of his mouth, that’s exactly what she would have done. The nerve of this nigga, she thought as she threw daggers at him.

  “You know what, you black bastard? You are so right. Fuck you and that bitch! I don’t have shit to say to you unless it concerns my son. As a matter of fact, scratch that. I don’t have shit to say to you, period! My son will be fine without you! I should have left your black ass with that scandalous bitch Chanel who ended up being a rat ass bitch. I regret the day I ever met you! Now I wish I would have got that fucking abortion so I wouldn’t have to deal with you. Get the fuck out of here and don’t bring your bitch ass back!” Coco yelled.

  Coco was so pissed off that one of the machines she was hooked up to started beeping and going crazy. Jayliah, who was standing out in the hallway, came rushing into the room when she heard her sister start yelling. She was trying to get Coco to calm down when nurses rushed into the room and forced her and Zeek to leave so they could get Coco to calm down for her and the baby’s safety.

  Zeek was so pissed that he could literally feel the steam rising from his ears. For Coco to say she wished she would have aborted his son touched a nerve with him. There was nothing he could have done or said for her to hit him with a low blow like that. If she wanted him to leave her alone for good, she definitely knew the right buttons to push.

  Chapter Nine

  Shanae shook her head at the condition Tariq’s house was in. There were beer bottles, liquor bottles, rolling paper wrappers, and even worse, condom wrappers spread out throughout his living room. Ever since he and Jayliah had broken up this last time, he had been on some other shit and she refused to let her daughter come over to his house with him acting the way he had been, so she was on his shit list too.

  “Thank you, Marco,” she said.

  “No doubt. Had I known this nigga was doing it like this, I would’ve had my ass over here sooner,” Marco said with his face distorted to show his disgust.

  “And he wonder why I won’t let my baby come over here,” Shanae mumbled as she kicked over his hookah.

  No sooner than she said that, they saw Tariq and a white girl they had never seen before come walking down the stairs. The girl had drug residue left on her nose and was looking half-dead as she tried to fix her clothes. Shanae looked at the girl upside her head while Marco shook his head.

  “Nigga, I know good and damn well you not doing no fucking blow!” he yelled at Tariq.

  “Hell nah! That’s her poison of choice. Who am I to stop her if that’s what she wanna do?” Tariq shrugged.

  To say that he was looking bad would be putting it very lightly. Tariq looked as if he hadn’t shaved in weeks, he needed a haircut like his life depended on it and it looked like he hadn’t been getting any sleep.

  “Why the fuck are you here and without my daughter?” He pointed at Shanae as he lit a cigarette.

  “You got me fucked up if you thought I was going to bring Tanae over to see this shit,” she spat.

  “You need to get yourself together and go home, bruh. If this how Jay got you tripping, y’all need to work it out,” Marco told Tariq.

  “Listen to your brother, Riq.”

  “Man, fuck y’all and most importantly, fuck her! She couldn’t give me the one simple thing I asked for. I paid her bills, I love and take care of her son like a man, I take care of her, I respect her. I don’t ask for nothing from her but to be loyal and respect me but she couldn’t even handle doing one of those tasks. All I wanted was for her to give a nigga baby but yet she goes behind my back to set up an appointment to get her fucking tubes tied. What kind of shit is that?” Tariq asked.

  “And you think handling shit like this is going to fix everything? Going about things like this is not just hurting you two, Tariq. In case you haven’t noticed, there are kids involved. Her son loves you and Tanae adores the hell out of her. She does not understand why the hell she hasn’t seen her Jay in a few weeks. Honestly, the both of you are being very selfish in this situation,” Shanae let him know.

  “Man, y'all don't know what the fuck y'all talking about. This is the woman I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with but fuck it, nothing I do is good enough for her. She just needs to be by herself right now because it's obvious that a nigga like me is not what she need.” Tariq shook his head.

  He just couldn't understand where his relationship with Jayliah kept going wrong. In the back of his mind, he kept hearing the word karma. In the past, he hadn't been all that good to the women he had previously messed with, including Shanae. He’d treated Jayliah better than he’d treated any of them so he felt this was his payback for doing them wrong.

  “And what about you, Riq? What do you need? I'll tell you. You need your girl. I'm pretty sure she's just as fucked up without you as you are without her. I can guarantee that she's tried to get in touch with you but you being the stubborn, bullheaded muthufucka that you are, you ignored her as a way to hurt her because you're hurt. I know you, nigga. I'm your brother,” Marco laughed.

  Tariq didn't say anything but smirked because he knew his brother knew him better than he knew the back of his hand.

  “Check this out, though. You remember what happened the last time you pulled some bullshit like that. Don't let another tragedy happen but this one won't allow you to be there for her all over some childish bullshit. Put your ego to the side, nigga,” Marco told him honestly. “I'm out of here, though. I got shit to take care of. Clean this shit up and stop acting like a bitch.”

  “Fuck you!” Tariq yelled at him as Marco walked out the door.

  “Get it together before it's too late,” Shanae warned him as she left herself.

  Tariq just sat there in that same spot as he let everything they had told him replay over and over in his mind. He would never try to front on Jayliah and try to act like he didn't love her. Hell yea he loved her, too much, that's why he was so fucked up. The one thing he just couldn't understand was why she was so adamant on not giving him another baby. Every time he thought about that, he thought about how she blatantly disrespected him by telling the doctor she wanted to continue with setting up an appointment to get her tubes tied right in his face.

  This time apart from her was a real eye opener for him. Maybe Jayliah just wasn't ready to get married right now and this was her way of showing him that. He couldn't do anything but respect it and fallback. He finally realized that he couldn't make her do anything that she didn't want to do, from marrying him to having his baby. That didn't mean he didn't love her if she didn't love him. It just wasn't meant for them.

  ___

  Coco laid on her side in her hospital bed feeling her son move wildly. She was so drained physically and mentally that it didn't make any sense. The way she was feeling now was the exact reason she’d moved from Detroit in the first place but the problem seemed to follow her to Cali. Coco was so fed up with Zeek that she had him banned from the hospital while she was there and didn't care to see his face until it was time for her to push.

  Never in her twenty-two years of being on this planet did Coco have to deal with so much bullshit behind a nigga. Sure, Trae came with his bullshit and a load of it, but that damn Ezekiel Clay was in a league of his own
. Zeek brought out emotions in her that she didn't even know were possible to feel. Then reality set in that she was doing all this and getting hyped up over a nigga that didn't belong to her.

  “I'm ready to go home,” she blurted out.

  “You get that blood pressure down and you will go home,” Jayliah told her as she walked over to her.

  Coco rolled her eyes. She couldn't shake her sister even if she wanted to. Ever since she had been admitted in the hospital, Jayliah had literally been right there by her side. Megan was nice enough to keep Quaid for her and when she and Amir had to work, he spent the day with Ishmael.

  “I can't wait to meet my little man.” Jayliah smiled brightly as she rubbed her sister’s stomach.

  “Me either. The closer I get, the more nervous I get, though,” Coco sighed. “Remember when the roles were reversed, Jay? I was the one anxiously pacing the room and you were lying in bed in pain.”

  “Girl, do I?” Jayliah rolled her eyes. “I was sixteen and scared as hell because I didn't know how to be a mother because I was a baby having a baby but you were there with me every step of the way. Even to this day but when they put my baby in my arms, it was the best feeling I've ever felt in the world. It's a feeling I can't even describe, Co. You'll know, though,” she explained.

  “So don't you think that you and the man you love deserve to experience that feeling again…together?” Coco asked as she looked up at her sister.

  “Co, don't.” Jayliah shook her head.

  “Okay, I'll leave it alone for now. Anyway, what daddy talking about?” Coco changed subjects.

  “Steven Tate is trying to find that bitch you call a mother because she refuses to give him a divorce and said if he tries to divorce her, she will take him for everything he has. Daddy wants to kill her but she has suddenly went missing in action. He also wanted me to ask you if you would allow him to come be here for the birth of his second grandson since he missed out on the birth of the first one because of some bullshit,” Jayliah told her.