“So how long are you going to be over there?” Jada asked.
I shrugged. “’Bout a week.”
“A week?” she pouted. “X… what am I going to do?”
“I don’t know. Talk to yo’ lil internet friends.”
“You trying to be funny,” she said.
I didn’t say anything. Grabbed the handle to the duffle, picking it up. Turning, I went to head out of the closet, but Jada blocked my path. With sad eyes, she stared up at me. Bottom lip slightly poked out. Arms crossed over her chest. Looking like the brat that she was. The brat that I created. She hadn’t always been this way. I created this shit. An entitled, superficial, materialistic broad. I missed who she used to be. Back in the day, she had personality. Was silly. Ran around the hood in clothes that came from donations and shit like that. The money changed her. Or did it just bring who she was all along to the surface?
“How long are you going to be mad at me, X?”
With my eyes locked on hers, I said, “I’m not mad. I’m disappointed. But that’s on me.”
“Disappointed?”
“Yeah, disappointed.”
Instead of asking her to move out of my way, I grabbed her waist and moved her out of my way. She was, as expected, on my heels. Talking. Steady trying to justify the unjust.
Jada knew me. And to know me is to know how I operated. She knew that constantly talking to me about the situationwouldn’t go the way she wanted it to. I had patience. A ton of it for Jada because of how she was. That bratty shit. But she was wearing thin on it. I was about ten seconds away from snapping on her ass.
“He don’t even care. He would?—
“Shut up,” I interrupted, standing at the dresser tossing underwear and socks into the duffle.
“Huh?”
“Shut up. I don’t want to hear shit else about the goofy shit you be on.”
“Exodus—”
I took a deep breath, cutting her off. With my head hanging, I turned to face her. I didn’t like to talk much. Didn’t like to explain what I saw coming off a mafucka. Bringing shit to the light, telling mafuckas I could see straight through them was something I’d rather not do. But shit… Jada was begging me to cut into her ass. So I did just that.
“You lookin for justification and approval to make you feel better about yourself. Constantly repeating why you did what you did don’t have shit to do with me for real, Jada. You feel like shit about it. You know you on bird shit. My disapproval is just confirmation. You probably go back and forth about your morals all the time. Shit eatin you alive, low key.”
She started to twirl her curly hair around her finger. “So… do you want to break up? Cause you don’t like me as a person, clearly. And…” she paused. “I just don’t know what to say or do.”
That was Jada’s go to. Anytime I disagreed with something or she didn’t like the way I spoke to her, she pulled the whole ‘do you want to break up’ card. She was severely afraid of us ending. Not because she loved the fuck out of me. But because she knew if we ended it was back to Brickhaven and subpar living. Should I feel some type of way about that? Hell naw. What Jada and I had was transactional as fuck. Because I was a niggawho was particular about how I shared my energy, having on demand clean, loyal pussy to call my own was important to me. She cooked, cleaned, and kept my balls drained. In exchanged, I funded the beautiful, carefree, lavish lifestyle she lived. I didn’t ask her to love me—I asked her to be loyal and that she had been.
Love was feeble. I didn’t have it to extend to anybody outside of my family, so I didn’t expect it. I wouldn’t say she didn’t love me, but I was smart enough to know she loved what I could do for her more than anything else. I wasn’t a knight in shining armor. I wasn’t a gentleman. I didn’t have the qualities of a nigga who truly deserved love. I was aight with that. I owned who I was. A nigga who needed pussy every now and then and didn’t want to sleep around for it. Fuck it.
“Exodus,” Jada mumbled, my silence clearly making her uncomfortable.
“You don’t have to worry, doll,” I paused, zipping the duffle bag. “I’m not sending you back to the Bricks.”
She started to say something, but I cut her off, asking if I could trust her to take the dogs out. I had two of them. Queen and King. Dobermann Pinscher’s that I’d had for about three years. With a sad expression on her face, she told me yeah.
About thirty minutes later, I was back at my ma’s. Genesis was running key information down to me. Showing me which medications needed to be administered and when. Mainly heart medication and something for sleep. Because ma’s condition didn’t have a diagnosis, there was nothing prescribed for that. Medically, she was fine. Mentally too. Doctors and psychiatrists called it deep emotional turmoil and shock. Essentially, she was suffering for a broken heart. The heart meds helped with the stress.
“You sure you don’t want me to stay? I can push my trip back,” Genesis said, just as she was about to go over the morning routine.
“Push a birthday trip back?” I asked, arms crossed over my chest. “Go ahead and tell me what I have to do, G.”
She sighed. “Well… I get her up around nine. Help her to the bathroom, undress her, and put her straight in the shower. That’s if she wasn’t feeling it the night before?—
“You wash her up? That’s why you tiptoeing around shit?”
