by J Peach
I cut her off by ending the call, I wasn’t trying to hear what her crazy ass was saying.
“Come on and let’s get this over with,” I grabbed the book-bag and got out of the car. I was about to close the door, but stopped when I saw that Missy hadn’t moved. “Miss, come on.”
Missy didn’t look at me. “I was thinking I would stay out here and wait for you. I mean, I know you don’t want me in your business or whatnot.”
My eyes cut hard at her. “Bitch, get the fuck out the car with yo scary ass. He ain’t gonna do shit to us, now come on and bring yo bag.” I may have talked a lot of shit, but I wasn’t dumb at all. I knew exactly when to talk my shit and when not to. And after Blaze shot at me, I knew I was only to talk shit when Peaches was around. “Scary ass hoe!” I slammed my door shut and waited for Missy.
“Irritating black ass. Go!” She pushed me in front of her.
Linking my arm with hers, I led us into the pool hall. Once inside, we stopped and looked around the club. I was hoping that I would find him at the bar or at one of the pool tables, but he wasn’t at either of them.
“Peaches said his office is in the very back,” Missy informed me, pointing toward a hallway.
I pushed the small backpack up my shoulder and made my way toward the back. I didn’t know how I was going to approach him with my offer. However I did it, though, I just hoped he took it. When we finally reached the last door, I reached for the handle, about to open it, but Missy slapped my hand hard.
“Did you not hear Peaches stress that we knock on the door first? It’s a reason she repeated that part, damn. Knock on the damn door,” Her eyes rolled hard at me.
I was so caught up in my thoughts that I’d forgotten. I raised my fist and pounded on the door hard. My hand hit against the door for about thirty seconds before it swung open.
“Why the fuck you beating on the damn door like you stupid—” Blaze fussed until his words faded. His eyes moved from me to Missy before they slid back to me. He smiled.
My mind yelled fuck it, but before my body could follow through with my thought, Blaze snatched me into his office, closed the door shut in Missy’s face and locked it.
“Blaze, open this fuckin’ door!” Missy screamed from the other side, beating on the door hard.
He ignored her. “Yo black ass gotda be dumb as fuck to come here by yoself.”
My mouth opened and closed before I decided to ignore his statement. A glare covered my face. “Blaze, let me the fuck go. Nigga, I ain’t none of Peaches,” I snapped at him. On the outside I’m sure I looked cool as hell, but inside I was scared. I just didn’t know what to expect from him.
“Yo ass tried to run me over and you walk yo short black ass in here like shit good?” He laughed before his face turned straight and I was roughly pushed against the wall. My mouth opened to snap at him, but Blaze quickly responded. “Shut the fuck up. I have every mothafuckin’ mind to beat yo ass, real shit. Yo ass lucky as fuck you Peaches’ home girl and I know beating yo ass will piss her off.”
He let me go, but didn’t back away from me.
“Now why the fuck you here?” He asked, getting straight to the point while still in my face.
My eyes cut at him after I realized that he did all that just to shake me up. “That shit ain’t cool, Blaze. Don’t be snatching on me like you stupid. Next time I’m not gonna be so quiet about the shit. I’mma knock yo ass out,” I snapped, pushing him away from me.
Blaze laughed, not seeming messed up about my threat. “Shut the fuck up and tell that big lip ass girl to stop knocking on my door.” He went to his desk and sat in the chair behind it.
I went to open the door.
“Don’t open that damn door. Tell her you’ll be out in a minute.”
“Missy, I’ll be out in a second. He don’t want me to open the door for you,” I told her before looking at Blaze. “How you know it wasn’t her that wanted something?”
“Because you was knocking. Now if you was knocking for her then you can get the fuck out and leave with her.” He waved his hand toward the door before he went back to twisting up a blunt. When I didn’t move, he pointed to the chair in front of his desk. “You gon’ tell me what’s up or just stand there and look stupid?”
Sighing, I walked over to the chair and sat down. I grabbed my backpack and sat it on his desk. I began to pull out all of its contents, the brick of cocaine and an eight-ball.
Seeing this, Blaze sat up in his seat. His brow rose and he pulled in a lung full of smoke. He exhaled and stared from me to the stuff. “What the fuck is this?”
“I know this is your line of work and I personally don’t know shit about this game. So I was wondering what you’ll give me for this.” I pointed to the drugs that I’d sat on his desk.
Blaze barked out a laugh as he put the blunt into the ashtray. “How much I’ll give you for what? What is this shit?” He got out of his seat, went to a stereo and turned it on full blast. Future blasted through the speakers.
Now I was nervous as I watched him go back to his desk. He opened the first drawer and pulled out a wand that looked like a metal paddle. “Blaze, what the hell you doing?” I yelled over the loud music to him, but he didn’t answer me. He probably didn’t hear me.
He grabbed a remote from his desk and pointed it to a flat screen mounted on to the wall, a screen that showed different sections of the inside of the club and parking lot. Now I was even more confused. I wasn’t feeling the way he was acting at all.
“You know what, that’s okay. I’ll find somebody else,” I yelled once again as I started to pack the bag up. Before I could put the brick inside the bag Blaze pulled me away from his desk.
He pulled me to him and brought his hands to my hair. He began to finger my hair from front to back twice before he did the sides. He then took the wand and slowly began to move it along my body.
My brows furrowed as the realization of what he was doing dawned on me. Does he think I’m trying to set him up? My eyes rolled, but I stood there with my arms spread out so he could do his thing. He stopped at my belly and looked up at me.
I was confused at first until I looked at the wand and saw the lights blinking. I raised my shirt, showing him my belly chain that I hadn’t taken off since leaving the club.
He twirled his finger for me to turn around. I did what he silently asked of me. Once he finished his inspection, he turned the radio down. Then came back to his desk.
“Blaze, I wouldn’t try to set you up. I mean, I don’t really like you, but I love Peaches and I wouldn’t do nothing to hurt her,” I told him truthfully.
“That’s cool, but I don’t fuck with you. So regardless of who you love, that don’t mean shit to me personally. In my business you don’t trust too many people and as I said I don’t fuck with you.” He shrugged while grabbing the blunt and lighting it once again. After a few hits of the blunt he pointed to my bag. “Who the fuck you hit for this shit?”
I don’t know why, but I felt that telling him the truth would be better than getting caught up into a lie I hadn’t thought up. “Honestly, my momma. She broke into my crib and took my stuff on top of eighteen thou. I know this not gonna come to the amount that I lost, but it’s better than nothing. You know?” I shrugged my shoulders.
“Damn, that’s a lot to lose to a fiend. I can tell you that eight-ball gon’ be one-fifty, but I’ll give you two hundred for it. That brick, I don’t know. Hold on,” he reached for his office phone a pressed a number. “Aye, send yo boy to me right quick.” He ended the call and continued to puff on the swisher.
“Can I hit that?” I was trying to resist asking, but that shit was smelling right and I needed to calm my nerves. Hell, I needed a pill to mellow me out behind this bullshit.
“What? You be smoking trees?” He joked, handing me the blunt.
My head nodded as I pulled in a lung full of smoke before releasing it from my mouth and nose. “Yeah, I have to in order to calm myself. It mellows me ou
t.”
“Yo ass was probably high when you almost hit me,” he said, not really asking.
I responded anyways. “If thinking that helps you sleep, then yeah, I was high. But I wasn’t though, you had just fuck’d up and hurt my bitch so I wanted to hurt you. Simple. We’re all we got, so we have to look after each other. You know how that is,” I inhaled the weed smoke and then handed it back to Blaze.
“You black ass trick. But I guess we even because I shot at you. I tried to blow yo fuckin’ car up. Yo ass was pushing that little bitch, real shit. That mothafucka hit that corner on two wheels, you turned that bitch so hard,” Blaze sat back in his chair laughing hard.
I didn’t find that shit funny one bit. “That’s not funny. You could’ve shot and killed me.”
His laughter stopped and his head tilted to the side. “That was the fuckin’ point. I only pull my gun if I’m trying to kill some shit,” he shrugged like it was nothing.
I opened my mouth to snap, but the knock on the door stopped me. Blaze looked at the monitor and then went to the door.
“Come in,” he told a skinny white man. Missy was right behind him, but Blaze immediately stopped her in her tracks by muffing her in the face. “Nuh uh, not yo big lip ass. Go wait yo ass in the car or at the bar.” He slammed the door shut in Missy’s face once again.
“Blaze, don’t be doing her like that. She ain’t did shit to you—”
“Shut yo black ass up, I wasn’t talking to you. And until she can keep those duck ass lips to herself, I ain’t gonna like her ass,” he snapped at me.
When he said that, I started laughing. He was wrong as hell for talking about my bitch like that, but the fact he didn’t like Missy because she kissed Peaches was funny. “Dude, she don’t want yo bitch. If anything, yo bitch want her. I don’t ever hear Peaches tell Missy to stop. Maybe you should be looking at your girl. She just might like playing with kitties,” I started laughing as I leaned on the desk to grab the blunt.
“Shut the fuck up before I put yo ass out. Stupid ass trick,” he fussed, but a thoughtful look came to his face. I broke out laughing hard. Blaze had some killer, his weed was that good for real.
“Tell me how that taste,” he told the man that came into the room. Blaze pulled a knife from his pocket and made a slit in the brick. The man scooped some powder with his index finger nail then put it to his nose and sniffled hard. He held his nose and started to choke. His finger went in a second time but unlike before he ran his finger along his gums.
The man looked at me. “What you tryna do, get him to bake a cake?” He asked.
My eyes squinted at him. I was confused by his question. “What?”
“That shit taste like baking soda.” He told Blaze and pushed the stuff away from him.
“Word?” Blaze looked at me then back at the man.
I wanted to yell and accuse him of lying, but I wasn’t a powder head so I didn’t know what it tasted like or how it was supposed to look aside from being white.
Blaze looked at me again, “Taste it,” he said.
I looked at him like he was crazy. “Hell n’all. I don’t do that shit. And I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about because I took this from a fuckin’ fiend.” He had me fucked up to tell me to taste that bullshit. “You know what, fuck it—” That crack head had pissed me off so much that I didn’t want to do that shit no more. I should’ve just gone with my first mind and took all that bullshit to King’s overbearing ass.
“Sit down and shut the fuck up!” Blaze pushed me back in the chair. I opened my mouth to snap at him, but the way his eyes slanted into mean slits and the tightening of his jaw had my mouth clamping shut.
I hoped like hell that crazy mothafucka didn’t think I was trying to trick him into buying baking soda. “Blaze, I don’t know what he’s talking about but I got that—”
“Shut up, damn.” He cut me off as he grabbed the eight-ball and tossed it to ol’ dude. “Taste it.”
Just like before, dude opened the bag and tasted it. This time when he snorted hard his eyes stayed closed for a few seconds longer. After wiping his nose, he dug into the bag again and took another hit. Lazily, his eyes slid to Blaze and his head nodded.
“This right,” he told him as he rubbed at his nose. “That shit right there ain’t this. That’s baking soda,” he pointed to the brick.
“I’ight,” he nodded toward the office door, signaling for the man to get out. He didn’t hesitate and quickly left the room.
Once the door was closed, I jumped into my explanation. “Look, I didn’t know that was baking soda. I told you I took this from my momma. I took all her shit, her pipe and everything. Blaze, I hope you don’t think I tried to stiff you because I really didn’t. I promise you I wasn’t trying to do that.” The last thing I wanted was for Blaze’s crazy ass to think I was trying to pull one over on him.
One thing I learned through my years of messing with a hood was to never fuck up their money or product. If you did either, that was death or you were going to get beat until you were close to dead. I saw too much dealing with Martell in my past.
“Would you chill the fuck out? Damn!” Blaze sat back in his chair and grabbed another blunt that was already wrapped. He lit it, took a pull from it and then handed it to me. “You need this mothafucka more than me right now.”
A heavy sigh left my mouth as I grabbed the blunt. I put it to my lips and inhaled. Learning that what I thought was cocaine was really just baking soda killed me a little more inside. Now I knew I wasn’t going to get that man his money as I had promised. Just thinking about how that encounter was going to go had me pulling on the swisher harder.
I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do. If I could find the mothafuckin’ slanga Kelley got the work from, I could go and confront his ass about this shit. But what good was that going to do? None. That would only get my ass in more shit and probably get me shot at. There was no telling with these youngins nowadays.
“You good?” Blaze snapped his fingers in my face.
My head reared back and I mentally shook it. “Hm?” I hummed as if I didn’t hear him the first time.
“You straight?” He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on top of his chest.
“I will be. It ain’t shit I’m not use to dealing with.” My fingers ran through my hair as a sigh left my mouth. I took out my phone and pulled up Martell’s number. I quickly shot him a text asking him if we could meet at his spot. Martell owned many different houses through the city, but there was only one that he considered ours. I didn’t wait for his response after I texted him. I put my phone back into my pocket before looking to Blaze.
A smile came to my lips. “Thanks for trying to help. I appreciate it. You can keep this stuff,” I laughed. It wasn’t like he could do much with it beside toss it in the trash.
“Hold up,” he waved his fingers for me to sit back down. “Answer me this. Why the hell would you have that in yo crib knowing who yo moms is?”
My head shook and I shrugged. “To be honest, I wasn’t thinking about her. I have two jobs. Shid, with running back and forth from one to the other on top of going to school, stopping at the bank was the last thing on my mind. I simply forgot. And the day my momma popped up at my house, I just wasn’t thinking. I was rushing to my next job…” My words trailed off and again I shrugged. “Can’t shit be done now, but I’ll figure it out like I always do. Thanks again, Blaze.”
He shrugged and put the blunt to his lips, taking a long pull. “It ain’t shit. What you in school for?” The smoke was released from his mouth as he spoke.
My brows rose at the question, but I answered it no less. “Criminal Justice.”
“That’s what’s up. No lie. I thought you was a scrub ass bitch, real shit,” he said before taking a drink from his cup.
My head tilted to the side and I mugged him hard. “You better cool it with that bitch word. And I have never been no gotdamn scrub.”
“Shut
the fuck up and get yo black ass out my shit. Black ass mothafucka,” he waved his hand towards the door, shooing me out.
“Disrespectful ass nigga. I should tell Peaches to whoop yo ass. Fucka!” I fussed as I walked toward the door.
“Aye, Black!” Blaze called to me as I yanked the door opened.
This nigga did not just call me Black. I swirled around to face him quick. “No you didn’t just call me—”
He cut me off. “Shut the fuck up, gotdamn. You bitches talk to fuckin’ much.” He thrust my backpack into my chest. “Here. Black, keep yo head straight, i’ight.” He pushed me out of his office and closed the door in my face.
“Rude ass mothafucka,” I looked down at my bag. I know I told his ass to get rid of this for me. I should just take this shit back to Kelley’s good for nothing ass. Sighing, I went to zip up the bag but stopped. My eyes furrowed as I opened it up more. Looking at the mustard colored bands wrapped around the money, I slowly walked back to his office.
Blaze just gave me forty thousand dollars...
I knocked on his door lightly at first, trying to wrap my mind around what he’d just given me. When he didn’t respond, I pounded harder. “Blaze—”
The door was yanked opened. “Why the fuck is you beating on my fuckin’ door fah? What?” He stared down at me with squinted eyes.
My mouth clamped shut. I wasn’t expecting him to answer the door like he had. “Don’t fuckin’ yell at me,” I fussed once I got myself together. “Stupid ass ignorant nigga. Damn.” I went to push past him to go into his office, but he pushed me back.
“What do you want?” His arms folded over his chest and he leaned against the door frame, waiting on my response.
A sigh left my mouth. “You gave me—”
“I know what I gave you. Now go take care of yo business, whatever’s extra keep it.” He pushed me further into the hallway and then turned his back to me as he locked his office door.
“I can’t take this—” This time my words were cut off as he walked away from me and the door, leaving me in the hallway. I watched Blaze walk to the bar and whisper something to the barman before he turned and walked out of the club. Not once did he look back at me.