by Shan
“Hey baby,” Cuba said and smiled up at me, barely able to keep her eyes open. “Been feeling you all the while boy I must confess. Boy let’s just get married. I just wanna get married.”
I couldn’t believe this shit. My bitch was laid out in the bathroom getting laced right after I professed my muthafuckin’ love to her in front of everybody. What the fuck was this? Was a nigga cursed or something? First Briana…
My head began to spin when the needle that had been stuck in Cuba’s arm fell out onto the floor. It was like déjà vu around this bitch. I slid my hands into my pockets and backed away towards the door.
“How could you do this shit, Cuba?” I said, suddenly seeing flashbacks of Briana the day I had found her the exact same way. I shook my head. This shit was crazy as hell. I felt like it was back in day, and all I could see was this trick ass bitch playing me all over again. I blinked and swallowed back hard as I turned around and stepped out of the restroom. My heart was thumping hard against my chest, feeling like it was about to explode. My ears were ringing as I popped my neck from side to side trying to shake this shit off.
“Everything good?” Tramell asked, and I looked at him with a frown.
“Shut this bitch down! I want everybody gone! Everybody out before I air this bitch out!” I roared, as I pulled my hands out and grabbed my pistol from behind my back. Tramell walked away just as two chicks came and stopped in front of the restroom.
“Excuse us, sexy,” the light-skinned one said with a lick of her lips.
“Get the fuck outta here,” I hissed and sucked my teeth. I was definitely not in the mood for the thot games.
“Damn, we can’t use the restroom?” she asked, and I had to quickly place my hands behind my back, fearful that I would drop two bodies just because.
“Ain’t no restroom, bih! Get the fuck outta here man before I knock you and this ugly ass bitch out!”
“Yora, let’s go girl. This nigga done lost his damn mind. It ain’t that muthafuckin serious, nigga,” the ugly one said to her home girl, and I shrugged as they walked away.
I sucked in a deep breath and let it out as I shook my head. I couldn’t believe shit was going down like this. Today, of all muthafuckin’ days. Today, when I was at the happiest point of my life. Today, when I was for sure that I had finally got it right. It was fucked up because I was starting to feel like wasn’t shit gonna be right for me…ever.
“Khi, did you hear me?” Briana asked, snapping me out of my thoughts, as she walked up on me. I looked down at her and sucked my teeth.
“Fuck are you doing here?” I asked and glanced back towards the restroom. “Where the fuck is my daughter at?”
“She’s good. Why you snapping and shit at me? Damn, I came to tell you congrats on your engagement. You really did it, huh?” Briana said, and I frowned at her even more.
“You wasn’t on the guest list. I didn’t put you on the guest list.”
“Dough knows me and let me in. He figured you forgot, but I guess you didn’t. What the hell did I do to you?”
“What you mean? Fuck do you mean? You asked me could you get Skylarr for the weekend, and Cuba sat up and told me not to let you get her. You had me going behind her back for Skylarr…”
“That’s my muthafuckin’ daughter, Khi! I’ve been calling you and begging you for months to see her, and you’ve been keeping her away from me because of that bitch Cuba. Go behind her back? She’s mine…why the hell would you have to go behind her back for me to see my muthafuckin’ child?”
“You know what, Briana, it don’t even fuckin’ matter,” I said and sighed.
“Everything is always about her. I bet she’s the one that pushed you to file for sole custody, right? She’s behind every damn thing that you do. Can you even fuckin’ think for yourself? You would’ve never wanted to take my daughter if it wasn’t for Cuba. You let that bitch make you think that I’m a bad mother to Skylarr, and I’m not.”
“Then, why the fuck are you here and not at home being a mother to Skylarr!”
“Cause I came here to tell you that our daughter is being abused. The woman you proposed to tonight…your soulmate has been abusing Skylarr. Skylarr said so herself,” Briana said, and I scoffed and shook my head.
“Bitch, get the fuck outta here before I put a bullet in your dumb ass head. Go home and get my child ready. I’ll be by there shortly to get her, and don’t try no funny shit either.”
“I need to use the restroom first. Why the fuck you guarding the door like you the secret service or somebody anyway, and why is Tramell telling everyone to leave?” Briana asked, and I could swea’ I saw her lips curl up into a smirk.
“Use the bathroom at home.”
“Why? Is your girlfriend in there or something? You put that hoe on a pedestal like that, that no one else is allowed to use the restroom while she’s using it?”
“My fiancé and…”
“What’s going on?” Cassidy asked, cutting me off as he stepped up next to me and stared at Briana.
“Is everybody gone?” I asked and looked over at KaeDee and then at Cassidy.
“Yea, it’s empty out there. You need me to handle this for you?” Cassidy asked, as he nodded to Briana, and I shook my head as she frowned.
“Nah, cause Briana about to go home and get my daughter ready, right?” I asked her, and she sucked her teeth and stepped back.
“Yea, definitely,” Briana answered, as she turned around and walked away. When she rounded the corner, I turned around and pushed the door to the restroom open. I nodded for my brothers and Tramell to follow me. I shook my head as Cuba laid helplessly on the floor with one hand cradling the left side of her neck.
“Yo, what the fuck happened to the kid man,” Cassidy asked, as he brought his hands up and sighed. He ran one hand through his braids and walked around me while we all stared down at my girl.
“Tell me this shit not happening,” KaeDee said, as I knelt down and pulled Cuba into my arms. I didn’t know what the fuck was happening or what the fuck I should think. All I knew was that Cuba was high as a muthafucka and too far gone to tell me if she was just another Briana or if somebody had did this shit to hurt the both of us.
As pissed as I wanted to be with Cuba, I could feel deep down that something wasn’t right. No matter how much it all resembled the day I discovered Briana’s addiction, it didn’t feel the same. Besides the hurt I felt back then, none of this shit felt anything like what I remembered. I felt like a fool back then for trying to love a dirty ass broad like Briana, but right now, I felt like somebody was fucking with me. I ain’t been knowing Cuba but a minute, but I knew her well enough to know that this wasn’t like her…at least, I hoped that this wasn’t like her.
I found myself thinking back to the day at the hospital when Cuba lost my seed, and the doctor told her that they’d found large amounts of coke in her system. Cuba said that she’d never done any other drugs other than weed, and I believed that shit. She was a weed head for real, and I always had to get on her ass about how much she consumed… but this here, I had never seen as a muthafuckin’ problem. She didn’t even act the same way I remembered Briana acting back then. All ditsy and shit, always nervous and antsy. Briana stayed in my muthafuckin’ pockets, and when I wouldn’t give her what she asked for, I would always notice my shit came up missing anyway.
There were rumors about Briana fuckin’ and suckin’ on the goonies and being up in the bandos giving lap dances and shit for money, but I never had to worry about none of that with Cuba. I never heard one bad word about her in the streets. Not one nigga or hoe spoke ill on Cuba’s name. All she did was take care of her nigga and take care of those muthafuckin’ kids… that was her life, and outside of working part-time for Tangie, even though she didn’t have to, Cuba didn’t do shit else. This shit had me lost as a muthafucka.
“Man, I gotta fire up the hay after this one. Nigga been trying to get high all night,” Cassidy said, and we all looked at him as he
fired up the blunt.
“Have y’all been having problems? Has she seemed off lately? Like you knew she was getting laced? Money missing, sleeping all the time,” KaeDee said, and I sighed.
“Yea, she been sleeping and sick for the past couple of weeks, but I thought it was because her hoe ass was pregnant again. Man, I swea’…”
“I think Tangie’s ass is pregnant too. That bitch thinks I’m about to chase her, but I’m not. She let Tameeka run her off after how hard I’ve been trying… man, fuck her!” Cassidy belted out, and everyone looked at his dumb ass again.
“Shut the fuck up, Cass,” KaeDee told him, and I hopped up and started pulling Cuba’s dress over her head. I ran my hands across every part of her body looking for track marks, but found none. Back when I had found Briana in the bathroom like this, I was able to find track marks hidden in places that I would’ve never thought possible. She had them bitches in between her fingers and toes, over her foot, and tiny ass holes on the side of her neck…
I quickly pulled Cuba’s hand away from her neck and spotted a reddish ass mark. Cuba tried to put her hand back there, and I pulled it away again. I looked down at her and tried to make sense of my muthafuckin’ thoughts. This shit felt like somebody was trying recreate my misery, and it was causing my insides to burn with anger. I swallowed back hard and fell back against the wall.
“She got one mark on her neck, but nowhere else. Why after I just got down on my knee to propose to her would she decide to get laced for the first muthafuckin’ time? I’m not crazy at all fam… does this shit make sense to you?” I asked, looking from KaeDee to Cassidy, and then to Tramell.
“I wanna know why the fuck you invite your sour ass baby mama here knowing you was gonna propose tonight, bruh? She is beyond bitter fam,” Cassidy said, and I looked up at him and frowned. I hopped back up, took Cuba’s dress, and carefully pulled it back over her head and onto her body.
“I didn’t invite her. She’d been asking to keep Skylarr, and I told her that I would this weekend since I had the party planned. We got to talking when I dropped Skylarr off, and I told her what I had planned. I didn’t even put the hoe on the guest list, because I didn’t want her here,” I told him and pulled Cuba into my arms, as I leaned back against the wall.
“Bruh…” Cassidy commented, as he passed the weed to Tramell.
“Think about it carefully,” KaeDee told me.
“She was salty as a bitch when you was proposing nigga. Her face said it all,” the goonie Tramell said, and I looked up at him.
“I should’ve known some shit wasn’t right when Briana walked in the building. Even Tangie knew something wasn’t right… then this hoe Tameeka! Nigga, I swea’ to God! That bitch… is dead. You know Cuba gonna leave you after this shit, right nigga? You better kill that hoe Briana or else you’ll never have a chance to get her back. You know she gone.”
“Cass…” KaeDee said, but I shook my head to stop him.
“Nah… aye, y’all really think Briana did this shit?” I asked and sighed. “Fam, that bitch stood in my face and acted like she didn’t know what the fuck was going on! Then, this hoe…man! Fuck!”
“Go get your daughter fam,” KaeDee said, and I nodded as he walked over to me and pulled Cuba from my arms and into his.
“Just take… take her back to the house…and stay with her,” I told him feeling a little incoherent.
“You need me to come with you?” Cassidy asked, and I nodded and looked over at Tramell.
“Follow me to Briana’s,” I told Tramell and looked back at Cassidy. “I’mma handle it.”
“Bruh, it’s nothing left you can do to help that girl,” KaeDee said.
“I said I’mma fuckin’ handle it,” I said, as I gritted my teeth and walked out of the door with Tramell following behind me.
***
I hopped out of the car the moment I pulled in front of Briana’s house with Tramell right behind me. I wanted to be wrong about this shit with her ass, and I hoped that Briana hadn’t did this bullshit to Cuba, but deep down, I knew that she had. She was always pulling some kinda stunt when she didn’t get her damn way with me, but damn…I never thought she would take shit this far. She put baby mama drama on a whole ‘nother level, and I couldn’t even be mad at my shawty if she no longer wanted to ride with a nigga.
Trying to fight that dope shit was going to be hard, but if she would let me, I was gonna commit myself to making sure she was straight. Man, I really cared about Cuba, and I hated that all this shit was happening to her. I remember telling her when she had been fighting me to just let me in and let me protect her, but shit, I hadn’t come through on my promise.
Truthfully, other than a little catfighting, I never expected nothing like this to ever happen. I mean, damn, poisoning my girl with antifreeze and then trying to force her into becoming a dope fiend was some hoe ass shit. Nothing about that was normal. Speaking of, I no longer believed that Selena was the one that put that Anti-Freeze in Cuba’s food that damn day. Selena had told me that she only prepared it and sat the food in the microwave; she said that, shortly after, she fell asleep on the sofa. I thought she had been making it up just to keep me from getting in her ass, but now I believed her.
Briana was a different kind of breed man. She was the type that just couldn’t appreciate shit for what it was. The bitch was evil and had let the muthafuckin’ hood terrorize her mind. She had people out here looking at me funny since the first day I ran into her ass, but no matter how much of a fool she made of me, I still tried to be a fuckin’ man about it. A man was supposed to never neglect his responsibilities, and being that I had laid down and created a child with Briana, that made her my responsibility. I had no type of feelings for that broad whatsoever. Yea, she was special to a nigga, and I would always remember the good times that she and I shared, but that was as far as it would go. At the end of the day, I looked out for Briana for my daughter’s sake.
There was no way I could drive around in nice cars, live in a nice house, and wear nice clothing, and have the mothers of my kids living in the damn gutter. I never understood how dudes could even pull in the projects to see their kids in a nice ass car, and their baby’s mother was just barely getting by living off of welfare and food stamps and shit. Guess I was just a different kind of nigga, because that shit didn’t sit well with me. It was why I never explained myself when it came to what I did for my kids’ mothers, because to me, it just made sense. I just wanted the best for anyone that was a reflection of me.
Briana used to live in the projects, because she knew that shit killed me; she always did shit that she knew would fuck with me. She didn’t care how bad she made me look. She knew what type of nigga I was, and she knew that, no matter how much bullshit she tossed at a nigga, I was still gonna, at the very least, look out for her. But damn, I never wanted baby girl to end up in the mix and hurt like this. She ain’t deserve this. I took full responsibility, because I should’ve let Briana go the minute I saw she wasn’t fit to raise our damn child. I should’ve just left her out here to fend for herself. I should’ve never allowed shit to get this far. I fucked up, and now I had to fix it.
“Just take Sky to the car for me and wait,” I told Tramell and brought my hand up to knock on the door just as Briana opened it. “Where you headed to?”
“What…I was coming to bring Sky to you,” Briana stuttered, and I frowned.
“What’s up daddy’s baby? Come here mama,” I said, as I reached for Sky, and she practically flew into my arms. She smiled as she threw her little arms around my neck and rested her head onto my chest. I kissed her on the cheek before I turned around and placed her into Tramell’s arms. “Give me about 15…20.”
“Bet,” Tramell said, as he walked away.
“What’s up?” Briana asked, as she crossed her arms over her chest.
“Let me come in. I need to talk to you about something. Damn,” I said, as I lightly bumped past her and walked inside. I looked around brie
fly and then ran my eyes across the luggage that was sitting right next to the door. I sighed as I walked into Briana’s living room and took a seat on her sofa.
Before coming here, I quickly stopped off at the crib and changed into a gray t-shirt and some black sweat pants and tennis shoes. I had a blunt behind my ear and some more weed in my pocket that I was ready to blaze. I pulled the blunt from my ear and took a lighter from Briana’s coffee table to fire the weed up.
Briana slowly walked inside where I was sitting. She held her hand out for her lighter, and I placed it into her hand and grabbed her at the same time.
“Come and sit next to me,” I told her, and she looked at me suspiciously.
“No…no, I’m good,” she told me, as she walked over and leaned against the brick of her fireplace.
“How you liking your new spot? I know Sky loves it here being she got a muthafuckin’ backyard and shit.”
“Yea,” Briana said, as she fired up the cancer stick. “We played outside yesterday.”
“Damn…after all the shit I done been through lately, it’s a wonder I haven’t aged from stress,” I said, as I ran my hand across my face, and then, placed the tip of the blunt to my mouth. “So sick of muthafuckas walking all over me, man, I don’t know what to do. Is it something wrong with me having a good heart? I mean, damn, why the fuck the good niggas gotta be treated the worst? Tell me what I’m doing wrong, Briana.”
“I…” Briana started, but I cut her off.
“Damn…I know you looking at me crazy right now. But you won’t believe what happened to me tonight. Shit, after I got down and proposed to that broad, Cuba, I found that hoe in the restroom getting high and shit. What the fuck man? That’s why I snapped on you earlier when I saw you, ‘cause that shit just took me back to the day you broke my heart. You was the only woman I ever truly loved…’til this day, you’re still the only woman I love. Selena knew that, and I guess Cuba grew to realize that shit too. I feel like I’ve been wasting my damn time with these hoes. Done made a baby, done lost one trying to run from what me and you had, and it’s all because I was in my feelings.”