Amir looked up at his dad, dead serious. “A man don’t take L’s. A man reviews the footage.”
We both lost it.
“He sounds just like you!” I said, wiping the tears out of my eyes.
Amir shuffled the cards again, like he was resetting his whole life.
“Best of five then,” he declared.
Love leaned back in his seat, looking relaxed.
“Run it.”
We played a few more games, both of them throwing cards like we were playin’ spades or some shit like that.
In the end, Love won three games, and Amir won two.
“That nigga rigged the game,” Amir yelled out.
“You said best outta five, I am the best.”
“Rematch!”
I grabbed my wine bottle. “Boy, you bout to be up all night arguing with your father.”
Amir turned to me immediately. “You on his side??”
I laughed, “I am on the truth side, but I’ma let y’all have this one.”
Love nodded like that was exactly what he expected. “Ya stepmoms learn fast.”
“Come on,” I said, changing the subject. “Let’s watch a movie.”
They both agreed.
Amir picked some shit on Netflix, and I snuggled up in Love’s arm under the blanket while Amir was on the other side in his beanbag. We weren’t five minutes into the movie when I looked over at Amir, and he was knocked out. I tapped Love so he could see, and he hopped up, covered Amir with a blanket, and kissed his forehead.
He then walked over to me, pulled me up by my arms, and then picked me up and carried me down the hallway. Once we reached our room, he used his foot to close the door, then laid me on the bed, kissing all over me.
I pulled my head to the side, letting him kiss my neck, and I softly said, “Why come I don’t see that Zone 6 side of you?”
Love pulled away from me slightly, resting back against the headboard while looking at me for a second before speaking.
“My girls know bout you, your son knows bout you…why don’t I?”
“Cause that side of me is not somethin’ I want to bring home to you.”
The calmness in his voice made me pay even more attention.
“I ran the streets in more ways than one,” he continued. “Not just hustlin’ either. I made it seem like light shit when we first met, but a nigga had workers, movin’ weight and countin’ money. I was a young and powerful ass nigga and was a no bullshit havin’ nigga. If somebody said something to me out of the way, I dropped them where they stood, threw niggas bodies on their mommas’ doorsteps.
“I had addicts doing whatever for a fix, street niggas wanting stripes under me. Clubs knew me, the trap respected me, the country fucked with me.” He laughed dryly. “Hell, I had the police on my fuckin’ payroll and judges lookin’ the other way for me while I took care of their own shit until I got a big head and was doing too much shit for them to look the other way.”
I sat up in the bed.
“Love…” I whispered softly.
“Nahhh, baby, you bout to be my wife, I’ma keep it G with you.” He looked directly at me. “I wasn’t no regular ass nigga like yo’ ex-man, I ran the city. But when I went to prison, that shit changed me for real. That was the first time in my life I couldn’t act how I wanted. I couldn’t touch money how I wanted, and being away from Amir damn near killed me.”
