by Love Belvin
“So this what we doing now?”
He laughed, standing from my ride. “What we doing?” he mocked.
I scratched the back of my head, giving my surroundings a cursory glance to see who was around to pretend not seeing me fuck Pettiford up. That quickly, I decided to let it go…again. It’s what his old ass wanted, and I wasn’t in the business of giving clowns a circus.
“Oh, you ain’t got shit for me? No, ‘hi, Big?’ Nothing?” he pushed as I sauntered to the driver’s side.
“The fuck are you even doing here?”
“I’m mentoring Jeremey. We had dinner and he remembered the chapter house meeting.” He shrugged. “I shot him over and told him I’d wait for him.” His smirk melted. “Or are you asking why am I standing outside of my own frat house, lurking like a weirdo?”
I laughed, pulling out my keys. Yup. He was fucking with me. “Nah.” I cracked the fuck up even louder. “Never that. I’ll leave the pleasure all to you.”
Just as I was about to duck inside, he asked, “I’m sure you heard I got a job with the Lady Panthers.” His face folded. “I’d be curious to know who told you, though.” Then the muscles in his face lifted, Cheshire cat smile illuminating. “Lil ViVi or A.D. Jones.”
With cavalier disregard, I chuckled. “Deeze nuts, bitch.” Then I dipped inside my ride, masking my boiling venom.
Seconds into my ride, deeper into campus, my cell rang. It was Aivery.
I was not available.
Samantha was out of breath and damn near limping into the locker room after our “workout.”
“This is how you train?” she panted.
Giggling silently, I shook my head with my eyes roaming all around. This was my first time in the recreation center. This was where all non-athletes at BSU worked out. It was nice…big, but different from the one on the athletic compound. It was hard to explain, but the machines were basic. This place resembled your average L.A. Fitness, which made me appreciate the athletic program even more.
We passed through the open door leading to the vanity section of the locker room, going straight to the back.
“I’m wiped out,” Samantha cried, swiping the sweat from her forehead. “How do you do this every day?”
“Only about five days a week,” I explained. “Six if I’m preparing for a fight.”
“Damn, that’s a lot!” She pulled clean clothes from her locker. “Is that why you never broke a sweat?”
Taking a seat on the bench, I laughed at that one. No, I wasn’t dripping in sweat like her, but my heartrate had elevated.
“Put it this way: we only did a quarter of what I have to do in my sessions. That was what we call a warmup to get me ready for the real deal.”
Samantha fell into the lockers dramatically. “Well, damn, Tori. Call me a fat loser while you’re at it!”
“You are not fat. Knock it off!”
I wasn’t into emotional blow jobs, but I liked Samantha. I’d been getting to know my roommate, although it was hard. I didn’t like meeting new humans. Shit. I’d had a hard enough time with the ones I’d known all my life. But she was reaching with the fat description.
Her face twisted into a pout. “That’s not what the cheer team told me last year.” She shrugged. “And when I went out for track, the coach told me I’d need to go on a diet before they’d even consider me.”
“I don’t know much about track, and especially at the college level, but I do know Blakewood don’t play when it comes to their athletes. They got my ass on a diet. I hate diets.”
She blew me off with a wave of her hand. “You don’t need them. What are you? A hundred and thirty pounds? I know you’re tall, but you look great.”
I shook my head. “I’m five-ten. My trainers wanna get me up to a hundred sixty-five/a hundred seventy. That’s why they’re regulating my food.”
“They want you to gain weight?” Her eyes went wild.
I threw a few air jabs. “They want me to knock out bigger broads.”
“You do that?”
Both our attention went behind us to the group of girls coming in, wearing all black: short biker shorts and matching tanks with low-top sneakers. Their hair was in high ponytails, too.
When I turned back toward Samantha, she mouthed, “Cheer team.”
The girls crossed over our section and filed into the next one over, it sounded like.
“Look!” one grated. “I’ve worked too hard to become captain, all to have half-ass talent on my team. I vouched for a few of you. Some of you came to me, begging for mentoring. I put you into positions to be seen, not lazy. Your poses are off, toe-points with your jumps are non-existent, and some of you aren’t even smiling!” she shouted like a vicious Chihuahua.
“Tamika, I swear to god, if you can’t get a basic thigh stand down, you don’t deserve to cheer at the collegiate level. And you damn sure don’t deserve placement on my squad: I don’t give a damn how many Olympic medals your father and uncle have won. This is my damn squad and I measure greatness with a performance scale, not a genetic one.”
The area grew quiet for a few seconds. Then sniffles could be heard. Again, I looked at Samantha. She rolled her eyes shut to a squeeze. She must have known these girls.
“Save your tears!” the Chihuahua commanded. “Now, everyone, let’s go and get this shit right!”
Within seconds, the herd’s feet sounded and they eventually crossed over our section again. No one paid a single glance in our direction; all sported long faces of pain and defeat. I knew those expressions all too well. But it was the last girl trailing behind the moping line. It seemed from the moment she registered Samantha’s and my presence, her nose lifted and mouth curled in disgust. I recognized her from that expression, but couldn’t remember from where right away.
When it was safe to speak, Samantha grunted, going back into her locker. “She’s relentless.”
“You know her?”
“That’s the Aivery Cooper girl I told you about.”
“When?”
“When I moved in. She was one of the upperclassmen giving me shit about my race and me attending an HBCU last year. She thinks the only things BSU revolves around are her, her cheer squad, and her boyfriend, Spence.”
“Spence?”
“Ashton Spencer. He’s the franchise football player for BSU, a quarterback. He’s pretty good. They call him Spence for short; he’s headed to the Combine in February.”
“What’s that?”
“Basically the tryouts for the big League.” Oh… “The school revolves around him. They’ve gotten a good run out of Spence. He’s brought the attention back to the Panthers since…Tariq Evans. You know him? He’s a wide receiver in the League.”
I nodded. He played for the Connecticut Kings. I didn’t watch football, but Raj, Cut, and so many at the gym in New Brunswick did, so I was forced to endure it.
“I think I’ve seen him around.”
Bad human…
It was in that moment I, in fact, remembered both of them. A couple of days before Labor Day, he barked at me like I was a dog. My mood darkened and I stood.
“Hey. Where are you going? You don’t need to shower?”
My body froze at the mention of being naked in a public bathroom.
I turned to her. “Nah. I’m going to shower back at the room. And I need to hurry up to make my shift at the cafe.”
Samantha’s face folded into a frown. “Oh. Okay. I’ll see you later then.”
I chucked her the deuces from over my head as I walked off.
My eyes got lost in the flame of the blazing fire pit. I floated above and beneath the sounds of idle conversation happening around me. It was Tuesday evening and I’d just gotten out of my business class, Organizational Structure, and was fucking tired and overwhelmed with coursework already. Al hit my Blackberry, saying this was the meeting place for the evening. Aivery managed to clear the greenhouse.
“I’m over this semester so soon,” Aivery moan
ed while sitting back, massaging her temples. “I fucked around and took two major courses my last fall semester here. Lorraine warned me against this, but I wanted to free up the spring for…” She gestured my way, referencing the League’s Combine.
“Who’s Lorraine?” Andrea asked, face curled as she flipped her long braids over her shoulder.
“My advisor.” Aivery mumbled.
“Shiiiiiiiit,” Dre sighed, pushing his palms down his thighs as he sat across from me. “I got the bomb hookups this semester for all my classes. Who’s got fucking time to ball, swag out, and study?”
I snorted at his silly ass. Al found it funnier than all of us by the way he hooted, laughing and reaching over to give Dre some dap. This dude was always dressed to the nines, and didn’t mind taking fashion risks either. He’d do leather motorcycle jackets with thick corduroy, rock pink as long as he had footwear to match it. He was even known to go sockless with pants outside of the summer season. Mr. Swag was his motif. Aivery and Andrea rolled their eyes, used to his jokes which, in this case, were serious.
“Nah. I feel you,” Al added. “Coach been on us for years, saying school’ll catch up with us soon if we didn’t develop study skills.”
Voices nearing us could be heard coming from the greenhouse. We all turned at the same time to see who was incoming. The expression of the girl with the familiar face dimmed as they sauntered farther out. On either side of her was an older woman and man. The man’s gear particularly caught my attention, wearing a Howard t-shirt, navy blue Bermuda shorts, and brown Ralph Lauren boat shoes.
A dad for sure…
“What do you want?” Aivery snapped, voice controlled.
The girl’s shoulders shrunk. “My parents are visiting. And I wanted to show them the greenhouse. I saw the closed sign was up, but the door was unlocked.”
“You saw the closed sign, but still came inside?” She dropped her head to the side and plucked her brows.
Sighing with grief, I turned back around to face ahead. Aivery was prepared to slaughter the poor girl in front of her parents.
“I was just…” The girl hesitated. “We wouldn’t be long.”
“Yet, I’m already here entertaining.” Aivery turned to face the fire pit and shooed them with her hand. “Try in the morning.”
I heard one of the parents clear their throats before the girl mumbled, “Great.”
The door slammed, letting us know we were alone again.
That’s when my phone vibrated. Without looking at it, I jumped to my feet to leave the area for privacy. “Excuse me.” I went inside the massive all-glass house where all I could see for, at least, a quarter of a mile were rows of shrubs. On the other side was the same design, but with long plots of soil. “Yeah.” I answered the call.
“Fuck!” my uncle, June, swore. “I think we lost him. Boobee, you there?”
“Yeah,” my cousin, Boobee, answered. “I think we lost him, though.”
“Shit. First we couldn’t get Ash; now we lose Brick.”
We’d been trying to three-way a call with my cousin, who was locked down for some time at this point. It had been a stressful time since he’d gotten locked up in July. Between his beef with Newark PD and Blocck Boi $even, a longstanding rival gang, my boy was hemmed up pretty badly. On the streets, my family had deep ties with a powerful gang. Brick ranked high in the organization, although he was less than twenty-five. So on the streets, he was covered, though on high alert for close to a year. But now, it was painful knowing there was nothing we could do while he was in custody. The Department of Corrections had its own society and was insolated as a motherfucker. We had very few eyes on him.
“What he say?” I asked.
“Nothing. I tried this three-way call as soon as he came through,” June bemoaned. You wouldn’t have known it unless you knew him. We were all stressed the hell out.
I nodded. “Hang up. He’s gonna try again. I’m right here by my phone.”
Boobee was the first to respond. “A’ight.”
“One,” June mumbled before disconnecting the call.
I went back outside, where I saw Aivery had sparked a blunt and passed it over to Andrea. When I plopped down into my seat, I felt her eyes on me, but ignored it.
“Damn,” Al groaned. “Y’all just gone do us Panthers the fuck like that, huhn?” His southern drawl came alive when he complained.
“I need this shit,” Andrea claimed, holding in the vapored ganja. “Sorry to you, sir.”
“That’s fucked up, and y’all know it,” Dre griped, pulling his cell phone out of his Louis Vuitton sweater pocket.
BSU had a strict zero-tolerance policy on drug use. We were tested fucking vigorously, which was all good in this instance. Here on three acres of loam soils, my friends were burning trees. It only propelled my reason for chucking the deuces. I didn’t want to be here anyway. Between class work and not having heard from my cousin in over three weeks, this was the last place I wanted to be.
Aivery waved her hand dismissively while pulling on the blunt. We waited for her to ceremoniously blow it out. “Brielle’s coming to town Thanksgiving week before we break.”
“Oh, word?” Al perked up.
“I’m going!” Dre declared. “We going. Shit!”
“Oh, my god! When?” Andrea began typing into her laptop. “What am I going to wear? Fuck.” She paused, gazing into the air. “I need to get my hair re-braided!”
Aivery beamed. “I don’t know, but I’m thinking about wearing those new Loubs I bought last month. Maybe my sister will get me—”
My phone rang again and I shot to my feet to take the call. “Yeah?” I barked when I made it inside.
“The fuck it do, kid?” I recognized the swag in that call right away.
I felt relieved and pained at the same damn time. “The fuck, yo!” My eyes closed. “Three fucking weeks?”
“Nigga, you know I woulda called before now if I could. I was just telling June these pigs in here fuckin’ with me.”
“That’s all. Right?” Boobee wanted to confirm. “‘Cause we can tighten up a Blocck Boi out here to make sure they know shit won’t be tolerated.”
“Nah, my G. I’m good on them. They keep us separated anyway. You know them informants keep them D. They beat my ass for like three fuckin’ days straight last month and revoked my calling privileges. Them bitches threw me in the hole all this time.”
“You good?” I asked, feeling fucking helpless.
“Muthafuckas chipped my tooth, broke my nose and shit. But I’m good now,” he was almost able to convince me. “But that lawyer you got me, Ash, is the reason why I’m making calls again. Them niggas tried to slow up my court dates and every fuckin’ thing.”
“That’s what’s up,” June mumbled.
“True dat,” Boobee agreed.
“Well, let me know what else I can do,” I offered with more sincerity than I’d ever pledged. “June ready to come put something on your books.”
“Coming as soon as we hang up,” June confirmed.
“I’m coming, too,” Boobee added.
“For what, nigga?” Brick scoffed. “It ain’t like I could see you.” The dryness in that last sentence wasn’t lost upon me. The line went silent for a few seconds, so much muted emotion synapsing from each man on the line. We wouldn’t break code, though. It wasn’t what we were taught. “Speaking of fuckin’ visits. Let me call this bitch. I know she trippin’ the fuck out.”
“Yeah,” Boobee agreed. “Do that.”
“Hit us as soon as you can next time,” June demanded.
“Fuck the collect charges. I got them.”
“I know you do, Ash. ‘Preciate you, my nigga. Salt and pepper, baby.” Brick, aka Deshawn Lee, fired off our code talk.
“Gray, bitch.” I replied predictably for him the same words we’d practiced since we were eleven years old and realized we were from the same family, but different bloodlines.
“That’s what’s up. A�
�ight, Boob and June. I’ll check my commissary in a few hours.”
“Peace.”
“Love you.”
My heart screamed a bidding, but it wouldn’t reach my lips. Goodbyes never felt right in situations like this. I prayed more this month and a half than I had all my life. I prayed God would spare my cousin from the gang war and his beef with the police department. My G was up against a wall right now and he had no protection.
Feeling…fucked up now, I headed back out. The moment I sat down, Aivery’s chinked eyes rolled over to me. I knew right away she was tight.
“Everything okay?”
I shook my head, unable to look at her. “Brick,” I mumbled, knowing she’d know what I meant right away.
“He still alive.”
Hardly…
I heard it in his voice and in what he didn’t say. “Obviously.”
She rolled her eyes again, taking her attention back to the group. “Well, since you left in the middle of the conversation, we picked roles for the Brielle concert. Dre’s bringing the liquor for the after-party; Andrea, ShawnNicole, and I will take care of the food; and Al’s paying for the party bus.” Aivery rolled her neck back to me dramatically and with defiance. She was a bold one when flying off the loud. “Now you gotta get the suite at the stadium.”
Al and Dre snickered. Of course, their cheap asses didn’t want that expense. Dre’s favorite pastime was showing off his parents’ wealth, until it included sharing it with others when there was nothing to be gained from it by him. Andrea’s wild eyes bounced between Aivery and me. She became extremely paranoid, depending on the grade of trees she inhaled.
Once again, I stood, this time grabbing my book bag. “Well, of course.” I gave a nod with crumpled lips. “I’m out.”
And I was off to do something more meaningful and productive.
4
-Then-
“There are like three tables that need cleaning out there. Take care of that then clear out the dishwasher. The cycle’s almost done. Got it?” Rich, my supervisor, shot out before going back into his office, turning slowly in a manner I could see the curve of his plumpness.