Page 49 of Senior

“Don’t be on that shit with my mama.”

He sighed heavily. “You know something son. My belt ain’t got no ass in a long time. “Good fucking night, Stanley.”

He hung up in my face. I tossed the phone next to me and went back to smoking my blunt. As my son would say, my Spidey senses were tingling. Some fuckery was a brew. He was too damn defensive.

I mean it was late, my common sense said.

“Fuck all that,” I found myself saying aloud.

I knew what I felt and I knew the signs.

My thoughts drifted back to the time before my mama married Aaron. Pops was in his feelings heavy the closer it got to the wedding. Nigga looked like he was depressed as hell.

It was about one in the morning when my alarm notified me that my back gate was open. The alert went off and I sat up to grab my phone.

I wasn’t worried about it being a stranger. The compound was locked down tighter than Fort Knox. If you didn’t belong here, you weren’t getting in. I just wanted to know who the hell was in my back yard this time of morning. Going to the camera app, I was surprised to see my father stumbling into the back yard, bottle in hand. He made his way over to the lounge chairs by the pool and fell into one.

I shook my head as I eased out of bed, ensuring not to wake up my wife. Shoving my feet in my slippers, I left the bedroom and headed downstairs. After disarming the alarm, I unlocked the back door and stepped out. Pops was laid out on the lounge chair, bottle to his lips.

I ran a hand down my face as I walked over to him. Standing next to the chair, I looked down at him. This wasn’t the confident man I knew. This wasn’t the man that rarely, if ever let anything bother him to the point that he drank excessively.

“Senior, what the hell you got going on?” I asked, snatching the bottle from him.

He looked up at me with red eyes. “Hey son,” he slurred.

He tried to sit up, but was having a hard time. I sighed and extended my hand to help him. He ran his hands down his face.

“How long I been out here?” he asked looking around.

“A few minutes. Why are you out this late?”

He chuckled. “This is the safest place to be at night. Can’t nobody fuck with me.”

“What’s wrong with you, Senior?” I took a seat across from him.

“You really gon’ let your mama marry that nigga, Deuce?”

I frowned. “What?”

“You gon’ let her marry him? You love running a nigga off, but you let this one stay. Kinda shit is that?”

I chuckled in disbelief. “So you in your feelings because Ma is getting married.”

“I love her.”

“Well, you should have thought about that before you put everything over her, Pop.”

“I didn’t⁠—”

“Whatchu’ mean you didn’t? The streets? The organization? Your other baby mamas.”

“I have never cheated on Stephanie,” he said, raising his voice.

“You better not wake my wife up. It doesn’t matter if you cheated or not Pops. You had too many damn women after her to have ever taken her serious.”

“You think she didn’t have niggas?” He laughed. “’Cause she did. Your mama ain’t a saint, Stanley. We were both single doing single shit.”

“My mama wasn’t out here popping out baby after baby, either.”