Kiss the Ring

by Meesha Mink

  “Don’t start nothing you can’t finish, Kelly,” Bas warned.

  “How could you, Sebastian?” she screeched as she slapped his face.

  WHAP.

  Sebastian?

  Naeema winced as he gripped her around the neck and lifted her up off her feet. It was mad crazy for him to get mad at her for his ass getting caught. And she felt bad for the girl too, but sympathetic chick wasn’t the role she was there to play and she didn’t want to be a witness to shit just in case he did something to cause the police to be called. “Excuse me,” she said, as she moved past them to walk into the bedroom and pull on her clothes.

  “You tried to send me out of town to bring this ghetto trick in our home, Sebastian?”

  Hold up. What?

  Naeema peeked her head out the door. Bas had her pressed up against the wall with her hands held in one of his. Tears streamed down her eyes. “Don’t start nothing with me you can’t finish, Kelly,” she said, playing her role even though she could see the pain and betrayal in the woman’s eyes.

  “Oh, go straight to hell,” Kelly snapped.

  Naeema rolled her eyes and walked back into the bedroom. She sat down on the bed and slipped on her shoes before she pulled her cell phone out of her pocketbook. Using the GPS, she pulled up the address and then the nearest cab company. She was making her request when she heard shit hitting the wall and then something crashing and breaking. I am tapping out on this bullshit.

  Her foot sent the bag of cocaine spiraling across the floor. She walked over to pick it up and then slid it into her purse. The last thing that fool needs is to get high and hurt that damn girl.

  She left the bedroom and acted like she didn’t see them sprawled across the couch fighting. Putting their drama behind her, Naeema walked out of the house to wait on the sidewalk for her cab headed back to her side of the city.

  • • •

  Bzzz . . . Bzzz . . . Bzzz . . .

  Naeema didn’t bother to pick up her vibrating cell phone. She already knew it was Bas calling. Between him and Vivica, her burner cell phone had been going off all day since she left him and his drama behind. Handle your handle, bruh . . .

  She wasn’t ignoring him because she was mad or jealous or hurt. Not at all. But she was glad for him and Vivica to think otherwise.

  Naeema tilted her chin up and released a thick stream of smoke through her pursed lips as she lay in the middle of her bed. She didn’t know if there was enough cannabis planted in the world to relax and calm her anxiety.

  A simple internet search had revealed more about Bas’s story than she ever thought she wanted to know.

  Not only had his father killed himself but he had murdered his wife as well. Their story had been prominent in the news and the bloody crime scene was one of the reasons the house had sat empty for years.

  No wonder Bas’s ass is so damn serious.

  But that’s not all that dominated her thoughts and fucked up her head space. For months she’d been so sure that Bas was behind Brandon’s murder and now that belief was shakier than a motherfucker. To her surprise she welcomed that idea.

  Did she have feelings for Bas? And if she did, what did that mean about all of the love she knew she had for Tank?

  “It’s time to bring this undercover shit to an end,” she said, closing her eyes as she shook her head at the shame of it all.

  12

  Naeema was at the barber shop sitting in her chair and looking out the window at all the comings and goings of the liquor store next door and trying to ignore the usual loud and rowdy politicking of the shop when she spotted Tank on his motorcycle pulling into the parking lot. She tapped her fingernail against her teeth as she tried to make out his sudden reappearance in her life. Climbing from the chair, she smoothed her hands down her hips in the low-riding skinny jeans she wore with a white shirt tied at the bottom above her belly button and the top buttons left open to expose her smooth cleavage.

  She had just exited the shop as he climbed off his Harley looking finer than ever in a V-neck gray tee and gray jeans. Her heart was pounding like crazy and she knew there would never be another man that she loved like she loved him.

  He removed his helmet and eyed her from her freshly shaven head down to the hot-pink polish on her toes in her high-heeled sandals. “What are you up to, Naeema?” Tank asked, his voice hard and his stare even harder.

  He was pissed.

  She froze as she was about to lean in and kiss his smooth cheek. “Well, damn, hello to you too,” she snapped.

  “When you start lying to me?” he asked with a frown.

  Naeema forced herself not to flinch or look away but she said not one word. He was shitting her.

  “You can tell me anything. You can ask me for anything,” Tank told her as he stepped forward to stand closer to her.

  Naeema closed her eyes and released a breath as she let the closeness of his presence wash over her, energize her, and tantalize her. Turn her the fuck on. “Tank—”

  He pointed his finger against her chest. “You are my wife, and I don’t give a fuck if we never live in the same house again, there is never a time you can’t put your burdens on my back for me to carry.”

  The thing was, he didn’t have to tell her that because she already knew it. If there was nothing else in life she could depend on, she knew that Tank would always have her back.

  Naeema glanced down the street to break their gaze. “What’s this about, Tank?” she asked, looking back at him.

  “Your son.”

  She felt her breath catch in her chest as she licked her lips and crossed her arms over her ample chest and shifted her stance. Tears welled up and she tried—and failed—to smile through the sadness that washed over her. “I, uhm . . . I didn’t . . . I didn’t know how to tell you about him,” she admitted, her voice soft as she released the lie and the secret that she had kept from so many people over the years.

  Tank reached out to swipe away a tear from her cheek with his thumb.

  “I never knew him,” she said, closing her eyes to drift back to a moment she had revisited so many times in the days after learning of his death. “I ain’t laid eyes on him since I gave him away.”

  “You could have told me, Na,” he insisted.

  “Who the fuck wants to tell their husband—who wants you to have a child—that you had one and gave it away and you don’t think it’s right to have another because you didn’t do right by that one,” Naeema said, feeling pain in her chest like her heart was truly breaking. “You don’t get do-overs with being a mother, Tank. I had my chance and I fucked it up because I wanted to rip and run.”

  “Go get your stuff,” Tank said, turning to climb back onto his Harley. He pulled a spare helmet from the rigid saddlebags on either side of the rear tire and patted the passenger seat. “Come ride wit’ me.”

  Naeema paused for just a few seconds. She needed to work and make up the money she lost during the two weeks she spent at that hotel waiting on Bas. The money from the robbery was still untouched and she wasn’t accepting anything from Tank.

  Still, she turned and went inside, grabbing her shades and fake Michael Kors bag. “Tell Derek I had to leave early, but I’ll be in tomorrow,” she said to Loc, the second-in-command when Derek was not in the shop.

  “Everything a’ight, Naeema?” he asked, his eyes moving past her to Tank awaiting her outside.

  She smiled at the older dude with the bald head who resembled a smaller version of Suge Knight. Everyone knew Tank was her husband but they also knew they weren’t together anymore. “I’m good,” she said, noticing the sudden quiet in the normally noisy surroundings. All eyes were on them. These fellas were her boys. Her brothas. They were concerned about her being missing in action a lot.

  That made her tear up. Sometimes she needed a reminder that she wasn’t as alone as she felt in the world. Turning, she left the shop before she started straight bawling. She made sure her own bike was locked and secured before she pul
led the helmet on, pushed her bag into the other saddlebag, and climbed onto the passenger seat behind him. At first she reached behind her to hold the bar running along the top of the backrest, but looking at the wide expanse of Tank’s back, she wanted to feel his strength. She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his waist.

  Naeema didn’t give a care about where Tank was taking her as they sped through the streets. She just closed her eyes and enjoyed the ride. It wasn’t until he pulled to a stop that she opened her eyes and looked around her. She smiled at the royal-blue canopy of the house on the corner of South Eighteenth Street and Madison Avenue that housed D & J Country Cooking, or Dick and Judy’s as everyone called it.

  Best soul food in the city, hands down.

  Naeema’s stomach grumbled at the smell of food in the air as they climbed off the motorcycle. “How you know I needed some good food in my life?” she asked as they walked to the corner entrance.

  Tank just laughed as he opened the screen door for her. “I ain’t forgot you can’t cook,” he teased her.

  “TV dinners don’t count?”

  “Hell no.”

  Dick and Judy’s wasn’t big. There were just four small booths and a counter with seats, but what it lacked in size it more than made up for in good down-home cooking. They served everything from homemade biscuits to oxtails with everything in between and all the Southern sides a mouth could water for. The heat from the kitchen filled the restaurant and made you feel like you were in the South during a heat wave. The only thing it was missing was a jukebox playing good hole-in-the-wall music like Tyrone Davis and Marvin Sease.

  She ordered lemonade and smothered pork chops. Tank got sweet tea and the oxtails. Their meals came with white rice and they decided to split a side of macaroni and cheese.

  When the waitress left with their order, Tank looked at Naeema across the table. “I wouldn’t have judged a decision you made when you was just a kid, Na,” he said, his eyes serious.

  She glanced out the window at the large yellow apartment building across the street. “Plenty of teenagers raise their kids, Tank,” she said. “I brought him into the world, somebody else raised him, and some scroungy motherfucker took him out.”

  “And you’re trying to find out who killed him.”

  She shifted her eyes back to him. “How’d you find out he’s my son?” she said, purposefully avoiding his comment.

  He shrugged one broad shoulder. ‘“I have my ways. You was too caught up in his murder, and that last night we spent together, when you was waking up in dreams yelling out his name and shit, I decided to see just what was going on. Since you wouldn’t tell me.”

  She sat back as their drinks were set before them.

  “Anything else you want to tell me, Na?” he asked.

  She shook her head and opened the straw to slide into her lemonade.

  “Naeema.”

  She locked eyes with his.

  Tank pressed his elbows on the top of the table and leaned in toward her. “Let the police handle this before you get yourself into a situation you can’t get yourself out of.”

  Situation?

  Naeema shook her head at an image of Bas’s tongue licking her nipples. Guilt flooded her for fucking Bas, but she pushed that aside because she knew Tank had to be fucking somebody. His sexual appetite was ferocious. It was nothing for them to go at it two or three times a day and he stayed ready. There was no way in hell he was running around without pussy on deck.

  Shaking her head again, she ran her hands over her closely shaven head. “Tank, stop lecturing me,” she said, sounding exhausted.

  “Stop lying to me, yo,” Tank countered.

  “I know how to take care of myself.”

  He captured both her knees between his under the table. “Because I taught you . . . and you’re not ready to be out here playing vigilante or Foxy Brown or some shit. This real life.”

  “Foxy Brown is a bad bitch,” Naeema said, thinking of the sexy heroine from one of those 1970s blaxploitation films her grandfather used to watch all the time.

  “You do know I mean the chick from the movie and not the rapper, right?”

  She rolled her eyes and looked up as the waitress brought their steaming hot plates of food. “Stop. Playing,” Naeema said, moving her glass out of the way.

  “That report I gave you isn’t up-to-date,” he said, not even glancing down at his food before him. “And the info that’s in there now I wouldn’t give to you knowing you on the manhunt for a killer like you’re a marshal or some shit.”

  Naeema dropped her fork and the chunk of pork chop on it. “What’s in it?” she asked, her mind already spinning with the possibilities.

  “Na—”

  “What’s in it?” she repeated, her voice cold as she stared down at some spot on the table that she never really focused on. She was trying like hell not to flip on Tank’s ass in public. The more he held out, the more the countdown continued. Slow but steady.

  Tank picked up his fork.

  Naeema yanked his plate from in front of him.

  Tank sat up straight and yanked it back, his face lined with annoyance.

  “He was my son and I ain’t never did shit for him,” she stressed.

  “And what purpose would dying for him serve?”

  Naeema pressed her hand to her chest as she spoke. “I just want to know what happened to him,” she said, switching gears on him.

  Tank sat back in his seat and eyed her. “They were looking into a cell phone grab your son did a few weeks before his death,” he said. “But the body of the dude who owned the cell phone has been in the morgue unidentified since about a week after the robbery.”

  One less motherfucker to hunt for. Good.

  “What else?” she asked.

  “Nothing else. Not yet,” he said.

  Bullshit.

  Naeema focused on her food even though her appetite was gone.

  “At least let me help you, Na,” Tank said.

  She took a bite of the macaroni and cheese. “I got something that needs your help,” she said, meaning to flirt to get him off her trail.

  Tank swiped at his mouth with his napkin. “I didn’t come to see you about that.”

  “So you don’t want it no more?” she asked, her eyes on him as she chewed slowly.

  “I’ll always want it . . . but I don’t need it, yo,” Tank’s eyes dipped to her cleavage exposed by her shirt.

  “And it don’t need you,” she shot back smooth as hell. Dicks are a dime a dozen.

  Naeema looked away as she drifted back to the moments of her ass high in the air as Bas tore the pussy up.

  “Here,” he said.

  She looked over at him as he held his palm out with a bulky gold ring in a small plastic bag.

  “It’s your—It’s Brandon’s,” Tank explained.

  Naeema gasped a little as she took it and pushed the bag from the plastic. She slid it onto her index finger and held up her hand. It was real gold but the diamonds were fake. Not even cubic zirconia. More like tiny rhinestones or some shit. It couldn’t have cost more than fifty dollars, but for a fourteen-year-old kid with no ends that must’ve seemed like a million bucks.

  “It was in evidence.”

  She dropped her head and pressed her lips to it, feeling just a little bit closer to the child she’d selfishly left behind. “I thought I had time to fix shit,” she admitted, her voice broken.

  Tank reached across the table and stroked her free hand with his thumb.

  She met his eyes. “Thank you so much. I don’t even deserve anything of his. But thank you.”

  “Stop beatin’ yourself up, yo. You gave birth to him. You chose to carry him and give him life and that ain’t no little thing, Na. For real, yo,” Tank said. “His father ain’t even done that.”

  Naeema looked up. “You know who his father is?” she asked, surprised.

  Tank shook his head. “Nah. I just assumed if you gave him up for adoption, th
at fool wasn’t no help to you.”

  Naeema forced a smiled that instead came off sad. “No he wasn’t. I ain’t laid eyes on that motherfucka since before the baby was born.”

  She took a deep breath and for the first time ever told someone else about the pain and shame she felt that night she was put out on the street pregnant and broke. It felt like a weight off her soul to speak on her struggles being homeless and pregnant.

  She wasn’t surprised to see the anger in Tank’s eyes.

  “Chance Mack, huh?” he asked, already pulling his iPhone from his pocket and walking out of the luncheonette.

  Naeema didn’t bother to stop him. She had enough battles to fight and was fine with Tank taking on that one. What Chance and his mother/father did to her was fucked up.

  She looked down at the ring. If it was in the police’s possession, then he was wearing it the night he was killed. She didn’t even realize she was crying until the tears blurred her vision.

  Naeema knew she had to finish what she started and find her son’s killer. She was determined to question Hammer and Nelson once and for all but she knew she couldn’t make a sudden reappearance without getting shit straight with Bas first.

  Swiping away her tears, Naeema reached for the burner cell in her pocketbook and powered it on. She ignored the alert that she had a dozen or more voice mail messages on the five-dollar phone. She pulled up Bas in her contact info and dialed his number while she looked out through the mesh of the screen door at Tank’s imposing figure pacing back and forth on the street as he talked on the phone.

  “So you all right now, Queen?”

  “You called me?” she said, surprised that the sound of his voice in her ear excited her.

  “You got jokes?”

  She used her thumb to circle the ring around her index finger. “That hot-ass mess that went down with your situation was pretty fucking funny, dude.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt her like that,” Bas said, sounding less than pleased.

  “Or me either, right?” she asked, faking like she was upset.