by Hood Rich
She lowered her head in defeat. “That is what I was afraid of. I feel like you’re going to make me fall in love with you, and then you’re going to kick me to the curb for a female that doesn’t have as much of a history as I do. And you wanna know what? If you did something like that I couldn’t even blame you. Who’d want to be with a girl that once sold pussy? Most dudes are looking for young females just, so they can pop their cherries. Life sucks.” She exhaled and walked away from me. “I want to show you something to prove what I’m saying to you is the truth.” She grabbed her phone and started to type on it before turning it sideways and handing it over to me. “When I was working for Ken, he had this thing where he always had to go through our phones and know our codes for everything, but he wasn’t the brightest bulb, so it was easy to keep things from him. Check out those pictures.”
I grabbed the iPhone and looked at the first picture. It was of a table full of cocaine or what appeared to be cocaine, because next to the powdery substance was four wrapped packages with an Uncle Sam stamp on them. I swiped, and the next picture was of what appeared to be ten packages stacked up against a wall. I kept on swiping until different colored packages appeared on the screen.
“I haven’t lied to you since we’ve officially met, Rich, and I don’t feel the need to. Now I know for a fact that this white man is obsessed with me, and I can set him up so that you walk away with all of his dope. All you have to do is murder Ken’s punk ass.” She grabbed the phone back from me. “I know you can make some major money off that shit. My cousin’s baby father down in Chicago will fuck with you real tough too. Once upon a time I thought about putting him up on the move, but I didn’t see any benefit in it for me. He runs shit down in the Windy City though. He has an army of niggas that follow behind him.” She sat on the bed and looked over at me. “So, what do you think?”
I was already imagining how me, and Paper could pull of that lick. It looked like at least twenty plus bricks in there, and if that was the case then we would be set for a minute. I felt like we could go hard for the summer and by the time the winter came I’d have enough to put some serious funds into my sisters’ savings accounts. That way, when it was time for them to go off to college, they would be set.
I walked over to Aaliyah and sat on the bed beside her. “How you get them pictures? Is dude really a lame like that?” I just wanted to know the type of man I was dealing with.
She smiled. “He trusts me, Rich. Pussy will do some things to a man. if you know what you’re doing with it.” She giggled and looked away all shy like.
“Alright, I’ll tell you what. We gon’ hit this lick with this white dude or whatever, and directly after that, I’m gon’ hunt that nigga Ken down and clap his ass. One hand will wash the other, and you’ll be free from that punk.”
“What about afterwards? Are we going to still be cool or is this more of a business arrangement, where you look out for me and I look out for you? Do you feel any sparks coming from between us?” she asked, taking her hand and placing it on the back of my neck to rub it slowly yet delicately.
I laughed at that. “I’m feeling you, Aaliyah. I like yo’ swag and I know you’ve been through a lot. I’m gon’ try my best to be there for you, even after all of this is concluded. You got my word on that.” I got out of the bed and put my other shoe on. I wanted to get over to Paper’s trap, so I could run this move by him in person.
“Tell me a secret, Rich.”
I stopped in the middle of tying my laces and looked over to her. “What you just say to me?”
She sat up more straight in the bed, peering into my eyes from a distance. “You’re a very peculiar individual. You’re not like most men. I can’t seem to pick you apart mentally, so I want you to let me in there just a little bit. So, come on now. You know a whole lot about me and I don’t know anything about you at all. So, tell me something. One of your deepest secrets that makes you the way you are. You know, before we enter into this new phase of things. Please.” She adjusted herself nervously.
I finished putting my Jordan’s back on, stood up and rolled my head around on my neck before placing my pistol into the small of my back. Then, I walked over to her and sat beside her once again. I didn’t even know what I was telling her until I finished. I took a deep breath. “You remember that I told you that my mother passed away from an overdose of heroin, right?”
She nodded and cleared her throat. “Yeah, I do.”
I rolled my head around on my neck again as I felt my eyes get watery. My throat got tight and I felt like I had a lump inside of it. “Well, I’m the reason that she overdosed,” I said barely above a whisper.
She gasped, swallowed and reached out and took my hand. A lone tear had fallen down my cheek. I quickly wiped it away. I was the typa nigga that dried tears, not shed them. “It’s okay, Rich. Just tell me what you mean. I’m here for you.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulder and pulled me to her breast.
I allowed for my cheek to rest on its softness. There was nothing like the comfort of a woman. The tears cascaded down my face and onto her sheet.
I swallowed the lump. “I gave her that final dose that killed her. Had I not, she would’ve still been alive and walking to this day.”
At saying the last part, I fell to my knees, imagining my mother’s face as she began to overdose off of the doses of heroin that I’d given her nearly a year ago. I saw the way the foam rose in her mouth until it pooled out of her and down her chin. I felt my stomach turn upside down as I recalled that tragic night.
Aaliyah got out of the bed and kneeled beside me, rubbing my back. She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “It’s okay, Rich. I know you didn’t mean to do it. You don’t need to beat yourself up over this.” She turned my head so that I was looking directly at her. Then she reached and rubbed my tears away, looking into my eyes.
I closed them and lowered my head, taking a deep breath so I could get ahold of myself. I wasn’t the type to shed tears, especially not in front of other people. I was the type that usually went and wrote my thoughts and feelings down. It was the way I expressed them. By this point, I had already written so many short stories about the things that had taken place in my life that I had a laptop full of them.
I exhaled loudly and shook my head. “I miss my mother so much, Aaliyah. I ain’t even get the chance to say goodbye to her. I was too busy expecting for her to pull through. I never took the time out to face the reality of me and her situation.”
Aaliyah continued to rub my cheeks with her thumbs, and that felt weird because I was used to being the one to console other people by wiping their tears away using that method.
I felt a little emasculated because I’d heard somewhere that men weren’t supposed to cry. I think it was one of the reasons prior to this point that I’d never shed a tear over my mother, even though every single day since it happened I felt the need to.
“Rich, you didn’t know that those doses were going to be her last, and what you have to understand is that if she had not gotten them from you she would have gotten them from somebody else. I mean, I know that’s not that reassuring, but it’s the one hundred percent truth.” She looked into my eyes for a long time, then leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, rubbing her face against my own in an affectionate manner.
I fully faced her and wrapped my arms around her small frame, taking the back of her head and pushing it forward so that she was laying on my chest. “Yo, I appreciate you saying that and for you allowing me to open up to you. I see that it ain’t easy, and I commend you for giving me so much of yourself, seriously.” I hugged her and kissed her cheek, stroking her hair.
“Rich, I know it’s early, but I’m telling you that in the end it’s going to be me and you. There is this energy between us that’s undeniable. I’m not trying to force anything, but just beware.” She raised her head, and for the first time, she kissed me on the lips, taking her hand and holding the side of my face, sucking on first my bottom one a
nd then the top.
It took me a few seconds to get into the act because her kiss had caught me off guard. When her lips first met mine, I honestly started to think about the street life that she was in. You know, the countless men that she’d probably been in contact with. Then, I thought about Andrea and how she made me feel. So, I felt a lil’ guilty because Andrea had been so one hunnit to me. But then it was like I felt something from her kiss— a lil’ spark or something like that, and it made me want to return her affections, so I did.
As she sucked my top lip, I sucked her bottom one, then her tongue swiped at mine before we started to simply go at it. We were breathing hard into each other’s mouths all lusty and shit. I didn’t even notice that she’d dropped her sheet until I felt her naked breasts pressing into my chest, both nipples spiked out. I grabbed them into my hands and squeezed them, loving the feel of their weight as she sucked all over my neck.
Then out of the blue, I pulled back and held her at arm’s length, shaking my head. “We can’t get down like this, Aaliyah. We gotta keep the emotions out of it until we handle our business on both ends. It’ll make things so much simpler,” I said, even though my dick was rock hard.
I couldn’t allow for us to mix business with pleasure because at the end of the day, the business aspect was more important. I had my whole household on my back, and at this point Aaliyah’s life was on the line, and so was her freedom.
She sucked on her bottom lip and wiped away my saliva from the top of her upper one. She pulled the sheet around her body and looked me over with lusty eyes. She nodded. “Maybe you’re right.” She stood up and turned her back to me, leaned over and picked up her panties, sliding them up her legs. “I’m gon’ get things in order on my end, and I’ll be at you. Just be ready when I call, and we’ll take it from there. Okay?” She turned around to face me, and I tried my hardest to not look over them pretty titties with the big, chocolate areolas.
“I will be. You got my word on that.” I stepped forward and pulled her into my embrace. “And don’t think I ain’t hear everything that you said because I did. I feel the same things that you feel and trust me it was hard for me to stop back there, but we have to. At least for right now. A’ight?” I hugged her tighter.
She nodded. “In the end, its gon’ be me and you. Just watch.”
Chapter 12
I was sitting at the table in Paper’s trap, a day after me and Aaliyah had come to our understanding, when there was a loud banging on the backdoor.
Paper and I had been chopping down and bagging up half a kilo of Andrea’s mixture when he jumped up and took his latex gloves off of his hands and placed them on the table beside his pile of dope. “Man, these fiends act like they can’t wait the lil’ three hours until we open shop back up. This shit crazy.” He laughed, and I knew he meant crazy in a good way because the night before I’d dropped him off nine ounces, and in less than two hours they were all gone.
We were chopping down the half a kilo getting ourselves prepared for Shirley’s party that was set to take place at eleven that night, and we were halfway done.
Paper cocked his Glock and put it on his hip. “I’ll be back, bruh. Let me go serve these fiends.” He snatched up about ten rocks and headed to the backdoor of the trap before opening it and going down the stairs.
I continued to bag up our work. I wanted to be finished so I could get back home and take a nice long shower. It had been about two days and I was starting to feel icky.
Shirley came into the living room where we were, yawning with her hands stretched over her head. She walked up to me and wrapped her arms around my neck, hugging me. “Afternoon, nephew. How you feeling, baby?”
I smiled. “I’m good, TT. How about yourself?” I knew that she was trying to get me all mushy and shit, so she could wiggle in and get a bag for free, so I just cut to the chase and handed her one. “Here.”
She took it out of my hand and took a step back, looking down at it with a big smile on her face. “Shit, I’m doing good now. Thank you, baby.” She hugged me again and disappeared into her room that Paper allowed for her to stay in from time to time.
I still couldn’t believe that he was fucking her, but to each its own, I guessed.
I placed about four hundred dime bags in a big Ziploc when I looked up and saw Jamie walking into the living room with Paper behind him. On Paper’s face was a look of irritation.
Jamie curled his upper lip and looked over the table before pulling a chair from under it, mugging me with hatred. “What’s good, Rich? I see you doing your thing all of the sudden. When did all of this come about?” He picked up about ten rocks and allowed them to fall to the table again.
I felt my head begin to heat up. I shot my hand forward and scooted the dope away from him. “This shit don’t concern you, old man. Stay in yo’ lane and I’ll stay in mine.” I mugged the shit out of him and lowered my eyes. I never really liked Jamie because he had this habit of looking at people like they weren’t shit, and back in the days when I really wasn’t doing so well, I felt like he was looking down on me. I didn’t like nobody looking down on me because in my heart I’ve always been a proud person.
Jamie grunted and slammed his hand on the table loudly. “This shit got everything to do with me, especially if it’s my son’s blood that allowed for this to take place.” He sucked his teeth and looked me in the eye, challengingly.
Paper walked around the table to my right shoulder and mugged him. “Nigga, I told you we ain’t got shit to do with yo’ son getting kilt, now you can quit coming at my nigga like it’s sweet or something, or a muhfucka gon’ have to show you what’s really good. That’s on my mama.” Paper said. I could see his eyes getting red which meant that his temper was rising like my own.
I shook my head. “N’all, don’t tell this nigga shit. Let him keep on trying me and he’ll find out what’s good soon enough.”
Jamie looked from me to Paper then back to me. “Man, you lil’ bitch ass niggas. Ain’t y’all the same muhfuckas that Fax laid down just last summer? Now y’all all hard and shit, huh?” He laughed with a frown on his face, looking deep into my eyes, then slowly trailed them to Paper. “Lil’ nigga, if I didn’t care about your mother in the way that I do, I’da knocked you off a long time ago. I never liked you and I still don’t. I know you living foul lil’ boy, and when I find out that you’re the one that set my son up, I’m gon’ slay yo’ punk ass and keep on fuckin’ your mother, how you love that?” He laughed out loud with his upper lip curled.
I looked over at Paper with my eyes bugged out of my head. In my opinion, that was the ultimate disrespect. Not only was he bragging about fucking his mother, but he was basically telling him that somewhere down the line that he was going to kill him.
Paper got ready to say something, and I don’t know what he was finna say, but before he could get his words out I swung and punched Jamie so hard that he flew backward out of the chair and hit his head on the wooden floor.
I jumped out of my chair, straddling him, punching him again and again in the nose and mouth. “You. Bitch. Ass. Nigga. You. Gon’. Respect. My. Nigga. And. His. Moms.” I said, fucking him up, watching his blood pop into the air.
His head bounced off of the floorboards and he failed to protect himself. I think after the first couple blows that he was already knocked out and sleeping, but you couldn’t tell my brain that. I hated this bitch ass nigga. I didn’t give a fuck if Paper had murked his son or not, Paper was like my brother. I wasn’t about to let nobody talk that bullshit to him or disrespect his mother’s honor. It just wasn’t happening.
Shirley ran out of the room and saw what I was doing and smiled wickedly. “Kill him, nephew. Kill his bitch ass. I hate that muthafucka!” She hollered.
My knuckles slammed into his face again and again. I was out of breath and my vision was hazy by the time it became clear again, Paper was pulling me off of him.
“Yo, chill, Rich. That nigga is out. Look at him!” he
hollered, pointing down at Jamie.
Jamie laid flat on his back with his eyes wide open and blood coming out of his nose and mouth. His chest heaved, signifying that he was alive, and I wouldn’t have been mad if he hadn’t been.
I pushed Paper up off me. “Why you let his bitch ass in here anyway, knowing that we had all this dope on the table?” I asked, feeling like going over and stomping Jamie. I watched him cough up a bloody loogey, trying to spit it out but it slid down his chin and stayed there.
Paper ran his hand over his deep waves and shook his head. “I wasn’t thinking, bruh. Word is bond, I wasn’t.” He looked down at Jamie as the man tried to sit up.
He shook and turned to his side before coming to his feet. I got ready to finish him off. I didn’t like seeing him be able to get up.
Shirley ran into his face and bumped her chest against his. “That’s what the fuck you get, Jamie. You ain’t nothing but a big ass bully anyway. I’ll never forget what you did to me back in the day.” She spits in his face before smacking him with all of her might.
He stumbled into the wall, went under his shirt and came up with a nine-millimeter, cocking it back and aiming the gun at her with a mug on his face. Blood ran from his nose in rivers.
I upped my .38 Special and aimed it at him. Then, I looked to my right and saw that Paper had two Glocks aimed at him as well. “Yo, you shoot her, I’m stanking you, nigga.” I said, walking over to them. As soon as I was close enough I pulled Shirley behind me. She’d had her hands in the air looking terrified. “Take yo’ ass in that room, Aunty, now!” I ordered.
She nodded and slowly backed her way into the bedroom she often slept in and closed the door. “Kill that nigga, Rich. He needs to be in the ground. I swear to God he do.”
Jamie faced me and aimed his gun at my head. I cocked the hammer on my pistol and got ready to dance with his bitch ass. I was tired of playing around with him. He spat a bloody loogey on the floor. “Look, man, you ain’t have to do this to me, Rich. I ain’t never put my hands on you.”
