Page 15 of Love Sanctioned

I looked at him, confused. Posydiann wasn’t the vacation taking type. He worked hard and didn’t know the meaning of play. It was funny because Killah’s funny ass took more vacations than a little bit. Junnie was always talking about him.

“You’d take me on vacation?”

“Hell yeah. How else do you think you are about to be somewhere half clothed? You got me fucked up if you think that’s the typa timing you think you on.”

I giggled. “Oh shit, you my man. You're running a strict program, huh.”

“The program has always been strict. Stop acting like you don’t already know this.”

I spent the better part of my day with Posydiann, just basking in his company and talking about whatever under the sun. This was no different because we always spent time together, but the talking was a lot more. It showed that he was trying and that was enough for me. His effort was enough…for now.

FOUR

Posydiann

A few weeks later

Time never mattered to me, given I made the most of whatever moment I was in before I found myself in it. Nothing came to a sleeper but dreams and bills. Even when I did sleep, I felt like I was wasting time, like there was so much other shit I should have been doing. It pissed me off to need something so vital in this life, something as simple as sleep. Moments of stillness. I left my bed at five this morning and found my way to the couple traps we still owned, checking to make sure shit was still moving. Funny enough, they didn’t expect me. Shit, I didn’t even expect myself. I had long ago surpassed this stage in life, but for some reason my sleep pattern hadn’t. My everyday habits had but also hadn’t. I hugged the blocks of Watertown from the ripe age of thirteen until I was sixteen and had enough, then I spent eight months behind bars right after my son was born and decided there had to be something more. The streets had to bow to me because I was done playing them the ways the ones before me had. Those included a father I had never met because he was gunned down on the very streets I wanted to master.

They said a gang was composed of individuals with intent to commit violence and cause destruction. The infamous Waterboys was an idea I came up with when I was too fucking young to know what a street gang was. It was my way of surviving the very streets deemed unsurvivable by many. What started out as a few young bulls from west of the water had grown into a movement that surpassed anything a gang could ever be seen as. Waterboys were more than a gang. It was survival, family, and most of all, space. Regardless of what it was seen as now, I knew what it was. To Briar South, Watertown was nothing more than an eye sore, so that was why they let any and every fucking thing happen because the true desire was for those like me to kill one another, handing over a space blessed by our ancestors to motherfuckers who didn’t belong.

“Yo, what the fuck you be doing up this time of morning, Psy?” Killah’s voice made me look away from the people loading up chairs and tables into the truck to him.

“Shit. You know I don’t sleep. What are you doing over here?”

“Tylon called. Shipment came through early; they’re about to unload.” He leaned over the banister, staring at the movement.

I nodded. I didn’t start Waterboys alone. Shit, never really did anything alone in the streets. Killah, my cousin—fuck that, my brother—stepped into any pile of shit I did. When I moved he did, and vice versa. We’d been this way since youngins with more ambition than funds.

“Heard some fool off Hollis and Ninth was claiming he’s the new head of Rich Jordan’s shit,” he said randomly.

I laughed. “What is he running?”

“Hell if I know. Maybe outskirts. Low end but not a motherfucking thing in the center of the water.”

I shook my head.

“They have been delusional since Iso made it clear he wasn’t stepping back in,” Killah responded.

“Smart. I don’t blame him.” I nodded. After all that shit happened with his old man and him faking his death, Iso was true to his word, leaving the streets in his rearview. I respected that because he never felt like he owed these streets his life and he made that clear.

“Hell. Him and CIA Barbie made another baby. I saw him in the store a few days ago.”

I laughed. “Yo, what the fuck? CIA Barbie?”

“Hell yeah, that’s what she is and what she looked like.” Killah shrugged, not seeing anything wrong with what he said.

“Yo, I hate your ass dead serious.” I couldn’t hold back the laughter because he was right. Shorty was pretty and extremely lethal.

“The fuck I do. I can’t imagine laying up with a motherfucker more deadly than me. I don’t even trust abortion warriors. It’s your body, your choice, but baby, you got bodies.”

“It’s too early for you, man.”

“Ain’t too early for the truth at all. When Junnie went and got her shit done, I was supportive and all that, but at the end of the day she knew she caught a body.”

“You need help, like real psychiatric help,” I responded, walking toward one of the offices I usually occupied when I was out this way.

He followed me, taking a seat on the sofa after I sat at the desk.