Real Wifeys: Get Money

by Mink, Meesha

  “Where you working, Miss Peaches?” I asked calmly.

  “Oh NO the fuck you didn’t!!” she screamed, stomping her foot as she jumped around in a full circle. CRAZY.

  “Yes, the fuck I did, because I have earned every cent your son has spent on me: keeping the house clean, making sure his bills are paid—including every cent you get for doing nothing, washing his dirty drawers, running his errands, holding my chin up when he fuck up, holding him down when he let me down. I earn what the fuck your son do for me.” I felt the fire in my eyes burn into her as my chest heaved.

  I didn’t need this shit.

  I DID NOT NEED THIS SHIT!

  “You know what, Peaches, take it up with your son,” I told her as the twins climbed out of the Tahoe. “He was more than satisfied when I told him y’all was banned from the building. So deal with him. Call him.”

  Completely not in the mood as the twins stepped up behind their mother, I reached in my purse and wrapped my hand around my can of mace. Nobody moved and nobody would get sprayed.

  “Is there a problem, Miss Jordan?”

  I turned to find the concierge standing in the doorway. I smiled at him before turning back to the crew. “I don’t think so. Ladies?”

  Peaches looked offended and leaned so far back that I thought she was going to knock one of the twins over. “Well, lahdee-dah, Miss Bougie, and just ten minutes from the crack of your ass smelling like a stripper pole,” she snapped.

  “Come on, Ma, we’ll just call Terrence,” one of the twins said, turning to walk back to the car on her plastic heels.

  “Deuces,” I sang in my head, posed up as they all shot me glares over their shoulders on their way back to the Tahoe.

  And I stood there watching them watching me until they finally pulled off with a screech of their tires.

  “Thank you,” I said to the concierge, before I turned and walked next door to the parking garage, whose façade matched the regal design of the apartment building.

  Eventually I was cruising through the streets of Newark. I pulled to a red light at Broad and Market. As always, it was packed with people moving at a fast pace to cross the busy streets, reach a bus stop, just shop, or rush back to work after lunch.

  Seeing the streets crammed like that reminded me of my teenage days with friends just itching to catch the bus downtown on Saturdays. It would be a day filled with cruising the stores, dreaming about the clothes we would buy one day, flirting with boys, and saving up our pennies to buy greasy slices of pizza.

  Humph, back then life was simple as hell.

  I was just accelerating forward when my BlackBerry sounded from inside my purse on the passenger seat. I dug it out as I steered past Essex County College with my left hand. I glanced down at the phone real quick. Make$.

  I knew that shit was about his mama and I politely turned the volume down and dropped the BlackBerry back into my bag. Fuck her. Definitely fuck him. Triple fuck them both.

  The only thing on my mind right then was getting to Has and forgetting all them clown-ass niggas. For now, anyway.

  “You really liked Goldie?” I asked Has as I laid stretched out on top of him while he laid on his stomach in the middle of the bed. My breasts were pressed into his back and my knees straddled his hips.

  The scent of kush was heavy in the air along with the smell of our sex.

  “Has?” I asked him again when he didn’t answer me.

  He just shrugged.

  “When’s the last time you spoke to her?” I asked, pushing my hair behind my ear as I kissed him from one broad shoulder to the other.

  “I don’t have nothing to say to her,” Has said, his voice sounding sleepy.

  “Damn, a lot of shit went down in that bathroom,” I said, pressing my face against his neck and inhaling the warm and spicy scent of this nigga.

  “I tried to pay her back some money I had of hers—”

  “So that was your money all over the bathroom floor?” I asked, flashing back to the scattered bills that night in Club 973.

  “Nah, it was her money I tried to give back to her, and she said some real foul shit to me, like I wasn’t on her level.”

  I pictured that bitch floating around the club that night and my stomach burned with hate. “Humph, she think she better than people. She don’t know shit about loyalty.”

  Has shrugged again with his laid-back self.

  I rested my head against his head and looked out the window covered by sheer curtains. “I remember when she was at the strip club she blew the fuck up real quick and all the others dancers hated that bitch. I used to defend her like, don’t throw shade ’cause she came and took over. You know? Half the dancers didn’t like her ass and thought she was caught up on herself and I would yoke these bitches up for her and come back and tell her which ones was trying to shit her out of money or scandalize her fucking name. Like I was a friend to the bitch. I never had no shade. I was applauding her shit, you know?”

  “Damn, you tense as hell, Luscious,” Has said, laughing.

  I got my focus back and he was right. My whole body was tight with anger. I laughed it off, but it was a front because my anger at that bitch was damn near choking me. “That shit got me hot, you know?”

  “Yo, don’t let what the fuck she did to you . . . destroy you. Nah what I mean?”

  “Yeah, you right,” I said, even though I didn’t agree with his ass at all. Goldie played me. Completely unforgivable.

  “I’m not thinking about Goldie myself,” he said.

  “I thought maybe you told her about us aready.” I leaned up and moved my shoulders so that my nipples teased the smooth dark skin of his back as I grinded my pussy against his hard ass.

  “Why? You gone tell her we messing around?” he asked, lifting his head to look back at me over his shoulder.

  I tilted my head and licked my lips as I looked at him. “Nah, it’s too much fun doing it behind they back,” I said, my voice soft as I felt my clit starting to swell.

  “I’m not gonna let you keep using my dick for revenge,” Has mumbled into his pillow.

  “We using each other,” I told him as I stood up on the bed and nudged him with my foot to turn over onto his back.

  As soon as he did I saw his long and hard dick fighting its own weight to stand up tall. I stared into them sexy-ass eyes of his as I worked my hips in tight circles until I was easing down and squatting over his dick. “Let us make an Oreo,” I whispered to him.

  “What?” Has asked, looking confused.

  I held his dick straight up like high noon. “A lot of white crème between two dark things,” I said, smiling.

  I slid down on to his hardness.

  “Oh, you got jokes? Huh?” Has thrust his hips up, filling me with pure DICK.

  That shit wiped the smile off my face as I hissed and bit my bottom lip from the feel of his dick pressing against my walls. Dammit.

  His large hands dug into my ass as he slammed my pussy down onto his dick. I cried out at the feel of his hardness stroking against my clit. “You want this dick, then you gone get this dick,” Has said, looking up at my twisted face as he continued to power-drive me.

  I couldn’t say nothing. The dick beat words out of me. And if they did come, I knew I would be stuttering or some shit. My heart was pounding. My breath was lost. Sweat was starting to form on my body.

  I sat up, pressing my hands into his chest as I looked down at him. Our eyes locked. “I needed this,” I whispered down to him, meeting him stroke for stroke.

  His mouth formed a circle as he switched to stroking the soft flesh of my ass as I rode him. But even as we fucked each other on some real porno-type shit and I felt my nut building, I wished I had some feelings for this nigga. I wished I really knew him.

  I missed the chemistry—the kind you have when you make love to someone you give a fuck about. Me and Has was cool and the sex was hot. But that was it.

  True, his dick was bigger, but I had loved the hell out
of Make$ and there was nothing sexier and more exciting to me than to ride his dick and look into his eyes as I kissed him and told him I loved him. That made the fireworks go off. That shit made me nut. Little dick or not.

  I felt stupid for the faith and love and trust I had in that nigga. He was my world. My everything. But all of it was based on lies. I lost my heart to a fucking fantasy. I saw what he wanted me to see . . . like a damn fool.

  Tears welled up. “Oh shit,” I cried out, sitting up straight and tilting my head back as I covered my eyes with my forearm. I couldn’t believe I was filled to the brim with dick—good, hard, long, thick dick—and my mind was on Make$’s whack ass. Hurting over his bullshit. Remembering the love I had for him.

  “Hey, you a’ight?” Has asked, lightly rubbing my hip.

  What the fuck is wrong is with me? My shoulders shook with my tears as the bullshit came flooding back at me. All of it.

  Has lifted me up and freed his dick before he laid me down on the bed next to him and then pulled my head against his chest and held me. That shit fucked me all the way up even more.

  “I’m so fucking stupid,” I admitted, covering my face with my hands as his compassion made me bawl even harder.

  He didn’t say nothing, but he we laid there for a long-ass time in that hotel room and he just held me while I cried.

  It felt good to have a man’s arms around me . . . even better than it felt to have his dick inside me.

  It was almost a week later and that afternoon with Has was still on my mind. We never did finish what I started and only a phone call he got finally made him release me and say he had to leave to handle some business. I never asked him what business he was in and he never offered. I just peeled my messy self from his body and tried not to look at him directly because I felt so embarrassed to have broken down in front of this dude like that. I just knew he was thinking I was one of them psycho chicks acting crazy and reckless . . . like Peaches or some shit.

  Me and Has hadn’t spoken since, but he did text me that night to ask if I was good. I wasn’t but I lied about it.

  “Yo, that party last night was crazzzzzzzzzy.”

  I shifted my eyes over to my cousin Eve sitting on the floor of Michel’s studio apartment flipping through a magazine. I shrugged as I kicked off my gold thong sandals and politely tucked my feet beneath me on the couch. “It was decent,” I said, my mind on other shit than parties and bullshit.

  I spotted a roach crawling on Michel’s curtain and I was glad to be up out of the Pavilion. His fuchsia, turquoise, and white–decorated apartment was spotless, but there wasn’t shit you could control about your neighbors when you lived in a big-ass apartment building. And we knew for a fact that Michel was triple fucked because his upstairs and downstairs neighbors was straight nasty: leave their stove greasy–, never clean their fridge–, clothes piled up in the corner–, food left for days around the apartment–, trash-overflowing kind of nasty. He was in the middle of two roach motels.

  Now roaches were everywhere regardless of the type of hood but thankfully the Twelve50 had freed me from those chasing-after-a-roach-with-a-shoe days. Fuck that shit.

  “Sheee-it, I had fuuuuuun,” Eve said, playing with the short layers of her hair as she flipped the page.

  I blinked away an image of Goldie and Make$ fucking on his tour bus and focused on my cousin. “It needed better drinks, and I would’ve hired somebody to perform or host, upped the entrance fee, and made more money than I know they did,” I said, fingering my blunt bangs. “People pay artists, radio personalities and all that, to come and get more people through the door. More people, more fun, more money and profits.”

  Eve looked thoughtful for a minute as she crossed her legs in the ruffled jean romper she wore. “See, I’m thinking fun times and you’re thinking money.”

  “If I take my mind off of money I’ll wind up back in this motherfucker . . . no offense,” I added, even though I didn’t sound like I meant it. Eve had a studio apartment down the hall.

  In fact, when I moved into the building last year it was Michel who figured out that his new bosom buddy on the sixth floor and his friend down the hall were related.

  The short of it was that my parents were bougie and pretended my mother wasn’t one generation out of Newark’s low-income projects. That meant Naomi Jordan barely saw, talked to, or acknowledged my aunt Nola and her five kids—Eve being the youngest of them. So my parents hated that Eve and I were close. Like I did with Make$, to avoid the drama, I just avoided taking Eve to my parents’, because I liked my crazy cousin. Minus the few faults she had—which I thought were mostly on account of immaturity—Eve was the comic relief of our little group.

  “Hot wings and moscato,” Michel said, strolling out of the kitchenette holding a bright fuchsia tray and wearing a tight pair of jean shorts and a ruffled strapless shirt. Makeup in place. Lace wig pulled up in a ponytail. Long, shapely legs greased.

  Sometimes I forgot he was a dude.

  I eyed his crotch as he slid the tray onto the white coffee table. “Where exactly is your dick?” I asked, leaning forward to accept the plastic cup of wine he offered me.

  Eve laughed into her own cup.

  Michel stepped back and posed like he was at the end of a runway or in a beauty pageant. “Ready to drop down when your man ready for it,” he said, playfully sarcastic.

  Luscious arched a brow. “You mean Goldie’s man,” I reminded him, sipping my wine as my left eye jumped.

  Michel pouted his glossy lips and shook his head. “We are not going into another long discussion on why Make$ and Goldie need to be fed Ex-Lax brownies—”

  “And magnesium-citrate milk shakes,” Eve added, leaning over to slap the hell out of Michel’s smooth hand.

  Okay, that made me laugh out loud.

  “They gone get theirs; you don’t even have to pray or wish on it, baby-boo,” Michel said, snapping his slender fingers in a full circle.

  “That caramel is a bitch,” Eve added before biting into a hot wing.

  Michel frowned and looked at me before we both looked at Eve. “What?” we asked.

  Eve was busy getting the hot-wing sauce from under her acrylic tips. “That caramel,” she repeated. “What goes around comes around.”

  “Lord, help this dumb bitch,” Michel said, falling back against the fuzzy turquoise area rug and fanning himself.

  “What?” Eve asked, looking lost as hell.

  “You mean karma. It’s karma,” I stressed.

  Eve flipped Michel the bird. “Y’all know what the fuck I meant,” she said.

  “Barely. Shit, I was looking for ice cream, bananas, and whipped cream and shit. I was lost like a motherfucker for a sec,” Michel teased.

  Bzzzzzz . . . Bzzzzzz . . . Bzzzzzz . . .

  I picked up the vibrating BlackBerry just as Michel jumped to his feet and started rapping the hook from Wu-Tang’s “Ice Cream.” “French vanilla, butter-pecan, chocolate deluxe. Even caramel sundaes is gettin’ touched.”

  Laughing, I answered the call without checking the caller ID. “Hello?”

  “Oh, you fucking laughing and my son in fucking jail, bitch!”

  My heart dropped into my stomach at Peaches’ words. I waved my hand for Michel to be quiet. “What did you say? Make$ locked up?” I asked.

  “Yes, he told me to call you. We need to get to Philly ASAP.”

  I jumped to my feet, already sliding on my shoes. “In Philly? What happened? What’s going on?”

  “That bitch Goldie said Fiyah and Tank raped her and then said my mufuckin’ son helped cover the shit up. The police locked all three of they asses up.”

  The strength left my knees and I sat back down. Michel and Eve were looking at me for details, but what the fuck could I say? The same bitch I caught my man eating out in the club just got him locked up in another state and now he want me to come be by his side like one of those wives of a cheating politician or minister or some shit. Looking stupid. Lookin
g played out. Caught up in they bullshit.

  “I will handle it, Luscious.”

  All of a sudden, his promise after I saw the DVD of Peaches getting that girl jumped came back to me.

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  Did him trying to handle or take care of what his crew did to Goldie get his ass in jail? But why would he cover up them raping his side-chick? And did he forget that he told me he fired Goldie?

  “The twins drove the truck to Maryland, so I need you to come get me, Luscious.”

  I bit my lip as my thoughts raced just as hard as my heart.

  When was enough enough?

  “Luscious!”

  I wanted to tell her, Fuck your son, because he’s getting what he deserves for even dealing with that ratchet bitch behind my back. I wanted to hang up the phone in her face. I wanted all those crazy motherfuckers out of my life.

  But that would piss him off and my money would be shorted. I wanted no part of a stripper pole again, and Make$ owed me the good life.

  “I’m on my way,” I said, ending the call.

  Damn.

  Goldie had been raped.

  That’s all that kept playing in my head as we drove through the busy Philly streets to the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility.

  Not “My man is locked up.”

  Not “I hope my man is okay.”

  Not “Make$ is already on probation.”

  Not “I can’t wait to get to the police station.”

  Not “Has his lawyer gotten to the police station yet?”

  Not even “I wish Peaches would stop complaining about me bringing Eve and Michel with us.”

  Goldie got raped.

  Bitch probably lying, I thought as I gripped the steering wheel tighter.

  And if she wasn’t?

  Fuck her. Serve the bitch right.

  You lie down with dogs and you get up with fleas.

  And I meant that shit. Fuck Goldie. She deserved one of those beat-downs Peaches’ ass had put on that girl.

  Funny how hate will make you see—and feel—shit differently.