She pointed at him. “That you would have all the plugs and connections, I’m just trying to get by.”
“One blunt, nothing else, you know you liked powder. I’m not having the shit,” Erys spoke up. “I’m sure Remedy can help you with the big booty bitches.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, squinting.
“Means you were a stripper, you got all the plugs and connections,” he quipped back.
Remedy shot him her middle finger.
“Rem, I’m going to assume my son fucks like me. Put the finger down if you don’t want to be put through a mattress,” Ernie commented.
Remedy clutched her imaginary pearls and gasped. “Ernie, don’t ever say that again.”
He shrugged. “I’m just saying. If May was around, she’d tell you how I nailed her ass to the gotdamn frame.”
“Alright that’s enough. I’m going to miss my bus,” Remedy said, starting toward the door.
“Bus?” the Moore men asked in unison. “You’re not riding no gotdamn bus.”
“First of all, neither of you are my daddy. My daddy is ac-” she stopped herself. “I’m not driving your car over there, it’ll be gone by the time I get into the house good. I’m fine.”
“So you’re going to carry all the stuff back on the bus?” Erys posed, standing to his feet.
“Yeah, I’ll go back for what I need. At least as many times as I can before I can’t,” she quietly admitted. She paused and blinked away a few tears. “I’ll be fine.”
“Come on, both of you. I’ll drive,” Erys said, heading toward the garage. Remedy didn’t know that he was working to secure her house before it went to auction. Even the push back from the county wasn’t enough to stop his determination.
“Erys. I’m fine really,” she replied, as if that were going to make him stop. What she wanted was some time alone to grieve. She knew the house was as good as gone, along with thememories and she just wanted to sit there for a while and say goodbye to the only place she’d been loved, seen, and safe.
“The man said come on,” Ernie teased.
“I thought you were my friend, Ernie,” Remedy huffed.
“Say, twin,” Ernie replied. “I’m your best friend, OG. But he’s not going to let you go alone so embrace the new. Isn’t that what you told me?” Ernie asked, making her groan.
“Yeah, I tell you a lot of stuff, it’s not for you to use it against me though.”
“I’ll never lead you wrong. You had one friend, now you got two,” Ernie said in response.
“Me and him are not friends,twin,” she hissed, following him out the door. “Where’d you even get that from?”
“Erys played me a song from some Yellow Nigga Three Stacks or something. It was trash,” Ernie said, opening the passenger door for Remedy.
“I’ll take the back, Ernie. You enjoy the shotgun,” Remedy said, opening the back door of the truck and getting in. Erys came around the bed of the truck and helped his father in. A scowl on his face. Remedy ignored it and continued the conversation with Ernie. “You mean YN3Dub?”
“Yeah him. He ain’t a good gangsta rapper. He might need another genre or something. He’s got cadence but he lacks the real. Erys manages him, street cred is out the window,” Ernie shared.
“The girls at the club love his stuff. I never understood it. He has these kickbacks, pays them to come through and shake some ass. I guess as long as he’s paying them, they’ll keep lying and telling him it’s fire,” Remedy said.
Erys looked at her in the rearview mirror. “You ever go?”
She shook her head. “I was actually booked for some shoot he was doing tonight, but that’s dead.”
Erys let a soft smirk cross his face knowing that was his doing. Remedy didn’t catch it. But she did walk out of her bathroom to the tips from the club counted and stacked on her dresser. From the looks of it, the stripper life was behind her and she had no idea what was next.
She tuned out Ernie and Erys talking amongst themselves and took in the ways Cashmere Lakes had changed and stayed the same. It was still a beautiful suburb. Still crawling with affluence, still a stark reminder that she could never fit in here. She tried her whole life but to no avail. She was an outcast now and if they had anything to do with it, it would always be that way.
The rest of the ride, she closed her eyes, needing to still how being there made her feel. Chaos. That’s what she felt. Chaos outside of the bubble because surprisingly, in Erys’ home, she felt safety. Safety she didn’t want to get used to.
