“You can be dumb, but when she gets older, I hope you teach her better. A nigga punch you in your mouth, the only option you had after that was to kill him. Go in your purse and blow hisfuckin brains out. Fuck all that talking,” I finished, going to end it at that because I’m sure she had gotten my point by now.
I walked into the family room with Daylani, and all her toys were laid out on the floor. I sat down, and I stood her up in my lap, bouncing her, and she was laughing away, loving that. Demi joined us, coming over to the couch that I was sitting down on, and she flopped down next to me. She sank back into the couch, pulled her legs up, and she turned her head, so that she could look over at me.
“What you did today?” she asked.
“I been at the house all day. I just got out the house a couple of hours ago. I pulled up on Gold. That nigga pissed me the fuck off too,” I told her, and she chuckled.
It wasn’t a secret what I was out here doing. My family knew, and Demi knew. They didn’t approve of it, but each of them knew that I was going to move to the beat of my own drum.
“I’ll never understand why you feel so compelled to live that dangerous ass lifestyle. It’s like leave that street shit to the niggas, Bean. We stay in Miami. You don’t gotta be one of the dope boys. You can fuck one of the dope boys and get whatever you want out of them. It don’t even gotta be a dope boy, though. Get a scammer, ball player, or a rapper like I did. You so pretty too. You can have any nigga that you want. Every time we go out in public, dudes always walking up to you trying to holla,” she finished, and I knew that I wasn’t going to be over here much longer because I’ve only been here less than ten minutes, and everything that she’s been saying to me has been annoying the hell out of me.
I wasn’t sure if I was just on edge because of what happened with Gold, but this girl was working my nerves. I usually knew how to tune Demi out, but today? I was fighting for my life.
“My goal ain’t to scout out the richest nigga and get tricked on. You already know what I’m trying to do. I hate that that’seven your mindset because that means that when Daylani grows up, you probably going to be teaching her the same shit. Rid yourself of that. That way of thinking is ignorant,” I said, and you could hear it in my voice that I was annoyed as hell with her.
She knew that she was annoying me, and that’s why she eventually got up, and she told me that she was going to finish packing their bags because their flight was leaving in a few hours. While she did that, I stayed down here, and the only thing that I could think about was that conversation that I had with Gold.
I was going to have to come up with a plan. I was a hustler at heart, so I knew that I was going to find a way.
Chapter 7
Ariana ‘Ari’ Monroe
“How it’s looking out there? You look exhausted friend,” my home girl Jade said to me, as I walked inside of the locker room, holding cash in my hands because the tips that I’d been getting tonight was crazy.
Even though it was the middle of the week, Miami was one of those cities were clubs never had a slow night. Tonight, a big fight was coming on, so the crowd that we usually got was doubled, and I’ve been up on my feet since I got here at 9:00 P.M. and right now, it was going on two in the morning, and the party was just getting started.
I only came to the back, so that I could sit my ass down for a second, and I wanted to check my phone because it had been ringing nonstop while I was out on the floor. The club’s manager was strict when it came to being on our phones while we were out on the floor, which is why I had to wait and check it when I got back here.
“Girl, the MBM niggas just walked in. You know how they do when they get here. Mark already gave me their section, so before I tend to them, I had to come down here, and catch mydamn breath,” I responded to Jade, sitting down on the bench, and pulling my phone out.
Jade wasn’t a bottle girl, and she wasn’t a dancer. She was the designer for us girls here. She was the one behind the looks that the strippers would wear whenever they stepped out on the dance floor, and the fly shit that myself, and all the bottle girls wore, she would design that too. She didn’t come in every night, but on nights like this, when the club was busy, she would stick around in the locker room, so that the girls could pay for their pieces, and she would fix anything that needed to be altered right there on the spot. I’ve known Jade for about three years now. This was my girl. We had a relationship outside of this club shit. She had a son the same age as my boy, so we would often do mommy and son dates, or the two of us would hang out without the kids.
“MBM is here? Is Dolo with them? I just talked to him this morning. He didn’t tell me shit about coming to the club tonight,” that was Jazelle.
She was the one that I was telling Riot about. Her and Dolo fucked around. I didn’t know the depths of it because me and her really weren’t friends, that’s why I didn’t have much to tell Riot, when I was explaining the situation to her.
“Yeah. He’s with them. The whole crew is out there,” I shared, and she sucked her teeth, while nastily rolling her eyes. You could tell that she was pissed.
Jazelle was sitting at one of the vanities, and she was fixing her hair. She had light skin, to the point that she almost looked white. Very pretty girl. Small waist with a fat ass. She was rocking a long, honey blonde body wave wig unit, and whoever styled her hair for her had done a good job. At the vanity, she had the curling iron on and was fixing up her curls. I could very well see why Dolo would fuck with her because she did have the looks, but that was all that I could speak on. I couldn’t speak onher personality or anything else like that because like I said, I didn’t know her like that.
She mumbled a bunch of shit under her breath, and I knew that she was going to be even madder once she found out that Mark didn’t give her MBM’s section. Mark was the club owner. I received favoritism from him because he wanted to fuck me. He would give me all the good sections with the big ballers, that would tip me so well that it would have my bills paid for at least two months at a time. He gave the section to me, and another one of the bottle girls. When Jazelle goes out front, and realizes that she wasn’t picked, she was going to be pissed. I’m sure she thought that because she was fuckin Dolo, that the section would automatically be rewarded to her, but sadly, that’s not how things worked around here.
Jazelle eventually got up, and she stormed out of the locker room.
“Get ready for her to be pissed at you because you got the section, and she didn’t,” Jade said, being in the club scene for a while, so she already knew how it went. I just waved her off, and I tended to my phone.
I had a couple of missed calls from my auntie Keyshawn, and my baby daddy texted me too, asking me if I was cool with him keeping Amir for the rest of the week. Me and my baby daddy were cool. That was literally my dawg. His name was Andre. Andre and I went back since high school. We were friends at first, but after high school, we’d crossed that line, eventually fucked a few times, and I got pregnant. I was a bold bitch, and could do a lot of things, but I couldn’t abort a baby, even though I wasn’t in good financial standing at the time to be having a child. We both decided that I should keep the baby, and that’s what I did.
Along the way, our relationship just didn’t work out. We broke up by the time Amir was three. We never fucked aroundwith each other after that, either. We strictly co- parented. He was a damn good father, and I was a damn good mother as well. My baby daddy didn’t give me any static about working at the club as a bottle girl and having to keep our son overnight. He did it with ease. He had a girlfriend too, who would often be at his house while Amir was there, and I didn’t have a problem with that at all. Her name was Malia, and the two of them have been dating for about a year now. I was cool with Malia. She was good to my son, and that’s all that mattered.
I texted Andre back, letting him know that I was cool with him keeping Amir for the rest of the week, and then I called my auntie back so that I could see what she wanted. For her to be calling me so late at night, I was wondering if it might have been an emergency, especially since she called twice.
I put the call in to her, and she answered on the third ring.
“What’s up auntie?” I asked once the call connected.
“Hey. I was calling you because I couldn’t get in contact with Bean. I got her though. She finally answered the phone. She was sleep,” she told me, and you could hear the relief in her voice.
