Moose snorted and stepped past them to get to Mozzi. He slid his stool up to the chair and picked up his needle, so he could get to work. “Wake Up in the Sky” with Gucci Mane, Bruno Mars, and Kodak Black thumped through the bass. Coast snapped her fingers and bent her knees while doing a little twerk.
“This my shit!” She twirled in a circle and threw her ass back, catching Moose’s attention. He laughed and shook his head. “Stop looking at my girl, nigga.” Mozzi shoved him.
“Be still before I fuck yo’ shit up,” Moose grumbled, leaning in closer as he worked on the piece on his back. “The fuck you doing with her anyway?”
Mozzi sipped Don Julio from his plastic red cup, and his eyes focused on the ground. Moose had comic strips on his floor, which was smart. People had to rest on their stomach often if he was doing work on their backside, so it gave them something to look at.
“Ion know,” Mozzi mumbled as his phone went off.
He picked it up off the side table where Moose kept his instruments and swiped to find a bunch of texts from Lin, Gill, and Roni coming through. The last few days, he hadn’t been fucking with any of them like he normally did, and after todayat the tournament, it was clear why. Now they were all shook because he was leaving them on read.
“She pregnant.”
“I told you that, fool.” Mozzi scrolled through Lin’s threats, Roni nagging him about not responding, and Gill asking him if she could get her back cracked later.
While tempting, since he wasn’t fucking Coast, he shook his head and ignored all of them again. Mozzi was a pain freak, always had been. The pinches against his skin from the needle were welcomed as Moose worked meticulously.
“I’m saying, she seems cool. A good girl.”
“You seen that attitude? ’Cause it’s more where that came from,” Mozzi joked.
“Like you ain’t moody. Has she seen that side of you?”
Nobody knew Mozzi better than his brothers. The three of them had seen each other at their darkest and lowest too many times to count. Growing up the way they did, being raised by Audiemar, who was slightly off his rocker and not at all traditional himself, their lives were as far away from normal as it could get.
“Moose, I don’t need this shit, aight. I’m fucking with her. That’s my business. I don’t know what the shit is because I ain’t never felt it before,” Mozzi confessed, propping his chin against both hands resting on the headrest in front of him.
His brother paused, watching how rigid he was now as he stared off ahead. He’d never heard him that defensive or open, and this was the first time he ever confessed to feeling anything for anybody aside from lust.
“And the baby?”
“What about it?”
“Nigga, the fuck you know about babies? You don’t even fuck with chicks who have kids. One of your own fucking rules,remember?” Moose jogged his memory but went back to drilling into his skin.
“Like I told her, that’s my fucking baby.” Mozzi glanced at his brother over his shoulder. “Fuck that nigga that got her pregnant.”
“I never thought I’d see the day a female got you tight like this. Let me find out you trying to grow up.”
“Fuck you,” Mozzi snuffed, chuckling with his brother.
The whole time Moose worked on Mozzi, Inari, Coast, and Ayla danced and sang along with whatever trap tunes blared from the surround sound speakers in the shop. Other than Trini, Moose had three other artists in the shop who were all dope at what they did. People bounced from chair to chair all night. Things didn’t start to wind down until nearly two am. By then, Ayla’s eyes were so tight from smoking weed that they were barely open. Her first za experience was one for the books, and Inari made sure to capture a few moments for reels and her stories to post. Although Coast couldn’t drink, she caught a contact high off all the weed being smoked, and her energy was almost like she had indulged with them all night.
“I’m hungry,” she declared, watching Moose cover Mozzi’s back in some kind of ointment over his fresh tatt.
“Yeah, tell us something we don’t know, preggo,” Inari teased.
“Which one of y’all going first?” Moose sparked a blunt he’d rolled and leaned against the counter.
“Me!” Ayla hopped up from the seat beside Kong and slid into Moose’s chair past Mozzi.
“Yo, my man Sipes know you pregnant?” a raspy voice questioned from the doorway to Moose’s suite.
Fire, Sipes’ right hand man stood in the doorway with two brown skinned girls in tight leather skirts and matching tops oneither side of him. Removing the cherry flavored Blow Pop from his mouth, he grinned as Coast turned rigid.
“Fuck you, Fire. My baby ain’t got shit to do with Sipes!” she hissed.
“Hmm, yeah, we’ll let him decide that.” His dark eyes swam over her in the tight, see through dress before skimming the other faces in the room.
