by Denora Boone
“Get out shawty,” he simply stated.
“Don’t be like that, baby. Let me make you feel good. I can send Naja and Drea home and it can be just me and you.”
Looking blankly into her face she finally got the picture and got out with much attitude. Qyree watched her throw her hips to the side extra hard in hopes that it would change his mind, and it almost did. Mama was working with something and she knew it, it just wasn’t worth it.
Pulling out his phone, he started smiling immediately at what he was about to do.
Qyree: U tryna slide off wit a G?
912-555-6363: I thought u were chillin tonight.
Qyree: Nah
912-555-6363: Aight
Qyree knew it was about to be some mess, as he put his car into reverse just as Naja came out of the house. Fatima and Drea weren’t far behind her yelling, and all he could do was laugh. He knew as soon as Fatima had showed out in front of Chey, he was gonna move to the next with Naja. She proved that she was worthy of a few minutes of alone time because she kept her mouth closed about him wanting to meet up with her too. Had it been the other way around, Fatima would have told the world.
Not paying any attention to the yelling and screaming, he headed to the nearest hotel. He just needed something to relax him before he headed home.
***
Traffic was to a minimum as Qyree rode down the interstate. He was so deep in his thoughts that the time seemed to fly by faster than normal. Turning the volume up on his sound system, he tried to let the noise drown out his thoughts but it was to no avail. Before he knew it, he was pulling up to his parents’ estate and just sat there. He was a grown man living at his parents’ house. Not because he couldn’t afford to leave, it was just that he didn’t have a reason to. They let him stay there rent free, come and go as he pleased, and was able to either stack his money or splurge on anything he wanted.
In the last year, he had bought 3 brand new, off the lot luxury cars, just because. He didn’t need them but it just seemed to do something to his ego when he got praise everywhere he went in either of them. People wanting to take pictures of them just to post to their social media pages and he let them. It was even better when the people recognized who he was when they saw him. His mother told him that all of that would get old to him one day. The women, cars, blowing money, and not having a relationship with God. She saw so much more potential in him than he saw in himself. All he saw was him being young and rich and taking over one of the biggest record companies in the nation, but his mother saw past all of that. She saw what God saw, and prayed fervently that one day his own eyes would be open.
“Ma! Where you at?” he yelled walking into the house. He threw his keys on the table beside the door and dropped his overnight bag on the floor. In that moment, he didn’t know why he had even bothered to take an overnight bag because he didn’t stay overnight.
The whole ride to the hotel, Naja talked his ear off and was asking question after question. The conversation had no depth to it and for the first time, Qyree noticed that. He had never been the one to care if a conversation was deep or not between him and a woman. It simply didn’t matter. All he needed was to get to that heavenly place and chuck up the deuces once he was done. Since the first day he had ran back into Chey on the campus all the way up until that very moment, she had been on his mind like no other woman had. Because of that, when he pulled up to the hotel and checked in, he gave Naja the key, told her to go on up and he would meet her, and he got in his car and left. She blew his phone up with text after text and voicemail after voicemail, until he finally got tired of it and blocked her number as he headed home.
“You’re back early. How did everything go?” his mother said coming around the corner. There was something different about her than before he left. Her eyes were clear and twinkling, but there was something else in them that he couldn’t figure out what it was. She had obviously pulled herself together but it was out of her character. Instead of touching on that right then, he filled her in.
“Yea, I wasn’t trying to stay down there until tomorrow. But the show went better than I expected. I signed this male and female R&B duo and another rapper who I know will put me in line to be Senior A&R of the company,” he said but his voice lacked excitement. This had been one of his lifelong dreams as far as he could remember, so to see him not the least bit amped was out of character.
“Aren’t you happy? This is what you have been wanting for the longest,” she said walking over to him and ushering him into the living room for them to sit.
“Yes and no. I mean, yes, because it’s my dream but no, because even if I get it, who besides you will share in this moment with me?” he told her and she immediately knew what he was thinking.
For so many years she had heard her husband teach their son that he didn’t need one woman in his life, he needed many. Although it hurt her, she had no one to blame but herself because she stayed and allowed it. All Zaria wanted was for her son to grow up with both of his parents when she found out she was pregnant with him. It was before Jaxon had started being flat out disrespectful with his indiscretions, and once it hit the fan that she felt like it was too late for her. But at that moment, she felt like God was answering her prayers by speaking to her son’s heart.
“So what else happened at the show?” Zaria asked and his face began to light up. There had to be a woman involved but right now wasn’t the time for her to ask him. She would just wait until he was ready to spill the beans.
“Awww man, Ma, let me tell you who I ran into,” he said, getting hyped. “Remember that time you and Dad came out to Cali to visit me at school and I introduced you to my tutor named—”
“Cheynese,” his mother finished for him, throwing him for a loop. How in the world did she know he was talking about her and better yet, how could she remember her off the top of her head like that? He knew that he had asked if she remembered, but he had planned on her telling him no and he would have to jog her memory.
“I remember her like I met her thirty seconds ago,” she smiled.
Looking at his mother he was at a loss for words until she spoke again.
“What about her?”
“I saw her before the show when I was finalizing everything at the school. We chopped it up for a few and then she left. Well, when I got there and got a list of who the performers were that had entered the contest, her name was on there. Ma, when I tell you that she has the voice of an angel…” he trailed off. Zaria watched him as he sat back in a daze, with a look of admiration on his face as he thought of Chey.
Zaria could never forget the girl as long as she lived. The moment she met her all of those years ago, she knew the girl was something special. Everything about her was pure and she had hoped that one day her son would call to tell her that they were a couple, but that day never came. He was too much like his father to settle down and that saddened her. As bad as she wanted Qyree to settle down with the girl that she had only met for a few minutes, she was glad that he didn’t pursue her. The last thing Zaria wanted was for Chey was to have her heart snatched from her chest the same way Jaxon continued to do hers.
“I didn’t know she was a singer. I thought she said she was in school for Criminal Justice,” Zaria remembered. Qyree looked over at his mother as she had a questioning look on her face.
“Ma, how you remembering all of this stuff about her and you only talked to her for a few minutes?” he asked.
Smiling, she said, “Baby, you never forget a person who is after God’s own heart. It’s just something in them that makes it hard to forget. I could tell in just that small amount of time that she was special.”
He couldn’t argue with her on that one. He, too, had felt it the first time he laid eyes on her when he walked into the student library.
Qyree couldn’t believe that he was on the verge of failing a subject his first semester. He couldn’t blame anyone but himself though, because he partied more than he studied and the d
ifferent girls in and out of his dorm room didn’t help either. Qyree knew that he could pass on his own had he just applied himself and been in class like he was supposed to be, but he was about to enjoy the college life and all it had to offer. The only reason he allowed his professor to set his up a tutor was because he didn’t want to hear his parents’ mouth when they came to visit in a few months. He knew as soon as they touched down they were going to be snooping around. Because he was well known just by who his father was, there was no way that he could embarrass them by flunking out of school.
Walking into the library, Qyree looked for a girl fitting the description he was given. Scanning the room, his eyes finally fell on the back of her head. From the angle he was looking from, he could see she was wearing a fitted jean shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, a pair of dark jean capris, and some low top Converse. Her long hair was almost down her back and it was pulled behind her ear. She wore a pair of thin framed eye glasses on her face. He couldn’t see her full face, but from the little he saw, he knew she was beautiful.
Walking over to the table she was sitting at with a pen to her lips, with her right hand and her left hand massaging her scalp, she looked like she was deep in thought and couldn’t find whatever she was looking for in the textbook in front of her.
“Excuse me, are you Chey? I hope I’m pronouncing it right,” he said.
“Hi,” she smiled up at him and at that moment, he thought he was going to pass out. It wasn’t because she looked like all of the girls he chased after, but because she didn’t look like them. She held such an innocence about her and seeing her face completely let him know the side view didn’t do her justice. The girl was gorgeous.
“It’s actually pronounced like Chi not Shay,” she said. He was glad that she wasn’t offended that he called her the wrong name.
Sitting across from her as he put his backpack on the table, he began to take out the thing he needed for the study session.
“My fault. So Chey, is that a nickname or your full name?” he asked her.
“It’s short for Cheynese,” she said and waited. She knew the response that she was about to get and she laughed on the inside. It was always the same whenever she told anyone her real name.
“You mean like the food and the country?” he said causing her to double over in laughter. Even the sound of her voice and the laughter she let out was beautiful.
“I see now why you need a tutor. Yes, like the food, but Chinese is not a country,” she smiled, making him embarrassed. He had never been around a woman that made him act the way that he had in that moment, and he was thrown off. Qyree couldn’t believe that he had just said something so stupid in front of her.
“You got jokes, huh?” he said trying to redeem himself. He couldn’t stop looking at her and after a few moments of an intense stare down, they got going on the material they needed to go over.
Almost an hour into their session, they had hit it off. Not only was she helping him catch up on his work, but he was enjoying her company. He had yet to tell her who his father was and she didn’t seem to know right away like the other females on campus. The more he talked to her, the more he liked being around her. That was until she brought up a topic of discussion that made him uncomfortable. God.
All he could think about as she sat there talking about her life as a preacher’s kid and doing ministry, was hoping his session would be over. He didn’t want to be rude and cut her off, so he made like he was paying attention. He may not have listened to the words she was saying, but he saw the joy that she had plastered on her face. Whatever she was saying, he could tell made her happier than anything.
“So this what you do? Can’t answer my call but you in here with the next chick,” the girl that came out of thin air said. Neither Chey nor Qyree saw her coming in since they were both in their own thoughts. Had he seen her, he would have made sure to turn in the other direction. Tameika was a stalker to him and he didn’t know how to get rid of her. She was the type that once she got out of your bed, she thought she was in a relationship. No matter how good her body felt to him, she just couldn’t offer him anything else. In all honesty, no woman could. All he needed was her body.
“Well, I guess our session is over. I’ll see you tomorrow at the same time,” Chey said gathering her things and walking off, not waiting on him to confirm. What impressed him the most though was how she totally ignored Tameika. Every time he was with someone new and would see one of the other women he was messing with, they always ended up in a yelling match or actually fighting, while he stood back and laughed. To see grown women fighting over him did nothing but feed his ego and he couldn’t wait to tell his father all about it.
“You wild, yo,” he said getting his stuff up and looked at her. Tameika had a nice body but her face and attitude were as ugly as they came. He didn’t know why she thought he would have her on his arm on the regular ‘cause she was only good behind closed doors and with the lights off. Ignoring the words that were coming out of her mouth, just like he had done Chey when she got on her “God wagon”, he headed out the door.
The more time he spent with Chey while she helped him with his class, the closer he felt to her, but she was pulling away. She was strictly on the friend tip and after a while, he wasn’t pressed for her. There was a campus full of ready and willing women to assist him with what he wanted. He was completely over trying to get with Chey.
-14-
After going back down memory lane, Qyree filled his mother in on everything with the show. He could tell by the way she was looking at him that she was proud of the decision he had made concerning the direction of the company, but she was also worried that Jaxon wouldn’t go along with it. It was a step in a direction that she knew he wouldn’t want to go in. She was definitely going to need her prayer warriors to intercede for her child. He was going to need it.
“Zaria!” Jaxon yelled out coming through the front door.
“In here,” she said sitting back on the couch, waiting for him to enter.
“What’s good son? How did everything go? You got something for me?” Jaxon rattled off. Qyree knew that he was referring to signing someone and by the big smile that slid across his face, Jaxon already knew what was up.
“You already know how I do,” Qyree said feeling himself. He knew that after all of the hard work he was putting in, there would be no doubt in his mind who would land in that top spot.
“Absolutely. With the talent you just found I know my new partner is going to be able to bring in more artists being our head A&R,” he said knocking the wind out of both Qyree and his mother.
“What!” they yelled at the same time while Jaxon stood there looking confused.
“What’s wrong with the two of you?” he asked.
“How you going to give the position that I been busting my behind for since I can remember, to someone else? Who else can or had been bringing it like I have for this company?” Qyree was furious. All of the years and the hard work that he had put in to secure his spot, and here his father was trying to give it away.
His father may not have said who he was putting in that spot, but he already had an idea that it was his right hand man, Reginald. He understood that his father and Reginald were best friends since the sandbox, but he was his heir, his first born, his only son. If it wasn’t for Qyree, they wouldn’t have the new artists that he had signed who were bringing in the majority of the money. All of the people that Reginald had signed flopped, so how his father wanted him to represent them was beyond him.
“First of all, you are going to respect me in my house and lower your voice. I’m not one of these jump-offs that you can talk to. You better check yourself,” Jaxon said walking over to him.
Qyree had never disrespected his father in all of the years he had been on the face of this earth, but today was a new day. He wasn’t about to let someone take something he worked for right from under him.
“Yo Dad, on the real, fall back. I�
��ve never disrespected you but I’m a grown man and you standing in my personal space,” Qyree said holding his own as Zaria was holding her breath. She didn’t know what was about to go on and there was no way that she was about to answer the door to whoever it was that was on the other side, ringing it like they were crazy. She didn’t know what would happen if she left the two of them alone.
“Second,” Jaxon began like Qyree didn’t just open his mouth and moved closer to his face. “What I do with my company is my business. I started this from the ground up and just because you think you poppin’ for signing a few acts, don’t forget who brought you in. If it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t be where you are today,” Jaxon said grilling his son. He knew that Qyree had been waiting and working for that top spot, but he wasn’t about to let him get that high up in rank. Of course he loved his son, but he loved his money and lifestyle more. As good as Qyree was, there was no doubt in his mind that his son would supersede him and pass him by. That wasn’t something that he was willing to let happen. Jaxon wasn’t about to let someone else take the shine off of him, even if it was his own son.
Looking his father up and down one last time, Qyree walked over to the door because the ringing of the bell was annoying him about just as much as his father’s revelation. Whoever it was needed to come back later. Now was not the time. He wasn’t sure who it was but he knew they were mad. Between the ringing of the bell, the pounding on the door, he knew they were adamant about getting in. It didn’t dawn on him right then that the security gate didn’t call to the house to inform them of a guest. So that meant whoever it was, was already on their property.