I double-parked in front of the apartment before I spoke. “I’m sorry, baby. I fucked up. I didn’t want Stephanie, I swear. I was only fucking her to get information on you.”
“Is that what they taught you as a detective, to fuck for information? So, when you came home telling me she sucked your dick and was trying to get you to sleep with her, you had already been fucking her, hadn’t you?”
There was no reason to lie if I wanted to make shit right with Savannah. I had to tell the truth.
“Yes, baby. I had fucked her like three or four times before then, but all during the same visit, and I won’t lie. I got some head from her a few times after that but never fucked her again. I saw you peeking in on us at the window right before I was about to put my dick in her. I was only going to fuck her again because it was her birthday, but when I saw you, I put on a show, so you wouldn’t think I was unfaithful. I’m sorry, Savannah. You’ve fucked up, and I have too, but we can work this shit out. I forgave you for all those Wednesday and Sunday nights you were fucking that lawyer nigga and lying to me about your whereabouts. I need your forgiveness now. Together, we can get custody of my son from her and make something beautiful out of all of this shit.”
I took a deep breath and shook my head. I couldn’t believe any of this was happening, but it was. I knocked up Stephanie with the buildup from not fucking Savannah, but how could I fuck her, knowing she was fucking someone else? That didn’t make it right I was fucking her so-called best friend in return, raw, but at the time, the shit felt right. Whatever the consequences were for my actions, I’d deal with them the best way I knew how. “What apartment are you in? Grab your gun and wait for me by your door. I got to get you out of here before Mike gets to you.”
She laughed like I had said something funny. “I’m not going anywhere with you, Dre. It’s over, and I mean it. If you or Mike come up here, I’m shooting to kill. I have real help on the way, and I’m getting far the fuck away from all of you. If you see me again, it will be in your dreams.”
“This isn’t the time to play stupid, Savannah. If you don’t want to be with me, fuck it. I’ve taken way more of your shit than you have of mine, you selfish bitch, but I can’t call Washington and tell our daughter I let you get killed. Let me get you to a safe place, and then we can go our separate ways. I’m done trying to be with a ho. I fucked Stephanie, and now I have another son to get custody of. I can’t keep worrying about y’all hoes I’ve had kids with.”
As I made my way in the doors, I almost knocked over two ladies who were checking their mail at the indoor mailboxes. I apologized, then turned on my feet to see who it was blowing their horn. It was Ryan. I rushed back out the door, and my phone was knocked out of my hands by another nigga rushing inside. Savannah had me fucking up. I picked up the phone in time to hear her last words.
“... one son.”
“What?” I asked.
“You heard me. You only have one son. Andre Junior is Mike’s son. He told me, and that ghetto bitch you were fucking with confirmed it. Why do you think we were fighting at your mama’s house? I didn’t tell Ryan because I didn’t want him to tell you, but now you know.”
Shock was all over my face, and Ryan kept asking me what was wrong. I couldn’t snap out of it. All I could manage to say was, “Bitch, stop lying. That ain’t shit to play with. Yeah, don’t let me in because I might put a bullet in yo’ ass for lying. Andre Jr. is mine. I don’t play when it comes to my kids.”
“I thought you loved me? Now that I told you your best friend fucked your baby mama like Stephanie did me with you, I gotta die?”
She laughed until I had to stop paying her attention.
Ryan was pointing at a car parked in the parking lot that I passed on my way in. It was a burgundy Buick Regal. He was holding two guns but threw one back in the backseat of his car and grabbed another out of his trunk.
“I’ll go to the back exit, and you take the front. She’s on the twelfth floor, number 1208,” he said and handed me the gun he had retrieved. The car he was pointing at had Tennessee plates and Davidson County tags. It was from Nashville. That could only mean one thing: Mike was already here.
“Fuck you, Savannah. I’m on my way up. Don’t answer the door. I think Mike is already here.”
I went to catch the elevator, but they were down, so I hit the stairs. I was climbing three steps at a time as Savannah continued to talk shit in my ear.
“You see, Dre, you’re not the only person with secrets. How does it feel to know that I played your ass from the very beginning? I never wanted shit with you. That’s why I gave up our daughter. That’s why I kept fucking whoever I wanted to.”
“Shut up, bitch. You’re a ho. You didn’t play nobody but yourself.”
“Is that why you started following me and even gave me a rose when you saw me looking good as fuck in the club in Vegas with Big Ant?”
“That was a rose for your grave, ho, and if Big Ant’s baby mama doesn’t put you in it first, I will if you keep talking all that loose shit. You don’t know shit about me—don’t forget it.”
Savannah didn’t know a damn thing about me or what I was capable of... because I didn’t. As I shouted my threats at her, they didn’t feel like lies to scare her off, and I felt comfortable that they didn’t. I was about to call her a bitch, but I thought I heard Ryan’s voice in her background talking to her. It almost sounded like she had him talking to her on another cell phone and had accidentally hit the speakerphone button. I fell silent to listen, but she killed it by talking.
“Is that all you got? I’ll be your bitch like you were Mike’s. You’ve raised his child for seven years and even had your mother break her broke, raggedy ass to get custody of him. But guess what else, Dre?”
I had made it to the eleventh-floor staircase and had one flight of stairs to go.
“You like playing with your life, don’t you, bitch? Who put you up to pissing me off? I heard them in the background. Tell them hoes it’s working.”
“Is it? You ready to shoot me now, or should I tell you more?”
I was too busy focusing on hitting the steps to respond. Push-ups were the only exercise I had been getting. The cardio was fucking with my breathing. Savannah took my lack of response as it being a yes for her to continue.
“The night you told me to take Mike out for his birthday...” I could hear her fumbling with her keys. “I took him to a strip club here, and we fucked in the men’s bathroom. I brought him home, sucked his big black birthday dick, and let him fuck me on my kitchen counter until he couldn’t get his dick back up. I completely understand why Tasha had to keep on getting dick from him while fucking with you. He might be the uglier ghetto friend, but your dick is garbage compared to his. Even his nut felt better going down my throat and wiped across my lips. It was too damn good not to keep fucking him, and the only reason he tried to rape me was that I wouldn’t give him the pussy again. That was a huge mistake that I made. There’s no way in hell that I should have chosen waiting for you over fucking him every day until you got out of jail.”
I made it out the door on the twelfth floor, and Savannah was walking out of her apartment door with this cocky smile on her face. I didn’t get a chance to see what she’d do or say next because the door flew open across the hall, the elevator doors opened at the same time, and somebody was coming from behind the tall tree at the end of the hallway. Shots were fired from every direction simultaneously. The people in the elevator, who had apparently pulled the emergency stop button, causing it not to work earlier, flew back in it. The man down the hall froze in his steps, and I watched two bodies hit the floor at the same time. One of them was Mike’s coming out of the apartment in front of Savannah’s, and the other body on the ground belonged to Savannah.
Ryan came from the staircase on the other end of the hall, where the man was standing near the tree. He snatched him up and brought him down the hallway with him. I ran to get the people from the elevator. To my surpr
ise, it was Stephanie, and I assumed the other woman was Melinda because she was wearing Anthony’s college basketball jersey. As a matter of fact, they were the two women I had apologized to by the mailboxes. They were unarmed, and they both looked at me, scared.
Ryan was holding Amir, who was only carrying a pocketknife in his hand. That was the same nigga that bumped into me and caused me to drop my phone on my way to Ryan. That’s when the story told itself. Savannah had shot Mike in his head before he could point his gun at her, and I had shot and killed my beloved Savannah.
Damn!
Chapter Eleven
If the Apples Are Rotten, It’s the Tree
There was no time for me to stomach what I had done, nor did I get to see her lifeless body because Ryan was already working the crime scene. He covered Savannah from the neck up with the shirt he had on before I could see where I had shot her. That confirmed it was a head shot. I had executed the woman I swore I loved. I went rushing over to her to kiss her, but that fool Amir smiled at me, so I tried to crack his jaw with the butt of the gun I was holding.
“Calm the fuck down, Dre,” Ryan said as he snatched the gun out of my hand, ran over to make it Mike’s, and sent me driving back to Nashville at full speed.
I couldn’t have stayed if I had wanted to because I violated my probation for even being there. That didn’t mean I left without putting up a fight, but in the end, Ryan’s words held too much truth for me to continue the battle.
“Dre, you got to go, man. Everyone here thinks the bullet that killed Savannah came from Mike’s gun. I have to make that true, and adding another gun holder causes too much suspicion. You just got out. Are you ready to go back to jail and say, fuck your daughter? You got to go, Dre. You know I’m right.”
Ryan was right, and I got confirmation of it as I walked past Stephanie to the staircase.
“Dre, please don’t be hard on yourself,” she managed to say between sobs. “You tried to save her, you really did. His bullet was just faster than yours. I’m so sorry.” She broke down crying like she had really lost her best friend and reached out to grab me so we could mourn together, but I snatched away from her. I hadn’t forgotten why she was here.
“If he wouldn’t have killed her, you bitches would have.”
Stephanie pulled herself together quickly and looked at Melinda for help. When none was offered, she started back speaking without it. “No, we... We didn’t come to kill her... just to shake her up some, Dre. We hate her for everything she is, but we both forgave her. You don’t have to believe us—”
“You don’t know me, Dre,” Melinda spoke up, “but I did forgive her. I didn’t know it, but we fucked her up with the shit we did to her as kids, and because of it, she ruined all of our adult lives. How can I not forgive her for doing us like we did her? Hell, it’s a lot of stuff that we did to her that I’m sure she never knew we did.”
“And, Dre, you knew that I loved her and that I would never—”
I kept walking at the sound of Stephanie’s voice but needed to make sure I said one more thing to her while I had her face-to-face. “I’m coming for my son. Lawyer up.”
I snatched the letter Stephanie and Melinda tried to stuff in Savannah’s mailbox to avoid the eyes of the couple walking in the building. I knew Ryan said he had everything, but I thought of the surveillance camera and went into the security office. It was empty, and there wasn’t a tape being recorded on. It was a live feed, but it wasn’t being stored. Savannah just lay there still on the floor as Ryan gathered everyone up and forced them inside of Savannah’s apartment and closed the door behind them.
“Savannah, baby, I’m so sorry,” I cried.
I knew I had to go, but it felt like I couldn’t leave without her. Snot mixed with tears, and anger flipped into a hurt that I’ve never known. When I looked back at the live feed on the twelfth floor, the screen had gone black. Ryan was doing his thing, and I knew he had to, so I got up and left.
I made it back to Nashville just in time to get the telephone call from the detective in Atlanta at my mama’s house informing me that a body they had might belong to my fiancée, but that they needed a family member to identify the body before they could confirm it. After pleading for more information, the only information he gave me was she had been shot and killed by a single bullet to the head. He also said he was told I was her fiancée by Ryan. I wasn’t legally her husband yet, and he couldn’t release information to me. I didn’t want to be the person who called her father or brother with the bad news, so I gave the detective their telephone numbers.
Mr. James, Savannah’s father, had her body shipped back to Washington a week later. He felt like California had brought her too much pain for her to be buried there. He asked for my input on it, but I didn’t have one because I was numb.
“I know you’re sad, Dre. No man should have to bury the woman he loves.”
“No, you don’t. How could you understand when you’ve never had to bury the woman you love? I’m not sad.”
I wasn’t sad at the time. I just didn’t have feelings about anything that was going on around me. It took Mama Dee to get with my PO so I could be granted permission to go to Washington to lay Savannah to rest and tie up any loose ends there. She would have come along with me, but once I told her that there was a chance Andre Jr. wasn’t mine, she wanted to get that handled first. She wanted me to help find some peace in my life and closure to the drama I had been plagued with for years.
On my flight to Washington, I finally opened the letter that I brought back from Atlanta with me. It was from Melinda.
Hey, Nana,
I only called you that because I heard you hate it now. I just wanted to share with you a day in my life. Thanks to you, everything is different now. I woke up this morning and tried to get dressed. I didn’t know if I should put on something short and tight for sex appeal or a dress for easy access. Big Ant liked them both, and then I realized it didn’t matter what he liked anymore because if I put on either outfit, I wouldn’t be wearing them for him. I can’t get sexy for my man ever again, but that’s okay. It was his choice to pull that trigger to take his own life. Thinking about how stupid his ass was to do the shit, I went back into my closet to find something else to put on.
It was Saturday, kinda chilly, but the sun was out. I could throw on some distressed jeans, a wife beater, and sandals and meet my bitches so we could spend the day getting fly for the night. You know, a trip to the nail shop, shopping, and, of course, we’d find somewhere to all eat together because that’s what Keisha, Christina, and I always did.
We kicked it hard, and if Big Ant wanted to take his own life, fuck him. I’d find somebody else to fuck with while I was out with my girls, but you know what, Savannah? That isn’t going to work either, and you know why it wouldn’t, but just in case your good-ass job and fat-ass banking account made you forget about the shit us little folks are battling, let me remind you. I can’t chill with my girls because they are in prison because of you. I can’t kick it with my homeboys because they are in prison because of you. I can’t hop on a plane and get away from the constant reminders that I’m out here alone because I’m on house arrest because of you. I can’t even sit back and say fuck all of them, I got my freedom, and move on with my life, but how free am I really now that I’m living with HIV? And guess what? That’s because of you too.
You have to be a very sick bitch to get revenge on adults for the dumb shit they did as kids. We didn’t know better, nor did we think that we were really hurting you. I can’t speak for anybody else, but if you would have picked up a phone after you left California and said the kid games we played on you had been fucking with you as an adult, I would have apologized and would have done anything to help. You might not believe me since it’s obvious that you think me and everybody around me are hoes, but I’m a mother first. My baby deals with bullying, and it breaks my heart. Big Ant even spent time helping our baby deal with it, but that can’t happen anymore becaus
e the bullying we did to you made you come back and fuck up all of our lives.
I can’t even be mad at you anymore for it. I can’t change the past, and what’s done is done, but I have to know one thing. If you hated us for being hoes as kids, why did you become one as an adult? I’ve made a new friend in Stephanie, thanks to you. Her guilt from being involved in it all is so honest that I had to forgive her, and we hang out almost every day. The stories she tells me about you and your pussy scare me. If I didn’t know about the prostitutes you hired, I’d assume everyone caught the virus from you. It’s sad that after all these years that you claimed to hate us, you’ve become us, and the cycle almost repeated itself between you and Stephanie. She hated you so much that she woke up one morning and realized she was becoming you, and that thought alone almost forced her to take her own life. I’m glad she didn’t because the revenge she’s getting on you trumps anything me and my friends could ever do to you, and her revenge is legal. How does it feel to know your soon-to-be-boss, ex-best friend, ex-girlfriend, and the closet woman you’ve ever had in your life has given birth to the baby of the only man your evil ass will probably ever love? Not just his baby from what I’ve heard, but his first biological son as well.
I have no choice but to forgive you and move on with whatever life I have left because I feel sorrier for you than myself. No friends, no family, and even your mama reached out to me to work against you. Your mother actually offered me money to kill you since she has a million-dollar policy over your head and had me meet with a lawyer that you used to fuck on how if I committed the crime, I could get off by pleading insanity. I declined because I truly feel sorry for you.
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