by Yoshe
Milan tried to explain her plight. “But, but you don’t understand, Tuki,” she said. “I’m so on the fence with this! It’s so confusing to live my life like this!” she cried, taking off her shades and throwing them to the side. She began weeping, covering her eyes with her hands.
Tuki sucked her teeth and collapsed in the chair across from Milan. “I ain’t trying to hear your sob story, Milan,” she said, with an angry look on her face. “What you need to do is tell your husband about us or else I’m gonna tell him. Simple as that.”
Milan blew her nose and started yelling at Tuki. “Are you crazy? I can’t tell Sean this shit! My got damn family don’t know nothing about my lifestyle!”
Tuki let out a sarcastic chuckle. “So help me understand this. You’re hiding behind your marriage, huh?”
Milan slapped her forehead with her hand. “No, marriage is not the some . . . some fake-ass marriage, okay? I really love that man, Tuki.”
Tuki raised one eyebrow. “Is that right?” She laughed. “Well, how do you think he’s gonna feel when he finds out that his beloved wife loves to eat pussy and get fucked with strap-ons?”
The fed up Milan sighed. “What do you want from me, Tuki?”
Tuki walked over to Milan and knelt down in front of her. She took her hands into hers and looked into her eyes. “I want you so bad,” she whispered, while rubbing Milan’s thighs. “You remind so much of my first love, the first woman I ever fell in love with. And I can’t shake that feeling.”
Milan clutched her chest. She brushed Tuki’s hands from her thighs. Then she ran into the bathroom and locked the door behind her.
Milan sat on the toilet and went into her jeans pocket, once again pulling out her stress reliever. After one sniff, she could feel the cocaine going straight to her brain. She leaned her head back against the tiled bathroom wall, waiting for the coke to take its effect. Suddenly, loud knocks on the door interrupted her high.
“Milan, Milan!” Tuki yelled at her from the other side of the bathroom door. “What the hell are you doing in there?”
Milan ignored the knocking and snorted some more of the cocaine. A few seconds later, she opened the bathroom door with a smile on her face. She grabbed Tuki’s face and shoved her tongue down her throat.
“Make love to me,” Milan whispered in her ear.
Chapter 19
It was eight o’clock at night when Kane pulled into the driveway of his Canarsie home. He had a great time hanging out at Brandi’s house for the better part of the day but it felt so good to finally be at his humble abode. He unlocked the door, disarmed the burglar alarm, and marched up the stairs to his bedroom. There, he stripped down to his boxers and climbed into his bed.
While Kane was lying in the bed and watching television, he began thinking about his life. His exaggerated sense of self-confidence was a front for what was really going on with him. He wanted to love someone and wanted someone to love him back. But it was so hard for him to reveal his true self to women. He had so much to hide.
Just like most people who had trust issues, Kane was in a relationship with a woman when he was a much younger, more volatile man. Gunplay and drugs were his forte, although his father had warned him about the dangers of the streets.
“Son,” J.P. would say to him, “you don’t want it with these streets. These streets are like a woman’s pussy. Just when you think you done fucked it real good, there always one that can fuck it way better than you. And just like some women, these streets don’t have no love or loyalty to nobody.”
Of course, being the young whippersnapper he was at the time, Kane brushed his father off. He took to the streets anyway and along with Rasheed and the rest of their crew, created a reputation for himself. That reputation only fueled the fire, causing some major beef with rivals wherever he went.
One day, everything that J.P. said about the streets came to fruition. Kane was twenty-two years old when he killed an innocent man. He was involved in a shootout in South Jamaica, Queens, Forty projects, while going to see a girl he was seeing at the time. This resulted in Kane shooting the man, an older gentleman, coming out of one of the buildings.
The thought of his heinous crime brought tears to Kane’s eyes. Fortunately for him, the police never found out who killed the man. But that was unfortunate for the victim’s family. They had lost a patriarch while Kane lived his waking life, indulging in pleasures that the dead man would never experience. And the guilt wore on him every day.
The woman Kane was involved with at the time was the major player in the tragic story. He found out later on that she was the reason he was getting shot at in the first place. Because Kane had displayed a more mild-tempered, low-key side to the young lady, she assumed he was a “vick.” So she set him up to be robbed by a group of her cousins and an ex-boyfriend, which led to the vicious shootout.
After the man was killed, the girl packed up her things and moved out of town. Kane never found out her whereabouts, promising himself that if he ever saw her again, she was going to meet her Maker. As luck would have it, Kane never saw the girl again. But he knew that one day he was going to meet his karma for the death of that innocent man.
And Kane was left with a distorted image of women. His father’s cryptic message about the streets and the comparison to a woman was imbedded in his mind. Although he loved the female members of his family very much, being in a genuine relationship with one was somewhat of an enigma for Kane. He didn’t think that it was possible for him to ever get close enough to a woman. But Kane knew that if he wanted love, he would have to try a different approach. And it all started with Brandi.
Kane had to admit that the short time he spent with Brandi was very enjoyable. He couldn’t remember the last time he spent more than two hours with a woman, let alone spending the night with her. But Brandi was kind of different from the other women he dated. She was mature, goal-oriented, and considerably older than what Kane normally went for. There was something about her “been there, done that” attitude that got his attention. And there was an air of mystery about Brandi that Kane found himself connecting with. He just couldn’t figure out what that was.
Kane turned over in his bed and began dozing off. Before he fell into a deep slumber, he went over the chain of events from the previous night. He hadn’t blamed Brandi for the altercation with Dollar, even though he wanted to. But Dollar definitely had it coming to him and Kane couldn’t wait to get his revenge.
It was around 12:00 a.m. Monday morning when Kane was awakened by a deafening boom. He immediately jumped up out of the bed and ran out of his room to investigate the noise. As soon as he opened the bedroom door, Kane was hit with a massive cloud of thick black smoke.
Kane began coughing nonstop, as the sounds of flames could be heard crackling beneath him. The smoldering heat sent him into a frightened frenzy, causing him to run back into his bedroom and slam the door.
Kane frantically looked around the room for his clothes. He grabbed his cell phone, his car keys, and wallet and put them into his pocket. Then he opened the second-story window and climbed out of it. As he hung on to the windowsill, he looked below him. Some of the flames were shooting out of the first-floor window. Kane closed his eyes and prayed for a safe landing.
“Please, God,” he whispered. “Please help me.”
Kane closed his eyes and let go of the windowsill. He fell to the ground, landing on the grass near the concrete driveway with a thud.
As Kane lay on the ground, the sound of shattering glass startled him. He tried to stand up but ended up falling back on the ground. While on the ground, Kane quickly crawled to the driver’s side of his car and shielded himself from the flying shards of glass and debris.
A few of Kane’s neighbors must have called 911 because pretty soon the quiet block was lit up with emergency vehicles.
Suddenly, Kane heard a familiar voice calling out his name. “Kane, Kane!”
It was Mr. Frank, the next door neighbor. He wal
ked over and helped Kane onto their front lawn. His wife, Mrs. Frank, ran inside and came back out of the house with a comforter to wrap around Kane’s shoulders.
Kane sat on the Franks’ lawn and watched as the firefighters of Engine #257 pulled out the water hoses and began working frantically to put the raging fire out. A small crowd of neighbors had gathered outside the scene. They started asking Kane questions that even he didn’t know the answer to. Thankfully, the Franks shooed the nosey neighbors away and insisted that Kane sit inside of their house while the firefighters put out the fire. But he couldn’t move. The burning embers coming from his home had him in a zone. He couldn’t believe what was happening.
An hour had passed and the fire was finally put out. Mr. Frank walked over to the fire captain and informed him that Kane was the homeowner.
The captain knelt down on the ground to talk to Kane, who was rubbing his injured left ankle. “So this is your house, sir?” he asked.
Kane nodded his head. “Yeah, it’s my house, man,” he replied, with a look on defeat on his face.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
Kane shook his head. “I was asleep in my bedroom when I heard this . . . this loud explosion. I got up to observe what was going on but when I got to the staircase, all I saw was this cloud of black smoke and flames! So I walked back into my room, threw my clothes on, and jumped out of the second-floor window. I think that I hurt myself from that fall, too,” Kane said, cringing from the pain.
“Do you want an ambulance?” the captain asked.
Kane waved him off. “Nah, nah, I can drive myself to the ER.”
The captain looked back at Kane’s damaged home. The last of the firefighters were walking out of the house with their equipment. He sighed. “Listen, I hate to tell you this, Mr. . . .”
“Porter. The name’s Kane Porter.”
“Well, Mr. Porter, just to let you know, we found a bottle near the front window and it reeked of gasoline. It seems like this fire was started by someone throwing a Molotov cocktail through that window. Has anyone threatened you recently?”
At the sound of that news, Kane’s mind began to wander. A Molotov cocktail? For some reason, an image of Dollar’s face popped into his head.
“No, no, not that I know of,” Kane said.
“Well, Mr. Porter, I think you might need to make a police report about this incident.”
Kane watched as the fire marshal walked back to his crew. Could it have been Dollar? Then again, Dollar doesn’t know where I live. Or does he? He thought about the night of the baby shower. After their scuffle, Kane was sure that Dollar dropped Brandi off to get her car out of his driveway. And based on what Rasheed told him about the hot-tempered Dollar, he wasn’t above getting some kind of retribution after their fight.
The Franks helped Kane stand up on his feet. “Thank you, Mrs. Frank, Mr. Frank,” Kane said. He gave the wife a hug and shook her husband’s hand.
Mr. Frank patted Kane on the shoulder. “It wasn’t a problem, son. Are you going to be okay? You know that you can stay with us while you get your house back in order.”
Kane smiled at the kindhearted septuagenarian. “Oh, no, Mr. Frank! Thanks so much for the hospitality but I will be just fine.”
The Franks waved at Kane and walked back into their house. The crowd of onlookers dispersed and went their way. After briefly talking to Kane about the suspected arson, the firefighters and police officers made their way off the block too. And just like that it was quiet again.
Kane stood outside of his house and stared at the external damage. The downstairs windows were broken or totally blown out and the brick front was untouched. But it didn’t take long for Kane to walk away from the home. He didn’t have the energy to deal with it at the moment. He hopped into his vehicle and pulled off.
But the normally composed Kane had barely driven off his block before he became overcome with emotion. He pulled over to the side and silently sobbed in the driver’s seat of his vehicle. Shortly after getting his feelings in check, Kane made a phone call.
“Hey, Tabitha,” Kane said to his sister when she answered the call. “I’m so, so sorry for calling you this late, but, can I stay there for a little while, sis?” He tried to explain what happened to his home when he began sobbing uncontrollably. Tabitha wouldn’t let her brother finish the story.
“Kane, Kane!” she said, interrupting his tearful rant. “Don’t you worry about a damn thing, baby bro! Everything is going to be okay! You can come right here and stay as long as you want.”
“Thank you so much, Tab,” Kane said, as he tried to calm himself down. “I love you, sis.”
“And I love you too, baby bro. Come on through. I’ll be waiting up for you.”
Kane disconnected the call and took a deep breath. He turned his car around and began driving toward the Belt Parkway. Between his pounding ankle, his damaged home, and everything else that happened within the last twenty-four hours, Kane knew that being with family was the best antidote.
“Let me step on the gas and hurry to Tab’s house,” Kane said aloud. “Because I’m ready to kill some fucking body!”
Chapter 20
It was two o’clock Monday morning and the depressed India couldn’t bring herself to get off her couch. She felt like she was losing what little sanity she had left. She had been feeling like that ever since Asia announced that she and Rasheed were having a baby. Wiping the lone tear from her face, India asked herself one question: am I ever going to be happy?
At one time, happiness for India was Chanel bags and Gucci shoes, but not anymore. She would have traded all of her material things just to have what her twin sister Asia had, which was a relationship with a man who truly loved her.
When am I gonna know what’s it feels like to have a relationship? India wished that she knew the answer to that question.
And she had grown tired of being treated like a doormat. She was tired of men taking whatever they could get out of her and walking in and out of her life. She stood by and watched as the men she dealt with settled down or married other women, women who weren’t her.
India knew that her looks weren’t the problem; she was a strikingly beautiful woman. With her smooth olive-colored skin and thick jet-black hair, she bore an uncanny resemblance to Pocahontas. And her body was definitely well put together. She worked extra hard to keep her toned frame intact, by practically living in the gym.
India sighed, as she thought about her past behaviors. Growing up, she had been pegged the so-called “bad” twin. She was the sister who always found trouble, while the “good” twin, Asia, just followed her lead. India was fine with being a bad girl and adapted that image, in order to hide all of her insecurities. She had plenty of those.
India sat up and looked around the dark room, finally finding the strength to get up. She turned on the lamp and looked at herself in the large mirror. She didn’t see pretty. She saw a broken woman, who was ugly on the inside and insanely jealous of her own sister. But aside from all of that, India saw a woman who wanted to have a man love her more than anything in this world.
It was 5:45 a.m the next morning when an exhausted India got out of bed and started getting ready for work. She yawned loudly and stared at the half-empty bottle of Hennessy sitting on her nightstand. The liquor and her excruciating headache were grim reminders of her emotionally taxing night.
A half hour later, India locked the door to her apartment. Just as she was about to walk down the stairs to the lobby, her cell phone rang.
“Who the hell is this?” she said to herself, as she dug in the bottom of her oversized handbag to retrieve the phone. She looked at the unrecognizable number on the caller ID.
“Hello? Who is this?” she asked, with a frown on her face.
The sound of female laughter could be heard on the other end of the phone. “Damn, I figured you probably recognize my got damn number. You don’t never use it anyway.”
India sucked her teeth. For t
he life of her, she couldn’t recognize the voice, although it sounded very familiar.
“Come on now! Who the hell is this? I ain’t got time to be playing with no bitch on the phone when I’m on my way to work!”
“Mmm hmm,” the female said. “Same old India! You was always a mean motherfucker!”
When India got to the lobby, she stopped in her tracks. “Wait a got damn minute,” she said. “Is this who I think it is?”
“Yes, it is! I don’t know why you acting like you don’t know your own cousin’s voice, girl!”
India walked outside of her building and got into her parked car. Once she was in the driver’s seat, she began screaming.
“Oh, shit! Tuki! Old country bumpkin-ass!”
It was her first cousin, Tuki. Born in Brooklyn, Tuki and her family moved down to Decatur, Georgia when she was only three years old. Her father, Rodney, was the twins’ uncle and their mother’s oldest brother. After hearing Tuki’s voice, India felt bad. She really didn’t visit her Southern family as often as she liked to.
Tuki laughed again. “Yes, it’s Tuki, baby! How you doing, cuzzo?”
India sighed. “Girl, I ain’t doing so good,” she began. “Let’s put it like this, these dudes be acting up and these hoes be letting them!”
“Yes, they do, girl!” Tuki replied with a laugh. “And that’s exactly why I only deal with women! All men wanna do is fuck any and everything that got a wet, hairy hole! And they just aren’t that attractive with all of their issues and nasty-ass habits. I can’t take them!”
Now it was India’s turn to laugh. “Tell ’em how you really feel, Tooks! So what have you been up to, girl?”
Tuki huffed. “Well, for one thing, you would never guess where I am right now.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in New York, child!” Tuki replied. India screamed into the phone. “I’m staying at the Aloft hotel, right in downtown Brooklyn.”