“Whatever. And thank you.” My grandmother placed the card on the table.
“Need me to do anything?” I looked around the kitchen. Monie was making potato salad, her daughter, Jasmine was taking a pan of macaroni and cheese out of the oven, and my cousin, Pam, was taking pieces of chicken out of piping hot grease.
“No, we got it all covered,” Monie answered. “Everything is about done. We’ll be eating in another ten minutes or so.”
I bobbed my head, grabbed a Sprite from the cooler and went outside to join my cousins and uncles at the spades table. “What it do, Breezy?” my cousin, Blake asked as I sat down. “When you gonna introduce me to one of them fine ass hoes in your car club?”
“I know you didn’t just play in my face like that!”
Blake’s eyes almost jumped out of his head as the woman that was pregnant with his child snaked her neck at him. “Got damn I forgot you were sitting right there,” he genuinely looked stumped. Blake looked down at the cup in his hand inspecting the contents as if he didn’t know what he was drinking. The look of confusion on his face was comical.
“You better put that cup down before it gets your head knocked off your shoulders,” my Aunt Connie shook her head athim. She’d been smoking crack for as long as I could remember, and she was a better mother to her kids than my mother was to me.
“It’s all good,” Kacey seethed. “I see the kinds of things that come out of your mouth when I’m not around. Just wait until I drop this load. I got a trick for your ass.”
“Aight. We magicians and shit now, huh? Don’t get fucked up,” Blake warned.
“Spell magician you stupid mother fucker.” Kacey stood up and stormed away from the table while we all laughed our asses off. Blake was lowkey slow as hell. He could barely read on a third-grade level but was always somewhere in a woman’s face.
“That hoe tripping. Anyway,” Blake mumbled trying to save face. “Like I said, Breezy. When you gon’ stop playing and hook me up?”
“You want me to lie to you or hurt your feelings?”
Blake frowned. “What you mean hurt my feelings?”
“Every single one of The Hellcat Barbies has something going for herself. We don’t just have nice cars. These are educated women with careers and money. Most of them have boyfriends but the ones that are single are about their business. You’re what? Twenty-six? You don’t have a job. You don’t have a car. You have a baby on the way, and you live with your baby mama in her mother’s house and after what you just did, you might not even live there.”
My Aunt Connie snickered while Blake’s frown deepened.
“I do have a job. I just got on at Wendy’s, and I’m about to start helping my homeboy detail cars on the weekend. I get forty hours a week at Wendy’s, and he’s going to pay me $100 per car I do. Even if I only do four or five cars in a weekend, that’s four or five hundred dollars,” he stated proudly.
“Congratulations,” was all I said, and I left it at that. I couldn’t knock anyone’s hustle, and him having two jobs wasbetter than not having one at all. But he wasn’t on any of the Barbie’s level, and there was no way in hell he could expect any of them to entertain him.
His credit score probably wasn’t even a 500. The man didn’t possess anything of his own except clothes and shoes. I was willing to bet that he didn’t even have a primary care physician, a savings account, or life insurance. I’d never in life attempt to put anyone that I actually liked and respected down with him. Shit, if Kacey asked me, I’d tell her ass she could do better, and he was my cousin.
The man had to live in her mother’s house, and he’d still been bold enough to sit in her face and disrespect her. That was one of the reasons that I’d been so into Lucci. Even when he wasn’t happy in his relationship, he never cheated, and I respected the hell out of him for that. I didn’t want thoughts of Lucci to sour my mood, so I finished off my Sprite and went to fix myself something stronger. I wasn’t going to get drunk. All I needed was a buzz. A buzz that would probably make me horny…
Stand on business. Inwardly, I had to give myself a pep talk. I couldn’t fold. Not this time. Lucci was going to take as long as he needed to figure things out with Kiandra, and I wasn’t accepting anything less. We’d played a dangerous game by jumping into something too fast. Now, I had to deal with the consequences. I liked Lucci. I really did. I even liked Kiandra. But I didn’t play second to anybody, so if he wasn’t sure where his loyalty lay, and he didn’t know who to choose, I’d make it easy for him. He could choose her every time.
CHAPTER 15
LUCCI
I laidon Kiandra’s bed with her head on my chest and one arm wrapped around her. I had been staring at the ceiling for the past, shit, I didn’t even know. Maybe an hour. Maybe more. The fact that I was being such a pussy was pissing me off. Even after I knocked her father out, she still wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, and couldn’t function knowing that I had moved on with Breezy. I didn’t think seeing my face would be good for her, but her friend seemed to think that it might help. My stupid ass fell for the okie doke, and now shorty had her head on my chest. That wasn’t helping shit, but what was I supposed to say? We weren’t getting back together, and I wasn’t going to sleep with her. If she wanted comfort from a man that refused to be with her, maybe that was the least I could give her.
Kiandra’s soft snores stopped, and she inhaled a deep breath through her nose and stretched. “I didn’t even realize I fell asleep.” She sat up, and I continued to stare at the ceiling. Life had gone from sugar to shit real fast, and I hadn’t been able to get back right. Tyler’s death set shit off. Everything was wrong. Nothing was right. Well, my money was right, but that was about it. Life was a shit show. At the rate I was going, I should have just stayed in a relationship with Kiandra and been bored as fuck.
“You spending the night?” she asked in a small voice. Her question snatched me out of the daze that I was in causing me to sit up as well.
“Nah. I have to get going.”
“You’re going to her?”
I sighed. “Kiandra,” all I could do was shake my head. “I came over here because Ro was worried about you. Your parents are worried about you. I didn’t even know if it was good for me to come by, but I’m worried about you too. Baby, I’m not worth it. I promise I’m not.”
“You can just get out. I don’t even know why Ro called you. I don’t even know why you came. Just to tell me again that you don’t want me. You think I want to be a complete, pathetic mess? You think I want everyone to know that you broke my heart? If I could just snap my fingers and make all of this disappear I would. Don’t you know that?” Kiandra was pissed. I still wasn’t used to seeing her upset.
“Were you dealing with her when I talked to her about becoming a Hellcat Barbie? I bet you she laughed behind my back. And I was all at the brunch. Wow.” Kiandra clicked her tongue.
