Niya

  “Well, I have a friend who just self-published a book and sent it out to a few publishers. I want to know if you can call someone to help get her a deal.”

  Carmello smiled as I waited to hear what he was thinking.

  “I don’t specialize in books, but I’m sure that if I make a few calls, I can deliver that deal for her. I know that the owner of Cash Flow Records just launched a publishing company, so that will be an easy deal. Anything else?”

  Damn. Carmello made all of this seem so easy.

  “So can we add that as a clause to the contract? If Jamilla doesn’t have a book deal within, let’s say, a month—”

  “She’ll get an e-mail from them as soon as I make that call, trust me. Just leave her contact info, and they will get at her.”

  I breathed easy as I ran through a few other things that I wanted. As my pocket vibrated with more of Jamilla’s texts, I was signing my first big contract.

  Jamilla

  As I wrote Niya another text, Rodney’s incoming calls just pissed me off. He wasn’t who I wanted to speak to. I needed to hear from Niya. I needed her to know that I loved her. I needed her to know that my anger about Brazil was jealousy, but she wouldn’t pick up.

  What the fuck is wrong with you? What? Should I kiss your ass for you to text me back? I am trying to tell you that I do love you. Text me back.

  I pressed SEND and waited. Still nothing. “Fuck her,” I yelled as I mashed the blunt into the ashtray. Why was she doing this to me? Didn’t she know that I loved her? Didn’t I prove that already? As I continued to talk to myself, I heard a knock on the door. I ignored it until the person started to knock even louder.

  “Who the fuck is—” I couldn’t continue to speak when I opened the door. At first, I thought that I was too damn drunk or high, because my mind had to be playing tricks on me.

  “Hey, baby. Surprise.”

  I was not too sure of the look that sat on my face, but I was sure shock was mixed in there somewhere.

  “Rodney, what are you doing here?”

  Niya

  The house was dim, and the darkness was created by something far deeper than the lack of lighting. I got chills as I headed for the front door. There was a sadness, an evil, a gloom that radiated through the house, and I couldn’t help but wonder about Brazil. It killed me that I was about to leave the house without even getting an update on how she was doing.

  “Niya?”

  I looked around and tried to find the voice. Like one might with a cat, all I saw were her eyes before she appeared.

  “Hey, Mrs. Green.”

  She had on a long, black, sheer robe, with just her bra and panties underneath. Even amid all that darkness, I could still see her fit body. Again, she got real close to me as she spoke, a little too close for comfort.

  “You remind me of someone from my past,” she said as ice clanged in the glass she held.

  I could smell the liquor on her breath, and it made me want some. I reached for the heavy crystal that was in her hand, took it from her, took a big swig, and asked her who.

  “No need to name drop. It’s just . . . every time I look at you, I see her. From your hair to your skin to your eyes, you make me miss her even more.”

  I stood there as her hand swept over my hair. Her fingers slid down a handful of strands until she reached the tips.

  “Why don’t you call her or go see her? I can tell by the look in your eyes that you really do miss her,” I replied.

  She didn’t answer right away. I stared at her to see if the tears that were forming in her eyes would eventually drop. They didn’t.

  “It’s too late for that.... I chose all of this,” she said as she waved her hands in the air, pointing out the house, before she continued. “I wanted all of this instead of her. Biggest mistake of my life.”

  “It’s never too late to change your mind,” I answered before finishing off the strong liquor that was in her glass.

  “For me, for us, it is.”

  Her voice was so filled with agony that her anguish seemed to leave her body, float to me, and cause me pain somewhere deep down within me. I put the glass down on the piano that stood beside us, making sure to put it on the cloth, and moved closer to her. I was not sure why, but I put my hands around her waist and pulled her to me. I hugged her long and hard, and she let me. We stood there, with her seemingly mourning the loss of a beautiful friendship, and with me in fear that I would end up right where she was.

  “I knew the minute I saw you that you were special, just as special as her,” she murmured.

  “Yeah, well, I’m sure you were very special to her too.”

  When I said that, she melted in my arms, and I . . . did the same. We hugged as if that was all either of us had ever needed. It wasn’t sexual; it was just one person being there for the other. When she let me go, she picked up the glass and took my hand.

  “Come with me. My daughter wants to see you.”

  Jamilla

  Rodney and I were sitting on the couch, and I just could not believe that he was sitting right next to me.

  “So, wait, you’re here to stay?” I asked.

  Why in the hell did he think that he could just show up and move in?

  “Yeah. My mom bitched a little bit, but I told her that I would enroll in college out here. June will be coming next week. Didn’t Niya tell you?”

  My anger rose through the roof. “You mean she knew?”

  Rodney started to laugh, as if all this was funny. “Yeah she knew. I just didn’t give her a date, ’cause I didn’t want her to tell you. I just told her that I would be here this month. You’re not mad that I’m here, are you?”

  I tried to fix my face and smile. “No. I mean, I’m surprised, but no.”

  Rodney leaned into me and hugged me, but I felt nothing. After a few seconds, I pulled away from him and reached for my phone. I texted Niya.

  Call me ASAP.

  And then I waited.

  Niya

  I followed Mrs. Green up the stairs and couldn’t wait to get to Brazil. The house seemed even bigger than I had initially thought, and it seemed to take forever to get to Brazil’s room.

  “Hey, Mom? Delilah is coming over. Is that cool?”

  I turned and saw who I had learned was Brazil’s brother during my research. He was a star basketball player in his high school and seemed to have a lot of buzz around him.

  “Yeah, that’s cool. Niya, this is Rio. Rio, Niya.”

  I shook his hand before he turned and went back to his bedroom. Finally, we made it to Brazil’s bedroom, but before I went in, her mother had a few last words for me.

  “You know, you are the only person she wants to see. If you can, try to act like you don’t notice the damage done to her face. I keep trying to tell her that the swelling will go down and the scars can be fixed, but . . . Anyway, I just want you to know that you must have had an impact on her in the short time that you have known her, ’cause she just kept asking for you.”

  She knocked on the door, and when we heard Brazil say, “Come in,” she walked away. I entered the room and found Brazil staring out her bedroom window. Her back was to me, and I was almost scared for her to turn around.

  “Hey, Brazil. It’s me, Niya.”

  She didn’t turn to face me but answered, “How are you?”

  Was she crazy? Fuck how I was doing. I was here for her.

  “Honestly, I have been worried about you. I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

  “Yeah, you and the whole world. I can’t even leave this fucking house, because everyone is worried about me.”

  “Well, I thought about you for more reasons than one. I may be out of line, but ever since I met you, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”

  She was silent for a while, still not facing me.

  Finally, she spoke. “Why is that? Have you been thinking about my beauty? Have you been thinking of the girl you saw before yesterday? Because if that’s who y
ou are thinking about, she may be gone for good.”

  When she turned and faced me, I took in a deep breath. Her face was so swollen and bruised. Her lower lip was split, and it looked as if it must be painful for her even to speak. I moved toward her and pushed her hair out of her face.

  “Nah, she’s still here. All this shit will go away, and because of it, you will be even more beautiful, because you will be stronger.”

  “But, Niya, I am in the business of beauty. Yes, people like our music, but my looks are what get me the endorsements. They are why I am Brazil Noelle.”

  It was so fucked up how this industry shit could really mess up people’s outlook on themselves. I wanted to ask her where her self-confidence was, without the business bullshit, but I didn’t. I just gave her the love that she needed.

  “You are Brazil Noelle because of who you are. You are beautiful because of who you are, and that outer shit. . . it will heal. As I stand here looking at you, I don’t see the swelling and all that other shit. I mean, I see it, but I still see the bad bitch who was shaking her ass in the restaurant to my shit. You’re still that bad bitch, and from the looks of it, you will be bad no matter what. You could still kill most of the bitches in the game right now, looking like Martin did on that one episode when he went up against the boxer Tommy Hearns.”

  That made her laugh, so I smiled.

  “Shut up. I don’t look that bad,” she said as she hit me on the shoulder.

  “Nah. I’m just fuckin’ with you. But what are you going to do about the press? You can’t just stay locked up in your room until you heal.”

  She thought about it for a second and asked me something that I was not expecting. “What if I wanted to get away? Would you come with me? Maybe we can work on the remix to ‘Team Take Yo’ Bitch.’”

  I was stunned. Go away with the Brazil Noelle? “Really? I mean, yeah, I would come. Where are you trying to go?”

  She didn’t answer me. She opened her bedroom door and yelled for her mom and waited for her to come in.

  Her mom walked in with a fresh drink and a long white cigarette in her hand. “What do you need, Brazil?”

  “I was just talking to Niya about getting away for a little bit. I feel trapped here. I just want to leave the country.”

  Leave the country? Damn. I was really happy that Santino had insisted that I get a passport.

  “Where do you want to go?” her mother asked.

  I guessed that was how the rich did it. They just got up and went, and that was including their kids.

  “Didn’t you and Dad renovate that house in Brazil? Are they done working on it, and did they finish the studio?”

  “Yeah, it’s all done. When do you want to leave?”

  “If we leave tonight, do you think that Dad will get things together so we can record the remix to Niya’s song and work on my solo stuff? Hell, we can even shoot the video out there once my face gets better.”

  “Wow, Niya. Looks like you did what we couldn’t do. She’s smiling. Let me call a few people to make sure the staff is there when you two get there. Don’t worry about Daddy. I know how to work him,” her mother said as she dialed a number on her cell phone.

  She spoke to a few people, and within ten minutes, she told us to pack our bags, because the plane would be ready in two hours.

  Jamilla

  Rodney was so hyped about being in Atlanta, but my mind wasn’t on him. I had yet to receive a text from Niya, although I had sent her one after the other.

  “Yo, let’s go out. Let’s celebrate. When is Niya coming home? I want to surprise her too.”

  “I’m not sure when she’s coming back. She went to go meet with Carmello from Green Note Records.”

  His eyes got big as I ran down the story of everything that had gone down, but I left out the part about me and Niya’s fight.

  “So you mean to tell me that I will have a chance to make beats for her while she’s under his label?”

  For the first time that night, I really smiled. Rodney was so excited and looked like a big kid.

  “If she signs with him, you will.”

  “Oh my God. Look how great things are unfolding. You got your book thing. How is that going, by the way?”

  “So good I even sent it out to some publishers.”

  Rodney jumped to his feet and pulled me up with him. He picked me up and hugged me as my feet left the floor.

  “Damn, baby, we are going to be the motherfucking dream team. You will blow up as a writer, and I will be killin’ these niggas with my beats. We can’t lose. Fuck that. We going out. I saw Niya’s car outside. Where are the keys?”

  I really didn’t want to go out with him without speaking to Niya first, but what more could I do? Maybe this was all meant to happen this way. Maybe Rodney and I were meant to be. I didn’t know, and some parts of me didn’t want to know. Hell, what I did know seemed to be getting away from me; what I really wanted alluded me.

  “Just let me get dressed,” I said as I headed to my bedroom.

  Once there, I told myself that while I was out, I would text Niya a few more times. I wouldn’t tell her that Rodney was here in a text, but I really hoped she called me. Damn. Life was a funny motherfucker. Leave it to the gods to have Rodney show up on the night Niya and I seemed to be falling apart. I shook my head at that funny little thing called fate and hoped that it knew what it was doing. I loved Niya with all of me and prayed that one day soon she would believe that.

  Once dressed, I looked for Niya’s extra set of car keys, found them, and handed them to Rodney. I wrote a note telling Niya that I had gone out in her car and that I would be back. I also wrote that she should call me, because I had something to tell her.

  “Yo, where should I leave my bag?” Rodney asked as he pointed to his duffel bag, which sat by the front door.

  “Just leave it there. You can put it away when we get back.”

  As we headed out to the car, I texted Niya again and wondered where Rodney would be sleeping until he got his own place.

  Niya

  Brazil had four trunks full of clothes and everything else she thought she would need for our trip to Brazil. They were all put into the truck that would follow us to my house, then to the airport. The only people who would join us there were her assistant and her hair and makeup people, being that the house in Brazil was fully staffed. That was shocking because she was the same age as me, only seventeen. I had always heard about the freedom these child stars had, but I was now experiencing it firsthand.

  When we got to my apartment, I dreaded going in and facing Jamilla, but at least I wouldn’t be staying long. I went in and headed straight for my bedroom closet. On my way there, I read the note Jamilla had left behind but didn’t give it a second thought. I pulled out two suitcases, then packed one with shoes and the other with clothes. I packed all my toiletries in a carry-on and made sure that I had plenty of cash, my bank card, my passport, and a blunt and weed to smoke on the way to the airport.

  After I made sure that I had everything that I needed for the trip, I picked up the notepad that I always left beside my bed. On it I wrote, Going to Brazil with Brazil. Not sure when I’ll be back. You know where some money is if you need anything. I dragged my bags to the kitchen and was about to tape my note to the fridge, but something stopped me. I looked at the duffel bag by the front door and wondered how I had missed it on my way in.

  So she was going to leave for a while? Really? The duffel bag couldn’t hold that much, so I knew that she wouldn’t be gone for too long, but she was just going to leave? To me, that just proved my point. If she was so ready to leave without even fixing the situation and facing the truth, what the fuck was I even wasting my time for? I loved her, but maybe we were just meant to be friends. Maybe that was what fate had in the cards for us.

  In that moment—I couldn’t even lie—that shit hurt like hell. Jamilla had my heart, even though I didn’t want her to, and I knew that it would take time to heal. I was
lovesick and needed to rebuild the empty space she was going to leave in my heart. So, I taped the note to the fridge and left . . . hoping that she would at least be there when I came back.

  The car ride to the airport was smooth. I was happy to know that Brazil smoked from time to time, and she helped me smoke the fat blunt I had rolled. She sat close to me and seemed relieved to be leaving America. She talked about how much she loved the country she was named after. She told me that her mom was half Brazilian and that every year, they made sure to visit Brazil. She said that her mother had told her that she was conceived there and that she knew from the minute she found out that she was having twins that she would name them Brazil and Rio. I liked hearing her talk about herself, the person, and not the star. While in that car, just being close to her and listening to the “real” her, I knew that something was brewing inside of me for her.

  Soon, we were standing on the tarmac at the airport, in front of her family’s private jet, waiting for the suitcases to load.

  “Let’s take a selfie. You have to take one with your phone so we can tag each other,” Brazil told me.

  Man, life was changing, and it made my head spin. We took our pictures and tagged each other with hashtags that read #Her, #JetSet, #GetAway, #Niya, #Brazil, #Us, #NeverYou, #TeamTakeYoBitch, #SheTookYo-Bitch, #Recovery, #LeaveUsAlone, #RockStarShit, and #PeaceAtLast.@NiyaSoDope@BrazilianBarbieBaby.

  Within ten minutes, her pictures had over twenty-five thousand likes, and the requests from people to follow me was out of control.

  “Don’t worry about the requests. I’ll have my assistant, Kelbe, take care of them for you,” Brazil promised.

  We started to climb the stairs to the plane, with her in front of me, but before I could step on the plane, my phone vibrated with a text. When I looked down, I read the text, and it was Jamilla asking me to call her. I went to my contacts and was about to push CALL when Brazil’s voice stopped me.