by Sephiri J
“Thanks for coming for me, bruh,” he said and dapped me up as he got to the car.
“You know I got you,” I said as I walked back to the car with him.
That bail wasn’t cheap, and neither was the lawyer that I got for him, but we had an understanding. There weren’t too many people I would do this shit for.
“Guwop, good to see you,” Bo said and got out the car. “You can sit in the front because I know you both got a lot to talk about.”
“Thanks, Bo,” he said and smiled at her.
He looked tired, but there was a lot that we had to set straight.
“What the lawyer say? What they got on you?” I asked as I started my car again.
“That white boy in the passenger seat who I knocked out wouldn’t let that shit go,” he started. “He went to the cops and described me, then the cops went to question the driver. Threatened him with jail time, and that nigga ain’t no thug. He gave ’em the license plate number, Lucas’ name, and my name. And here we fucking are.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. The lawyer said that’s all they got, though. So, I gotta take a ride to find this nigga and make it so he don’t bring my name up again.”
“This motherfucker Lucas.” I shook my head. “I got a call from Rigs just now. You not gon’ believe about what.”
Guwop turned to look at me. “What he say?”
“’Bout Lucas setting me up and snatching the money from the lick.”
“The fuck!” Guwop yelled, and I shook my head.
“I’m supposed to meet the nigga at three. You ridin?”
“Fuck yeah, you know I’m comin’, nigga.”
“Aight, bet,” I said.
Glancing in my rearview mirror at Bo, who was listening to us talk, I said, “Babe, Ima take you to the crib so I can handle this shit with G. I’ll be back, though. We got shit to make up.”
She giggled. “Okay, baby.”
Twenty minutes later
I’d dropped Bo at the house and was making my way across town to the park where Rigs said he wanted to meet.
“Yo, so I didn’t want to address this shit with your girl in the car,” Guwop started.
“What’s good?”
“I know that shit the other day was wild when you came by the shop. I’m not gon’ lie and say I didn’t start believing it for a minute. When I heard the shit Lucas played for me, it had my head spinnin’ for a minute. I didn’t want to believe it because I know you, and that shit didn’t sound like some shit you would say. But hearing your voice over the recording, I couldn’t explain away that shit. That’s why I needed to see you and look in your face, bruh.”
“Yeah, G. But you know I would never say no shit like that. That’s some suspect shit. For what reason? We ain’t got no beef. This nigga Lucas is trippin’ and I don’t understand what he’s on. But for him to go through lengths to come see me about some shit, have a whole ass conversation about Rigs, then edit the words I said to make it seem like I was talkin’ about you, he got it out for me, and I don’t even get why. I never done shit to that man in my life, so I got questions for his weird ass, and I need answers.”
“Let’s see what Rigs gotta say about this and then decide how we gotta move,” Guwop said and I nodded.
We pulled up to the park, and I hopped out the car. Sauntering over to the west side where he said in a text that he would be, I spotted him sitting on a bench. I ran up on him and grabbed the back of his shirt, pulling him up to look at me.
He jumped up in surprise when he saw me and Guwop.
“I thought you was coming alone?” he shrieked since I took him off guard.
“You thought wrong, Rigs. You got two minutes to explain to me what the fuck you were talking about on the phone about Lucas before I smash your face in,” I said.
“I ain’t sayin’ shit till I know you gon’ leave me and my moms alone for good.” He sneered at me.
Chuckling, I looked over at Guwop, who was just shaking his head. I grabbed Rigs up and pulled him close to me. His skinny ass didn’t have a chance. I could throw him across the park if I wanted to.
“You think I’m ’bout to deal with your ultimatums? We not playin’ them games, nigga. Your mama and me gotta talk cuz that shit is separate. As for you, we fightin’ regardless. Got me running around the fucking City of Miami lookin’ for you like you fucking Waldo. Ain’t no deals, nigga. You not leavin’ this fucking park without spitting out what I came here for.”
He stared right into my eyes then looked down and away since I was staring right back.
“I just want you to take it easy on my moms, man. She been through enough. She been in and out the hospital with stress related anxiety, and I can’t be putting her through no more shit. She don’t need it.”
“Tell me what I came here for, nigga. I ain’t got all day. All this whining is annoying the fuck out of me, and I’m not interested in the sob story. I been told you that. What you know about Lucas?” I asked and sucked my teeth.
Rigs exhaled and rubbed his hands down his face. I let him go and watched him with my eyes squinted. I didn’t trust this nigga for shit.
“Lucas likes niggas, bruh,” Rigs said, and I raised an eyebrow.
“The fuck you talkin’ about?” I asked. This shit was getting more unbelievable.
“He likes niggas. I’m telling you. He started pushin’ up on me a couple months back, and I shut that shit down, but he been runnin’ his mouth lately. Why you think he fell off from you? He been feelin’ your boy Guwop and is jealous as fuck of how close the two of you are. He knows Guwop not interested in none of that shit, but the fact that he not even as close friends to Guwop as you are got him hating you like a motherfucker.”
“The fuck? How you know all this?” I asked, looking at him suspiciously. This story was fucking weird.
“I know for a fact. Trust me. He been running his mouth to a few of the niggas I know. He been jealous of the y’all relationship, but since he not as close to Guwop as you, what I heard was he planned to set you up to pit the two of you against each other. He came to my shop and ran the recording he made by me right after he did it because he wanted to see if it sounded legit.”
“Why he run it by you, though? You and him cool like that?” Guwop asked suspiciously.
“Nah, we ain’t cool like that,” Rigs said too quickly. “But he came by lookin’ for my partna, and since he wasn’t there, he played the shit for me instead.”
“Something about this story smells fishy as fuck to me,” I said, shaking my head. “So, you telling me that Lucas been feeling Guwop and is jealous of me and Guwop’s relationship. So, he went out of his way to set me up and edit my voice talking shit about G, so he would go to war with me, and then Lucas could slide in as G’s best friend and secret fucking admirer?”
Just saying that shit out loud sounded dumb as fuck, but Rigs was nodding his head like everything I said made perfect sense.
“Nigga, lie one more time,” Guwop said then sucked his teeth and pulled his gun out.
Rigs’ eyes got wide as hell.
“Woah, woah, chill, bruh. I’m telling the truth,” he said and held his hands up.
“Nah, you not.” Guwop slowly shook his head, and his dreads that hung down to his shoulders started to shake. “You know why? Cuz a nigga who speak with truth and conviction will look the niggas he speaking to in the eyes with his head up. You been eyeballin’ the ground like a punk since we rolled up in here. And Lucas ain’t got no motherfucking crush on me. I don’t know if the nigga like niggas or what, but if he do, I ain’t on his list. I been around that nigga way too long and too many times to not know if he been pushin’ up on me. So that story you just made up, that’s some bullshit. We gon’ do this one more time before I lose my fucking patience. I got real motherfuckin’ charges to handle, and you wastin’ my time. What is the fucking goddamn truth before I start droppin’ shells in this park?”
I smirked. I knew Guwop wasn’t wi
th the bullshit. Neither was I. This story wasn’t adding up, and if it didn’t make sense, it wasn’t true.
“It’s the truth,” Rigs said, but his voice went up an octave. He cleared his throat.
“Nigga, you can’t even lie convincingly,” I said.
“Five fucking seconds,” Guwop interrupted. “Four, three…” He cocked the gun and raised it an inch as he aimed it right at Rigs’ skull.
“Two…” he boomed.
“Okay, wait. Wait, please don’t shoot,” Rigs said and covered his face. “Fuck!” he cursed. He sounded really distressed, and I had no idea why he was buggin’ like this.
“Speak, nigga! You heard we ain’t got all day,” I said, and he jumped.
“Okay, I’ll tell you, but you can’t say shit. Please, this is real life right here,” he said, taking his hands from his face. His eyes were red like he was about to start crying.
What the fuck was going on?
“I’m gay,” he said, and I took a step back. This was too fucking much.
“The fuck? What? And what the fuck that gotta do with this?” I asked.
“I’m gay, and I been with Lucas for a little over a year, man,” he said.
He couldn’t even look me in the face.
“Okay….” I said, not sure what the fuck else to say.
“Ain’t nobody know we was together. Nobody knows he gay, or me either. And I need it to stay the fuck that way. Lucas knows the shit me and you been through. When you came to my shop and put hands on me, that was the last straw for him. For both of us. He said he wanted you gone, and the best way to do it was to get the two of you to turn on each other and you would fight it out. The robbery came at the right time too.”
“Does he have the money?” Guwop asked in a steel, cold voice.
“Yeah, he got it,” Rigs mumbled and looked down at the gravel on the park ground.
I shook my head at this sorry ass nigga. Not because he was gay; I didn’t give a fuck about where he chose to stick his dick. But he was out here singing like a canary about this nigga he claimed to have been with for a year. Ain’t nothin’ in the world that would let me do that shit to somebody I claimed to love.
“So, why the fuck you out here running your mouth about him if you claim that’s your nigga?” I asked.
“He’s threatening to out me, and I can’t have that. I’m not ready to let nobody know about me yet, not with what I’m trying to do in the industry. He’s not having it, so I needed to do something. I figured if you knew what he tried to do to you, City, you would go after him, and then I would be the last thing he’d be worried about.”
“You a disloyal motherfucker,” Guwop said then spat on the ground. “Call that nigga up now, and tell him to meet you here. Put that shit on speaker.”
Rigs sighed and pulled his phone out. It rang only twice before Lucas’ voice came over the line.
“Baby are you calmed down now?” he asked, and I glanced at Guwop. This was some crazy shit.
“Yeah, we good. Look, we gotta talk. Can you meet me at Lincoln Park?” Rigs said.
“Yeah, of course. Are you ready to tell your mother about us?”
“Uh huh. I just gotta talk to you first, okay?”
“Okay, babe, I’m on the way. Ten minutes.”
“I’ll be here,” Rigs said then hung up.
I shook my head. This nigga didn’t give a fuck about nobody. The relationship was a shock to me, but I wasn’t even all the way surprised. Something was always different about Lucas, and hearing that he didn’t like pussy made sense to me because he was always to himself in the club when we used to go out. But, at a minimum, I didn’t see Lucas betraying somebody he claimed he loved like Rigs was doing to him now.
I felt sorry for the nigga for a second, but then I thought about how he dead ass tried to set me up and put a robbery on me. Nah, he was gonna take everything he had coming his way. All we had to do was wait for the nigga to show up.
12
Sade
I had never in my life felt anxiety like I felt yesterday afternoon when I watched the cops haul Guwop away like a criminal. I’d just delivered the news that he was about to be a father, but all that happiness I knew he felt was destroyed in a minute when those men ran up in his shop. It was crazy! I’d spent the whole night unable to sleep, tossing and turning and worried sick. But Bo told me earlier that City had hooked it up and got him a lawyer who got him out on bail. I couldn’t even begin to express how relieved I was.
Just in the last few days of knowing that Guwop was my child’s father, I’d felt this closeness to him that wasn’t 100% there before. Or maybe it was always there, but I was so stuck on being loyal to the wrong one that I wouldn’t let it actually happen the way it was supposed to. I regretted every day that I wasted with Greg’s dumb ass because that was time that I could have been spending with Guwop.
I’d taken off the day from school since Guwop was supposed to get out. I was impatiently waiting for Bo to get home, so I could know what was going on. I ran my hand over my belly. I really hoped my child’s father was going to be okay.
The sound of the lock clicking in the door made me sit up, and I waited expectantly to see who would walk through the door. Bo stepped in and closed the door behind her. I walked over to her.
“Everything okay? What happened?” I nervously asked.
“He’s fine,” Bo said and smiled at me. “They have to handle something, though, so they dropped me off at the house, and I drove over here. You okay?”
“Yeah. Just worried, you know?”
“I feel you, and I get it, but he looks fine. The lawyer said the state doesn’t have a real strong case, but I think they are going to make it so that nobody talks about what they think they know. Know what I mean?”
“Whatever keeps him out of jail. I can’t be losing baby daddies left and right.”
Bo laughed out loud, and I giggled. It was a serious situation, but I was just happy that he was out.
“We gotta go by City’s shop real quick, though,” Bo said with her hand still on the door.
“Why?”
“I told him I’m broke as a fucking joke. He has a stash of cash in the safe in his office, so he gave me the code to go over there and get it.”
“Why he don’t keep that at his house, though?”
“You know these street niggas. They keep money in a bunch of different places in case they get raided. He has a safe at his house, but it has face recognition to get in, and he’s handling some shit with G and won’t be back for a little bit. I need to figure out my grocery situation like now, and the light bill was due yesterday. Plus, I gotta buy a new camera, so we gotta take a ride over there,” she explained.
“Okay, let me grab my purse.”
Five minutes later, we were on the way to the shop.
“Did you tell Guwop about the baby before they came to get him?” Bo asked.
I nodded. “Yeah, I’d just told him. He was so happy, Bo. I wasn’t sure if he would have been because we haven’t known each other too long. But he legit was excited. He said he wants me to move in with him. I think we would be good together, but I just wish all this shit wasn’t going on. I want to see him and just make sure he’s good, you know?”
“I know, babe. You always been a nurturer, even to the people around you who didn’t deserve it.”
I knew she was talking about Greg when she said that.
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“You have any idea what happened to Greg since things went crazy at the house?” she asked.
I shook my head. I had no idea if the cops arrested him or what. I hadn’t been back to the house since I left, and I had no intention of going back. You could stick a fork in me; I was done.
“Dumb ass nigga. He needs to go fix his non-working ass dick before he shows his face again. I’m sick of him,” Bo said.
We pulled up to City’s shop and parked in one of the parking spots in the back. This was my first
time coming to his shop, so I was really curious to see what it looked like. City’s name literally preceded him. He had a really good reputation as a tattoo artist, and I knew his shop was going to be top notch.
I walked inside and was not disappointed. It felt alive in there, even though he wasn’t there. The waiting room was full of customers waiting for their appointment. I followed Bo as she walked up to the receptionist.
“Hey, Tati. City asked me to get something for him in the back,” Bo said as we walked past the girl sitting behind the desk.
“Okay, cool,” she responded and turned back to a customer she was talking to.
As we walked to the back, one of the room doors opened, and City’s friend, Marcus, stepped out. I remembered him from the club that night I came out. The first night I met Guwop.
“What’s up, Bo?” he said and nodded at Bo.
He seemed distracted. His head was buried in his phone, and he looked like he was in a rush to get somewhere.
“What’s up?” Bo said, but Marcus didn’t stop walking.
Looking at Bo, I shrugged. Obviously, he had some other things going on that had nothing to do with me, so we kept walking to the back until we got to the very last room.
“Okay, here we are,” Bo said then walked over to the desk and opened a drawer at the bottom. I saw the safe behind it. She put in the code, and the door swung open. All I saw was stacks of cash. The safe was small, but it was full of money. There had to be at least $100,000 in there.
“Well, damn!” I said with my mouth open.
City was living like that? That’s what’s up.
“Let me just take some of this,” Bo said then reached in and grabbed a stack.
I giggled. That was groceries and then some.
Just then, a high-pitched scream pierced my ears. I turned around, scared to death.
“Aye, no! Stop!” I heard another voice say.
I turned back to look at Bo, who was staring at me with wide eyes.
“Oh shit,” she said and quickly closed the safe back before running back to the door.