The One He Craves

by A Marie Johnson

  “Yes. I am.” I smiled weakly, hoping he’d understand. “I can make up for it, though. I want you to be my date to my uncle’s cancer free celebration in a few weeks. He’s been in remission for a year now, and he’s celebrating by throwing a get-together at his house.” My smile quickly turned into a pleading one.

  If I could get Andretti to meet my family now instead of later, our getting to know each other better process would run a lot smoother. If my family—more specifically my father—approved of him now, I would have nothing to worry about later on. I knew as soon as I showed my father who Andretti was, he’d probably know a little something about him and the kind of man he was since he was on the police force. He worked in the gang and drug unit for a long time before he was promoted to a police sergeant. I needed them to meet before Andretti and I got super serious, because the last thing I wanted was for my father to think I was making another bad choice in men.

  10

  Andretti

  After I agreed to be Nim’s date to her uncle’s party, she asked me a thousand and one questions about my family I didn’t even mind answering. We talked about basic things like who my mother and father were. If I had siblings and how my relationship with them was. I couldn't count on one hand how many times she awwed when I told her about my relationship with Bebe and how she had made me feel like I meant the world to her ever since she came into my life. She thought it was noble of Bebe to treat me no differently than she treated Aniya.

  I didn't tell her much about my baby sister other than she hadn't been acting like herself lately and was into some things that could get her in trouble. Nim prayed over Aniya's safety and said she hoped she would start acting like her normal self again soon. Her compassion toward people she'd never met in her life attracted me to her more than I already was, and that shit was already through the roof and beyond the stars. Nim never failed at drawing me into her.

  It'd been years since I talked to anyone about the situation with my birth mother, but it felt natural to be open about almost anything with Nim. The sad look in her eyes when I told her about how my birth mother abandoned me on my father's doorstep was the exact reason why I never talked about it, though. It wasn't like my mother put me in a fucked up situation by leaving me with my father, so I didn't need any sympathy, but I couldn't lie and say hers wasn't cute or didn't make me feel good.

  “So yeah. That's the only reason I tried to convince myself I could never be serious with you, Nim. I felt like women who were capable of having one night stands were capable of much worse shit. Shit like what my mother did. That was unfair of me to think, though. And again, I’m sorry for ever making you feel like…”

  “Please, don’t bring that up again, Dretti. I’ve forgiven you. We’re good.” Nim placed her hand over mine and smiled up at me.

  Damn, she was so fucking beautiful. Everything about Nim’s pretty face turned me on, but her soft, pink lips were my favorite thing about her. They called out my name every time I stared at them.

  Running my thumb across her bottom lip I asked, “So I’m Dretti now?”

  That was the first time I’d heard Nim call me by my nickname. I was so used to her calling me Andretti that I had to ask about the sudden change.

  Nim trailed her finger along my jawline and smiled a cheesy ass smile that made me smile back at her.

  “Is that who you want to be?”

  “I want to be whoever you want me to be, beautiful.”

  “Oh really?" Nim's smile grew wider. "Are you sure about that?”

  “I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t, mami.”

  “Mmhm. We’ll see soon enough.” She giggled when I tickled her sides. “Stop, Dretti!” Nim pried my teasing fingers away from her. "I feel like you're trying to stop me from continuing on with my questions. If this is a deflecting tactic, you're so not slick."

  Chuckling, I relaxed against the couch cushions and rested my hands on her thick thighs.

  "I'm wide open for you, baby. Ask anything else you want to know. I'm all ears and answers."

  Nim snuggled deeper into my hold and rubbed her hands up and down my forearms. I picked up on her hesitation and felt she was probably about to continue asking questions about my birth mother.

  "I know this is a personal topic, Dretti, but I can't help my curiosity. You've really never, ever met your birth mother? Do you even know her name?"

  “Nah,” I casually answered the first question. With anyone else, I probably would've been bothered by their persistence to know more about the subject, but I didn't feel that way with Nim. “I’ve really never, ever met her, but I do know her name. My father told me who she was a long time ago after he explained why she wasn’t in my life.”

  “OK, so you know her name and you’ve never thought about finding out more about her? Or even her family?”

  “Not at all. I went without them my whole life, Nim. My whole life neither her or her family once tried to reach out to me, and I had a good family on my dad’s side that made up for their absence, anyway. It was no need to know anything about some muthafuckas who made it clear they didn’t want shit to do with me.”

  “You’re older now though, Dretti. What about when you have kids and they ask you questions about your mom’s side of the family? You won’t feel the need to find out more about them so you can answer your kids' questions? Kids are curious. They’ll want to know about the people they come from even if you don’t.”

  I mulled over Nim’s words before I answered her. I’d never put the situation with my mother and her family in that type of perspective. I hadn’t even talked about my birth mother to anyone in years. My father and Bebe never brought her up, and I didn’t either. I never longed to have a relationship with her because Bebe came in my life early enough for me not to miss out on a woman’s motherly touch and nature.

  “I don’t think I can answer that question until it becomes relevant, Nim. I can’t say how I’d feel because kids change you in ways you could never imagine, and since I don’t have them right now, I’m not thinking as a father. I’m thinking like a man with pride. A man who’d never in his life beg for a muthafucka to be in it.”

  “Well, I know you might not care about what I think, but I’m going to tell you anyway.” Nim smirked, and I chuckled at her persistent ass. “I think you should at least find out who they are, Dretti. I mean, you could be doing business with some of your relatives right now and not even know it. Isn’t that weird to you?”

  “As long as them niggas pay me, not really.” I shrugged.

  Nim hit me on the chest and raised her voice a little when she spoke.

  “I’m being serious, Dretti! This is not a funny, he-he-ha-ha matter. This is your history we’re talking about. Your blood. You at least owe it to yourself to know who these people are. If not for you right now, at least do it for your future.”

  “Why though, baby? Adding more people to my life sounds like adding more stress. Why can’t I leave their asses wherever the fuck they’ve been at and keep it pushing?” I said it jokingly, and she hit me on my chest again.

  “I feel like you’re only joking right now because you don’t want to express your real feelings about the situation.” Damn. I couldn’t wrap my head around how she was able to call me out on my bullshit so well. “It’s OK to want to know who you come from, Dretti. It’s not a diss to the family that took care of you, and it doesn’t mean you have to be the best of friends with the new family you find out about. It just means you want to know your history. Everyone deserves the right to know who their people are. So just… think about it, OK?”

  “You got it, mami. I’ll think about it.” I placed a kiss on her forehead and another one on the top of her shoulder. “I already feel like I’d do anything for you, Nim.”

  And I meant that shit with every bone in my body too.

  No question about it.

  “Aniya still hasn’t been back home yet?” I asked my father, Andre, as I took a seat on the couch across
from the one he was sitting on.

  Bebe called me the morning after Exon’s party and told me Aniya left the house as soon as I dropped her off. She hadn’t been answering anyone’s phone calls, and Bebe was at her wit's end with her disrespect.

  “Nope. Haven’t seen her.”

  The coolness in my father's tone made one of my eyebrows raise, and I scratched the side of my temple, trying to figure out why his temper didn’t flare when he answered. My father wasn’t the type of man you wanted to piss off, and now that I thought about it, I had yet to see him go off on Aniya about her wild change in behavior these past few months.

  That shit didn’t make sense to me at all.

  “So you’re cool with her not coming home for days at a time? Knowing she’s fucking around with a snake ass nigga?”

  My father took one last pull of the cigar he was smoking and reached across the table to hand it to me.

  “Yep. That ain't my business.”

  After he said that, I could’ve finished off the whole cigar in two seconds. He was too calm for my own damn nerves. Aniya was somewhere running around with Exon’s reckless ass, getting into only God knows what, and my father was sitting around smoking and relaxing like it wasn’t a problem or his concern. As if his name didn’t hold major weight all throughout the city. A nigga like Exon shouldn’t have been able to associate himself with anybody with the last name Matthews, period.

  Snakes had never been allowed to associate with the likes of anyone who was related or close to my father, and he had been untouchable the entire time he was in the drug game because of it. My father could point out a grimy nigga better than anyone, and he kept his circle of people close to his chest. He didn’t allow anybody he fucked with to fuck with anybody he didn’t. That was the law.

  “You gon’ have to explain this shit to me, Pops, because I’m confused as fuck right now.”

  “Don’t disrespect me, little nigga,” my father warned. “Do you honestly think I’m just now finding out about Aniya and Exon’s relationship? You of all people should know better than that, Dretti. I may be retired, but my connections are not.” He shook his head and motioned for me to give him his cigar back. “Aniya has been seeing Exon's dumb ass since he got out of prison a few months ago.”

  The fuck?

  The vein on the side of my neck pulsed rapidly, and I had to think very carefully on my next words because I never wanted to disrespect my father in any way, but knowing he kept that kind of information from me had me hella pissed off.

  I couldn’t respond to him right away. I had to take a deep breath and a long exhale before I said anything.

  “Pops, why would you keep some shit like that from me? I could’ve…”

  “You could’ve fucking what, Dretti!” he yelled. Finally, the temper I’d been waiting to see rise was in action. He’d been playing this situation too fucking cool. “I warned her once to stay away from him, and she didn’t listen. You know I don’t ever repeat myself, so there ain’t shit else I can do about it but kill him off, and he’s not worth the fucking time or body.”

  “And you haven’t tried to reason with her since then? I don’t get this shit, man. Somebody gotta talk some goddamn sense into her before she fucks around and ends up in a situation she won’t know how to get herself out of.”

  My father chuckled and ashed his cigar on the side of the ashtray on top of the table.

  “Dretti, clearly listen to me when I tell you this. When a woman loves a man, ain’t nothing nobody can do to stop it. Aniya’s young-minded ass thinks she’s in love, and until she realizes Exon’s love isn’t the kind of love she needs, nothing anyone says is going to make her fall out of it. Exon can be the most ain’t shit man in the world, and she’ll still stand right behind him, helping him clean up his bullshit. Trust me.”

  “So basically you’re telling me we’re supposed to sit back and watch this train wreck happen? ‘Cause we know that’s exactly what it’s gon’ be. A fucking disaster.”

  “It sounds worse when you put it that way, Dretti, but that’s exactly what we’re supposed to do. Sometimes you have to let the people you love fall on their ass so they can realize how soft and precious it actually is. Aniya will learn her lesson soon enough. And when she needs us to be there for her after she does, we will. Until then, we wait.”

  Although I didn’t want to agree with my father’s logic, I knew I had no other choice. Aniya’s mind was so far gone she was ready to hate me in order to love Exon, and as much as that shit hurt my feelings, I knew there was nothing I could do to change it. Until Aniya saw Exon’s true colors, she would continue to be blind and make reckless decisions.

  “I know you’re probably ready for me to get out your hair, Pops, but I got one more thing I need to rap with you about.”

  “Goddamn. What is it now, son? A man can only take so much more when it comes to this family. I’m already hearing enough shit from Bebe because your sister is turning her hair gray. So if it has anything else to do with that little heathen, save that shit for tomorrow. I’m tired, and I’m ready to go to sleep, shit.”

  “Nah.” I chuckled at his irritation. It was about time his rude ass mouth showed up. “It’s about me. About my birth mother, actually.”

  My father’s eyebrows dipped and he stared at me with a slack expression for a while. I could tell he was thrown off by the topic and hadn’t figured out how to respond. I hadn’t asked him about Regina since I was a young boy. It was a topic we both steered clear of.

  After a minute or two, he slouched back against the couch and rubbed the sides of his beard.

  “You wanna talk about Regina?” he asked in a clarifying tone.

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “What about her? You haven’t asked or talked about her in years, Dretti. Is something wrong?”

  “Nah. I’m good, Pops. I guess I’m just wondering if you might know where she is? Or who some of her people are?”

  Sighing, my father sat up straight and rubbed his thumbs together. It was a gesture he always made when he had some heavy shit to lay on somebody.

  “Regina is dead, Andretti.”

  Good goddamn grief.

  I couldn’t figure out if I was more shocked by Regina being dead or my father once again keeping some deep information from me. I’d never known him to keep secrets and I didn’t know how to feel about it.

  “How long have you known this, and why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “I’ve known for maybe two or three years now. I never said anything about it because I didn’t think you’d want to know. You haven’t asked about her since you were a kid, Dretti. I figured you’d be better off without the information.” My father sighed and massaged his temples. “Where is this even coming from?”

  “Nowhere really. I don’t have a specific reason.”

  “Cut the fucking bullshit, Dretti. No one is going to randomly ask about a woman they haven’t wanted to speak about in years for no reason. What the fuck is going on?”

  “A nigga can’t just be curious about who he comes from?”

  My father chuckled and looked at me knowingly.

  “So what’s her name, son?”

  Laughing, I rubbed underneath my chin and pretended not to know what he was talking about.

  “What’s whose name, Pops?”

  “You wanna play all fucking night, don’t you?” My father and I both laughed. “You know exactly who I’m talking about, Dretti. The woman who has your ass doing shit you said you’d never do.” Clearly, nothing got past my father or Bebe. She 'd said something very similar when I sat down and talked to her not too long ago. “Apparently, I've got all night now. So go ahead and tell me more about this woman, Dretti. I’ll stay up to hear this shit."

  11

  Nim

  “It’s sooo perfect, Dretti! I can’t wait to decorate it and jazz the place up. It’s so beautiful!”

  Andretti picked me up by my underarms and twirled me around the driveway. We ha
d just finished doing a walkthrough of the mini-mansion Steeze was throwing his party at, and I was utterly excited about how gorgeous the house was.

  It was well into the evening and the garden lights lined around the long, circular driveway shined beautifully against the light brown bricks of the home. The front and backyard were filled with lush green grass, and both were spacious enough to hold the entire party outside if Steeze wanted to. The mini-mansion was the last house at the end of the street, and there was enough space between it and the next house to play the music Andretti and Keyon would be mixing as loud as it could possibly be played. Everything about the house was absolutely perfect for a summer-night party, and I couldn’t have been more honored that I would be the one putting it all together.

  “The house is aight,” Andretti teased and placed me on the hood of his GranTurismo. “It’s not as beautiful as you are, though. I know that for a fact.”

  Placing his head on top of my forehead, Andretti stared deep into my eyes and licked his sexy full lips, and right as I was about to place my lips against his, my phone rang loudly and interrupted our intimate moment. I pulled it from my pocket, ready to curse whoever it was out for calling me so late, and instantly became annoyed when the caller ID showed Britton’s number.

  “What’s wrong?” Andretti asked, noticing the sudden frown on my face.

  “Britton is calling me from his business phone. I’ve been meaning to block this number because I knew he’d try to call me from it once he found out his personal phone number was blocked, but I never got around to it."

  Andretti cupped my chin in his hand and looked back and forth between my eyes.

  “Be honest with me when I ask you this, Nim. Does his calling make you feel uncomfortable?”

  Biting down on my lip, I nodded my head yes and let out a low breath.

  “Yeah, it actually kind of does. I honestly just want him to move on and leave me alone. I’d never go back to him, Dretti. Never.”