Turned Out by His Hood Mentality 3

by Diamond D Johnson

  Although that was the most fucked up news I could have ever received, it did make me happy when I learned that the two of them had snuck their asses off and got married. Was I shocked? Yes, but I expected nothing less from Billion because he loved the fuck out of that woman. I called Normani twice, and she didn’t pick up the phone. It was Friday evening in Miami, and a little bit after six, so I knew she should be home from work by now. I decided to Facetime Billion, and he answered on the third ring. When he picked up, I could see that he was in his home office.

  “What’s good?” he answered, his gold teeth flashing on the screen.

  “Where my girl at? I called her twice,” I said.

  He sucked his teeth when I asked that, and I groaned, thinking that the two of them were more than likely having trouble in paradise.

  “I think she’s in the room. You need to talk to your girl. She around here with a fucked-up attitude. It’s Friday, and she ain’t been fuckin’ with me since Wednesday,” he said, not even looking into the screen. His eyes were too busy focused on whatever was taking place on his computer screen.

  “Well, nigga, what did you do? A woman ain’t going to just stop fuckin’ with her man just because,” I said.

  “A crazy one will. I can take a woman PMS’ing, but this shit right here, Twink… man, Normani got me losing my motha fuckin’ mind, yo. She got a nigga standing on the porch, smoking mo’ weed than I ever smoked in my life. I’m spending mo’ money on Kush than I do on groceries, and I’m only smoking so much, so a nigga can stay sane and not spaz the fuck out.

  “Normani got this special place in my heart, so I can’t handle her the way that I would handle anybody else, but at the same time, she’s pushing a nigga. Call her back and talk some sense into her because she ain’t trying to hear shit I’m saying. I’m putting her house on the market tomorrow because she thinks she’s supposed to have a little something on the side to run to when shit don’t go her way. Fuckin’ around with me, you better go run and sit yo’ ass on the porch if you need some space,” he said.

  I laughed because this nigga was fuckin’ crazy.

  “You still not telling me what happened. Why are the two of y’all beefing with each other? Y’all just got fuckin’ married. This is still supposed to be the honeymoon stage,” I said to him.

  “I don’t be telling Normani certain shit that I be doing, and she gets mad when I do that. I don’t even be doing that shit on some sneaky shit, but my wife has not been emotionally okay ever since we got back from Mexico. Twink, if I even say something about Mexico, she starts crying because all things tie right back to her getting thrown into the back of that van. Sometimes, I regret that I rushed us to get married in Mexico. Whenever I bring up our wedding day, she ain’t going to have no choice but to think about the fucked up shit that happened.

  “I should have just waited and did it once we made it back home, but I was trying to be on some romantic shit that day, and I wanted her to be my wife right then and there. I ain’t want to ride out that fiancée shit much longer. Anyway, to make a long story short, her pops paid somebody from the church to take me out. I didn’t tell Normani about it when I got home. She saw blood on my shoes and started jumping down my throat. Fast forward to the next day, I go and pay her pops a visit, and I didn’t tell her in the time frame that she wanted me to tell her, so she’s just beefing with me over that. If doing that is wrong, then I apologize for that, but I ain’t trying to be causing her pain all the fuckin’ time,” Billion said.

  My mouth was damn near hitting the floor, and this was solely because he told me that Normani’s dad had paid someone to try and kill him. That shit was very disturbing, yet Billion was telling it like it was no big deal.

  “The same way you just apologized right here, have you said it to her?” I asked.

  “Nah,” he spat. I heard it all in his voice that he was mad.

  “Well, you should start off by apologizing. Her birthday is tomorrow. I hope you have something planned, or else, your ass is going to be a dead man. I’m not trying to fly out to Miami for a funeral. I’m having way too much fun in Cali,” I told him.

  “Yeah, you having too much fuckin’ fun if you ask me. I got a little something planned for her tomorrow. Shouldn’t do shit for her mean ass. I swear Ima wake up in the morning and act like I forgot,” he said, and I laughed as I shook my head at him.

  “And you niggas have the nerve to wonder why us women are crazy. Look how y’all provoke us. What you got planned for her? You know I want to be nosey,” I said, smiling from ear to ear like tomorrow was my birthday.

  “I ain’t telling you. Why? So, you can run back and tell her? Who all you be hanging out with in Cali? They treating you right there? One weekend, me, Normani, and the kids are going to just pop up on yo’ ass. I want to see who you running with,” he said.

  “Come. I would love to show y’all my new stomping grounds. I just be with Truth. You remember my best friend, Mia, right?” I asked him, and he paused.

  Billion made a face. A face that every woman could easily read and tell what that face meant. I dealt with one of the biggest dogs in the world, so I knew that if a nigga made a face like that, when you asked them if they knew a bitch, then ten times out of ten, it meant that they fucked them.

  “Billion, no! You put me in the fuckin’ middle now! Conflict of interest!” I said.

  “Yo, that shit is old. We fucked about a year before I went to prison. She came down to Miami to visit. Twink, I don’t know what you be doing in your personal life, so how was I supposed to have known that you be running with her? Just don’t be bringing my wife around shorty. It’s no hard feelings between Mia and me. We did our thing, and that was that. At the same time, my wife ain’t about to be around no bitch, and they sit around sharing sex stories about me with each other,” he said.

  “I’ve been around her for a couple of months now. She never even brought it up,” I whispered. I was more so talking to myself than I was talking to him.

  “It ain’t shit to tell. The only reason I told you is so you’ll know not to have her around my wife. It’s cool, Twink. Do yo’ thing. I’ll make sure I tell Normani before she jumps down my fuckin’ throat about this shit too,” he let me know.

  I stayed on the phone with my cousin for another five minutes or so, and then we finally hung up. I tried calling Normani back, and that’s when a text message came through from Billion that she was in the room, taking a nap. I couldn’t wait to get in the car tonight with Mia and find out why she never told me that she messed around with my cousin in the past, especially since I had brought him and Normani up to her a couple of times, and she’d never even batted a damn eye.

  On the way to the game

  “Bitch, I got a bone to pick with you,” I said to Mia as she and I sat in the backseat of the Escalade as we were chauffeured to my baby’s game.

  We barely had our asses touching the seats before I jumped down her throat. I was hoping Mia would tell me that Billion was lying, but I knew the type of nigga my cousin was, and it had never been a problem for him to bag a bitch, so I knew the nigga didn’t have to lie on his dick, but damn, at the same time, I hoped that this time, he was lying. What’s so crazy is that ever since Mia and I came back into each other’s lives, we had pretty much picked up our friendship where it had left off years ago, so she was back to telling me her personal stories, and I was back to telling her mine. She never even hinted at her and my cousin's messing around back in the day.

  My legs were crossed in the studded Christian Louboutin thigh-high boots, and I was definitely feeling myself. What I liked about Cali was that they had a lot of cool weather, so I was able to throw on different fashion pieces that I couldn’t wear in Miami because my ass would burn up. My man told me he loved it when I came to the games dressed in a sexy way, but still keeping it classy for him. That way, I wasn’t showing the whole world everything on my body.

  Tonight, I was in a see-through bodysuit with sta
r patches on my nipples, so I wasn’t exposing anything. I wore a pair of skintight, black, skinny jeans that took me a few minutes to jump my ass into because being out here in Cali with Truth, this nigga had me eating out just about every day. I was picking up weight, but in all the right places, of course. Like I said, I wore thigh-high boots, and because I knew how to do my own hair, my hair was styled in a long Kim K ponytail that went down to my ass, swinging with every step I took.

  Truth was into diamonds. Ever since he and I were in high school, this man has had a mean obsession with jewelry, so it was only right that he kept me laced up as well. A fat, custom Cuban chain lay around my neck. It was dripping in diamonds with the words, Truth’s Girl on it. I wore the gold AP watch that he had gotten me on my wrist, with the Cuban bracelet to give off a flashier look. The engagement ring that sat on my finger, which had to cost the price of a few exotic cars put together, glowed in the back of the dark car.

  “What’s up?” Mia asked as she dumped the contents of the weed into her lap, getting ready to roll up.

  Mia was one of the prettiest bitches I knew, but she would sit up and roll a blunt like a nigga, and I would be right there to help her smoke it too.

  “Why you never told me that you and Billion messed around?” I asked, and she let out an annoyed groan.

  Mia looked up at me with those beautiful, hazel colored eyes, and she rolled them. Just like me, Mia was dressed up tonight. She was in a tan colored Gucci shirt with the word Gucci spread across the front in different colors. She also wore a pair of light blue, high waisted denim jeans with her shirt tucked inside. A pair of red heels were on her feet, and her long hair was flat ironed bone straight with a part down the middle. Mia could do make-up like a real professional, so her make-up tonight was sick. As pretty as she looked, I saw it all in her face that she didn’t care to explain the past she shared with my cousin.

  “He told you that? Because there are only two people who know about that, and that’s him and me. We vowed to never even speak on that shit,” she said, confirming that it was true.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because when you started telling me about him, you told me about his girl too. That’s disrespectful for me to be like, ‘oh yeah, by the way, I fucked him’ Plus, it wasn’t even that serious. This was before me and Beatz even got together. I came down for a funeral, and I ended up running into him that night at a club. We chilled, we smoked, we fucked, and that was it. It was never supposed to be anything between Billion and me, and it never was. He’s fine! Too fuckin’ fine, but I have my own nigga, and he has his own girl. That’s why every time you brought up Normani, I’d just shrug it off because I knew I wasn’t about to be around no woman whose nigga I had fucked.

  “Even though that shit happened in the past, and it didn’t mean anything to either of us, I feel like I still shouldn’t be around her. That’s just how my respect is set up. If she’s secure in her relationship with him, and she doesn’t mind being around me, I don’t mind the three of us kicking it. I just know the type of bitch I am. I ain’t chopping it up with no bitch that my husband fucked before. I don’t care if the shit happened when he was in middle school; it just ain’t happening,” she said to me.

  “Damn, Mia! I would have never even thought that,” I said before slouching down in my seat and taking the blunt from her, so I could take a pull for myself.

  “From the pictures that you showed me of his wife, she’s fuckin’ beautiful. That man got him a whole fuckin’ black barbie doll over there, with some pretty ass eyes. On top of that, she got her shit together because you did tell me that she’s a doctor. She’s carrying a baby for that nigga too. Billion ain’t thinking about my ass, and I ain’t thinking about him either. Girl, the way my husband’s dick be knocking in the back of my tonsils, I wish the fuck I would sit back and worry about another nigga,” she said, making me laugh.

  We must have spoken Normani up because her ass was just now calling me back after I called her hours ago. She was calling me through Facetime, and while I answered the phone for her, Mia pulled out her phone and entertained herself.

  Normani popped up on the screen, and I could see it in her eyes that she had just woken up. Her facial expression alone screamed that she wasn’t in the best of moods.

  “What’s wrong with you? Billion said you over there driving him crazy,” I joked, as I watched Normani through the screen. From her background, I could tell she was in the bathroom. She had to have the phone propped up on something because I could see the entire upper part of her body. As she fixed the bun in her hair, Hennessy sucked her teeth at what I had just said to her.

  “More like he’s driving me crazy. I wasn’t ignoring your calls. I was sleeping when you called me. Now, watch, I’m going to be up all night. What’s up? Where are you on your way to? You look cute,” she said, which made me smile.

  “I’m going to Truth’s game tonight. Make sure you watch, so you can see me sitting courtside,” I told her, and she laughed.

  “I’m going to put it on. I caught it the other night, and you were looking bomb then as well. I’m so happy for you, Twinkle. You have this glow in your eyes, and it just shows how happy you are. I remember when me and you were coming from having brunch, and we ran into Truth. It was something about the way the two of you were looking at each other, and I just knew y’all had some unfinished business. The only thing I hate is that you’re not here in Miami with me. I’m going to have to start dragging your annoying cousin with me to our ritual Saturday brunches,” she said, followed by a groan.

  I laughed and then rolled my eyes at her because I knew they would kiss and make up by tomorrow. Shit, if anything, by tonight, since her birthday was coming up in just a few hours.

  “Normani, please! You’ll be fuckin’ him by tonight. It can’t be all that bad in paradise,” I told her.

  I looked out of the window because we were about to pull up to the arena in a few.

  “Girl, I highly doubt it. Who are you with? Are you by yourself?” she asked.

  I thought about if I should tell her who I was with. Damn, this shit just made me feel like I was doing something wrong. Normani and I were best friends, and now that she and Billion were married, I considered her my family, although I’ve always looked at her like a big sister. Just so I wouldn’t feel like I was keeping shit from her, I would tell her who Mia was, but it wouldn’t be tonight. Then again, I would let my cousin handle it because I knew the type of nigga he was, and he would get mad that I told his wife something about him before he had a chance to say something.

  “I’m with Mia. I told you about her,” I said to Normani.

  Just as she was getting ready to respond, I heard the bathroom door open. She took her eyes off the screen and focused them on whoever was standing by the door.

  “I thought you was about to get in the shower,” I heard Billion’s deep voice boom from Normani’s side of the phone.

  “I am, but I needed to call Twinkle back. You need me?” she asked Billion.

  “Normani, I’ll just call you back in the morning,” I said.

  “Girl, no. This is just your cousin’s way of trying to bully me into getting off the phone,” she said, and I laughed. I was about to hang up on her ass because when they started going at it, I wanted no parts of their shit.

  “Shorty, I’ll take that fuckin’ phone from you and make you hang that bitch up. Show out in front of Twinkle all you want to, ma, and I’ll give her a fuckin’ show. I got you them nasty ass strawberries and syrup and shit that you like to eat on the dresser. I was just coming in here to let you know that. I should take all that shit and throw it in the fuckin’ trash since you want to act crazy,” he said.

  I was dying on the other end of the phone. Although I was trying so hard not to laugh, I was laughing so damn hard that I couldn’t even make out what Normani was saying back to him. Suddenly, the phone just hung up. I wouldn’t even bother calling back. I would just let the two
of them handle their issues.

  “From the sound of things, it looks like the nigga has finally met his match,” Mia told me, and I nodded, knowing he did.

  “Girl, yes! Normani ain’t but so big, but I swear she knows how to keep up with his ass,” I told her.

  There was a long line for us to get dropped off in front of the arena, so while we waited, I went to my social media app. One thing that I liked to do when I got on Instagram is to look through the pictures that were trending at the time. There was one specific picture that stood out to me. Shit, the picture had me actually freezing in place with my hands over my mouth as I stared down at it.

  Although I no longer followed Monterius on any social media networks, a picture he had just posted a couple of hours ago had been trending, so it popped up. It was Trinity and their daughter. Trinity was lying on the couch while holding one of the most beautiful babies that I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The baby was sleeping too, and I used my fingers to zoom into the picture. All I could see was how that baby was the exact replica of Monterius. I mean, she literally had his entire face. She was sleeping on her mother, and she was dressed in a little onesie. I was just in awe at the amount of hair on her head, although she was so small.

  The pictures had over twenty thousand likes. Everyone, I mean everyone, was commenting on how beautiful the picture was. The caption on the pictures was my sleeping beauties. I knew I shouldn’t have even given a fuck when I saw the picture, but I did. This was a nigga who swore up and down that there was absolutely no chance this little girl could have been his. This was the same man who would always say that Trinity was just a fuck. I’ve known about Trinity for a couple of years. He always made it seem like she was just a piece of pussy that he went chasing after whenever he and I weren’t on the best of terms. I know I had moved on, but I had every right because of what this nigga had done to pretty much end of our relationship, but for him to just jump headfirst into a relationship with a bitch who he talked down on to me on plenty of occasions was fuckin’ wild.