I waved the ring at Niyah and Iyana, chanting, “He got my ring! He got my ring!”
“Aaaaaaaaawww!” they both chanted and immediately got out their phones to capture the moment.
I finally let Banks go and handed them the ring. But I was so excited that I wouldn't let him get a word in. I grabbed both sides of his face and started to kiss him over and over again. My tears sank into his beard as I wrapped my arms around him so tightly that I was suffocating him.
Finally, I let him go again and stuck my hand out. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”
Everyone behind us laughed at my eagerness.
“Girl, you didn’t even give him a chance to ask,” Niyah said.
Banks and I laughed as he grabbed my hand and slid the ring on my finger. He stopped short when it wouldn’t fit.
“Damn, it’s too small,” he told me.
“That’s okay,” I quickly insisted. “We’ll just go get it sized tomorrow.”
“Cool,” Banks said putting it back in the box smiling into my face.
Grabbing his beard, I slightly pulled his face to mine. “I love you.”
And for the first time in years, my heart relaxed. Now, I had no worries of who could take him from me because he had chosen me, and he had finally proven them all wrong.
4
True
- A MONTH LATER –
I had never known that a man knowing that you are sleeping with someone else would draw him to you so much. A month after bumping into Coop at Norman’s Bistro, we were a lot closer than we had ever been before. We saw each other more often; every week now, versus once every couple of weeks. He started to take me on real dates, talk to me about my day, and he was a lot less of an asshole. It was like we were… dating.
Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t falling for him, and he was still against all things resembling a relationship. Our time together was just oddly becoming more consistent.
“Are you going out with Coop again?”
I cringed as I walked towards the front door. I swallowed hard and turned towards my mother’s judgmental eyes.
Knowing where this was going, I answered, “Yes.”
Her perfectly arched eyebrow rose. “Do you like him?”
Admittedly, I did. As I said, I wasn’t falling in love. I couldn’t fall in love. There was no time for that. That wasn’t an option for a person in my position. But over the last month, Coop had shed his hard shell and shown me who he could be. By now, I had grown comfortable with Coop. We had been spending so much time together that he was slowly getting rid of the other players on my team. Clearly, I hadn’t learned from my mistakes with Jameel because I was falling for another asshole. But there was something so authentic about Coop when he took off that hardcore mask.
I would never tell him that, though. There was no use.
“Yeah, I guess I do,” I admitted.
My mother’s arms folded across her chest as she stared at me with those motherly eyes. “Are you falling for him?”
My eyes rolled to the ceiling. “No, Ma, I know better. He’s just fun to be around.”
That’s truly all that it was. I guess in addition to the sex, Coop and I were becoming friends.
“What’s the use in dating somebody right now?” my mother probed.
“Well, you said you wanted another grandbaby,” I joked. Then I smiled, hoping it would get her to smile too.
“I do. But…” Her voice trailed off with sadness.
I sighed, feeling defeated that I hadn’t gotten her to smile. “I was just playing. I am just having fun with Coop, Ma.”
Her lips pressed together. “It’s fun until one or both of you get feelings.”
Not wanting to argue with her, hoping that it would ensure a sooner exit for me, I didn’t say anything.
Yet, she pressed, “Did you tell him?”
“No,” I answered shamefully.
“Well, don’t you think you should?”
I allowed the frustration that her question had caused to flood my face. “Why?”
Shocked, my mother repeated, “Why?” She slightly sat up. Her elbows rested on her knees as she stared at me. She was in full Mama mode now. “Don’t you think he needs to know?”
“No, he doesn’t,” I argued.
“Just because Jameel left you, it doesn’t mean everybody—”
“Mama!” She jumped a bit, and I felt bad. I took a deep breath, calming myself down. “I’m sorry. I just… I just don’t want to talk about it. When I’m out there dating and having fun, I don’t think about it. It’s like it doesn’t exist. It’s my escape. It’s all that I have, besides you and Joy. And I enjoy it. I don’t want to ruin it by talking about it.”
My mother nodded, but I could see the regret all over her face. I went towards her on the couch, bent down, and kissed her cheek. “I’ll be back. Thanks for watching Joy.”
“You don’t have to thank me for watching my baby. I wish you had some more of ‘em for me to watch.” There was a bit of sadness in her eyes that I sympathized.
However, I only said, “See you later.” I wanted to keep this conversation from going to the dark place that I was running away from.
COOP
“Aye, shorty, come here.”
I laughed at my right hand, Rakim, as he hung out of the passenger’s window of my Beamer, hollering at this dirty-foot shorty while I pumped the gas. She was switching her lopsided booty hard as hell in some dingy-ass leggings that were see-thru, so they showed her polka dot panties underneath.
Her bum ass had the nerve to turn around, eyeball Rakim, ball her face up, and spit, “Ewwwwe. No.”
My eyes bucked. Shorty had a lot of nerve. Her PINK hoodie needed to be washed. Her gym shoes were dingy and probably from Walmart.
“Ewe?” I shot back. “You gon’ let her get on you like that?” I asked Rakim.
“Man, fuck her!”
“Fuck you!” she spat at him.
I laughed at her. “Aye, shawty, stand down. Dirty ass looking like you got more claps than an auditorium.”
Her face dropped. She was embarrassed, so she had lost all of that mouth quick. She tucked her dirty tail and scampered into the store.
Rakim hung out of the passenger’s window, laughing. “Wow, dawg, for real?”
“She was trying to play you. I don’t know why you was trying to holla at her anyway. Dirty ass probably only shower after three periods like a fucking hockey player or some shit.”
Rakim started laughing even harder as he sat back in the car. I finished pumping the gas and hopped in the driver’s side just as my phone started to ring.
I cringed when I saw it was Issa. Between hustling and True, I hadn’t been able to get up with shorty. I had stood her up a few times, hadn’t responded to a few text messages, and hadn’t returned a shitload of her calls.
Unconsciously, I had given Prince what he wanted after all.
“What up?” I answered reluctantly.
“Really?!” she popped. “That’s what you on? You let another nigga tell you to stop fucking with your broad?”
I laughed at her ass. “You ain’t my broad.”
She instantly lost all that attitude. “This pussy was yours, though, baby,” she whined. “Please don’t let Prince come between us.”
I looked at the phone as if that would make her make sense. “Ain’t you still with that nigga?”
She sucked her teeth. “Are you going to wife me and pay my bills?”
“Fuck no.”
“Then that’s why I’m still with him, but I want you, though. I miss you and it. Don’t you miss this pussy?”
Then this motherfucker, Rakim, sends it up by saying out loud, “He’s fucking somebody else, Issa!”
I laughed softly while Issa gasped. “Are you fucking serious, Coop?!”
Still chuckling, I told her, “Aye, I gotta go.”
“Coop!” she shouted.
I hung up on her while Rakim laughed his ass off. “Ah
hhh! Hell nah!”
“Thanks a lot, motherfucka.” I threw the car in drive, shaking my head, and pulled out of the gas station.
“I saw your girl, Trina, last night at V75,” Rakim told me. “She was asking about you. You ain’t been fucking with her either?”
“Nah, she’s a dirty motherfucker too. I worry about getting robbed by hood niggas in the streets every day, and then I gotta go over there and worry about getting robbed by the rats? Nah, fuck that. I don’t know whether it’s her or a roach sucking my dick.”
Rakim bent over laughing. “You know that girl wasn’t that dirty. You wouldn’t even lay your head in a place like that.”
I nodded. “You’re right. She was just junky than a motherfucker and clingy as shit. So, I haven’t seen her in a few weeks.”
I felt him looking at me. So, I quickly turned towards him before putting my eyes back on the road. “What?”
With a smirk, he told me, “Stop lying.”
“What I’m lying about?”
“Trina being junky and clingy don’t have shit to do with why you aren’t fucking her no more.”
“What it got to do with?” I challenged him.
“True.”
I had to force back my grin at the mention of her name. Since he was my right hand, Rakim was the only person who knew how I had been spending more and more time with True. I was too embarrassed to let anybody know how I had started liking a woman after I caught her up playing me. But I had never had a woman boss up on me like that. Her pulling that move had definitely made me pay more attention to her. It was like they say, everybody wants what they can’t have, and since True acted like I couldn’t have her, I wanted to captivate her. She was a challenge to me, and that made her different than any other woman who was begging and waiting patiently to suck my dick. So, she had my attention.
However, I would never tell her that. True was the first woman that I’d fucked that never asked me about other women, who else I was fucking, and if I wanted to be with her. She still wasn’t trying to be tied down, and neither was I.
Ignoring that bitch-like feeling in my stomach that came every time I thought about her, I shrugged. “She’s cool.”
Rakim smirked. “She’s more than cool.”
“No, she’s not,” I shot back. “She’s just cool to be around. She’s less of a headache than most females.”
Rakim folded his arms and stared at me. “If not, then why are you taking me home, instead of taking us to see them hoes waiting on us?”
“Because I would rather see True,” I said with confidence.
Rakim laughed so hard that his head fell back on the headrest.
“Fuck you,” I cursed.
“It’s cool if you’re falling for a chick.”
I spat, “I ain’t falling nowhere. She’s just cool to be around. She’s different.”
Rakim nodded.
“Now, stop talking about it about before I knock yo’ ugly ass out.”
“Whatever, pretty boy motherfucker.” Changing the subject, he said, “Anyway, I gotta holla at you about something I heard Zell is pillow talking with his baby mama. He thinks you’re being reckless and killed Mac.”
My eyebrows rose. “He said that to his baby mama?”
“Yeah.”
“How you know?” I quickly looked over at Rakim who was wearing a slick, devilish grin. I put my eyes back on the road and asked, “You fucking Candi?”
Candi was Zell’s baby mama.
Rakim nodded once. “Here and there.”
Frowning, I reminded him, “She like eighteen, dawg.”
His devious grin told me that he was well aware of her age. “I know. That pussy tiiiiight too.”
I shook my head. “You foul, dawg.”
He shrugged with a careless smirk. “Anyway, you gotta take care of that lil’ nigga. I know he like a lil’ brother to you, but he can’t keep running his mouth like a bitch. He say that shit to the wrong motherfucker and all of this is done. Game over. He needs to be dealt with.”
I nodded. “Say less.”
“Whaaaat?!” True shrieked. She held a smile as she looked into the bag I’d handed her when she walked into my spot.
I chuckled. “Shut up.”
“Oooooh!” She continued fucking with me, teasing me as she scurried over to the couch. “You brought me my favorite? Ahhhhhh!”
“Didn’t I say shut yo’ ass up?” I snapped with a blush.
She looked up at me, grinning from ear to ear. “I’m geeked. You brought me one… two… three… four… five weed pens. And they are lemon haze.” She paused and looked up at me with starry eyes. “You like me. You really liiiike me.”
I brushed her off. “Shut the fuck up before I take them from you. I was just tired of yo’ ass smoking all of my shit. Now, you have your own.”
The smile on her face was unbelievable as she sat on my couch Indian style and turned one of the pens. I sat across from her on the chaise attached to it and watched her with a smile on my face, as if I was a daddy watching my baby opening her presents on Christmas.
Out of all the pens I had let her hit, she particularly liked the lemon haze oil because of the smell of zest, citrus, and a lingering sweetness that it left in the air. She particularly liked how it left her feeling energetic and lively since it particularly helped smokers that suffered from depression and fatigue. Usually, when she and I would meet up, no matter the smile on her face, I could see the exhaustion in her eyes. But after hitting the pen a few times, she was full of life like her worries had vanished. And she could have sex for hours.
She took the first hit slowly, blowing it out even slower, and then meeting my eyes with a happy twinkle in hers. “You are so nice, once a person gets to know you. I never knew you would be so cool to be around.”
I rolled my eyes. “Is it a point to that?”
“Why are you such an asshole then?” she pressed. “Why not just be this cool person all the time?”
I simply shrugged. “People don’t respect nice.”
“So, you’re an asshole just to get respect from people? It's a facade?”
I confidently shook my head. “Ain’t shit fake about me, shorty.”
“Then what is it?” she asked as she kicked off her sandals and started to run her toes over the carpet. As she did, I admired her fresh, French manicured toes.
“I’ve had to be this way for so long that I guess its second nature. It’s how I survived. I had nobody else to take care of me. I had to fend for myself. It was just me out there.”
“Where were your parents?”
Again, I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
True raised an eyebrow and hit the pen again. She then asked with a throat full of smoke, “You don’t know?”
“No. From as long as I can remember, I was bounced from foster home to foster home to group home.” Her eyes bucked slightly as she listened intently. “Everybody had a different story on where my parents were. I figured they were all lies, and, eventually, I forgot about my parents. If I wasn’t fighting off the kids in the group home, I was fighting off the motherfuckers who just wanted the check when they took me in but didn’t want the responsibility of actually caring for me. So, there was never a chance to be nice. I had to be a motherfucker to keep people off me. Most of my foster parents didn’t give a fuck about me. Most of ‘em mistreated me. Some of ‘em even abused me. The last ones were so abusive that I ran and never went back. I was twelve then. Ever since then, I’ve been out here fending for myself.”
I looked away from the sympathy in her eyes. I didn’t want sympathy from anybody. It is what it is.
That part of my life was over. I hadn’t folded back then, and I would never fold for a motherfucker now. I had to beat people to being the beast before they beasted up on me. That’s how you survived in this world.
“You get it now?” I asked her.
“Yeah,” she answered softly as she blew out a cloud of smoke slowly. “But is th
at what you want to be remembered for?”
I was happy that she hadn’t pried with more questions about what I had gone through as a child. That’s why I fucked with her, despite wanting my distance from people. She didn’t try to get too close, and neither did I, still while enjoying each other’s company.
“What you mean?” I asked.
“I mean when you die, do you want that to be what people remember you for? Do you want everyone at your funeral saying you were some asshole they all feared?”
I thought for a few seconds before replying, “I never thought about it like that.”
“You should because life is short. Very, unexpectedly short…” She looked like she had phased out for a split second and then came back to reality. “But how we are remembered lasts forever.”
I let that sink in for a minute. We both sat in silence as she puffed on her pen. I puffed on what she said, realizing that all I had in my legacy was murder and mayhem. Everybody feared me, but who loved me? Who truly loved me?
“You done being Iyanla Vanzant?” I joked, avoiding the question.
Fuck that deep, thought-provoking shit True was on.
Her head fell back as she laughed. “Whatever. I was just trying to put something on your mind.”
“Well, I’m trying to put something on your mind too,” I said as I grabbed the bulge forcing its way out of my basketball shorts.
As I stood up from the couch and started walking towards her, she smiled slowly as she sat back on the couch, opening her legs, and inviting me in.
“Like what?” she beamed.
As I kneeled in front of her, she licked her lips slowly and seductively continued to hit the pen. I pushed up her short-sleeve T-shirt dress and exposed her shaved chocolate pussy. I spread her legs as I brought my face closer to her leaking opening, her eyes bucked. I had never given her head before—ever. That was just something I didn’t do often. I could count on one hand how many times I had done it in my life, but True made me so comfortable that I just wanted to taste her. So, I did.
When My Soul Met A Thug Page 6
