“For what?” I interrupted.
She shrugged. “I miss my daddy.”
I stabbed at the cereal, looked over at her, and stabbed at it again before getting a spoonful and putting it in my mouth. I didn’t want her across the bridge. There was nothing across the bridge but bullshit, drama, and murder. The main reason she was here in the first place.
We stayed in Wildermere Falls. However, I spent the majority of my time in Brickhaven. It was home for me. Shit, it was home for her too. But the difference between she and I was that I could walk around that bitch freely, without an escort because I was who I was. She should have been held to that same regard, being that she was attached to me, but I was wise enough to know that niggas, respectful or not, looked at Jada as a target to get to me. However, she wouldn’t look at it like that. She’d get on the block with her peoples and drop awareness. Her head was never on a swivel. She was never on her P’s and Q’s. Lanchester—the street she grew up on—was home to her. She thought she had love there. And while she might’ve at one point, all of that shit flipped when she got involved with me.
I was widely known and heavily respected all over Brickhaven, MI. I was the eldest Christ. Of course I was. The name held weight and respect. Not because of me but because of my father, Isaiah. The church Jada and I grew up in was owned and ran by him. He was the pastor. Known, loved, and honoredthroughout the community. And because we came from him, that same love, honor and respect was extended to his children. His wife, my mother, too. But after he passed away, and we grew up, things shifted. We went from just being loved, honored, and respected to being feared too. And with fear came a lot of mistakes. None made by me and mine—a ton made by niggas who didn’t know how to navigate around that fear.
“Exodus…”
I looked over at her and with a mouth full of corn flakes, asked, “What?”
“I want to go see my daddy.”
“In other words, you want to run around the hood all day, trying to find that nigga.”
She went quiet for a minute, putting her hands between her legs. From the corner of my eye, I noticed her shoulders rise and fall with a deep sigh.
“He’s always one of three places. It won’t be hard.”
I looked up from the bowl to the microwave at the digital numbers, before looking back at her. “Aight. I’ll get up with Rocc in a minute. Redd tied up.”
She smiled and threw her arm over my neck before showering my cheek with kisses. “Okay. Thank you bae. I promise it won’t take long. After I see him, do you want to go to dinner? I been craving Steak 52.”
I finished my bowl of cereal and slid it across the island, away from me. “Depends on how long I’m held up at ma’s.”
“How was she yesterday?”
“How she always is,” I said with a shrug. “Hopefully shit goes smooth with ol’ girl.”
“I hope so too. You’ve been over there a lot lately. You sure she’s not getting worse?”
“I don’t know,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, staring off into the distance, thinking about my OG. “Hopefully I’ll know somethin soon tho’.”
She wasn’t okay. Hadn’t been okay for years. It wasn’t that she was sick. Not with an illness or anything like that. It was mental. Pops was murdered and she flipped. Went from mothering us, with a smile, handling business to a shell of that. All she did was stare off, humming. Sometimes she’d stare off, humming, with tears rolling down her face. These days though, the tears and the humming had flipped to smiles and giggling. I would say that was a nice change, but it wasn’t. It was alarming.
I took a deep breath, uncrossed my arms, and rested my elbows on the island, picking my phone up. I texted Rocc, telling him I needed him at the house by three. He responded almost instantly, letting me know he couldn’t be here until after five. His BM had a doctor’s appointment, and they had to handle house shit afterward.
I brushed my hand down over my head and shifted my eyes over at Jada who was setting her phone up to record herself opening the door to the pantry. She was on that social media, influencer shit. Social media was all she did. Jada hadn’t worked since we made things official and she moved in with me. She loved that shit too. Keeping her face in a camera, telling people her business. I didn’t fuck with it. She kept me off her page, so I didn’t really give a fuck about her being on it. For a while, I was iffy about her filming in the crib but after a lot of convincing and promising to keep the address and street name off that shit, I let her do her. It kept her busy enough to keep her out of my business.
“How much longer that shit gon’ take?” I asked.
She closed the pantry, sat her coffee shit down and looked over at me. “About thirty minutes, X,” she said, annoyed. “If youdon’t want your arm in it like last time, you might want to leave the kitchen.”
That was all I showed. Pieces of me. Not purposely, but because she was always in the way with that shit. She loved it though. To a point where I felt like she got little pieces of me in videos on purpose, just so her comments would blow up. The first time it happened, her views skyrocketed and people were calling me Mr. Incognito. She thought it was cute. I didn’t feel anything towards it. I thought social media was filled with a lot of fuckin’ weirdos.
“You need to hurry up and get ready. Rocc ain’t takin’ you. I am.”
She paused in the middle of loading coffee beans in her espresso maker and looked up at me with a hiked brow. “You’retaking me?”
It wasn’t that she was surprised. She didn’t want me to take her. Any other time, Jada would love to be a passenger princess but only if I wasn’t going to her hood. Only if I wasn’t taking her to see her pops.
“You want to see your daddy, right?”
Her bottom lip extended a little before she shrugged. “Yeah…”
“So, relax,” I told her, my eyes locked on hers.
