“We’re halfway through the album. The next song that I’m going to play is called lock eyes. Lock eyes is one of those songs where the title speaks for itself. It’s about the first time that you lock eyes with somebody, and just from one look, you know that they’re the one. You feel it, without even knowing their name. Here it is,” she went on to say, and then the beat dropped, and the soft R&B song started playing.
I was posted up with my dawgs, rolling up, vibing to the music. The second I lit the blunt, my eyes darted over to some fine shit that was sitting across the room. Seeing her, it caughtme off guard, so I damn near dropped the blunt that I was holding in my hands, but luckily, I was quick, so I was able to catch it before it hit the floor.
I squinted my eyes a little bit, even with the prescription glasses that I wore, trying to get a better look at her. All the women here were dressed up in these tight ass dresses, ass cheeks out, heels that looked high enough to break their necks if they fell, make-up, the whole nine. She didn’t have any of those things going on, but she was the baddest bitch in the fuckin room.
She really didn’t dress up for this party. She came on some chill shit. Her attire, compared to everyone else is what had her standing out. She was comfortable, and she did it effortlessly, too. The forest green and mint track jacket that she had on was tough. It fit loose on her, and it was unzipped , so you could see the black bralette that she was wearing up under. She wore crème track pants that she had pulled up to her waist. The white forces that she had on looked fresh out of the box. Her long, sandy brown hair was parted down the middle, and she didn’t have to do shit but sit there, but the face that she had… the swag that she had, it was going to make people automatically stare.
Her aura was out of this world, and something tells me that she didn’t even know that shit. There were women that she was sitting around, and I could see that she was with them from how close they were sitting to each other. They looked to have been having a good time, vibing to the music, while she looked dissociated, and as if she was ready to go home.
She looked familiar though. I don’t know if I was tripping, but her face looked like one that I’d seen before.
“Ay, who that? The one in the mint track suit,” I asked, nudging Kendrick with my arm, trying to get his attention.
I took a long pull from the blunt, keeping my eyes on her, waiting on him to answer me. He looked, and then he turned his attention back to me.
“That’s Riot. She was locked up for a lil minute. Her mugshot went viral on social media. Shit, she got hella mugshots, and they always go viral, but this one hit different. The whole fuckin timeline was posting her. I’m talking millions and millions of shares,” he voiced, and the second he said that shit, that’s where I remembered her from. The mugshot.
I watched him as he went into his pocket, pulled his phone out, fished around for a little bit, and he handed the phone to me. Easily the sexist mugshot that I’ve ever seen in my life. She wasn’t smiling or looking angry. If anything, she had a look on her face like she was irritated. I kept looking at different facial features of her on the mugshot, and everything was perfect. Her full lips, her pretty eyes, golden skin, perfect eyelashes, the beauty mark under her left eye, just everything. She was flawlessly beautiful. I looked at the picture for a little while longer, and then I handed Kendrick back his phone.
“What she went in for?” I asked.
“Assault. Beat the shit out of this bitch in the club. Knocked her teeth out of her mouth and fucked up her jaw. The bitch ended up pressing charges against her, and everything. She bout two pounds, but they say she like that,” he said, and I agreed with him because she was very tiny. Even with her sitting down, I could tell how small she was.
“They say she in the streets,” Mook joined in because he could hear us talking over the music.
“In the streets doing what?” I asked him, and my question caused him, and Kendrick to laugh.
“Nigga, she in the streets doing the same shit that we out here doing. I mean, she not in a position right now where she gotan organization or anything behind her. They say that she help move weight for Gold” Mook informed me.
I was caught off guard by that, so I stopped hitting the blunt for a second. Gold was big time in Miami. He hasn’t been a small-time hustler since he was a teenager.
“She pretty. Pretty ass bitch for sure. She reminds me of what they say Uzi was back in the day. It’s not often that you’ll hear anyone compare another woman to a young Uzi. Granted, we were kids when Uzi was in the streets, running shit, but just based off the things that they’ve said about Uzi over the years, I feel like Riot has a lot of her ways. I ain’t going to lie, I been looking over there at her since she walked in. She quiet. I can tell by the way her eyes keep searching around this whole room that she’s calculated in everything that she does. If Gold ever put that girl in a position to really run her own shit, she going to be fuckin dangerous, man. Shit, she’ll probably give us a run for our money,” Mook spoke on Riot, and I stood, puffing the blunt, watching her.
In this life, I’ve been in situations where I could have any bitch that I’ve wanted. I’ve fucked some of the prettiest girls. I don’t think that I’ve ever stood back and been this infatuated with one though. I wanted to stand here, post up, and continue to learn new shit about her.
Chapter 4
Riot St. James
“I’ll be back. Ima stand outside,” I announced to my cousins, standing up, putting my hands inside the track pants pockets that I was wearing, ready to cut through them, so that I could stand outside on the back patio.
“No. Sit your ass right here. The last time we all went out together, and you stepped away to use the restroom, your ass was beating a bitch ass, and you had to go to jail for it,” my cousin, Janiyah snapped on me, reaching her hand up, so that she could pull my arm, and prevent me from leaving.
My natural reflexes were to snatch my arm away from her and slap this bitch down for pulling on me like that. I didn’t do that though. I did snatch my arm away from her and look at her ass like she was crazy.
“Chill the fuck out! I’m grown. I don’t need a bitch telling me where the fuck I can and can’t go. Fuck wrong with you?” I snapped.
I only went so hard because Janiyah was the cousin that swore she was my mama. She was older than me by one year, so with that, she felt like she was the boss of my some. She’s been this way since we were kids. I just had to snap on her assyesterday because we all went over to my grandparents’ house for dinner, and there she was, trying to run some shit, boss me around, telling me what I needed to be doing, now that I was free.
Don’t get me wrong, everyone had been getting on me since my release date, telling me that I needed to watch my temper, change my lifestyle around, and things like that, and I’ve taken everything into consideration that everyone had been telling me, even though I still planned to live my life the way that I saw fit. I didn’t like the way Janiyah came at me. You would think that after the way I had to snap on her yesterday that she would stop trying to tell me how to live my life, but I guess not.
“Niyah, chill out. You don’t gotta keep policing her like that. Every time she make a move, you don’t gotta treat her like her actions going to land her on a prison bus. Let her vibe. Go Bean,” Ari defended me, so that I wouldn’t have to continue doing it.
I cut through Ari, Janiyah, and my other cousin, Zaria. Janiyah and Zaria were sisters. They were my auntie Erica’s daughters. Like I already mentioned, Janiyah was only a year older than me, while me and Zaria were the same age. My auntie Katrina was the baby, and she didn’t have any children. I was going to be just like that. I’ve known since I was a kid that I’ve never wanted any children of my own. I love children though. I’m good with kids, but I knew that with the life that I was living, I would be reckless, and foolish to bring kids out into this world.
I hated that I had to step outside, but it was too much going on in here. The artist, Elani, I actually fucked with her music, and I planned to stream some of her songs once I made it back home. Prior to tonight, I’ve never heard of her. According to Ari, she was a new artist that just started putting out music about six months ago. Since I was locked up, I didn’t get the chance to find out about her until now.
Because my cousin was in the club scene, working as a bottle girl, Ari knew just about everybody. Elani had invited Ari out to the event tonight, telling her to bring whoever. I had no intentions of coming out with my cousins. My mood has been down since yesterday, and that’s why I wanted to stay in the house tonight.
