“I can’t believe you really came,” Treasure gushed. “I look a hot ass mess.”
Not even a half hour ago, Treasure and Benji were on the phone and he asked her what she was doing. She said she was at home bored, watching movies by herself since Eternity was with her daddy. Jokingly, she told him that she wished he were there so he could keep her company. Benji told her he was on her way and hung up. Treasure was left sitting there stuck because she was honestly playing and didn’t expect him to show up at her front door. Now here he was and she wasn't even prepared.
“Cut it out, you look fine,” Benji said as he let his eyes roam over her body.
Treasure had on some black leggings and a tank top that showed off her curvy figure. “What's in the bag?” she asked.
“I got us something to sip on and something to smoke on,” Benji said. “I mean, if you don't mind.”
“I haven't smoked since I found out I was pregnant with Eternity but I can roll you a mean one,” Treasure told him.
Benji laughed as she led him to her bedroom where she had her movie on pause to let him in the house. He looked around her room at all the pictures she had of her and her family. Benji paused when he reached a picture of her and Aries and Ceon.
“Damn, you know my nigga Ceon, too?” Benji asked with a laugh.
Treasure looked up at him with a smile. “That's my big brother.”
“What a small fucking world,” Benji said as he came and plopped down on her bed.
“I should've known, though. Ce into the same shit you and Choppa into. Is that how you know Lorenzo? Y'all run in the same circle or something?” Treasure asked.
“Hell nah!” Benji exclaimed. “No disrespect, baby, but ya baby daddy a bitch. I could never hang with a nigga like him. He be on some fufu type shit. It's just crazy cause I didn't even know that he was your baby daddy,” Benji told her.
“What, y'all got some type of beef or something?” Treasure asked.
Lorenzo never told her about his street affairs and she never asked. He swore up and down if something were to ever pop off, she would be the first person the police took back in that room to question and the less she knew was the better for the both of them. Lorenzo never actually believed that Treasure would snitch on him but he never wanted to put her in that position either.
“It's no beef on my end. I leave that beefing shit for grade school niggas. It's just me and Choppa tried to put Renzo in a position to make more money and he didn't want to be down so now he swear niggas is stepping on his toes. He wanna throw bitch fits and shit. I be ignoring his ass because the way I see it is, if it don't affect my pockets then it don't affect my emotions,” Benji said.
“He so childish.” Treasure rolled her eyes. “That sound like Lorenzo, though. He has a habit of being a little ass backwards.”
“I can tell…He lost you.”
“Boy, gone, you are not smooth.” Treasure smiled. “What's up, though? Why you babysitting the bottle?”
“Oh shit, my bad,” Benji said as he pulled the bottle of Grey Goose out of the bag.
Treasure laughed at his hood etiquette as he blessed the bottle and made her do it as well. She wasn't dare judging him because she thought he was so sexy with his little thugged out ass. Getting comfortable in her bed, Benji passed Treasure his bag of Kush and rillos to see what her pearl game was like.
“Tell me something, Benji,” Treasure said.
“Anything you wanna know, baby.”
“I know you got a few good horses in your stable, so why are you single?” she asked.
“I just never saw myself as the settle down type. I had bitches just throwing the pussy at me and I was willing and happy to catch but I haven't met one yet that made me want to turn in my player card. Unless you trynna be that one,” he told her.
“Me?” Treasure asked.
“Yea, you.”
“Why me?”
“Why not you?” Benji threw back at her.
“Uhh, let's see. Because I'm twenty-four years old with a three-year-old daughter and a crazy baby daddy who swears that we’re going to get back together. Did I mention you and my baby daddy already have history? You don't need that type of baggage,” Treasure told him.
“First of all, lil mama is not baggage. You and her are a package deal so any nigga that wants to be with you has to accept your daughter, period. Plus, she already said I could be her friend so that's taken care of. Second, you let me worry about Renzo,” Benji told her.
Treasure heard everything he said and she agreed completely but she was too busy trying to light up the blunt she had just rolled to respond. She held the lighter up to the end of it and as soon as she inhaled, she started choking.
“Give me that shit, girl. You don't even know what you doing,” Benji laughed.
“What the fuck is that?” Treasure asked as she continued to cough.
Benji took a toke himself and held it for a minute before he let the smoke out through his nose. Treasure rolled her eyes at the fact that he wanted to be a show off.
“You ain't cute,” she told him.
“I'm sexy as fuck, girl.” He smiled. “Anyway, this some new shit me and Chop bout to put out on the streets.”
“Y'all sell weed, too?”
Benji looked at her like he was offended. “Baby girl, it ain't shit that we don't have a hand in. Blow, heroin, pills, pharmaceutical and non, shit any poison of your choice.”
A lot of people had it misconstrued that the only thing the Kings had a hand in was simply cocaine. Years before they took over, Benji and Choppa were putting bugs in their dad’s ears about ways he could make more money. They had connections for every drug they had out on the street and it was safe to say that their business was booming.
“I hear that shit, make that money then,” Treasure told him. She really didn't know what to say or how to feel.
“Making it ain't the problem, having someone to spend it with me is,” Benji said as he took a toke of the blunt and drew imaginary circles on the skin above her breasts.
“Benji,” Treasure sighed, “as nice as it sounds, I've messed with someone who was in the game before and he let that shit go to his head. You're in way deeper than him so I can only imagine…” Her voice trailed off when he placed his finger on her lips.
“Don't do that. I ain't that nigga and he damn sure ain’t me. Just trust me, ma.”
“How about this. How about we start as friends and wherever that leads us, we just go with it?” Treasure suggested.
Benji acted like he had to think about it for a minute before finally saying he was down with it. Treasure so badly wanted to believe that things between her and Benji could work out but she didn't know. She was going to take this one step at a time and let the cards fall wherever they may.
Ten
After being gone for four days, Aries decided to return home. She'd had enough of Kevin crying, begging, and pleading on her voicemail for her to answer her phone so she decided to just put him out of his misery. She had Treasure come pick her up, which Choppa wasn't too happy about. He had no problems voicing how dumb she was for going back to a nigga who she really didn't want to be with.
She let everything he was spitting at her go in one ear and out the other. For one, she knew he was just mad because she chose Kevin over him and he was hurt, so he was saying whatever he thought would hurt her. Two, Aries was tired of explaining and defending her relationship with Kevin. She could admit that he wasn't the perfect man to be with, but who was?
Kevin had been there for her at a time in her life when she was going through some things and really helped her out so she felt like she owed him. Not only that, but she really did love him despite what everyone else around her thought.
As soon as Aries walked through the door, Kevin was getting ready to walk out. The two of them just stood there staring at each other, neither knowing what to saying.
“Aries, babe. Y…you’re home,” Kevin said.
�
�Yea.” Aries nodded her head slowly with a sigh.
“Are you cheating on me?” Kevin blurted out.
“Wait, what?”
“Do you not want to get married anymore? Because you can be honest. I just need to know. I’m—”
“Hold up, Kevin. Slow down. One question at a time. Where are you getting all this from? Let me guess…Carol, right?” Aries rolled her eyes.
Kevin had to put his head down because he knew it was true. He had let his mother get into his head and convince him that Aries was probably out cheating on him and that she didn't want to marry him anymore. He had been a mama's boy all his life and swore up and down that her word was golden. He never knew how much damage his mother could actually do until he got with Aries.
“See, that's the shit I be talking about, Kevin! The question is do you even want this relationship because the way you go about things, I don't think so. Just to put your mind at ease, no, I'm not cheating on you and if I didn't want to get married to your black ass, I wouldn't be standing here,” Aries told him.
Aries felt bad because she did almost have a slip up with Choppa but she was thanking God that he got called away before things went further than they did. She had never cheated on Kevin before and never thought about cheating on him, so that was a clear signal to her that she needed to keep her ass as far away from Choppa as possible because she could never think straight when she was in his presence.
Aries tried to walk away from him so she could go put her bags up but Kevin wouldn't let her. “Move, Kevin, don't you have somewhere to be? I could've sworn you were on your way out.” Aries rolled her eyes.
“I was just on my way out with the guys but that's not important right now,” he told her as he led her over to the couch. “Talk to me, Aries. Let me know how I can fix this. I’m willing to do whatever I can to work this out.”
Aries looked at him like he was dumb. It was as if he hadn't been listening to anything she had been telling him for the past few months. He knew exactly where the problems in their relationship stemmed from but he chose to ignore them.
“Okay, I’m going to say this one more time, Kevin. Listen to me and listen to me good. You need to tell your mother to respect me. You sit there and you let her talk to me any kind of way and you say nothing about it but the moment I open my mouth to defend myself, you want to jump down my throat,” Aries told him.
“Aries, I understand what you're saying. I really do but my mom is her own woman. I can't control what she lets fly out of her mouth. You see she doesn't even listen to my dad,” Kevin said.
“Kevin, either you're going to stick up for me or you're not!” Aries yelled. “I'm sick of you sitting there like a lost puppy when you know good and damn well you can put Carol in her place without disrespecting her. Another thing, keep her messy ass out of our business! What goes on in this house stays in this house! It's nobody's business but ours. If you can't do those simple things then I'm gone…for good,” she stressed before getting up and walking away.
“Let's move the wedding up!” Kevin quickly said.
Aries stopped dead in her tracks as if she had heard him wrong. She slowly spun around with a confused look on her face. “What you just say?”
“I said, let's move the wedding up. Why wait when we can make it happen within the next few months? What exactly is holding us back?”
Aries was stuck because she really didn't know what to say to this sudden change that Kevin had just sprung on her. They had only been engaged for a total of three months and agreed that they would stay engaged for at least a year so she could finish school and mostly because that's what Carol suggested. Now here he was talking about planning a wedding in a few months’ time as if she wasn't already stressed out.
“I don’t know, Kevin. I'm already stressed with planning it on top of school and work. How am I going to make it happen in ‘a few months,’ as you say? What exactly is a few months?’ Aries asked.
“I'm thinking no less than five but before you flip your lid, you have your sister to help you, your mom, Morgan, and did you forget Morgan’s best friend is a well-known event planner? I'm sure she would be happy to help,” Kevin said as if he had it all figured out.
Aries was still stuck. Just the other day she was damn near about to fuck another man who she had been staying with for the past four days, yet here she was standing in her living that she shared with her fiancé talking about moving up the date to their lifetime commitment. There was nothing funny about the scenario but she really wanted to laugh. She was actually happy that she didn't let a moment of lust with Choppa ruin what she had with Kevin.
“Alright, let's do it,” she told him. “But there is going to have to be some major changes before I walk down that aisle, Kevin.”
“Anything you want, babe,” Kevin said before taking her in his arms and kissing her as if his life depended on it.
Eleven
Benji sat the table with money spread all across it with money labels and a money counter along with it. He kept his eyes focused on the money as it rolled through the machine and once it reached the total he had just counted by hand, he took it out and wrapped a label around it. Even though it was time consuming, Benji was the type to triple count his money. Twice by hand and once through the money counter.
Benji felt his phone vibrating in his pocket but he ignored it to finish the task at hand. Just as he was reaching for another stack of money, the door to the warehouse came open and in walked his partner in crime.
“What them numbers looking like?” Choppa asked as he swaggered over to his brother.
“Good as always, you know that though, baby boy,” Benji told him.
Choppa sat at the table with him and took the money out of his brother's hands. “Take a break and relax your fingers, nigga.”
Benji didn't argue as he sat back and took his phone out his pocket to check it. He saw he had a missed call and a text message from Treasure.
My Future: I know you're probably busy so I won't bother you but I just wanted to let you know that you were on my mind. Be safe out there Benjamin.
Benji read her text with a goofy smile on his face. It was shit like that that let him know Treasure was a real one. She knew and understood what he did in these streets but she didn't judge him or worry him. Simple shit like sending a text to let him know she was thinking of him really did something to him.
“You a bitch,” Choppa said, never taking his eyes off the money in front of him.
“Fuck you, bitch. Why you always got some shit to say?” Benji asked.
“Nigga, you been sitting here smiling at that damn phone for five minutes straight. If she ain't send you a video of her playing with the pussy, you a straight bitch. She ain't say shit that good to have you smiling that hard,” Choppa cracked on Benji as he wrapped a label around the stack in his hand.
“Let me call Aries so she can come get your hating ass,” Benji laughed.
“Fuck her,” Choppa gritted.
At this point, Choppa didn't have anything to say to or regarding Aries. He felt like he couldn't even be mad about the situation because he knew from day one that she had a nigga. He tried to show her shit she had been missing out on and show her what it was like to be with a real nigga but she would rather spend the rest of her life with a lame, so he was going to let her.
“Damn, it's like that now?” Benji asked, shocked. “Don't worry, little brother, when she realize her nigga whack as fuck, she'll come running back.”
“I'm not for none of that shit. She had her chance and she fucked up.” Choppa shrugged as he watched the money go through the money counter.
“Shit! Speaking of lame, whack ass niggas, you'll never guess who Treasure baby daddy is, though,” Benji said.
“No, I won't, but I'm sure you'll tell me, though.”
Benji paused and cut his eyes at Choppa before swinging on him in a playful manner. His little brother always had some smart shit to say. It was as if Choppa came out
the womb talking shit. “You play too fucking much,” Benji told him.
“Alright, alright.” Choppa laughed. “Who is the scrub? We know him?” he asked on a serious note.
“Sure do, Renzo’s punk ass.”
Choppa had mastered the art of being able to talk and count money at the same time without losing his count but the shit that just flew out his brother's mouth made him lose his train of thought. He suddenly burst into laughter. “Get the fuck outta here, nigga! You bullshitting me, right?” Choppa asked through laughter.
“I wouldn't have believed the shit either if I wouldn't have seen it with my own eyes.” Benji shook his head.
“Nah man, fuck was she thinking? I can't even see Treasure with a nigga like Renzo's bitch ass. No wonder I heard this nigga been saltier than a can of sardines lately. Here I am thinking it's because we shitting on his whole operation and the whole time it's because you fucking with the nigga baby mama.”
“That nigga will be alright. I ain't trynna beef over no pussy I ain't even had yet, but if his ass want it, he can definitely get it. Just like a nigga, scared to beef over the money but bring pussy into the equation, and all of a sudden he get heart,” Benji chuckled.
“Real shit, I fucks with Treasure. I really like her and I like her for you and all that shit but I love you. If shit boils down to it, I'll send her a card with my condolences,” Choppa said with not a trace of humor in his voice.
For Choppa, all bets were off the table when his brother was involved. He could talk crazy shit to Benji all he wanted to but nobody else was even allowed to look at his brother crazy without being handled. Choppa went hard for his brother and vice versa.
Benji understood why Renzo would be in his feelings and he was expecting him to be. Not only was Treasure a great catch but niggas hated to find out another nigga was fucking or fucking with their baby mama. That was just one of the worst things that could happen to you, especially if you still loved her ass. Benji didn't care, though. Renzo's trash was going to be Benji’s Treasure.
Always Gonna Be My Baby: A Hood Love Story Page 5