Najee shook his head. “A’ight. You heard what I said, though.”
“Nigga, you can’t check me. I respect you, though, so I’ma play nice today.”
“Get off my phone, man.” Najee laughed.
“A’ight,” Lune said, laughing. “Tell RiRi I said hi,” he joked, knowing it’d pissed Najee off.
He gritted his teeth, and before he could say anything about calling her that, Lune hung up in his face. While Najee could’ve made the executive decision for Lune to end Dante’s life, he didn’t want that power anymore. He’d been on the straight and narrow for too long to have shit go bad. Ending Dante’s life wasn’t worth throwing away everything he’d worked hard for.
Najee made the type of money Dante owed him in a few hours, was giving it to Lune, and could get more. It had stopped being about his cash a long time ago. It was the principle, and Lune was going to make sure he understood that one way or another.
Najee pulled up to Orielle’s place and parked. Hopping out, he grabbed her flowers out of the backseat and another small gift bag from the floor. As much as he loved her loft, he hated how difficult it was to get to her place. He had to go through too many doors, down a hallway, take an elevator, and then another hallway just to get to the door.
The city skyline view was somewhat worth the hassle once you were inside, but Najee was ready to put her in another place. It was an inconvenience some days, just as much as it was a safety issue, and he wanted to be able to get to her quickly if something was wrong. He didn’t even mind that he’d be paying her rent still; he just wanted his Pretty Girl somewhere safer.
Thankfully, she’d given him her extra keycard, so he didn’t have to call and wait for her to answer. When he made it inside her place and heard her on IG live, he was glad she had.Placing the bags down, Najee used the bathroom in her guest bedroom, which doubled as her at-home studio, before heading to her bedroom. Orielle saw his grin through the mirror, and she smiled.
“I think we have an intruder, y’all,” she teased as he snuck up on the side of her.
She was at her vanity playing in makeup and chatting with whoever was tuned in. Najee leaned in just enough to plant a kiss on her cheek. His face was halfway in the camera, giving her viewers and fans just enough of his sexy side profile. They knew Orielle was seeing someone, but they didn’t know who.
She and Najee were private, but not a secret.
If people knew, then they knew. If they didn’t, they weren’t supposed to know, because that meant that they didn’t know them.
“What’s up, baby?”
Orielle’s cheeks ballooned as she smiled. “Hey, you.”
“You in here wasting money,” he said, observing all the brushes, pallets, powders, liquids, pencils, and something he said looked like a surgical utensil.
When she told him she wanted to startreallydoing her makeup outside of a light, natural face, Najee told her to send him the total. The amount of products she had on the dresser didn’t look like it nearly amounted to the almost eight hundred dollar bill he footed, but she was smiling and looked like she was having a grand time, and that was all that mattered.
“No.” Orielle giggled. “I’m actually in here showing the girls how I do my everyday look. Is that okay with you?”
Najee smirked. “Yeah. Someone on your live just asked if I’m your boyfriend.”
Smacking her lips, she leaned into the screen, trying to see if she could find the comment or if he was bluffing.
“Didn’t nobody ask me that,” Orielle said, after scrolling upward and not finding the comment.
“Damn. Why you don’t want to be my girlfriend? You gon’ turn me down with all these people on here?”
Orielle looked mortified as Najee casually teased her. This was them every day but he had taken it too far while she was on live. She turned to face him and laughed while swatting at him.
“Stop. Don’t do that,” she said, giggling. “Y’all see how this man be acting, y’all. We practically live together.”
Najee read another comment. “Look. They said answer the question.”
Orielle playfully rolled her eyes. “We know what it is and that’s all that matters.”
Najee didn’t like that answer at all. It sounded weak as fuck, like she was just some random bitch he was fucking on. That wasn’t the case, and he wanted it to be known. Not to her viewers because he couldn’t give a fuck less what they thought, but to her because she meant so much more to him. When he walked out of the room, Orielle made a face like she was in trouble.
“Ooh. I don’t think he liked that answer, y’all,” she whispered into the screen.
“Aye,” Najee called out from the doorway. His arms were full of her gifts. “Come here.”
Hopping up, Orielle didn’t even tell her viewers to hold on. Her eyes lit up at all the beautiful roses he had set down on her dresser, and she smiled so big.
