by Kira Graham
Adonis just smiles adoringly, as if none of this is messed up. Which it freaking is. Why can’t anyone ever just react normally to things? I ask silently, glaring at Adonis in the rearview mirror when he chuckles and winks at me.
“This isn’t funny.”
“It really is. You’re sulking right now because you thought that she’d come busting down your door first, didn’t you?” he asks, making me scowl harder and look away when I feel my cheeks flush.
So what if I did? Look, when I left that hospital room, with my head messed up and my heart aching, I wasn’t thinking about anything other than the fact that I needed to get home, open a bottle, and drown my sorrows before my thoughts drove me insane. Then I blabbed like a drunken sailor, felt guilty, and told myself that I was staying away from Sinai because it was the right thing to do for us both. After that, and after some serious thought, I realized that I was giving her time and a choice. She could either come after me or lose me.
I was banking on being irresistible enough to merit a first stop, but apparently, that isn’t the case.
“I told you, we’re just friends,” I grumble, ignoring Cleo’s snort.
“Then be her friend, and stop being such a fucking dickhole,” she grumbles.
“I was trying to be her friend before she told me to get lost,” I mutter, feeling sorry for myself.
It’s not easy to have to think about everything and admit that Sin was partly right. I am a spoiled brat who plays around with people like they’re disposable, and I never even knew that I was doing it until I found out that she can’t have children. Ironically, that hit home for me because suddenly, I’m not seeing Sin as this perfect female the way I once did, and that makes me feel like shit.
I know that I shouldn’t think less of her for something that she can’t control, and even though I actually don’t—I don’t see her as less—I also don’t know where things are going with us. We’re not getting married—that ship sailed a long time ago—and I don’t see us in some whirlwind relationship, either, so then where does that leave us?
The answer is sex. What we could have is sex, plus maybe friendship, and, if I’m lucky, a little closure on matters to boot. Don’t get me wrong—my current view has nothing to do with her inability to have children, because that would be messed up. Rather, I’m positive that we would never work because I don’t think that we’re necessarily a good match. I don’t want to always be unsure of the woman I’m with, and after the way things went for us before, that’s something that I can’t get over. I don’t trust Sin, and she doesn’t trust me, so that kind of puts the kibosh on anything permanent.
We could still try to be…something, though, I think, and that’s what I was banking on. Until tonight. Now, I’m just pissed at her all over again, and it only gets worse when we reach the station and get stopped dead in our tracks. As it turns out, it is one thing to get arrested for vandalism and destruction of property, but another thing entirely when the person being charged kicks a cop in the balls.
Dammit, Sin.
Sinai
“And then he walked out,” I sigh, my lip pouting out glumly while Bee softly strokes my hair and cradles my aching head against her huge bosom.
“Day-um, girl. That’s cold,” she sighs, shaking her head with a grumble of sympathy.
Tee is passed out on one of the long metal benches across the way, and the junkie who tried to attack her while she was sleeping earlier is huddled in the opposite corner, watching her like a hawk and letting out an occasional whimper. Serves her right for thinking that anyone can get the drop on Tee and come away unscathed, I think, my mouth curling into a hard smile as I glare at the woman.
Bee, an old friend of Rosetta’s—or rather, one of the friends that Rosetta made when she was locked up here a few months ago—is back in after the cops caught her offering her wares to gentlemen just a block down from the police station. Not that Bee seems all that fazed about being busted for solicitation again. She’s leaning back against the wall, her large body clothed in a short red velvet dress and providing the comfiest bed that I’ve ever had the honor of using. You know, in county lockup, that is.
“Yeah. But I kinda deserved it after everything that happened before,” I say seriously, slurring my words only slightly while I cross my eyes and try to refocus my vision, which has been out of whack ever since Tee and I cracked open that first bottle.
How we intended to get back home, drunk off our asses, I do not know, but seeing as how we don’t have to worry about that anymore, I’m feeling pretty chill right now, just resting up against Bee’s huge boobs while I try not to puke from the three quarters of a bottle of whiskey in my gut.
“Pshaw. From what you tellin’ me, little lady, you was messed up in the head and heart, and rightly so. Ain’t no woman on this Earth gonna get news like that, go through what you gone through, and come out A-okay. That’s just crazy thinking. You sure this boy is worth all this heartache?” she asks, her lips pursing out when I sigh and nod against her boobs.
“He is. I think. I mean, I hope he is. Parry isn’t a bad guy; he’s just—”
“Spoiled rotten,” she snorts, huffing when I giggle and crack one eyelid open to look up at her.
Bee smells like sex, which wouldn’t usually be a bad smell, except that whoever was on her recently must have suffered from some violently unnatural body odor. Or a very extreme love of onions and garlic. I don’t care, though; I like her. She’s good people. Just ’cause she sells her coochie for money doesn’t make her a bad person. Bad people are the kind that would let their kids starve before they lifted a finger to do something to earn some money. From what I know about Bee, she feeds her kids three square meals a day, and makes sure that they’re clothed, have a decent place to sleep, and go to school.
That’s a good mom, and that makes her someone that I consider worth knowing.
“Spoiled for sure. But a good person, too. He’s kind, he cares about other people, and he has always been good to me, Bee.”
“Up till now. Now, he’s just being an asshole. You know what I’d have done if he’d tried to walk out that door after I’d poured my heart out to him?” she asks, sniffing when I giggle and shake my head.
“I’d have called Carla. Jorge or Juan woulda beat him bloody, left him on my doorstep, and shown him just what I thought of his choices.”
“Well, I don’t operate that way, mama. I want the guy I like to like and want me back, not feel coerced into staying with me. Besides, I’m still not sure that, even without all the baby drama and my head noise, we’d have worked out. He’s bossy, Bee. Like, seriously bossy,” I admit, grimacing because I never knew until recently just how much of a control freak Paris could be.
When we were just “friends,” he was so easy to hang out with. I’d say that I wanted to go party, and he’d be right there with me, all the way. I’d slash someone’s tires, and he’d be revving the getaway car. Now, he just glares at me with disapproval and makes me feel about as mature as a fourteen-year-old just tasting that first drop of rebelliousness.
“Sometimes that just means that he’s deep caring for ya, honey. There ain’t nothing to be pissy about when a man cares enough to piss you off by having your back. When I was with my boo Charlie, he’d say things like, ‘Don’t forget to go to the clinic to get tested,’” she sighs, her smile sad and nostalgic.
I, uh…don’t think that having my boyfriend express concern by reminding me to get an STD test is necessarily what I’m looking for, but, ya know, I’m not judging. We love who we love, and if Charlie made Bee happy, then he was a good guy. I guess.
“What happened to Charlie?”
“Got his ass shot by the cops for resisting arrest,” she snorts, making a face before she chuckles. “Man was the love of my life, but dumb as a bag of bricks, girl. I can’t tell you how many times I told him to stop stealing gas from squad cars, but did he listen?”
“I’m gonna say no,” I giggle, my head starti
ng to ring as time keeps passing.
I fully admit that I’m drunk off my ass, and the last two hours haven’t done all that much to sober me up. But I’m feeling about as good as I can, considering that my legs are killing me—that’ll teach me to try running in a boot—and I need to pee so badly that I’m starting to consider the filthy toilet in the corner.
“Don’t go thinking that you’re using that thing, girl. That thing still ain’t working, and the last time someone used it was when your cousin Rosetta took a dump in it. It didn’t flush then, and it won’t flush now,” Bee warns me, making my stomach turn before I swallow and get it to settle.
Tee’s still passed out, her mouth hanging askew even as one half-closed eyeball stares at me, as if, even in sleep, she’s watching.
“Oh, my God—that’s so creepy.”
Bee chuckles and crosses herself, making reference to some voodoo spirit that I suspect may be evil.
“Girl ain’t right. Knew that the first time I met her. What kinda person bites the leader of a drug cartel?” she asks, referring to the time that Juan, Carla’s brother and another friend of Rosetta’s, tried to cop a feel, but instead ended up getting three stitches. After we got Tee to release her jaw.
“Nefertiti,” I muse, my mouth twitching when she swipes her fist out in her sleep, stopping the junkie in her tracks, mid-crawl.
“You better stay away, Sal. That one’ll kill ya without thinking twice. She ain’t right in the head,” Bee warns, nodding when Sal scuttles back and crouches, giving us a view of her groin.
Her panty-less groin.
“So. How’ve you been? I thought that you were walking the straight and narrow and working accounts for Juan.”
“I was, till Carla married that idiot friend of her brother’s. God, I don’t like that man, but sometimes that girl don’t listen worth shit. I’m just waiting till she kills this one, and then I’ll go back. Juan says that I’m welcome anytime, as long as I agree to live in the guest house on his compound. Good soul, that one. He even sent me something extra for the babies last month, after Junior beat me up and I couldn’t work for two days. Asshole musta gone on vacation after that, ’cause he hasn’t been around since.”
I hesitate to say this, but I doubt that Junior went on vacation. Unless you consider being dead a vacation, I think, knowing in my bones that Juan probably sent him somewhere hot—for eternity.
“That’s great. It’s good to have friends.”
“What about you? Word on the street is that you’re broke, unemployed, and sleeping in Tee’s guest room.”
“Is ‘the street’ Rosetta?” I ask, snorting when Bee grins.
“Adonis. Woo-hee, that boy is some kinda fine. He gossips worse than us ladies do, though. It true? You lose everything?”
“Not everything, okay? Though just about. But I fully intend to get a new job just as soon as this boot is off, and these pins aren’t giving me hell.”
And I will succeed. I just don’t know what I want to do. Helos was all I knew for a long time, so not having it is like having lost a limb, in a way.
“So, in short, you’re homeless, you’re broke, you assaulted a cop after they caught you for vandalism and destruction of private property, and all that happened after you got your ass dumped, got evicted, and almost got killed by some lunatic who ran the car you were in off the road.”
“That about sums it up,” I agree with a sigh, my lips twitching when her eyes go theatrically wide, and she shakes her head.
“Honey. That is some seriously bad juju you got going on in your life.”
“Ya think?” I snort, my brow scrunching up when I think about that and realize that Paris was the start of it all!
Yeah. Yeah, this is all his fault.
Bee snorts, her bosom shaking so violently that my head bobs up and down, and then she settles again and gently lifts me so that I’m sitting up and facing her, staring into the softest, kindest brown eyes that I’ve ever had to look in to.
“You know that none of this is about Paris Hart, just like I know that whatever’s been riding your ass isn’t going to just resolve itself if you ignore it. I been where you’re at more times’n I can count, baby, and from experience, I can tell you that this shit just multiplies until your head is so messed up that you can’t form a single good thought inside your head. Whatever you got eating away at your soul, you gotta tell someone, ’fore it takes all of you,” she says softly, making the lump in my throat swell so much that I feel like I’m choking on it.
Grief.
I feel grief and fear and anger and all of those sick emotions that I always swore to myself I was too good to feel. I’m Sinai Sweet, the hard one—the girl who takes life’s knocks, rolls back onto her feet, and comes up swinging in the process. I am not the woman who gets so tied up that she makes stupid mistakes and runs her life into the ground.
Right now, though, that’s what I’ve become—and dammit, it annoys the hell out of me that I’ve let myself become this person.
“What should I do?” I ask softly, keeping my voice as low as I can so as not to alert Tee, or to scare the junkie who is still eyeing my cousin with a sinister, manic look. Which would scare me—if it were anyone else but Nefertiti being targeted, that is.
“Can’t say without knowing exactly what it is that’s eating you up inside, Sin. All’s I can tell ya is, sometimes, if you got a gangrenous limb, best you can do is cut that sucka off and say good riddance. The problem with a rotting limb is that keeping it will spoil all the rest of ya.”
“Jesus, Bee. You know, for a prostitute, you’re really smart and wise,” I breathe, grinning when she laughs and mock-slaps me.
“You think that just ’cause I gotta sell my body to feed my babies, I don’t got smarts? Some of the wisest people are folks who gotta do the hardest things in life. Now, we’re at the point where you tell me at least part of what got your rich—ahem, previously rich—ass in the slammer,” she says softly, snorting when I grimace.
“Kicked a cop in the balls ’cause I was—ahem, am—as drunk as a skunk,” I say sagely, giggling when she chortles and purses her lips.
“That’ll do it. Why don’t you tell me why you was outside your ex’s house in the first place, wasting good eggs on his paint job?”
This one takes me a minute to answer, because while I won’t outright lie to my newest life guru, I am not about to tell her that I ended up pregnant, found myself at an abortion clinic contemplating actually doing something like that, and then discovered that the only chance I had of actually ever being pregnant was slimmer than Kate Moss’s ass in the nineties. And that now, after a good talk with Tee, who admittedly may not be the best choice of people to take advice from, I’ve decided that I’m going to put myself out there with Paris, the man I rejected, because I’ve finally admitted to myself that I love him and want to be with him.
It’s a mouthful—hell, it’s a bellyful—of messed-up problems, and not something that I’m okay with just laying out ther—
“We were getting closure for Sin. Ya know, before she starts stalking Paris Hart because she’s in looooove with him,” I hear, my head whipping around to find Tee’s eyes opened to narrow slits, and a grin of challenge on her face.
“Hey! You promised that this would be our secret.”
“Meh. I lie. A lot. To get my way. You should try it sometime,” she murmurs, her lips curling into a threat when the junkie’s head twists her way, a mad expression in her eyes.
Jesus—tweakers. They’re weird.
“Nefertiti!”
“Oh, stop complaining and trying to make me feel bad. I deal with guilt about as well as Rosetta does, and that’s saying something, considering the fact that she has no soul—or, if she does, it’s so small, black, and shriveled that it coulda been a California raisin.”
I giggle. Mostly because it’s all true. Playing to Tee’s sense of guilt is a waste of time. And Rosetta—well, if God did give her a soul, then it’s gotta
be one of those really small ones that are destined for warm climes after she kicks the bucket.
“She’s right about that!” Bee crows, smiling affectionately as she thinks of Rosetta. “Girl ain’t all there. But about this Paris thing! Giiiiirl, that boy is all kindsa fine.”
Brother. Like I don’t already know that. I’ve had enough wet dreams about the man that it could be classified as stalking and perversion, and don’t even get me started on what it’s like to see him in the flesh. All the time!
“I didn’t know you likes him,” Bee continues. “Last I heard, you cut him down and trampled all over his heart.”
“I did not!”
“Did, too. And you know why she did it?” Tee asks, ignoring my growl as she sits up, sucks her teeth at the junkie, and lazes back against the wall.
“Nefertiti!”
“She went and got knocked up by that Cole guy, only to find out, after the biggest panic attack known to man, that she wasn’t pregnant after all, but that her ovaries are useless. She then had what could be called a nosedive into depression, spiraled out of control, lost everything—including the only job she’s ever wanted and a man who loved her—and now…she’s here. Arrested, whining about her life, and ignoring the fact that that junkie’s been slowly pissing herself in the corner and letting it run all over her sneaker and boot.”
“Oh, my God!” I yell, pulling my feet up and back with a scream of disgust when I notice a wet puddle that is indeed originating from the corner.
Junkie Jill smiles at me, and, unlike with Tee, my blood runs cold enough that I move closer to Bee and practically climb into her lap.
“Why the hell didn’t you warn me?”
“Eh, it was funny. Now, back to—”
“Back to nothing! I know that you think this is amusing, sitting here dissecting my life, but it’s not amusing to me,” I hiss, shuddering while trying to wiggle my foot out of my sneaker without touching the thing.