“Good, because I got some shit to tell you bestie.” I loved to call him bestie even though he hated that shit with a passion.
“Like what?”
“I’m like five minutes from the house. Can you meet me outside? I got a few groceries.”
“Why? It isn’tlike you’re going to cook anything you buy.”
“You’re right I’m not. Ommy is cooking tonight.” I called myself smart by buying what I wanted to eat for her to cook.
He talked to me until I reached the house and even had the gate open for me to pull right in. Namari was definitely sweet when he wanted to be, but when he didn’t want to be he wasn’t. Just like I thought he would, he met me at the circle and grabbed all the bags to take them.
“What did you have to tell me?” He sat all of the bags on the counter and peered at me.
“I was in the nail salon earlier and Requ’s baby mother ran up on me. She told me to leave her man alone.”
“And what did you do?” Now this was the trick question, because if I told him I fought anybody and they hit me he’d be pissed because he still thought I should’ve been laid up somewhere healing. If I was healed enough to take dick then I was healed enough to defend myself. His overprotective ass didn’t see it that way and that’s why he asked me to stay out ofthe city unless it was business related until all of this was over. “Surah.”
“She approached me disrespectful as fuck and I was sitting in a chair. So, to create some space I cracked her upside her fucking head with the little metal nail drying fan.”
I expected him to give me shit, but shockingly he started laughing then his face grew serious. “Look Ion need you out here fighting, but I understand defending yourself. I hope you told that bitch I’d be to see that nigga too.”
“And did.” I leaned forward and pressed my lips against his.See, his childishness matched mine. His weird, matched mine. Shit, his everything matched mine effortlessly.
I had a nightmare last night. The type of night terror that kept me up for the rest of the night staring at the side of the wall while I lay snuggled in his arms. I didn’t want to wake Mari, because what was the sense of me waking him up and us both staring at the wall? There was none, so I toughed it out and tried not to move so much so he didn’t realize I was awake. He needed his sleep, shit that was the least I could do for him since he had damn near dedicated his work to finding who shot me and killing them. Of course he didn’t say any of that directly to me, but I wasn’t like the females who sat pretty and acted oblivious to who they laid next to every night. He didn’t have to tell me who he was because this wasn’t my first rodeo.
Before Namari there was Pharaoh. They were two totally different men, but they chose the same lives for different reasons. I was fifteen when I fell headfirst in love with a nigga who didn’t have the ability to love anything but the streets. Shit, I wanted him to love me like he loved those streets, but he didn’thave that capacity. Pharaoh wanted to be number one and hood rich, a dream that he refused to slow down on attaining. I got pregnant by him at sixteen and he begged me to keep it. For a split moment I wanted to because I was convinced that the baby would keep him. I thought that baby would make him love me almost as much as he loved those fucking streets. To make a long story short I made the hardest decision I’ve ever made. I aborted his child and went about my life. It was nothing against him, but everything about the longing I had to be a fixture in his life. I was too young for that shit and had a lot more life to live before I found myself lost in love with a drug dealer. Especially not one that I had to sneak into the bathroom window of my mama’s two-bedroom apartment.
None of what I went through stopped me from loving hood niggas, shit it made me love them even more, because they were the most driven beings to be created. A hoodnigga would make a way when their wasn’t one. My favorite thing about them was their ability to be emotionally unavailable but sell a dream like a used car salesman. That shit right there was top fucking tier to a girl like me who was also emotionally unavailable as well. While their unavailability came from the need to survive mine came from the fact that my father didn’t think enough of me to stick around.
Pharoah and I never talked after I did that. I didn’t expect us to though. Though that was a lifetime ago I still thought about it. None of that matters now though, because Pharaoh was killed about a year ago right after he attained all that he had worked his life away for and I lately found myself in a different space. I was wide freaking open and emotionally available for Namari Payne’s hood ass. The difference was that Namari didn’t belong to the streets. He belonged to himself and had the emotional ability to think and feel outside of them. Though he seemed emotionally unavailable at first, I quickly learned that wasn’t thecase. It just took a special person to open him up, just like it did the same for me.
“Earth to Surah. You good over there?” Ommy’s voice broke my thoughts.
I looked up from my phone and my eyes landed directly on my cousin. Concern was etched all over her face.
“Are you good?” she asked a few seconds later.
“Yeah. Sometimes I get lost in my thoughts. You sure you don’t want me to help your big ass cut up the veggies?” Tonight we were having dinner like we used to before she got with North and I got with Namari. It’s crazy that everything changed so much when we both found ourselves in relationships. The only person missing was Luna. She was still out of town dealing with whatever was going on with her family.
“First of all I’m not that big. Actually I’m carrying small,” Ommy tried to defend.
“And who told you that lie?” I smirked “Hopefully not the man you’re fucking and sucking every night because he’s biased.”
“And how do you figure that?”
“Umm hello. I literally just said it. Sucking and fu…” My sentence trailed off the moment I laid eyes on Niema walking in the room.
“Hey Surah. Ommy, North said answer your freaking phone. I’m not gonna say the word he said.”
I greeted her back just before she turned around and went back to the area that she was in before she came in here.
“So I saw my mother at the shop.” She was tapping away on her phone before she looked up at me.
“What mother?Girl quit playing.” I waved her off thinking she was joking.
She shook her head. “Nope, not a joke.” Then she gave me the rundown of what happened and by the time she was finished I was floored.
“I mean what are you gonna do?”
