Cheaper to Keep Her part 2 (The Saga Continues) (16 page)

I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to risk being detected so I looked through the peephole and saw who this unidentified man was. I raced away from the door and then I yelled, “I’m coming,” after I realized it was Devin’s friend, Neil. Neil was his sidekick. So if he saw me with Devin’s pistol in my hand, he wasn’t going to receive it very well.

I rushed back down the hallway and shoved Devin’s gun right back where I got it from and then I raced back down the hallway to open the front door. When Neil walked in, he looked at me pretty strange. “You all right?” he asked as he walked in slowly.

“Well, why you sweating and shit?” he asked jokingly. Neil was a very handsome guy with excellent taste in clothing, but he was also a fucking wise guy. So, I never liked him. He had a huge influence on Devin’s decision making. When Devin and I were dating and I wanted him to hang out with me, Neil would always come up with some bullshit about how they had already made fucking plans. That shit used to burn me up. Not only that, whenever Devin and I got into fights, Neil always threw in his two cents. Truth be told, he was one of the main reasons why Devin and I broke up. I thought he was Devin’s undercover lover at one point, so I used to tease him about it. I knew he hated my fucking guts. But guess what? I hated his fucking guts too, so we were even.

“Why the fuck are you always up in my space?” I responded.

Neil walked away from the door and headed towards the kitchen. “Trust me, I'm not in your space,” he replied with his back facing me.

I ignored his immaturity and switched the conversation around. “Do you know where Devin is?” I asked him.

He walked back into the living room with a beer in his hand. “He's outside talking to some chick named Kim. He’s keeping her from coming in here and seeing you, so you won’t get your ass kicked!” he replied and then smiled.

“You got your own opinions, and I got mines. And so you know, she was already here when I broke up their little rendezvous. So if she wanted to have a boxing match with me, she would have tried her hand last night. End of story,” I told him as I rolled my eyes.

He took a sip of his beer and said, “So you’re proud that you got my homeboy to pull his dick out of her pussy just so he could push it up in you?”

“Fuck you, Neil! For your information, I didn’t fuck Devin last night. I’m not skanky like those hoes you fuck with. I’ve got more class than any woman you ever been with. So get a grip on yourself! You’re looking really tacky right now sipping on a beer at ten-thirty in the morning. That's a sure sign of a broke ass alcoholic!”

Neil took another sip of his beer and then he smiled. “Is this your way of venting your frustrations because your life is pretty much fucked up right now? And in order for you to feel good about yourself, you try to find fault in other people.”

“Neil, please shut the fuck up! You don’t know shit about my life. So stay in your own lane please.”

Neil was about to come back at me with another one of his sarcastic remarks, but Devin stopped all of the bullshit when he walked through the door. “Yo’! Yo’! Yo’! I can hear y’all when I was walking up the stairs,” he commented.

I sucked my teeth. “If your best friend would mind his own business, then the world and everybody in it would be better off,” my sarcasm continued.

“Come on now, let’s not fight, boys and girls,” he said with humor as he closed the door and took a seat on the sofa. He looked directly at Neil and said, “Yo’, dude, did you see how she was acting?”

Neil sat down in the recliner across from Devin. “Yeah, I saw her. She’s gonna be unmanageable if you don’t get her ass straight now.”

“I know. I’m gonna probably have to break up with her ass sooner than I thought,” Devin told Neil.

I wanted to shake my head and ask Devin did he remember last night when he was talking marriage and shit because he thought Kim had saved his life. Short term memory. That was the shit too many of us suffered with.

And to hear these two talking about this chick really rubbed me the wrong way. Okay, granted, I didn’t exactly like her ass after she made that comment about how dirty I looked. Hell, I would have kicked Duke’s and a bitch’s ass for barging in on us in the wee hours of the morning. But still, it made me sick to my stomach that Neil had so much influence on Devin. I mean, mind your own business. Get your own girlfriend, you fucking loser!

In the middle of their back and forth conversation about Devin’s new play toy, Kim, I interjected and asked Devin if he minded if I went into his room and laid down on his bed. He told me he didn’t mind, so I got up and left.

While Neil continued to give jackass relationship advice, Devin’s Blackberry rang. He left it on top of his dresser, so I got off the bed, grabbed it and took it to him. But by the time I handed it to him, it had stopped ringing. He took it from me and then I returned back to his bedroom and climbed back onto his bed. I’m sure he knew I looked down at the screen to see who was calling. He didn’t mention it though. I laid there in silence and waited for him to call Ms. Olivia back. I shook my head as I wondered how men, but him in particular, could fuck two and three bitches at one time. It just angered me that he could never be faithful.

While Kim had questioned him about me, she needed to be worried about all the other bitches he was creeping with. Niggas will never change!

I dosed off for about an hour but Devin woke me up to tell me he had to make a run with Neil. “Don’t go snooping through my shit!” he warned me.

“You ain’t gotta worry about that,” I assured him. And I meant that from the bottom of my heart. I will admit that I used to go through his shit but it was only because we were dating. Believe me, he gave me many reasons to search his pants pockets and look through his text messages to see what new bitch he was fucking behind my back. But now, I wouldn’t waste my time. He’s shown me at least five times within the last ten hours that he had not changed and he had no intentions of doing so.

I did however search his bottom drawer to see if he’d taken his gun with him. But he didn’t. I was relieved to know that if any funny business went down, then I’d be okay after I pumped a couple of rounds of those lead pellets in a nigga’s ass.

It’s crazy how guns and knives give muthafuckas false bravado.

Cheaper to Keep Her part 2 Unique

Zero Ways to Communicate-Chapter Nineteen

Sleep is for the weary—the way to success is to wake up, get up and get moving.

I slept for about another hour and then I became restless, so I got up. Devin’s apartment was completely quiet. I could hear a pin drop if I had one to throw on the floor. Since I didn’t, I headed into the kitchen to see what he had in the refrigerator to eat. I was so hungry I could feel my stomach in my back. Unfortunately for me, he didn’t have a damn thing to eat. The box of cereal he had was empty, but he had plenty of milk left. I noticed that he had a cartoon of eggs too, but when I grabbed it, the motherfucking thing was empty. I mean, who does that dumb shit? If we were still dating I would be furious with his selfish ass right now. So I made do by getting a large glass of milk and then I stuck four slices of bread into the toaster oven and when they were done, I spread some butter on them and topped it off with a couple packages of strawberry preserve I found in his kitchen drawer. It wasn’t an International House of Pancakes meal, but it served its purpose.

As soon as I started to enjoy my quiet time, I heard some chick fussing outside of Devin’s front door. It became apparent she was gossiping with her home girl on her cell phone, because I didn’t hear anyone else’s mouth but hers. After my so-called breakfast, I took a sit in the living room so I could watch a little bit of TV. But then it dawned on me that she’d probably let me use her cell phone if I asked nicely. I immediately got up from the sofa and opened the front door. I realized I scared her because she jumped as soon as she saw me.

“I am so sorry if I scared you,” I told her with a smile on my face.

She smiled in return. “No, it’s okay. I’m probably talking to loud, huh?” she asked me. I wanted to tell her what I really thought but I didn’t. I figured it would lessen my chances of getting her to agree to let me use her phone. Not only that, she was a big, heavyweight Amazon chick. She had to be every bit of six feet and weighing about three hundred pounds. And like true Amazon women, it was packed tight and solid on her body. I didn’t think the average nigga would run up on her. Aside from how huge she was, she was kind of cute and she seemed like a sweetheart.

“Nah, you’re fine,” I lied. “But I do want to know if I could use your phone when you’re done. ‘Cause, see, the guy who lives here doesn’t have a home phone and since I left my cell phone at my best friend’s house, I was trying to get in touch with her to see if I could get her to drop it off to me,” Which was also a lie.

“Oh yeah, that’ll be no problem,” she said in a naturally loud voice. I couldn’t see her trying to sneak and whisper to anyone. She placed the phone back to her mouth, “Janet, let me call you back in like five minutes. I’m gonna let this lady use my phone.”

Immediately after she ended her call, she gave me her cell. I thanked her after I took the phone from her hand.

“Knock on my door when you’re finished,” she instructed me as she turned around and went into her apartment, which was directly across from Devin’s place.

I looked down at the keypad of Devin’s neighbor’s cell phone and had no idea who I was going to call. My mind drew a complete blank. “Come on, Lynise, there’s gotta be somebody you can call,” I mumbled to myself. And then it dawned on me that I had taken down Rodney’s cell phone number while I was watching Diamonds apartment.

I rushed back into Devin’s apartment, leaving the front door open to retrieve Rodney’s number from my pants pocket. But when I dug inside all my pockets, I couldn’t find it. Damn, I was pissed at myself.

I started to take Devin’s neighbor her phone back when I noticed Devin had left his car keys on the coffee table in the living room. I came up with the perfect idea. I knew if he allowed me to use his car for a couple of hours, then I would be able to make a few moves. Going to talk to those two homicide detectives was one-stop I had to make, since I no longer had Bishop around to help me sort things out.

When I dialed his number I knew he wasn’t going to answer but it didn’t matter because I was going to leave him a message anyway. Needless to say, he did the unexpected and answered the call on the second ring. I was shocked.

“I wanna run by my sister’s job and then I wanna go to the store to pick up a few things,” I lied. I knew I couldn’t tell him the real reason why I wanted to use his car. He would’ve told me no with the quickness.

“Yeah, go ahead but you better not have a nigga riding around in my shit with you.”

“Devin, no one does that trifling shit but you,” I assured him.

“I don’t do that shit either,” he expressed. But I quickly cut him short by telling him thank you and that I would be putting gas in his car when I was done with it.

I looked at the time on his neighbor’s cell phone and noticed I had three hours to play with, so I promised him I would have it back by that time.

“Lock my door. And don't try to make a spare key while you’re out,” he yelled through the phone.

“All right,” was the last thing I said before ending the call.

I knocked on Kesha’s door and returned her cell phone as soon as I got off the phone with Devin. I thanked her about three times before she could close her front door. “No problem, anytime,” she said before we parted ways.

Back inside of Devin’s apartment, I put back on the clothes I had on yesterday since they were completely dry. I made my exit from the apartment and jumped in Devin’s whip, a black, two-door Nissan 350Z with smoked gray tinted windows. This car was his prize possession, so it shocked me when he gave me permission to drive. When we dated, I can remember only driving it three times. It sat really low to the ground, so I had to hunch down to climb inside. There wasn’t a lot of room inside of the car either. But I wasn’t going to let that deter me because all I needed was for this vehicle to take me from point A to point B. And that was it.

Immediately after I turned on the ignition and revved up the engine, I put the little remote control car in gear and headed towards the highway. I was really nervous about the idea, but I decided to ride by Katrina’s house. I had to see if Duke’s car was still there or not. I wanted to see if Bishop’s truck was still parked there as well as see if there was any sign of Katrina. If her car was there and Duke’s wasn’t, that may be a good sign. However, that could also be a trap. What if Duke or Chris was hiding in the house, waiting on my stupid ass to return? Then again, who knows, Duke may had both of Katrina’s and Bishop’s vehicles towed away from the house, so the police wouldn’t link the tags to Bishop.

My heart raced at a rapid speed while my mind thought of the many ways I could get caught by driving back to Katrina’s house. It was clear that I was treading on dangerous waters, but I knew of no other way to handle this. Maybe I was a glutton for punishment.

It only took me twenty minutes to drive from Devin’s apartment to Katrina’s gated community. To get to her house was like traveling through a maze but I managed. And as soon as I made a left turn onto her street I noticed that Bishop’s truck was still parked in front of the house, but Katrina’s Audi and Duke’s Porsche were gone.