CHAPTER 2
BREEZY
My brows pinched togetherwhen my doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting company, so I wondered who was at my door. Popping a shrimp into my mouth, I sauntered to the door and stuck my eye in front of the peephole.
“Fuck do you want?” I barked.
“It’s Taco Tuesday, hoe. Open the door.”
Giggling, I twisted the lock and let Lauren in. “It’s not Taco Tuesday over here for you. You stood me up to hang with Tyler, remember. Where he at?”
“Girl,” she sighed walking into the living room. “His brother’s girlfriend got shot yesterday. He’s comforting his brother and shit.”
My eyes bulged out of my skull. “Lucci? Is she okay?”
“Yeah. She was hit in the neck, and arm, but a bullet fragment got inside her ear, and it’s probably going to affect her hearing. None of the injuries are life threatening, but she got hit up pretty bad.”
“Damn,” I led Lauren to the kitchen where I was cooking tacos and drinking tequila and Red Bull.
I couldn’t even front. When I first saw Lucci in the park, he was the first light-skinned man I had ever internally salivatedover. He was seriously handsome, but when Lauren told me he had a girl and that she’d never heard of him cheating, my infatuation dissipated. I overly respected a loyal man, and I’d never be that thirsty ass broad throwing myself at a man that was spoken for. That was bird behavior in the highest form, and I was far from a bird.
“He be out here on that dumb shit?” I grabbed a bottle of Azul and a glass. I could look at Lucci and tell that he was rugged as hell and far from the corporate type, but he could have had a job. Maybe he was a tattoo artist or a rapper. I had never heard anything about him until that day in the park when Lauren gave me a brief rundown.
“I don’t really know. I honestly don’t even know what Lucci does. I don’t think he sells drugs. Years ago, my cousins told me he was into scamming and shit. He bought my cousin’s homegirl a Louis Vuitton purse and some mo’ shit with a stolen credit card. I don’t know what he’s on now. I think he pretty much stays out the way.”
“Damn that’s messed up,” I mumbled passing her the glass.
I’d dated my share of bad boys, and I couldn’t imagine being shot multiple times simply from riding in the car with someone that possibly had beef that didn’t involve me. I had no clue who his girlfriend was, but I said a quick prayer that she was okay. Hearing about the tragedy had dampened the mood a bit. I sipped my drink and tried to shake the heaviness off.
“You really like Tyler, or he’s just something to do?”
Lauren’s cheeks reddened instantly, and I knew she liked him. “Tyler is cute,” she grinned. “He’s a little younger than me. He’s only twenty-six, so I don’t really know.”
Simultaneously, I kissed my teeth and rolled my eyes. “He’s four years younger than you. That’s not bad.”
A slight scowl covered her face. “You know men mature slow. I don’t know. He’s been flirting with me for a minute, but I justgave him my number like a month ago. I’m going to take it slow. You know these men are good for being everything you want in the beginning and as soon as you let your guard down, they unleash their inner fuck nigga.”
“You ain’t never lied,” I sighed. Shaking my head I couldn’t help but think of TJ. He begged for my number, we talked on the phone for a month, he took me out on a date, and the day after our date, I saw a picture of him on social media with his child that had just been born five hours before. I blocked him and kept it pushing.
Men could be some sick ass creatures, and I had no desire to waste my time or energy on them. I was thirty with no prospects in sight for a husband. Being a baby mama was never on my bingo card, so no husband meant no baby. Time was ticking, and it wasn’t on my side. A husband that didn’t play about me and one or two kids would have been nice, but I wasn’t forcing shit, and I wasn’t settling.
“I can’t believe Lucci looks how he looks and acts how he acts yet, no one can get him to cheat on his girl. She’s real pretty but plain as hell. Real meek and shit. I definitely wouldn’t think they’d be attracted to one another, but the fact that he doesn’t cheat says it all. She has herself a winner. And that gives me hope. Hopefully, his brother is the same way.”
I turned the stove off and used my fork to remove the shrimp I cooked from the pan. “What does Tyler do? Does he have any kids?”
“He sells weed, and he has a mobile car detailing service. And he’s not a baby daddy.”
“Oh shit, you should have been gave me his card. He can start getting my baby right. I don’t mind spending with him as long as he does a good job.”
“He’s the best,” she grinned, and twerked a little on the barstool she was seated on.
“Anyway,” I laughed while grabbing a few bowls to put the toppings for the tacos in. “I’ll hit him up. Sometimes, the guy I use be on bullshit. I pay him too much money not to be completely satisfied.”
I was an only child, but my father had a huge family. He had nine sisters and brothers and between the ten of them, my grandparents had thirty-two grandchildren and seven great grandchildren. My mother’s family wasn’t as large, but it wasn’t exactly small either. I was cool with one of my aunts, an uncle, and a few cousins, but my mother was a deadbeat and so was her mother. My grandmother was a drunk that let any and everybody watch my mother when she was a child. From what I was told, my grandmother was either always somewhere in the streets or passed out while other people watched her child. As she got older, there were times my mother fended for herself.
My parents met when they were seventeen and fresh out of high school my father landed a decent job. It didn’t take long for him to get his own place, and my mother moved in with him. By the time I was born, she wasn’t interested in being a mother. All she wanted to do was party all night and sleep all day. My father would come home from work to find me screaming my head off, and her asleep. He wasn’t going for that and when I was eight months old, he put her out and never looked back. For as long as I could remember, my mother hardly ever came around and when she did, she acted like anything but a mother.
The older I got, I had no desire to be around her and when I expressed that to my father, he didn’t force me to deal with her. Our relationship was pretty much nonexistent and while it bothered me when I was a child, as an adult, I was fine with it. I had plenty of cousins, aunts, and uncles, plus my grandparents and father to always feel loved and supported. Because I had such a large family, I never needed a lot of friends, but the women in The Hellcat Barbies had become my family. Laurenand I were the closest, but I rocked with all the ladies. I simply wanted a hellcat and two days after I got it, I used the hashtag on Instagram, and discovered there were quite a few women in Diamond Cove that had hellcats, and the idea to start a car club was born.
