Another ten minutes had gone by, and I’d managed to take as much of these niggas’ money as I possibly could, so I finally bowed out. Just as I finished bending down to collect all my bills and place them in my pocket, I happened to look up into the parking lot, and I saw a familiar face. The thing is, the few lights that these apartments did have weren’t even that bright, so it was a wonder that I could see her little ass from so far. Maybe it was that bright ass pink cast that I saw.
My eyebrows quickly went up in confusion when I saw her because she didn’t spark me as the type of woman who would be out this late, especially not in this hood. Plus, she was moving all fast like she was in a hurry or some shit. Her fast movements brought me back to the reason why she had that cast on her arm in the first place, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she was speeding while trying to get there.
Shaking my head, I couldn’t help but wonder why the fuck I cared so much. I didn’t even know shorty’s last name, yet I was sweating her like this.
“Takari!” I yelled her name out just to make sure it was her.
When she turned her head to look at me, I knew it was her. She gave me one of those dry hi’s that the phony church members give in church, and then she proceeded to walk toward the stairs that led to her mother’s apartment. I could feel it in my bones that something was up with her, so I dapped up Marco and let him know that I would catch up to him some other time, and then I jogged in Takari’s direction because she was walking so damn fast that she was halfway up the stairs already.
“Damn! Slow the fuck down. Why you walking so damn fast?” I asked, taking the stairs two at a time.
Eventually, I caught up to her. I blocked her path, placing both of my arms on either side of the stair railing, preventing her from walking any further. The first thing I noticed when I looked down at her was the little ass clothes that she was wearing along with a foul stench. Now, I wasn’t the nigga to judge, but I didn’t know if that odor was coming from her or someone’s stank ass apartment.
One of the flickering lights outside was right above us, so eventually, I was able to pay her hair more attention. My kids liked to watch these little slime videos on Nickelodeon. After someone would get all that slime dumped on their body, their hair would be all matted together, and that’s exactly what Takari resembled right now.
Suspicion got the best of me, so I reached down and touched her hair. Then my dumb ass smelled my hand, and that stench that I was talking about was sure enough coming from her. Still looking down at her, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that she had started softly crying. Her left hand clutched the strap of the bag that she had around her body, and the first thing I noticed was the fact that her ring was no longer on her finger. I wasn’t the smartest nigga in the world, but I started putting two and two together. I started thinking about how late in the night it was, mixed with her appearance, her emotions, and the emptiness of her ring finger. Those were all clues that something had gone down with her and her nigga.
“That nigga put his hands on you?” I asked, and she quickly shook her head no.
I honestly didn’t know if I believed her or not. I needed to spend more time with her to pick up on her ways and be able to see when she was lying to me. For whatever reason, I didn’t want to let her out of my space. Instead of moving out of the way and letting her go to her mother’s spot, I grabbed her hand and led her in the direction of my grandma’s apartment.
She questioned me the entire walk, inquiring on where I was taking her, but she never let my hand go. She never screamed as if her life was in danger, nor could I feel a shakiness in her hands mixed with her hands sweating. That right there proved that she trusted me for whatever reason. We were finally standing in front of my grandma’s door, and I used my spare key to let us in.
My grandma had drank herself into a coma tonight, so I knew her ass wouldn’t wake up anytime soon. The apartment was pitch black, but luckily, I knew my way around this place, so I didn’t have to worry about bumping into anything as I led Takari to the back room. You could say that this room was my room away from home. Majority of my shit was in there, and if ever I was in the hood late at night and didn’t feel like making that drive back to my spot, I would just crash there.
I walked the two of us inside the room, flicked the light on on the wall, and then I closed the door behind me.
“Why did you bring me here? I need to take a shower. I’m embarrassed to be out here looking like this. I don’t want to show you my flaws, Za’Kai. Just walk me back upstairs,” she said, standing in the middle of the bedroom and using her good hand to wipe away the tears that were still falling from her eyes.
“What damn flaws, Takari? A nigga not worried about your appearance right now. Yeah, your hair smells a little funky, but I just came from gambling with niggas who smelled like they haven’t taken a damn shower in years, so I’m not worried about that little odor that you got coming from your hair. I’m not trying to fuck on you, fuck with your head, take advantage of you, none of that shit. I get vibes from you that you just be needing someone to talk to, so that’s why I brought you up here. Hell, we could go outside and talk so I can really show you that I didn’t bring you up here to fuck. I just figured that with your situation right now, you wouldn’t want to be around a whole bunch of people,” I said, and she nodded.
Months ago, when I met her for the first time at the movies, who would have ever thought that I would have her mean ass in my room? On top of that, I had her in my room, and she was vulnerable as hell. She didn’t have big balls right now, and a whole bunch of shit talking wasn’t coming from her mouth. Crazy thing is, I preferred that Takari over this one. The one who was standing in front of me right now had me feeling bad for her, and I didn’t even know what the hell was going on.
“Can I at least take a shower first?” she finally asked.
I stood up from the foot of the bed and walked out of the bedroom. There was a linen closet in the hallway, so I grabbed her a clean washcloth and a towel. I brought the items with me inside the bathroom, and I searched under the cabinets for a new bar of soap along with the Cantu shampoo that was down there for when my daughter comes over and I was either forced to wash her hair, or my grandmother would do it. Just in case she didn’t have shit to change into when she was out, I put one of my Nike shirts on the counter for her and walked out of the bathroom.
I let her know that she could go ahead and take her shower, and she quickly walked out of the room. Now, that it was just me in the bedroom, my mind went straight into overdrive. Did this nigga throw her in the garbage or some shit? Now that we were inside where there were lights, I could see little cuts and bruises on her knees that had me wondering where the hell did those come from. What did that nigga do to her that was so bad that it got her to take her ring off? It was like physically, she was there with me, but mentally, she hadn’t been there since I called out her name when I saw her in the parking lot.
All this back and forth, trying to figure out what he had done was giving me a fuckin’ headache, so I went into my stash to roll me up a fat one. I needed some type of drugs in my system to help me deal with the shit that I had gotten myself involved in. Once I had rolled the perfect joint, and I had the potent inside, I took long, deep pulls from it, releasing that good smoke. The headache that had been coming on was slowly easing away with each pull that I took from this blunt.
It had been about thirty minutes since Takari had been in the bathroom, and had I not just heard the bathroom door open, I was going to go busting in there just to make sure that she wasn’t in that bitch trying to harm herself. She came out of the bathroom looking like a completely different person. She threw on the Nike shirt that I had given her, which fit her small body more like an oversized dress than anything. Her long hair was still wet from her washing it, and it was hanging loosely down her back.
Of course, the hurt was still very much evident in her eyes, but her beauty overpowered that shit. The clot
hes that she’d just taken off were in her hands, but she quickly placed them inside the bag that she came into the house with. I watched her from the corner of my eye as she walked over to the bed and took a seat at the foot of it. She started playing with her fingernails, and then she released a sigh.
“I’m so scared. I’m scared that he’s going to take my kids away from me. The only way that I can keep my kids is if I decide to stay with him, and I can’t do that. I won’t do that to myself. I’ve been mentally abused by this man for years now, and I can finally say that I want out. This man threw me out of our home and into the driveway while I was butt naked. I stood outside, begging him to unlock the door for me, but he wouldn’t. As if he didn’t already humiliate me enough, he came outside and poured trash all over my body, which explains the smell in my hair.
“Za’Kai, he has the power to do whatever the hell he wants to do. He’s the one with the money, he’s the one who owns everything that we have. There’s no doubt in my mind that the judge will give him full custody. I can’t lose my kids behind this,” she said, and she finally broke down.
I quickly stood up from the chair that I was sitting in and closed the bedroom door because she’d forgotten to close it when she came back into the room. Crazy how I could feel like I was affected by her cries, but years ago when I was with Breshay, I felt like her cries were the most annoying thing in the fuckin’ world! I’ve seen Takari in “mommy mode,” so I knew that she was a damn good mother. If that husband of hers planned to do some shit like that, it was fucked up on his part.
“Give me the nigga’s address. I’ll pull up on him right now,” I told her.
She laughed through her tears while she shook her head no.
“What you mean by he’s the one with the money? You not working?” I asked.
It just hit me that I really didn’t know much about shorty.
“My husband is successful. He’s the CEO of a company that was passed down to him by his father. I have the daycare that he’d purchased for me as a gift, but that doesn’t really count because he owns that too. When I had the twins, we both decided that my job would be to take care of the kids, although they’re older now, so I do go into the preschool at least three times a week to handle whatever I have to handle there as far as paperwork and things like that. I have to be the stupidest person in the world,” she said, followed by a forced, sarcastic laugh.
“I’ve been smart my entire life. I was never put into the same classes as my friends when I was in school because I was always in advanced courses. I went to college on a full four-year scholarship, and my mom didn’t have to come out of pocket for anything. I didn’t even stop my degree with my bachelors. I went further, and I got my master’s as well. I have a master’s in business, and I never did what I really wanted to do with it.
“Yes, I wanted to one day open a daycare, and I thought that it was the best thing once my husband gave it to me, but because he pretty much owned it, I didn’t have a say so. He put the preschool right in the heart of Miami Beach, which isn’t what I wanted. I wanted the preschool to be right in the heart of the projects so the parents who couldn’t afford daycare services could be able to afford mine. I had so much planned for that daycare, but like I did a lot of things that happened in our marriage, I just shrugged it off. I have to be a better example for my children, especially my daughters,” she went on to say. She had said a mouthful.
I heard everything she said, yet I was still on the beginning part of the story where she said the nigga threw her out of the house butt ass naked and threw trash on her. That was some gay ass shit. Not only was she his wife, but she was the mother of his children. I swear, these new niggas nowadays were cut from a different cloth than I was. Breshay and I didn’t get along all the time, but the fact of the matter was that she was my children’s mother, so respect was always going to be given to her. My kids wouldn’t be here if she didn’t carry them for me, and I think a lot of niggas tend to forget that shit.
“Don’t tell me you signed a prenup,” I said, and with her head down, she shook her head yes that she did. “At least tell me that you have a shoe box with some money stashed in that bitch. You from the same hood as I am, Takari, so I know you have some street smarts to add on to your book smarts,” I said.
“I don’t have a shoe box with money, but I do have a separate savings account that he doesn’t know about,” she told me, and I nodded, thinking that we were finally on to something.
“Alright, that’s a start then. Look, I’m not sure if I’m the best one to be taking advice from, but at least just hear a nigga out. I know you not trying to move back in the projects with your three kids. With the money that you have saved up, I say use whatever you have to use from that so that you could put a deposit down on a nice little apartment somewhere or a townhouse. Hell, whatever is suitable for you and your kids. I’m pretty sure your background is squeaky clean, and shorty, you have degrees under your belt so anybody would be lucky to hire you. Find you a little job because you want to be able to prove to the courts that you can financially take care of your children.
“You’re going to need all of the proof that you can get to prove to the courts that you deserve to be the primary guardian of your kids, so if I were you, I would take pictures of every cut and bruise that you have on your body from tonight,” I let her know.
I could look at her face and tell that she was taking everything in that I said. There was an awkward silence between the two of us, so I went ahead and said something, so I could make things less awkward for us.
“He white, huh? Niggas don’t do corny shit like that,” I asked her, and she laughed.
“No, he’s black. Thank you,” she said and playfully rolled her eyes.
“I can bet you my last fuckin’ dollar that he’s not fully black, though. What is ole boy mixed with?” I asked her.
“He’s mixed. His mom is Puerto Rican,” she said, and I laughed while nodding my head, like him being mixed actually meant something.
“Isn’t it crazy how life works, though?” she asked. I raised an eyebrow, basically telling her to elaborate on what she was talking about. “I just feel like we meet people for a reason. I couldn’t stand you at first. I guess because I’m pretty, guys let me get away with saying whatever to them, but you quickly showed me that a pretty face is just that... a pretty face. Then, I met you again for the second time. You hurt my feelings that day, talking about I had the body of a little boy. I cried when you left,” she said, and I smirked.
“I was just fuckin’ with you when I made that comparison to you having the body of a little boy,” I said, and she looked at me like, yeah right nigga, you meant it!
“Sure! You meant it, I know you did. No need to cover it up now. I’ve heard just about every joke that you can make about my weight, so I’m not tripping,” she let me know.
“I don’t really have a type like that, though. Of course, I want a beautiful woman with a good ass personality, but you can have those things and be skinny, thick, fat, it don’t matter. That shit is just physical anyway. In the end, we all going to lose it one day,” I let her know, and she was still looking at me like I was kicking bullshit to her.
“The last bitch you fucked, was she skinny or thick?” she boldly asked me.
I wasn’t the type of nigga to lie or hold back from shit, so I answered her question.
“She was thick. Thick as fuck, actually,” I said, and there she was, rolling her eyes again.
“And the one before that?” she asked.
“Thick too,” I responded.
“And let me guess, your baby mama is thick too, right?” she asked me, and I nodded.
“Okay then, so don’t say you don’t have a type! It’s clear as day that thick women are your top pick, which lets me know that you weren’t just fuckin’ with me, as you put it when you said what you said to me a while back,” she said.
I let her have her piece, and when I knew she was finished, that’
s when I went in.
“You done?” I asked her, and she nodded that she was. “All those thick bitches that you sitting here getting all riled up about were just bitches that I fucked! I didn’t drop down on one knee and ask neither of them broads to marry me, not even my own baby mama. When that day comes, and I find me a little shorty that I want to settle down with, like I said, she can be skinny, thick, or fat, as long as I fuck with her personality, she’s beautiful, my kids like her, and so forth.
“Thick women just happen to be the ones who flock to me. I don’t know what it is about you skinny women. Y’all probably think I have too much dick, so y’all don’t even bother shooting your shot with me,” I threw in, and she looked at me like yeah right. I laughed and then I continued. “On some real shit, I heard skinny women can take dick better anyway, so I take that last part back,” I told her.
“Too bad that I won’t be the skinny woman who proves if you’re right or wrong,” she let me know.
I pulled down on my chin hair, and it was my turn to look at her like, yeah right. I wouldn’t say that I was cocky or no shit like that, but I never wanted any pussy that I couldn’t have. If I wanted to fuck Takari right here and right now, I would have her riding my dick before I could even find a fuckin’ condom in this bitch. Not because I had it like that, but because I was a man who knew what to say. I could talk her right out of her panties if I wanted to, but I honestly wasn’t on that with her.
Yes, she was fine, and all of that, but shorty was married. Plus, her head was fucked up right now. She could be screaming that she wanted a divorce today but would be somewhere fuckin’ that nigga next week. I was too fuckin’ crazy to let a woman play me like that. If Takari and I ever decided to fuck with each other on that level, I needed to see her name signed on that dotted line, proving to me that she was really done with ole boy. I didn’t just want to hear her say the shit. I wanted to actually see her making moves.
Love Me Page 14