by Meesha Mink
Rolling her eyes she balled it up and tossed it over her shoulder. She had just turned on the shower when she backtracked and entered the living room. Vivica was still on the sofa flipping through the TV channels. “Viv, I can’t go shopping. I gotta get home,” she said. “I’ll holla at you later.”
“You want a ride home?” she asked.
“Can you drop me downtown?” Naeema asked, already planning to catch a cab from there to get home.
“A’ight, but Bas not gon’ like you changing his plans.”
“I’ll make it up to him,” she said over her shoulder as she walked back into the bathroom that was filled with the steam from the running shower.
Naeema slipped a shower cap over her wig and then dropped the robe to the floor before stepping into the shower.
She would play Bas’s game of hideaway but first she was going home to get the gun she took from Rico.
• • •
Bas didn’t come back to the suite for three days. No call. No show.
I coulda been making money.
And her boss, Derek, wasn’t happy at all that she’d taken more time off indefinitely. Still, she knew that as long as she was the lone female in the shop, kept her body right and tight, and gave her boss, coworkers, and customers plenty of eye candy, her chair was waiting on her return.
Vivica played the go-between just enough to be bait to keep Naeema on the hook for Bas to reel her in when he was ready. When she wasn’t sneaking off for a couple of hours every day to look for the identity of the vic of the cell phone grab Ms. JuJu had told her Brandon did, she ordered room service, played Candy Crush Saga on her phone, wondered why Tank had yet to call, mourned her son, and plotted on just how she planned to kill whoever murdered him. All while she waited on Bas to make his next move.
Bzzzz . . . bzzzz . . . bzzzz . . .
She leaned forward on the sofa to pick up her burner cell phone. It was Bas. Naeema set it back on the table. She was playing the role of Queen, who would’ve jumped at a call from him, but Naeema decided to make him wait. She set the phone back on the table and picked up the remote to turn up the volume on an episode of The First 48.
Bzzzz . . . bzzzz . . . bzzzz . . .
Naeema turned the volume up higher and ignored the phone. Finally it stopped vibrating. She was already regretting not bringing some of her weed stash with her. Still playing the game of “just in case,” she didn’t want Bas to be able to trace back to her real identity through her weed connect. Not everybody sold underground medicinal weed and sometimes the very strain of weed let you know who sold it. Still, she was ready to get fucked up, and the bottle of Absolut vodka and cranberry juice she’d brought wasn’t doing it.
Click.
She looked over her shoulder at the sound of the door lock detaching. Moments later Bas’s tall figure filled the doorway. He was dressed in all black but the look on his face was darker . . . especially when his eyes shifted to her cell phone sitting in plain view on the table next to her drink.
“Hey, stranger,” she said, reaching for the snifter to take a sip of the vodka and juice.
Bas walked over and snatched it from her hand, spilling some of it onto her, before he turned and threw it against the wall. THUD. The glass bounced off the wall but didn’t shatter and the red liquid drizzled down the walls to seep into the carpet.
The fuck?
Naeema eyed him. She couldn’t front that his action had made her pause like a motherfucker. She had made a calculated move that didn’t play well. Her anger at him for not showing her respect was the move, the nerve, and the grit of Naeema . . . not Queen. Somewhere the line had blurred for her.
“Go get dressed,” he said before he dropped down on the love seat.
“I am dressed.”
“In something besides all that stretchy shit you wear,” he said, his tone rude as hell as he eyed the black- and gold-striped leggings she wore with a white tank. “Hell, I knew how fat your pussy was before I ate it the other night.”
“I thought you liked it,” she said, slipping back into the role of Queen to help calm his anger.
He didn’t say anything else and Naeema stood up to head into the bedroom.
“I missed you, yo.”
She stopped and looked over her shoulder at him. His eyes were still locked on the television screen and his fists were clasped together under his square chin. She didn’t say a word as she moved on into the bedroom.
Naeema emerged a half hour later freshly showered, makeup beat, and dressed in a white off-the-shoulder spandex top and a long fitted skirt that exposed her flat stomach. In her purse she had the gun she swiped from Rico. “More stretchy shit,” she said, doing a slow turn beside where he still sat.
“Queen, next time I offer you a shopping trip, please go,” he said, sounding more chill as he reached out to slap at her ass.
Naeema looked over her shoulder as she made it clap for him.
Bas slapped it again. WHAP!
“So . . . did you get everyone situated while you were gone?” she asked.
Bas stood up and moved toward the door. “Almost,” he said, holding the door open for her.
“Must be a serious-ass situation,” she said as she passed him to walk down the hall to the elevator.
“Right?” he agreed sarcastically.
Once they were on the elevator he stepped behind her and then pulled her back by her hips to settle her ass against his groin. He pressed a kiss to her neck. “You smell good,” he whispered against her pulse.
It was pounding.
Get your shit together, Naeema.
She stepped up from him and shimmied his hands off her hips with a back-and-forth motion. “Don’t want to get into another serious situation before you handle the other one,” she said, her eyes on his reflection against the metal wall of the elevator.
“I get what I want . . . when I want it,” he said.
They strolled off the elevator together and crossed the lobby of the hotel. Naeema paused at a bright red Porsche Panamera sitting curbside. When Bas stepped forward to open the passenger door for her, she knew he was somehow involved in a stolen car ring or some shit. There was no way to explain his having access to luxury vehicles worth half a million dollars or better.
What if I get pulled over in this stolen motherfucker?
The stakes kept getting higher and higher.
“This your whip too?” she asked, looking up at him as she slid into the passenger seat.
“Somethin’ like that,” they said in unison.
As they were cruising through the steady traffic on the downtown streets of Newark, Bas turned on the music. Soon the sounds of “Crooked Smile” by J. Cole filled the interior of the car. Naeema snapped her fingers and moved her hips in the seat.
“When this song first came out last year I had just—”
Bas looked over at her as she bit back the rest of the words. “Just what?”
Shaved my hair off.
But she wasn’t sharing with him that the idea of a closely shaven head with her features had nagged at her until she finally tried it and said she would just grow it back if the shape of her head was lumpy or whopped. In the first hours after the deed was done she had regretted shaving off her shoulder-length hair, and listening to that song made her finally say “fuck it” and embrace the change.
“I had just got fired,” she lied.
She was glad when he let the subject drop.
Naeema looked out the tinted window as the landscape changed from the tall buildings surrounding Penn Station to the storefronts of downtown to residential town houses. Soon the streets were lined with more lots where houses once stood than actual homes. Whether from the riots of 1967, the demolition of the high-rise projects, or natural disasters, there were still areas of certain wards of the city that couldn’t seem to recover.
Naeema loved her hometown and she wanted the best for it.
“Shit,” Bas swore as a man stumbled back in
to the street.
He slammed on his brakes and their bodies jerked forward. Naeema reached her hands out and pressed against the dashboard to stop herself from lunging forward any further without her seat belt on. She cried out when the body fell back against the top of the roof.
BAM!
Two women came running into the street to start throwing hard blows against his body. One woman’s shirt was torn in half and her bra was down under one of her breasts, exposing a big and bumpy brown nipple. One of them punched at the man’s head as he tried to curl his body into a ball and her hand missed his head and slammed against the windshield.
“Ah, man, fuck this shit,” Bas spat as he reached for the door handle.
Naeema reached over and pressed her hand against the horn as Bas climbed from the car.
They seemed to fight the man even harder.
As she watched Bas easily remove each of the women from atop the man and the hood of the car, she knew two women straight fucking up a dude was nothing but pussy problems and dick drama. The man jumped to his feet once he was free and the headlights spotlighted the scratches on his face, the swelling of his bottom lip, and his clothes, nearly ripped to shreds on his body. As Bas spread his arms wide to try to hold back both of the women from jumping on him again, the dude turned and took off running up the middle of the street. His knees damn near touched his chin, he was booking it so hard.
Naeema laughed.
The women both pushed Bas out of the way and he stumbled back as they turned on each other and started fighting while the man’s figure receded with each bit of distance he put between them. As they pulled at each other’s hair and tugged like crazy, they both fell back between two cars parked in front of a large bank.
Naeema laughed harder.
Bas studied the hood and the windshield before he finally got back into the car. He glanced over at Naeema covering her mouth as she continued to laugh. “That shit is not funny,” he said, sounding irritated as he steered the car around the fighting women and the crowd surrounding them in the street.
Naeema fought like crazy to swallow back her laughter. “Is the car okay?” she asked.
Bas shrugged one broad shoulder. “It don’t matter. It’s getting chopped up tomorrow.”
Stolen car. I knew it.
Naeema shook her head at the whole encounter they’d just had. The streets of the hood stay popping with some mess. Big tittie just flopping around like a fish out of water.
When they had driven fifteen blocks or better and past the man, still running up the middle of the street like he knew hell was on his heels, Bas and Naeema glanced at each other and then they both broke out laughing.
10
Two weeks later
“So, you avoiding me?”
Naeema froze in the doorway of her house with her hands still on the knob as she looked at Tank sitting on the edge of her bed. She leaned against the door and let her eyes take him in. Still Laz Alonzo–level fine, in a navy V-neck that pressed against his muscles and looked so good against his brown complexion. His elbows were pressed on his knees and his hands were loosely clasped in the space between them. She lightly shook off that intense initial reaction she had at the sight of him. “You haven’t called me either, Tank,” she said.
“You left me,” he said.
“A year ago,” she shot back as she finally stepped into the house and closed the door. “And in that year we talk sometimes and sometimes we don’t.”
“And we fuck sometimes and sometimes we don’t.” His eyes were bright with something. Some emotion.
She couldn’t identify it.
“True,” Naeema finally agreed. “But that doesn’t give you a right to do a B&E.”
Her eyes shifted to the large plastic container her TV sat on. Inside it was a smaller container with everything in the world she had of Brandon’s.
“Sarge let me in . . . after he called me to say you went missing for two weeks,” he said, looking down at his hands, then at her as she stepped into the living room and dropped the Louis Vuitton garment bag she was carrying over her arm.
“Sarge?” she asked in disbelief.
“That’s right.”
She looked up as her elderly tenant—who paid no rent—stepped into the living room from the kitchen. That was a first as far as Naeema knew.
So this little mini-intervention is serious as hell.
“You all right?” he asked, those sharp eyes on her as he scratched his scruffy beard and shifted back and forth in his boots like he wasn’t comfortable being in her space.
Naeema opened her mouth.
“You all right,” he said again, this time as a declaration, before turning to shuffle back into the kitchen with a rough wave of his hand.
Naeema closed her mouth and arched her brow.
She wasn’t surprised when the door leading to the basement slammed and echoed through the house.
Tank stood up and his presence seemed to make the room smaller. “I think we need to give each other some space,” he said.
“You mean some more space,” she said as he walked over to her.
“What kind of games are you playin’, Na?” Tank asked. “I told you we needed to do something and then your ass disappear for two weeks?”
Naeema reached up and stroked the side of his face as she closed the gap between them. “Tank,” she whispered up to him.
“Nah,” he said, leaning back from her touch and sidestepping the feel of her breasts pressed against his chest.
She got stiff with anger, feeling rejected. “So you not feelin’ me now?” she asked, pointedly reaching for him.
“So you want me to use you for sex? You want me to chop you down like any other bitch in the street and then walk away before I even zip my dick back in my pants?” He grabbed her by the waist and then gripped the back of her neck to roughly bend her over before him. With her ass spread before him in the maxi dress she wore, he ground against her, his arm stretched as he kept gripping her neck to hold her down. “This what you want, huh?”
Naeema looked at him over her shoulder. “Fuck me,” she said, grinding back against him.
Tank’s face became cold as he roughly pushed her from him.
She stumbled forward and almost hit the wall. Reaching out with both hands, she blocked the fall then stood up to slowly turn and face him.
“If you lookin’ for dick on demand, then buy you a dildo,” he said, striding to the front door.
Naeema leaned back against the wall and looked over at him. “Don’t leave me, Tank. I need you. Don’t walk out that door,” she said, reaching up to remove the black wig she wore. She flung it across the room.
Tank froze at the door.
She felt those invisible waters rise again, covering her and drowning her. Her eyes filled with tears and she felt her anxiety literally make her skin itch. Tank was her drug and she needed a hit. She jerked the straps of her dress down and pushed it over her hips and ass to puddle around her feet.
His back was still to her and she walked up behind him to press herself against the length of him as she dragged her hands down his chest.
“I’m not feeling this shit no more, Na,” Tank said, reaching up to catch her hands before they slipped inside his pants to stroke his dick.
She laughed as she freed her hands and pushed him back against the wall. “Yeah, right,” Naeema said, her voice slightly mocking.
He grabbed her hands again.
She looked into his face.
“Where you been the last two weeks, Na?” Tank asked.
Her eyes shifted away from him. “I was—”
“Don’t lie to me,” he ordered in a hard voice.
I was laid up with a thief who might be the murderer of my son.
“I took a little trip and I shoulda let somebody know. My bad,” she said.
Tank still held her hands in his as he stared down into her face. His eyes opened wider in a sudden awareness. “You rawin’ that dude?�
�� he asked, his hands tightening on hers.
“I’m not fucking nobody else, Tank,” she told him honestly. And she wasn’t.
Most of the time she sat around that suite alone waiting on Bas. His situation at home kept him busy and she was more than fine with that. They were still playing the flirting game. But she knew she had to find out the truth soon or risk blowing her cover when he did make a play for more than just flirting. That shit was stressful and she truly could use a little Tank in her life to make her forget for a while, the way only he could, physically and emotionally.
He released her hands and brought one of his up to grip her chin tightly as he tilted her face upward. Her eyes studied his and she saw the conflict within him rage in the brown depths. She gasped as her chest radiated with pain.
She loved this dude and he meant more to her than a fuck.
Tell him.
Something must have shown in her eyes because his face changed quick as hell.
Tell him.
She shifted her eyes away and he jerked her face to make her lock her gaze with his again. Tank released her face and stepped back from her. He looked pained that she was keeping something from him.
He knew her better than anybody else in the world.
He knew her and he loved her. She had no doubts about that. But she couldn’t face telling him the truth and seeing disappointment in her for not stepping up to her responsibility or anger at her for lying to him and keeping her son a secret. She couldn’t do it. Especially not right then, when everything else seemed to be weighing her life down.
Shaking his head, he reached past her to open the door. She didn’t reach for him. She didn’t stop him.
And just like that he was out.
She slid down the wall and pulled her legs to her chest as she rested her head on her knees.
• • •
Hours later, Naeema left her bathroom with her damp body in a plush black robe that she’d swiped from Tank when she left him. She picked up her TV from atop the plastic container to remove the lid and pull the smaller container from inside it. With it tucked under her arm, Naeema turned her fan on low and let it rotate, even though the house wasn’t hot. Climbing onto the middle of the bed, she set the container before her and opened it.