“That bad, huh?”
“Even worse,” she sighed.
“How long were y’all together?”
“Umm, let me see. Eight years.”
“What? How old did you say you were again?” I asked her knowing that she couldn’t possibly be with one dude for all that time and only be twenty.
“I’m twenty. We just met when we were kids and started going together in ‘96,” she explained.
“So, you were with that one nigga all that time?”
“Well, not exactly. He was always in and out of trouble, so when he had to do sit downs I had time to see other people.”
“Oh, so you had a street nigga?”
“Unfortunately. And now I’m trying to find greener pastures.”
“What? So you ain’t trying to fuck with niggas in the streets no more?”
“To be honest, I’m not looking for a particular kind of dude when it comes to his occupation. I just want somebody that makes good choices with whatever they have going on. I like all kinds of men from different backgrounds, but I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t love a nigga with a little thug in ‘em,” she laughed.
“Oh, yeah?” I laughed. “Well, what kind of job do you have?”
“Right now I work at Home Depot.”
“No, shit? How long have you been working there?”
“For two years now. I just went full time so that I can move out of my mama’s house.”
“That’s what’s up. You finished school?”
“Yeah, I graduated from Kashmere two years ago. I need to have my ass in somebody’s college, but my first priority is getting the hell out of my mama’s spot.”
“Your T-Jones be tripping?”
“Tripping hard. She gets on my damn nerves, so I stay away from home as much as possible.”
“Well, all I can say is that you’re doing the right thing by trying to leave.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m just waiting for income tax season and then I’m out of here.”
“You and your boyfriend gon try to take another stab at it again?” I asked, trying to make sure that she was really done with her ex. Eight years could make it hard to just walk away from somebody.
“Hell no. His ass is in jail, anyway.”
“You writing him?”
“Nope. That fucker had the nerve to threaten me right before they gave him his time.”
“For what?”
“Look at you…got me talking about his ass, anyway. But yeah…its cause he claims that he was always there for me. He thinks that because he spent a little change on me that I’m obligated to be there for him. I guess that he got so comfortable that he thought that I’d always be there no matter what. So now that I’ve moved on, he thinks that I betrayed him. Never mind that, we weren’t together when he got locked up. He was with some bitch that he’d been fucking while we were still together. I feel like he needs to be calling that bitch and leaving me the fuck alone.”
“Well, maybe he feels like y’all got a lot of years together and y’all should always be down for each other,” I offered.
“Fuck that. All that shit went out the window when he fucked over me. I just got over him and all that bull, so I’m not about to go back down that lane. Things will never be the same between us and I don’t owe him shit.”
I was convinced that the ex wasn’t going to be a problem after she said that. I could tell that she loved him, but he must’ve hurt her deeply. “You’re right. You don’t owe him anything,” I agreed. “So, when can I get a picture of you?”
“You got a camera phone?” she asked me.
“Hell, yeah.”
“Okay, well when I hang up I’ll send you a pic and you can send me one.”
“That’s a bet. Let’s get on that right now,” I told her.
“Okay. Call me after you get mine.”
“I will,” I hung up the phone.
Usually I didn’t send a broad my picture until I saw theirs; but for some reason, I had a feeling that I didn’t have to do that with her, so I sent her a picture of me leaning on my Cadillac counting some Benjamins. About two minutes later I got her picture. She was looking good in a yellow tank top. I stared at the picture for a while and then it hit me. She was the same chick from the club!
Chapter 3
Keirah
I was waiting on Killah’s picture as I laid in bed. Finally, after like three minutes, his picture came in. He was fine with his fitted cap sitting low over his eyes giving him a mysterious look. He was leaning on a clean ass Cadillac and counting some money. He had to have thousands in his hands. I was checking out everything from his clothes to his jewelry. He was sporting a big faced watch with incrusted diamonds and a platinum chain. The car that he was leaning on was sitting on super-pokers. This is what every man in Houston wanted on their slab. The entire picture read money loud and clear.
Now for some reason I was feeling disappointed. Killah seemed like a simple dude by his conversation, but now I saw a headache in the making. He seemed too handsome and worldly. Those kinds of guys never had to go out of their way to make their women feel special because their mere presence was enough for most chicks. He probably never had to work hard at pulling a girl. I hated those types of guys and I ain’t gon lie, those types usually intimidated me. That’s why I was with Ken for years while guys that were much better looking always tried to talk to me. I felt like with Ken, I was the most beautiful chick on the planet because I honestly thought that he couldn’t do any better, while the other boys would have just bunched me up with the rest of the girls. I needed to feel special and have the upper hand in my relationship. With a guy like Killah, I wouldn’t have any control. He had his own money and enough sex appeal to make any broad wet her panties. I didn’t even know how to begin to deal with that kind of shit.
I figured that I wouldn’t have to put too much thought into it because I knew that he’d received my picture already but hadn’t called back yet. Maybe he saw my picture and wasn’t impressed. Right when I doubted myself my phone rung.
“Hello,” I spoke into the phone.
“Yeah, I got your picture. You’re cute,” Killah claimed.
“Oh, yeah. I guess,” I replied, not feeling that confident.
“That’s real shit right there. So, tell me when can a nigga see you in person?”
“Umm, I don’t know.”
“Why is that?” he probed.
“Well, I work and I’m sure that you be busy a lot…” I stalled, before he cut me off.
“Wait, wait. Do you want to see me?”
“I mean, yeah, but I was just saying…”
He cut me off again. “Okay, so tell me when you’re free so that we can make this happen.”
“Well, I’m free at some time during every day.”
“Alright, so let’s pick a day so that I can see your pretty ass,” he said urgently.
“Okay, how about Sunday?” I suggested.
“Sunday it is,” Killah laughed.
Killah and I talked until the sun came up. It was refreshing to talk to a dude that could actually listen and hold a decent conversation. He seemed so different from the dude I saw in that picture, but I still kept my reservations in my head. I couldn’t believe that a man of his caliber was even on the chat line. Kerry had given me the number one day while she was chilling at my house. I called it a few times and met one guy off of there. He ended up being decent, so I figured that calling the chat wasn’t all that bad. The men never seemed to be amazingly handsome, but there were definitely some that were cute. Killah was really a one in a million type thing. I knew that he was too good to be true. So, I guess that’s why when Sunday came around, I stood him up.
* * * * *
My work week flew by and it was once again Thursday. I was more than ready to let my hair down and head to Metropolis. The only problem was that it was nine o’clock and my girls were dropping out like flies. My girl, Winter, claimed that she couldn’t fin
d a babysitter at the last fuckin minute. Angel said that Tee asked her to stay at home. We all know that he didn’t ask her a damn thing; he told her. And then Tameka was suffering from another one of her black eyes. So that just left me and Kerry. Her aunt was keeping her daughter and Jay was tripping, but she was going out anyway.
Since I had to drive Kerry all around the world, she got some gas money from her granny for me, or so I thought. Right when I jumped on the freeway, she sprung the question on me.
“Can you take me by my friend’s house before we go to the club?”
“What friend?” I asked her. I noticed that she’d been on my cell caking with some dude.
“My baby,” she giggled as she held my cell phone to her ear.
“I thought that the man at your apartment was your baby?”
“No, this right here is my baby,” she said so that the nigga on the phone could hear her.
I rolled my eyes. “So, where he live?”
“Baby, how do we get to your house?” she asked. “45 to 288?”
I was already on Highway 45, so I headed south toward 288. “Bitch, your ass thinks that you are slick. You waited till the last minute to ask me to take you to this nigga’s house. I hope you know that I’m not staying that long.”
Kerry didn’t bother replying because she was too caught up in her conversation. The only time she managed to say anything to me was when she was further instructing me on how to get to his house. What really fucked me up was when I was about to exit and she said into the phone, “You better not be ugly.”
“What?! You never met this nigga before?” I asked on a fast track to being pissed off. It was damn near twelve o’clock at night and she tricked me into going to some strange ass nigga’s house in an area that I knew nothing about. I was still new to the chat line and hadn’t been to anybody’s house and nobody had been to mine. I still felt that there were too many weirdoes on there to do that type of shit.
“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that I met him on the chat line,” Kerry giggled, trying to make light of the situation.
“Well, you tell his ass that I have a knife and I ain’t afraid to use it,” I said, lying through my teeth. I was wishing that I had a weapon, but my eyebrow archer would just have to do if necessary.
Kerry repeated what I said and I guess that her and her little friend had a good little laugh about it. I, on the other hand, was nervous as I pulled into his driveway. He lived in a subdivision that seemed to have very dark streets. I was trying to think of all kinds of escape routes in case some shit popped off.
The dude that called himself Boo stepped outside. He was about our age, give or take, and was handsome considering the fact that he was on the chat line. Kerry was acting like he was her long-lost love the way she was all hugged up and kissing him. I didn’t mind their little love connection, especially since I knew that she was playing Jay’s sorry ass. But they were cutting in to my club time.
“Uh, can y’all hurry it up?” I said from my car’s window as they leaned against my trunk.
Boo released Kerry and walked up to my window. “I can go get my big brother for you.”
I immediately shook my head. “I ain’t trying to meet your brother or anybody else. I’m trying to get to the club.”
“Alright,” he nodded.
I was not trying to get hooked up when there were plenty of niggas at the club. I was nobody’s charity case. So, Kerry said her goodbyes to her new man and we were headed to Metropolis. She talked to Boo the entire time and then passed me the phone.
“Who is this?” I asked her before I placed the phone to my ear.
Kerry just hunched her shoulders and I gave her my best evil look. “Hello,” I said into the phone.
“What’s up?” a deep voice asked me. He sounded like he’d just woke up and had some stank ass breath.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“This Slim. What’s up?” he asked again.
“Shit, I was on the way to the club.”
“Well, my little brother said that y’all was chilling outside. Why did y’all leave?”
“Cause, I ain’t trying to be no hater or nothing, but what I look like sitting there while they’re kicking it and shit?”
“I feel you on that, but I want to kick it with you. Is that cool?”
“But we almost halfway to the club.”
“So, fuck that club. Just come and kick it with us. It ain’t too late to turn around.”
I looked over at Kerry. I could tell that she really wanted to keep kicking it with ole’ boy and probably wasn’t going to be much fun if I forced her to go to the club.
“Fuck it. We’ll be back over there in like ten minutes,” I told Slim.
Just as promised, I was back at Boo’s crib in ten minutes. He stepped outside, right along with his tall, dark-skinned brother. They couldn’t be more opposite. Slim was indeed slim; but was cut, tall, had a mouth full of gold, tattoos all over, and bow legs. Boo was about 5’6” or 5’7” with a light brown complexion, no tattoos, and plain white teeth. Both dudes were handsome in their own right, but they didn’t resemble at all. Slim had some deep dimples that kind of edged out his roughness and I think that Boo had some two. If so that’s the only thing that those two shared physically.
Slim slid right in my passenger’s seat and Boo got in the back with Kerry. Boo broke the ice and formally introduced us. After that, the conversation just took off and all four of us talked about everything under the sun. Before we knew it the sun was coming up and we were still sitting in their parents’ driveway. About eight in the morning, I received a call from Kerry’s house phone.
“Kerry, I think that Jay is calling me,” I told her.
“How? I don’t have caller ID and he don’t have your number,” she said confused.
“Shit, I don’t know, but this is his ass calling.”
“Okay, okay. I’m going to answer but y’all have to be quiet,” she told all of us before she answered the phone. “Hello,” she answered trying her best to sound groggy.
It was so quiet in the car that we could all hear him loud and clear on the other end of the phone.
“Where the fuck are you?!” he shouted.
“I’m at Keirah’s house. How did you get her number?”
“Angel gave it to me.”
“Oh.”
“And how the hell are you at Keirah’s house when I just called her mama’s house and she said that y’all weren’t there?”
I knew that she didn’t know what to say so I decided to coach her. “Tell, him that we got in real late and my mama don’t even know that we’re in the room lying down already,” I whispered.
She told him exactly what I said. He was coming with question after question and she was telling lie after lie. That conversation was eating up my daytime minutes.
“Uh, you gon have to call him back cause y’all using up all my minutes,” I told her loud enough for Jay to hear. Slim and Boo were chuckling and shaking their heads.
Then Jay got to talking about calling her on our house phone. “Tell him that my mama got the phone in her room and I ain’t trying to wake her up,” I spoke up trying to help her cover her tracks and get the hell off my phone.
Jay heard me and kept right on talking. Finally out of nowhere, Kerry came with this shit, “You know what Jay...this right here just ain’t working. I’m tired of your shit. I can’t do nothing. I have to fuss and fight with you just to go out with my friends. I am young in case you forgot.”
Jay shouted. “And this is why! I let you go out and look what you do to me. Why are you still gone and it’s damn near nine o’clock in the morning, Kerry?”
“Cause. I told you that Keirah got drunk and couldn’t take me home. And the reason why I didn’t come home is because you made it that way. You made me not want to come home. I feel like an old ass woman. All you do is pressure me about marriage.”
“But I thought that you wanted to get married?”
“No, that’s what you want. I want my old life back. I want my freedom back. I think that us getting together was a mistake. I just want this to be over!”
Everybody in the car started laughing when she said that.
“I think that you should pack your shit and go,” Kerry said with finality.
I couldn’t believe how she just ended her relationship with him. After all the ass kickings and starved-out days where he couldn’t even put food on the table, she leaves him just because she met Boo. She may not admit it, but he was the only reason that she was standing up to Jay.
Jay was begging and sounding pitiful. By then we couldn’t even remain silent because his desperation was hilarious. It was obvious that Kerry was in the wrong and he couldn’t take her rejection like a man. He was making himself look like a bigger fool by the minute. Finally, I got tired of listening to him on my damn daytime minutes and demanded that Kerry give me my phone. He should’ve been thanking me because I spared him any further embarrassment. She’d taken his balls in front of two other niggas. I was just hoping that she was smart enough to know that there was no turning back after this. If she was to take Jay back, he was never going to let her forget this day and would probably kick her ass every time it crossed his mind.
Everything was all happening so fast, and before I knew it, all four of us were in route to Kerry’s apartment. She was convinced that Jay was going to his new job and that we could all kick it. I felt like a man might call off after his woman just kicked him out after staying out all night long. Still I headed to her crib. It was crazy how the niggas weren’t even tripping about the situation. They were just ready to kick it.
When we arrived at her apartment, I had the brilliant idea of getting Boo and Slim to stay behind in the car while we check to make sure that the coast was clear. So, we entered her apartment two deep and searched each room. Some of Jay’s things were still there, but he was nowhere in sight. I was relieved and decided to go use the bathroom. I was thinking about how crazy shit could’ve gotten if Jay would have still been sitting in that bitch when we got there.
Can I Talk to You (G Street Chronicles Presents) Page 3