“So . . .” Sonia paused to pick up a half-eaten glazed doughnut in front of her. She took a bite, closed her eyes, moaned, then got right back to my business. “Are you going to talk to me?”
My eyes darted from one corner of the room to the other; I gnawed on my tongue, I folded then unfolded my hands in my lap. The entire time, Sonia sat, stared, and waited. Finally, all I could get out was, “Like I said, there’s nothing to talk about.”
After a moment of a you’re-kidding-me stare, she shrugged again and shoved another piece of doughnut into her mouth. It was one of those reverse psychology moves, because right as her hand hovered over her doughnut again, I added, “Except for Trey.”
She squinted and cocked her head a bit, as if trying to recall that name and put it together with a face, but she blanked out. “Who?”
“Trey, Damon’s best friend.” It was my pause and then the way I exhaled his name once again, “Trey,” that made Sonia narrow her eyes.
She pushed her plate aside and leaned forward. “You better start talkin’.”
So I did—the gates opened and the (almost complete) truth flooded out. I reminded her of the history of Damon and his best friend and how I never wanted Trey to come back to DC, but how Trey had told Damon he wanted to stand up for him when he found out we were getting married, and Damon happily agreed. Then I went into yesterday: the airport, the kiss, and how he’d taken me straight to heaven’s door. By the time I got to the end of my story, I had to unfasten another button on my blouse to allow cool air to brush against my skin.
Sonia just stared at me in silence that felt like it went on forever until, “Damn!” She leaned back in her chair. “Damn, ” she said again. Then she looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time. “Damn!”
“Maybe this would be a good time for you to switch to Spanish.” I hoped that she heard how annoyed I was.
She nodded. “Okay.” Then she thought for a moment and said, “Damn!”
I blew out a long breath and Sonia laughed. “I’m sorry, chica. I was just kidding with that last one. But, is he that fine? That sexy?”
My lips parted, but then I shut my mouth. How could I explain what I didn’t understand?
Sonia said, “So tell me, what is it about this man?”
I paused before I said, “I’m not sure this man is the problem.”
“What do you mean?” she asked without thinking, because once a moment passed, she added, “No!”
I shrugged.
“No, Tiffanie. This has nothing to do with your mother.”
“How else can you explain it then? I meet a guy and . . .”
She shook her head, even as I spoke. “It’s not that. It has to be . . . him. He’s one of those bad boys, and you’re a good girl. That’s why you’re attracted to him. Everyone in your life treats you like a porcelain doll and you wanna know what it would be like to take a trip on the wild side.”
She was right about the bad boy part. I did find everything from his strut to his swagger sexy and intriguing. And it seemed like he just didn’t care—about anything. But still, there had to be more to it than that. “But it’s not like I’ve ever been attracted to bad boys before.”
“You never allowed yourself to be open to any guys. But now that you’ve opened your heart to Damon, of course you’re noticing other men.”
I paused, pondering her words. No, that couldn’t be it. I’d been with Damon for six years. Why hadn’t any other man ever turned my head?
Then she said, “Wait, has he made some kind of move on you?” Her eyes got wider than before. “Is he trying to hit it?”
This time, I was the one shaking my head before she even got the last word out. “He hasn’t done anything” was what I told her, though that wasn’t quite true. Trey had done everything.
He looked at me.
He talked to me.
He kissed me.
He got to me.
I continued, “He’s not trying to make any kind of move. He’s Damon’s boy.”
Sonia squinted. “Hmph. Sounds like he’s got something on his mind.”
“No, really,” I said, needing to convince Sonia, because my girl was so protective, she’d walk right up to Trey, get in his face, and tell him to stay away from me. Then he’d laugh in her face and tell her the truth—that he wasn’t interested in me at all and that everything had been my imagination.
Sonia leaned back in her chair. “So it’s not him, and”—she paused and spoke with an emphasis on each of her next words—“it’s not you or your mother.” She waved her hand in the air. “Then, you don’t have anything to worry about.” That was her prognosis. “What’s happening is normal. Think about it: it’s just days before your wedding and your mind just needs a distraction.”
“Really?” I was desperate to believe her.
“Absolutamente.” She nodded. “I went through the same thing right before Allen and I got married.”
I didn’t remember anything like that. So I said, “Really?” again.
“You must’ve forgotten. I was like a dog in heat. Remember I kept telling you how every man who walked by me wanted to sleep with me?”
When she laughed, I did, too, only because I knew she was trying to make me feel better.
“I had pre-wedding jitters, and now you do, too.”
If I wasn’t in crisis mode, I would have told Sonia to give up her chairside therapy, because if I’d been paying her, I would’ve asked for my money back. Every man wanting to sleep with her? That was an everyday occurrence. But since I realized that my confiding in her hadn’t helped, I just nodded so that we could move on.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Just be happy,” she sang. “A few more days around Trey, and you’ll get used to him.”
That’s what I was afraid of.
She said, “This will all go away.”
That wouldn’t happen.
“You’ll be back to your old self on Friday night; right after you and Damon say, ‘I do.’ ”
That’s what I prayed.
“So, you’re good now?” she asked.
“¡Absolutamente!”
She laughed the way she always did when I tried to speak in Spanish. Coming from around her desk, she gave me a hug, then leaned back. “De acuerdo; no te preocupes.”
“I won’t worry.”
She pulled me into another hug, I was glad, because it gave me a few moments to blink back my tears. The only thing this conversation had done was make me sure that I was in trouble. I wanted Sonia to be right, but I knew she was so wrong.
That meant that there was only one solution—the one I’d come up with last night. I’d stay away from Trey. Never laying eyes on him until I had to. And I just prayed that would be enough.
12
Damon
Man, this tux is like that!” Trey grinned as he twisted and turned, looking at himself in the full-length mirror. “You know you doing the damn thing when you have your best man fitted in Armani.”
Watching this dude acting like he’d never had on designer clothes was blowing me. Come on, now. Trey was acting brand new, like he expected something less. He couldn’t have forgotten. This was me, the King, getting ready for my royal day. How else was this gonna play?
But instead of breaking it down for Trey, I just sat back in the leather chair inside the private fitting room of Mr. Spangler’s Gallery—a high-end clothier whose clientele were the who’s who of DMV ballers.
Trey nodded at his image as if he approved. “Yo, bruh, I’m liking this.” He paused and, through the mirror, looked back at me. “But I guess this is how you have to roll when you got a dime like Tiff on your arm.”
I stiffened, then straightened my shoulders. “Yo, I meant to tell you.” He caught my stare through the reflection in the mirror. He didn’t turn around
and I didn’t crack a smile. “My girl likes to be called Tiffanie.”
He didn’t even hesitate when he said, “Really? You call her Tiff.”
The muscle in my jaw jumped. This was how it had always been. Trey just couldn’t accept what I told him. There were always shots fired, though some shots were friendlier than others.
I leaned forward and pressed my hands against my knees. “That’s me, son. I call my wife Tiff. No one else.”
We kept our stare, eye-to-eye. I waited for his comeback. One beat went by, then another. And Trey blinked first.
Then he shrugged. “Tiffanie.”
I nodded.
“Well”—his hands slid against the satin of his lapels—“Tiffanie is fine for real.”
I frowned. He may have blinked, but he was talking like he was still challenging me. Hadn’t I told this boy to keep it respectful? He knew I didn’t play, didn’t have much of a sense of humor. He had to know this was especially true about Tiffanie.
But I made the mistake of not saying anything, and he continued, “Yeah, Tiffanie’s fine as hell.” Now he wasn’t even looking at me. His eyes were on his reflection like he was talking to himself. “Fine.” His voice was lower, but still loud enough for me to hear. “And phatter than a second-grade pencil.”
He laughed, and that was the only reason why he didn’t hear my growl. There was no way, though, that I was gonna let him see that he’d broken my cool.
I leaned back in my chair like I was a king holding court. “Hey, blood,” I said. He brought his glance back to mine. Still looking at him through the mirror, I said, “I promise you, you gonna have to keep it respectful when you’re talking about my lady.”
We had another one of those staring matches and just like before, Trey blinked, but this time, it came with a chuckle. I joined him just to throw him off. But truth—he was getting to me. Yeah, we used to talk like this, but I’d already told him that she was different and I didn’t like repeating myself.
“My bad.” Trey turned all the way around and faced me. “You know I didn’t mean nothin’, right?”
I nodded and kept my smile. But I knew that Trey could see in my eyes that he’d reached me. I expected him to step up, give me some dap, let me know that it was all good. But he didn’t do none of that. He just kinda grinned and turned back to his image in the mirror.
Then he said, “Yeah, I didn’t mean nothin’.” He was looking me straight in my eyes, when he said, “Just like you didn’t mean nothin’ when you cut out on me in Atlanta.”
Now I was the one who blinked—a couple of times. That was a quick left, but I nodded, letting him know that while it had been a sharp turn, I approved of his message. We didn’t need to talk about Tiffanie anymore, but this talk right here—this was one that was waiting to be had.
I told him what he already knew. “Son, the block was hot, it was time to get out. I never wanted a lifetime membership in the game, you know that. You know what my pops always said.” I repeated the words my father spoke whenever he was out and had the chance to sit me and Trey down. “The game ain’t meant to be permanent. Anybody who plans to stay deserves to go down.”
It was like a heavy cloud had slid into the room, darkening everything. His eyes narrowed as he studied me, trying to figure out if I was clownin’ him. Not that I was; I was just stating a fact.
But, since Trey looked like now he was the one about to growl, I changed directions. “You know why I got started.” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “We were kids trying to find our way.” The only reason I was taking him on this memory-lane stroll was because he was acting like he’d forgotten what he needed to remember. Maybe breaking it down would help to get rid of whatever animosity he was holding. I continued, “But you knew when we were what? Fourteen? Fifteen? You knew we were gonna make that turn one day from the left to the right.” I paused to give him another moment to remember. “We were supposed to get out.”
“That was your plan.”
“I thought my plan was our plan.”
He was still, except for that little vein right above his left eyebrow. I recognized that—Trey was heating up. His next words told me I’d assessed the situation correctly. “That was one of the problems. That’s what you thought, that’s not how it was.”
Just like I had to do all the time back in the day, I told him, “That’s how it should have been. That was our agreement.”
That vein above his eye still pulsed, more visible now, and I hoped he wasn’t about to bust that thing. “No!” He shook his head and his voice got a little louder. “Our agreement, the real deal was that we’d have each other’s backs always no matter what went down.”
He’d shot from zero to sixty, but I kept my calm like I’d always done with him. Nodding, I said, “And I’ve always abided by that.”
He took two quick steps and I thought he was gonna come for me. I stiffened and it took all kinds of mental strength to hold back my reflex and not reach for my piece.
“You abided by that?”
If his tone had been a knife, I would’ve bled out already.
With a move that was meant to put him on ice, I just nodded, thinking he’d see that he needed to bring it down.
His volume may have been lower, but his tone was still murderous. “When did you ever have my back when I was inside?”
The way to get him to really chill was just to blurt it all out; I could’ve told him that the only reason he ate in prison was because of me and the money I’d put on his books. I’d put the money there anonymously, not only following my pop’s rules, but because Trey didn’t need to know. He was filled with too much pride to take a dollar from me; he would’ve rather starved.
And that was why he would never know about my major contribution. For the last seven years, I’d been paying Hank Morris, a renowned attorney who founded an organization to get reduced time for nonviolent offenders. From the beginning, Hank had been optimistic about Trey, so I footed the bill for more than eighty months, and each of those months, Hank kept me up to date. It was because of Hank and my checks that Trey stood in front of me right now.
But again, because of my pop’s lessons, because of who Trey was, I wouldn’t say a word. I could, though, remind him of what he did know, and the reason why I’d made sure this news had made it to him.
“Ms. Irene,” I reminded him. “I’m not looking for gratitude, but I had your back with your grandmother ’cause I didn’t want that on your mind when you were dealing with that time.”
His eyes, his tone were still dark. But at least his eyebrow stopped doing that little dance. “Like I told you, I will always be grateful,” he said.
“And like I told you, I’m not looking for gratitude. I was just giving you a little reminder of how I had you.”
“But I’m talking about when I reached out, when I was first picked up.”
It was like he’d ignored what I said; he just wanted to make his point.
Shaking my head just a little, I said, “I don’t know how many times we got to go over this.”
He chuckled, though there was no smile in the sound. “Yeah, your pops told you . . .”
“He told you, too.”
With his fist, he pounded his chest. “But I wasn’t just ordinary people; we were fam.”
Trey knew that didn’t matter, that didn’t make a difference to my father. If he didn’t want me, his son, communicating with him when he was inside, I certainly wasn’t gonna put myself out there like that with Trey. I kept my tone flatline. “We will always be fam. But . . .”
“I knew the rules,” he finished for me.
I nodded. “And don’t act like I didn’t try to get you out the game before and after I left.” I paused and let the room sit in silence, giving him space to remember some more. Even if he couldn’t remember the couple of dozen conversations we’d had with m
y pops through the years, he had to remember the last talk he and I had a couple of nights before he was picked up.
The conversation hadn’t started with Trey. The call had come in from my major connect . . .
June 13, 2009
“YO, THANKS FOR the heads-up,” I told G-Money. Even though I had left Atlanta about four years before, my partner’s news had me grasping the telephone tight.
“I had to make this call, son. You my boy and I just wanted to make sure you weren’t coming back down here.”
That’s how G-Money had always been. He may have been one of my connects, all business when it came time for that. But when it came to lookin’ out, we were like fam. “Nah, I’m out. I put a period on the ATL.”
“I hear you. This has been where I laid my head for a long time, but it’s time to bounce. They got a stranglehold on the streets.”
“So where you headed?” I asked him.
“To parts unknown as of right now,” he said, though before he got the third word out of his mouth good, I knew he was lying. G-Money always had a plan, he knew where he was going. But even though I was one of his most trusted soldiers, he wasn’t gonna tell me. No one knew when tables could turn. And if anyone ever came to me, I couldn’t give information that I didn’t have.
He said, “All I know is that I’m not gonna get caught up in no setup. You need to tell your boy to either go home or lay low. There’s a spotlight on him.”
I told G-Money that I would make that call to Trey, though he could have done it himself. But most folks at the top didn’t want to deal with Trey. He was too volatile and no one wanted to get into a beef with him over a simple conversation.
So I hung up and made the call to my fam. But Trey had no brotherly love for me that day.
I told Trey what I’d heard, and his response confirmed the reason why G-Money hadn’t reached out to him.
“Bruh, you need to miss me with all this bull. My pockets are phat ’cause I know what none of these cats down here seem to know—no risk, no reward.”
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