Ari pulled up on me in her Genesis GV80. This was my first time seeing it. She’d just got it about five months ago, but since Iwas locked up, I didn’t get the change to lay eyes on it until now. It was beautiful, just like she’d described it to me over the phone. It was black and glossy. From here, I could see the 5% tints that she had on it. The doors were closed, but I knew that the interior was red because that’s what she told me when she described it to me.
The second my cousin’s eyes laid on me, she ran over to me, and this was probably the first time in a long ass time that I showed any kind of emotion because I smiled big, letting the clear bag that was in my hand drop to the floor, and I wrapped my arms around my big cousin. I haven’t seen Ari in person since I was in court and was sentenced. I’m funny acting as hell when I was locked up, and I didn’t want anyone coming to visit me. I made sure that I didn’t add anyone to my visitation list. Coming to visit me at a jail wasn’t a field day. The shit was depressing. I didn’t want to bring my family into that kind of atmosphere, so visitations has always been off limits for me. The most they would get out of me were video calls.
“Bean, what the fuck! You look like you got smaller. Were you eating? What the hell were you doing with the money that we were sending you?” Ari asked, pulling away from me, and she picked her hands up, so that she could wipe away the couple of tears that had fallen from her eyes.
Looking up at my cousin, you could tell that she was genuinely happy to see me. Ari was beautiful. You can say that we looked alike because her mom and my mom resembled each other, so their genes were passed down to us. She had the same honey brown skin that I did. Our eyes had that same slightly hooded lid, and we naturally had long eye lashes. We were known for having big lips. Since I was a little girl, people would always compliment my defined cupid’s bow, and Ari had the same thing going on.
Aside from those little things, we really didn’t look alike physically at all. Ari had a body that was banging. My cousin stood about 5’7”, her waist was small, and her ass was huge. She had a lot of hair, just as I did, but Ari was into wearing things like sew- ins, and she would pay top dollar for her wigs. Right now, she stood before me with a wig that had to have been at least 40 inches, and it looked to have been coming out of her scalp.
The wig had a middle part, which I wasn’t shocked about because I knew that my cousin loved her middle parts. She was dressed down casually in a white v- neck top that was clinging to her, showing off her small waist, and she paired the top with some jeans that were hugging her down below. Sandals from Tory & Burch were on her feet, showing off her pretty white toes.
“I was eating. Come on. I’m ready to get the fuck out of here,” I voiced, bending down for a second, so that I could pick up the clear bag.
“How you doing? I’m officer Randall. Keep an eye on her, alright? I already had a talk with her, but I want to tell it to somebody else. I know she’s a grown woman, and you can’t make her do anything, but I don’t want her coming back here. Just watch out for her,” officer Randall said to Ari.
“I appreciate that. It shows that you care. I’ll do my best to keep her out of trouble,” Ari assured him.
He just nodded at that. I turned to look at officer Randall one last time, and he stuck his fist out for me. I pounded it, and then I quickly walked away, really needing to get the fuck away from this jail, mainly for my mental.
“Where Amir? I thought he was going to come with you,” I said, referring to her six-year-old son.
Amir was my lil man. He was bad as hell, giving Ari a run for her money. He was the reason why my cousin didn’t want any more children. She claimed that his little ass was more than enough.
“He is. He fell asleep in the back,” she told me.
Hearing that my little cousin came with her, it forced a smile out of me, and I quickly jogged over to her truck, pulled on the door handle for the back, and I found my little cousin knocked out in his booster seat. I shook him, and I saw where his eyes popped open, but he didn’t turn his head to look over at me.
“Watch out, bruh. Move!” he snapped, not knowing who he was talking to, but was just talking. I’m telling you, this lil nigga was bad as hell.
“Wake your lil ass up, and give me a hug,” I said to him in a playful way, and the second he heard my voice, he immediately jumped up, raced to get the seatbelt off, and he jumped on me.
Amir loved me like I was his second mama. Before I got locked up, I was living with him, and Ari, so I had a very close relationship with my little cousin. Now that I was released from jail, I was going to be living with them again, so our relationship was only going to get better.
“Beannnnnn. I missed you,” was probably the nicest shit his ass said all day.
I was holding his little body in my arms, as he wrapped his arms around my neck, and his legs around my waist. Out of my peripheral, I could see Ari with her phone out, recording this moment that I was sharing with my little cousin. I loved on him so much, placing kisses all over his face. I wasn’t much of a crier. I rarely shed tears because life made me numb to a lot of things, but no lie, standing here, holding onto my little cousin, and seeing how happy he was, it almost made my gangsta ass shed a few tears, but I didn’t.
“What’s up Bug? I missed you too. You so handsome, man,” I revealed, lowering him down to the ground, so that he could stand in front of me, and I could examine him.
Bug was the nickname that I called my little cousin. I gave him that nickname when he was just a baby, and only I calledhim that. I would be ready to beat somebody’s ass for using my special nickname on him that only I was allowed to use.
“Riot, he just as big as you,” Ari said from the side, trying to be funny.
I laughed, but I kept my eyes on my little cousin, checking him out, seeing how fly he looked. Ari always kept him fly, and that was one of the things that I loved about her.
We were right in the middle of spring, so it was a little cool out this morning. With that, Amir had on a white Palm Angels sweatshirt with the bold lettering going across the shirt. He paired it with navy blue Palm Angels track pants, that had white stripes running down the legs of the pants. A crisp pair of white, and navy-blue Jordan 12’s were hugging his small feet. Amir had jet black hair. He used to have braids when he was a toddler, but Ari cut his hair for his third birthday, so these days, he would rock a fresh cut, and that’s what he had going on right now. My little cousin was so handsome, as he stood in front of me, smiling big, just happy to be back in my presence.
“You don’t gotta go back, right?” he asked me. You could hear it in his little voice that it would break his heart if I had to turn myself back in and be away from him for another year.
“Nope. I’m home for good,” I assured him, and he smiled, loving the sound of that.
“You got in any fights while you were locked up?” he asked me. His question made me laugh, but I wasn’t going to tell him all that happened while I was locked up.
Truth is, this jail stay wasn’t easy. I made a few associates while I was locked up, but for the most part, most of those bitches on the inside hated me. Shit, my first week being in there, I fucked around and got food poisoning because the bitches that were in charge of working the cafeteria put some shit in my food, and it had me down bad for weeks. I never toldmy family about that shit either because I didn’t want them to worry about me.
Ari, speaking on my weight wasn’t her jumping the gun. I was tiny. I’ve always been small, but I came out smaller than I was when I went in because jail made me paranoid, so I was in that bitch starving myself, not eating, fearing that a bitch was trying to take me out. I have some fucked up stories that I can tell that I’m sure was going to play on my mental now that I was free and change me in a way that probably wasn’t for the best.
“No. I was chilling,” I lied to him.
