by Bianca
He sighed and rubbed his temples.
“Listen, give me one more year. Mayhem about to move me up a notch, and I’m about to start making even more money.”
“Okay, baby, I trust you,” I whispered.
Before I could say something else, I could hear the slight snores coming from him. I never been the type to snoop, but I needed to see how much money he saved up because he was talking about giving him another year. I sat up and grabbed his jeans from the floor and reached into his pocket to get his phone. See, if this had been Frank, he would have grabbed my ankle the minute I reached off the bed to pick up his jeans. That nigga was weird as fuck, man.
I knew the passcode to everything that he owned. I opened up his phone and went to his bank account. I opened up the app, and the minute I saw the numbers, my eyes burned with water and pain. In Bash’s checking account, he only had fifteen thousand dollars, and in his savings account, he had thirty thousand dollars. I guess my sniffing woke him up because he lifted his head.
“Why the fuck you in my phone? Now you have seen something that you didn’t want to see,” he said.
I threw his phone at him, and he looked at what I was looking at it. He had a shocked look on his face and then looked at me.
“Bash, where the fuck is all the money you been making? You should have way more money than this. You drive a cash car, and your rent is not even a thousand dollars,” I questioned him. “Where the fuck is your money!” I screamed at him.
“Alex, calm the fuck down, damn!”
“No! I won’t do that! What the fuck are you going to do in a year to get the money we need to fucking survive!” I screamed and grabbed a pillow to hit him in the head with it.
I couldn’t control myself and started punching him in his chest as hard as I could. He grabbed both of my wrists and started shaking me.
“Look, I ain’t never put my hands on you, Alex, and don’t fucking make me start today. Fuck!”
“Stupid ass! Fuck you, Bash. You starting to get to deep in this street shit, and I fear that you will get killed before you get out, and I swear to God…”
“Stop fucking worrying about that shit, man, damn! I promise you that I’m not going anywhere. We are going to move away in a year and be one. I promise,” he said and pulled me on his lap and kissed the palm of my hands. “I’m going to marry your little ass and give you all of my fucking babies. You ain’t gon’ ever have to clock into anyone’s job. You gon’ be my fucking housewife. My sexy ass referee housewife,” he said and laughed.
Looking down at him, he made me believe every word that he said, but I was still skeptical. How the fuck was he going to get all that money in a year?
“Don’t doubt me, mama. I promise,” he said again.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
I climbed off his lap and started getting dressed. I had been gone away from the house for too long, and I was sure that Frank was probably looking for me. After I got dressed, Bash was still laying in the bed naked.
“Get up and put some clothes on. We about to go.”
“Mane, I’m about to lay here for a little minute. You pulled a big ass nut out of a nigga.” He laughed.
“Well at least put some clothes on and get under the covers or something.”
He sighed and got out of the bed and started putting his clothes on.
“I get it. You don’t trust me around your cousin. I’mma leave after you. You know we can’t leave at the same time,” he said.
“You’re right.”
After I got dressed, I went back out into the living room and grabbed my phone out of my purse. Surprisingly, I had no missed calls or text messages from Frank. I wondered if I went home smelling like another nigga, would he leave me alone. I’d do the sixty hours in The Box for my nigga.
“Kharisma,” I called her name.
Her lazy ass was still laying on the couch, and Price was still walking around, tearing down the house. I didn’t even know how the hell she even got money. I knew she didn’t get child support because she told me that she didn’t know who her baby daddy was. She said she got drunk one night and fucked some nigga. I knew she still got her little checks from being an Instagram model, but I knew for a fact she wasn’t getting enough money to fund this expensive ass place. She moved here around three or four years ago, and the rent for this place was two thousand dollars a month. She even got rid of the car that Mayhem bought her, and she got a brand-new Cocaine white G-Wagon she had sitting outside. I knew her ass wasn’t getting flown out nowhere, and I was sure her pussy wasn’t worth two thousand dollars a month. My mind instantly went to a place I didn’t want to think of.
“What, girl?” she answered me. “Don’t you see me watching TV?”
“Yeah, I do! I was just letting you know that I was getting ready to leave, and Bash is still in the back, sleeping.”
“Okay… and?” she said and sat up and glared at me.
“Don’t be letting none of your friends come over here while he here. You know how thirsty they are,” I said.
“Girl, get your insecure ass up out of here. You know I don’t even fuck with nobody like that enough for them to come over to my house. I’m not fucking Bash! Don’t buck your eyes; I know that’s what you thinking. Don’t think I don’t know you be wondering how I get my shit. I work, and that’s all your light ass needs to know. Now get out. I’ll see you the next time you want to fuck Bash.”
“Khari—”
She held her hand up and said, “I get it. I fuck niggas and get money, but I would never fuck Bash. Trust me.”
“Sure.”
I didn’t know what else to say after that. Price walked up to me and held his arms up. I picked him up and placed several kisses on his cheeks. I couldn’t wait to be a mom one day. I knew I would be a much better mom than Kharisma’s ass. After placing kisses on his cheeks, I put him down and left the house.
I walked back around the block to the Starbucks and got in my car to head back home. When I pulled in the yard, Frank’s car was still gone, and I was silently thanking God. I walked in the house and jumped in the shower and scrubbed myself clean. After I got out the shower, I made sure to spray a little air freshener because Frank had the nose of a Basset Hound. I fell back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling.
One more year…
Sebastian James
As soon as I heard the door close, I got up and peeked out of the window. I saw Alex walking her sexy ass down the sidewalk and to the Starbucks where she always parked her car to come to her bald head ass cousin’s house. Don’t get me wrong; I loved Alex with everything in me. She’d been my little ride or die since high school. Damn, me and Alex had really been together since high school. The only thing I hated about Alex was the fact that she always tried to change me. I was a street nigga. That was all I knew, hell. My mom was a street bitch, and my dad was a street nigga. They were made perfectly for each other. That was why they were spending the rest of their life behind bars down in Florida. They were sentenced to life for doing a drive by on a whole fucking block and killing ten people. Listen, my mom and pops were the fucking truth. I loved the street life, and there was nothing Alex was going to be able to do to change that. I lived by the street, and I knew that one day I was going to die by the street.
After watching her until I couldn’t see her anymore, I walked into the bathroom and cleaned myself up a little. I couldn’t believe that a nigga almost got caught slipping because I left my regular phone in my pocket, instead of my burner phone, although she had both phone numbers. If Alex had of went into the pictures, she definitely would have seen pictures she didn’t need to see, and all hell would have broken loose. The whole operation would have been blown to bits. I sighed before coming out because I knew that Kharisma was going to be talking shit like she always did, and I hated that bitch with a passion. The moment my foot hit the living room carpet, she started talking without even looking at me.
“Leave my shit on the fucking ta
ble, nigga. Stop selling my cousin those fucking fairytales. Y’all ain’t going no damn where. You gon’ keep your ass right here and take care of your child, nigga.”
“Shut the fuck up! Everything is your fucking fault anyway. Dumb ass bitch!”
“Yep, I’m all that, but make sure you leave my ten racks on the fucking table. You might as well tell her that y’all ain’t moving to Canada or wherever she is talking about y’all going to move to after y’all make some money. Mayhem will kill you before you can skip town.”
“All of a sudden you give a damn about your cousin…” I hissed.
“I been caring about her.”
“Please, bitch! You ain’t give two shits when you basically pimped her out to Frank. You just mad that shit didn’t work out with you and Mayhem, and he is now married and got three kids. You see that new house he just bought his wife and kids?” I taunted her.
“Yeah, I saw that house he got her, and I also saw the house you bought. Keep fucking with me. Run me my money.”
I stood there and contemplated killing her dumb ass.
“Don’t be looking at me crazy, nigga! You are acting like you wasn’t on board. Your bitch ass could have said no, but all you saw was dollar signs. Now you about to leave a trail of broken hearts when you get murked. Don’t worry; I’ll console my cousin right on the next nigga’s dick,” she said and laughed maniacally.
Kharisma was crazy and fucking calculated. I didn’t know how many times I had to say this, but I hated this bitch with a fucking passion, man. Days like this were the days I wished that I would have never walked my ass into this bitch’s house. I wish I would have gotten out after the first couple months that Alex was tired of playing girlfriend to Frank’s crazy ass. She didn’t have to tell me; I knew that Frank was off his rocker… not slightly either… full blown off that mothafucka. I found that out after my first meeting, and I watched him stomp a nigga’s head until it was flat. I was not exaggerating when I said that. I wished the fuck I was. Listen to me… if you watch The Walking Dead, you remember when Negan beat Glenn’s head to mush with his bat called Lucille? It was just like that, but Frank used his fucking steel-toe boot. After he stomped his head, he stared at the room and asked if anybody else had something else to lie about. I threw the fuck up all over myself and the nigga that was standing in front of me. Frank then came over to me as I was bending over, throwing up, and placed his hand on my shoulder. I looked at his boot with all of the brain matter on it, and I threw up again. He told me that I would get used to it and walked away. After that, I became more afraid for Alex than she was afraid for herself.
I went out to my car, grabbed her money out the armrest, and walked back in the house. I threw the bag at her and hit her in the fucking head. She ain’t do shit but smirk at me, and I turned to walk back out the house.
“Same time next month,” she said at my back.
I ignored her comment and got in my car and headed across town. Forty-five minutes later, I pulled into my driveway. My heart started beating fast as hell when I pulled in behind Mayhem’s Bentley. I pulled the visor down to make sure I wasn’t looking crazy or anything. I tried to ignore the thumping of my heart in my ears, but it was hard. I was trying not to sweat because Mayhem noticed little nervous triggers like that. He knew when a nigga was lying to him about something. He’d never been wrong. You would think that both Mayhem and Frank had special powers or something.
I got out the car and fixed my clothes. I was so thankful that I decided to wash up before I came home. I didn’t want that nigga to smell sex on me. I used my key to walk in the house. The house smelled of Cashmere Woods, one of my favorite smells. Don’t judge me.
“Daddddyyyy, you’re home!” my four-year-old daughter, Raylee James, screamed and jumped into my arms.
I hugged her tight and then walked over to hug her mom, Rubee Bailey, my girlfriend of the last four and a half years. I held my fist out to dap up Mayhem, but he looked me up and down. Rubee was Mayhem’s cousin that he was very protective of.
“Germs,” he said, not even looking at me. “Rubee, step in here and let’s finish this conversation.”
Rubee followed Mayhem into her vanity room and shut the door. I put Raylee on her feet, and then she grabbed my hand.
“Daddy, come on! Let me show you what I did at camp today.” My daughter grabbed my hand and led me to her Tangled theme room.
Raylee was the love of my life. She was the spitting image of me and one of the greatest things that I could have ever done. I promise that I didn’t mean to get her mom pregnant, but it just happened. All my ill feelings about being a father went out the window the day that she was born. This was the secret that I had to pay Kharisma to keep. This secret was costing me ten thousand dollars a month. I would gladly pay anything to keep Alex from finding out. As much as I loved Raylee, I loved Alex too, and I knew it would hurt her when she found out. I couldn’t keep Raylee a secret forever.
Everything was Kharisma’s fault because she set this whole thing up. At first, I couldn’t get down with Mayhem and his crew because it was a hard organization to get into. Kharisma knew that they would do all types of background checks on me, so she had a tech guy to wipe the web clean of anything that would lead back to Alex and I being together or Alex and her being some kin. I told you that bitch was smart and calculated. Who the hell would have thought that she could find somebody to do some shit like that?
Anyways, she told me to start dating Rubee. Rubee was Mayhem’s cousin, and if I could get in good with her, she could put in a word for me. Calculated. She told me where Rubee and her friends hung out at, and I started making my move. This was only a month after Frank and Alex started dating. I couldn’t lie and say that I wasn’t jealous because I was. Alex was my whole heart and the only woman I had ever loved in my life. I’d do anything to get to this money, and that was just a small price to pay. At least I knew that she wouldn’t be fucking on him.
When I finally saw Rubee, my heart had low key skipped a beat because she was beautiful as hell. She had on a tight fitting Gucci dress paired with some tall black ass pumps. I never thought that I would meet another woman that would make my heart skip a beat. She was sitting a little far away from where I was sitting, and she was making my heart skip a beat. I knew that once I got close up on her, she would be even more beautiful, and that was the truth. The first time I walked by her and her friends, we made eye contact, and she smiled at me. Her skin was blemish free and a golden color. Her little pie shaped face was beautiful, and she had the sexiest set of small plump lips on her face that I had ever seen in my life. Her makeup was on point, but underneath that makeup was an even prettier face, and pretty freckles going across her nose. Her teeth were straight as hell and extremely white. You could tell that she took care of herself in every area. She had the long weave down her back, and even though I didn’t like weave, she was sexy with hers.
So I had been low key stalking Rubee and her friends until I got the courage to walk up on her and tell her that it must be fate that we kept running into each other. After we conversed for a week, she finally told me her age and that she was a virgin. I was heated. At the time, I was twenty-nine, and she was twenty-one. I would have never in my life fucked with a girl that young, and I let Kharisma know how I felt after she revealed that to me. She told me that she was the ticket to me getting into the Bailey organization and that I had to do what I had to do.
Not even two weeks later, my ass had sweet talked her, and I was breaking her hymen. Her pussy was so mothafuckin’ wet and tight that I couldn’t even pull out of that tight shit. I should have known that her ass wasn’t on birth control because she was still a virgin, and my old ass knew better and should have worn a condom. After that first time we had sex, I started using condoms. I didn’t want kids at all, but I knew that Alex wanted kids, so I would give her one or two. Two months later, she told me that she missed her period. Everything went up and down from there. I said that because I was
able to convince Mayhem that I needed money to take care of my kid, and I was able to get on… but went down because Kharisma found out that Rubee was pregnant and threatened to tell Alex. I couldn’t tell the love of my life that within three months of us moving here, I got a girl pregnant. That would destroy her, and I didn’t want to do that.
Rubee had Raylee a little earlier than expected, but she was healthy. I ended up buying us a house as a push present.
Over the last few years, I fell in love with Rubee. I tried hard to fight it, but I did anyway. The fact that she pushed out my daughter was the most perfect thing in the world. To Raylee, I was perfect. I could do no wrong in her eyes. I was her hero, her protector, and everything else. In reality, I was a fucked up individual. I fucked up when I agreed to basically pimp my girl out to the highest bidder. I fucked up when I got Rubee pregnant. I fucked up when I fell in love with her.
“You like it, Dad?” Raylee asked, showing me her stick figures.
I looked down at the pictures, and there were three stick figures holding hands. I assumed it was her mother, me, and her.
“Of course, I do! I love it!” I said and kissed her on the forehead.
“I’m going to go show Uncle May, and I hope he likes it too,” she said and skipped out of the room.
“That’s not your uncle,” I said to her, but she walked out.
I didn’t follow her. I sat on the bed and then laid back and stared at the pink ceiling. My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out to see that it was Alex texting me.
Al: Bash, I just want to let you know that I love you so fucking much. Everything I’m fucking doing is for you… for us. Every day, I think about pushing out your first big head ass son. I think about walking down the aisle to you but honestly, we don’t even have to have a big wedding, we can have something small on the beach. I just want to be married to you and carry your last name. I just want… you. Frank is not here and he’s probably not going to come back, can we get a hotel tonight and just… hold each other. I want to be in your arms. The silence in this big house is killing me.
