Long As You Know Who You Belong To (9 page)

I hung up the phone glad to have an excuse to dead
that conversation. Vicious was one third of the R&B/pop group
Wild 1’s that I used to mess with. She was wild and crazy and her
sex game was dummy, but that was about all that she was good for.
If she wasn’t working, she was popping pills or partying. That was
cool and all, but she had no substance to her.  Her life was
sex, drugs, parties, and music, and I wasn’t about that life.

When she started to see that my interest in her was
waning, she tried to hold on for dear life. She started claiming me
in public and making the blogs and gossips sites go crazy with
ridiculous rumors. I’m not even going to front like the
attention that I got from her stunts didn’t help put a nigga on the
map a little bit. But she was too unpredictable and rowdy for me. I
needed my chick to be chill sometimes, and Vicious was turnt all
the damn time. I was happy with who I was with and when I finally
got around to tell her how I felt, we’d be official. 

“
Legs moving side to side, smack it in the air.
Legs moving side to side, smack it in the air. Smack it, smack it,
in the air
.” I twerked as the sounds of Beyonce’s
7/11
filled the air. I felt like Queen B as I moved around the kitchen,
gathering ingredients to make my man a five-star dinner. As I
reached in the refrigerator, my phone chimed and interrupted my
groove. I reached for it and saw that it was Blu letting me know
that she was outside.

I dropped the ingredients that I was carrying on the
counter and ran to the door to let my bestie in. A few moments
later,  Blu came sauntering in dressed casually in a pair of
high waist Citizen jeans, a grey cropped Alexander Wang 
sweatshirt that read Wang on the front, and a pair of wheat
Timbs.  Her now long blue hair was done in a side fishtail
braid, and she was wearing the Melody Ehsani hoops I’d bought her
for her birthday last year.

“Hey, bitch! What you ‘bout to cook?” she asked as
she dropped her Celine bag on the kitchen table.

“Nothing for your greedy ass. I’m cooking
my 
man
 filet mignon with sautéed shrimp, garlic
mashed potatoes, and oven roasted asparagus. Oh and some cheddar
biscuits.”

“You better burn, ho!”

We both laughed. Blu took a seat at the bar style
island that extended from Grey's kitchen.

“So what's been up, sis?” I asked her. I hadn’t
really seen or talked to my girl much since our impromptu trip to
Grey’s club. We’d seen each other here and there and texted, but we
hadn’t really chilled in a minute.

“A little bit of this, a little bit of that. You know
how I do.”

“You still kicking it with Kimani?” I asked.

“Yeah, girl,” she smiled so wide that I saw her
molars.

“Oop! Let me find out! So have ya’ll made things
official yet?” I pulled a medium sized skillet from underneath the
sink and rinsed it out in the sink.

“Oh, no.  We’re good how we are.”

I looked a Blu quizzically as I placed my hands flat
on the counter. I didn’t get her. She had herself a perfect man,
and she was okay with not having a title? Kimani was a cool ass
nigga and, from what I could tell, he treated Blu exceptionally
well. He was fine, paid, down-to-earth and was in the process of
building a brand for himself. I couldn’t understand what she was
waiting for. She was going to mess around and lose this nigga
trying to let him do him.

“You better lock that down. This nigga has over
five-hundred thousand followers on Instagram alone. How many of
them bitches you think are up in his DM’s while you’re over here
trying to play it cool?”

“Kami, I’m good. We good. We understand who we are to
each other, and I don’t need a label to define that. We are moving
at a pace that I like, and that’s good with me.”

I laughed to myself. If she likes it, I love it. It
couldn’t have been me and Grey though. Bitches needed to understand
who he belonged to, and I made sure every chick Grey encountered
knew he was mine. If Blu wanted to pretend that she was good with
keeping it light, I wasn’t going to butt in. But I could tell by
the way that Blu’s face lit up when I mentioned his name that her
heart was in deep. She thought she was protecting herself by
keeping things simple, but she wasn’t doing anything but fooling
herself.

“Anyway, what’s been going on with you and Grey? I am
still in shock that you sold your place and moved in with him. He
must be slanging, honey, because you loved that loft.” 

I scoffed. “Yeah, maybe a little too much.” 

Blu’s eyes widened. I turned away from her and
retrieved the chopping board from under the island.

“What do you mean? Please tell me you found proof
this time. Spill the tea!” 

“I mean…no, not really. I just have this feeling.
I’ve been trying to catch him in something but every time I do, I
end up looking stupid. I’ve been through his phone, his emails, his
pockets…and I swear all he does is talk business. I haven't even
seen another chick’s name in his phone. But I know something is
going on. Call it a woman’s intuition.” 

Blu cocked her head to the side. “Girl, I am
your friend, and I am going to keep it all the way a hundred with
you; you’re fucking crazy. Grey is all about you and his money. A
blind person can see that. Leave that man alone and just enjoy
being his woman. Bitches like you kill me! Always looking for
something to be wrong just so you have a reason to show your
ass,” she giggled. 

I quickly got offended. I slammed the large knife
into the onion hard, making Blu jump slightly.  “Now this is
why I don’t ask you for relationship advice. When’s the last time
you were in a relationship anyway?” Silence filled the room.
“Exactly. Not never. So don’t be so quick to throw advice about a
situation you ain't never been in.”

“I have common sense,” Blu shot back. “So I don’t
have to have been in the situation to know what’s right or wrong or
what to tell your deranged ass what you should do. Now if you want
to keep your man, you need to rein in the crazy and act like you
didn’t just check out of an institution.” 

“You not going to keep calling me crazy in my house,
Blu!” I yelled.

I could feel my face flooding with anger. It would be
nothing to chuck this knife straight into Blu’s flesh, and she was
tempting me. 

Blu stood to her feet.  “Kamikaze, you’d better
chill with all that damn yelling. I ain’t the one.”

I hated that name! She thought I was displaying signs
of crazy before, but hearing that name flipped a switch that
brought me out of my body and turned me into someone else. Stabbing
the wooden chopping board with the tip of the knife, I leaned
across the island and got up in Blu’s face.

“Bitch, try me if you want to, but you already know
how I get down! You feeling froggy, then jump, bitch!” I could see
the spit flying from my mouth and landing on her face.

She paid it no mind, as she stepped even closer to
me. “I’m going to disregard your outburst because we’re
sisters, but let it be known that this will be the last time that
you talk to me out the side of your neck and I don’t bust you in
your shit. I’m going to make my exit and save your life, so call me
when you’re on your meds.”  Blu snatched up her purse and
stalked to the door. After she opened the door, she whipped around
to face me. “If you know what's good, you would lock Grey down
before he finds out just how coo-coo your ass is for cocoa puffs.
You don’t want another Shye situation on your hands, now do you?”
Blu smirked before she walked out and slammed the door behind
her. 

“Ughhhh!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I
pushed all the frames, vases, and candles off the foyer table and
to the floor. 

The mention of Shye’s bitch ass only added fuel to
the fire that was raging inside me. Shye Bryant was my first
everything. Being so up under my father for so long, when I got to
college, I didn’t know what to do with myself. My first trip to
college was actually to an HBCU, Clark Atlanta in Atlanta, GA. I
was happy to be away for a while because my dad wasn’t there to
make sure that I was all about my books, and my attention began to
wander from studying to partying. 

I met Shye at the school’s annual fall pajama jam. He
was strolling with his Alpha frat brothers, and I was watching from
the sidelines in awe of all the fine, buff young men dancing around
with their shirts off. When Shye jumped up and landed a clap
between his raised leg and then stomped the floor with force
reminiscent of an earthquake, he looked in my direction and I
instantly got hot all over. His nutmeg colored skin was dripping
with sweat, and I couldn’t help but stare at his ripped body that
resembled a Greek God. He smiled a megawatt smile at me, revealing
his dimples, and an electric shock shot up my spine. 

We exchanged numbers that night, and a few weeks
later we were official. He was everything to me, and I couldn’t
have been more in love if cupid had actually shot me with that damn
arrow. Everything changed for us during my second semester. Shye
became extremely busy with school, his fraternity, and football,
while I made my life completely about him. I would skip class to
the point where I couldn’t even tell you what classes were on my
schedule. Instead, I’d spend all day holed up in his room plotting
different ways I could please him. At first he was excited that I
was at his beck and call, but he quickly got annoyed.  His
annoyance pissed me off. Once he started distancing himself from
me, I started getting suspicious that he was messing with another
girl. 

I was quick to let any of those hot in the ass girls
on campus know that he was mine and that I was more than happy to
hand out ass whopping’s to any bitch that tried to go against the
grain. But only one chick was bold enough to try me. Parker
Princeton pranced her baton twirling, rump shaking, band dancing
ass right up on my man.  To my horror, Shye dropped me like a
bad habit. But I wasn’t having that. I went out swinging. I won’t
go into detail about my actions, but just know that it was enough
for Shye to call the police, get a restraining order, have me
forced off campus and kicked out of school. Not only was I furious
but I was embarrassed as hell. I promised that it would be the last
time that I got that crazy over a nigga. But lo and behold, I could
feel myself going there with Grey. 

Even though I didn’t want to admit it, Blu was right.
I needed to reel it in and stop acting like a damn nutcase
if I wanted to keep Grey around. Since I didn’t have any
proof that he was messing around, I buried the thought of him
cheating in the back of mind and put a lockdown on the crazy juice
I had currently been sipping. I loved Grey more than I had ever
loved a man, and I needed to make sure that he would be a permanent
fixture in my life. 

I twirled the velvet box around in my hand for the
umpteeth time. I had never felt sicker to my stomach than I felt
now. Standing in the bathroom of the Hotel Bel-Air, I could feel
myself about to lose my cool. There was nothing I wanted more than
to walk out of this hotel and leave Nakami and her fruit cake ass
father far behind. But I couldn’t. The money that I was making with
Hero was far more than I had been making in the D, and I had a far
wider reach. I was perpetrating a boss nigga before; now I
was
one. I couldn’t give that up. I’d be damned if I ran
away from good money because my ninty-nineth problem actually
was a bitch.

And a pyscho bitch she was. I almost didn’t make it
here to the dinner that was taking place outside these doors. 
A nigga was damn near behind bars off Nakami.  I placed my
hands on the white marble countertops as I thought back to the
events that took place earlier today.

“
Grey?” The shrill of her voice let me know that I
had some explaining to do.

Huffing, I got up from the living room couch,
adjusted the volume on the sound system, and calmly walked towards
the kitchen where I knew Nakami was. When I walked into the
spacious kitchen, I eyeballed the fuck out of Nakami. Her back was
turned, and all I could see was her perfectly round ass hanging out
of a pair of grey sweat shorts. The thought of running my hands
underneath them was abruptly cut short when she swung around with a
deranged look on her face.

“
What?” I asked. Just the look on her face alone
irritated me.

“
What is this, Grey?” She held up a bottle of wine
and wiggled it in the air.

“
A dildo. What the fuck does it look
like?”

“
Oh, you got jokes? Well, since you think it’s
comedy hour in this bitch, I got a riddle for your ass. Let’s see
if you think this shit is funny. What’s flat and broke and
scratched all over?”

I waved Nakami off and started walking back towards
the living room. I didn’t have time for her bullshit today. I was
already going to have to put up with Hero in a public setting, so I
didn’t have the patience for extra shit.

Beep. Beep.

The sound of my car being unlocked caused me to stop
in my tracks. “What’s flat and broke and scratched all over?” The
riddle played through my head a few more times before I bolted out
the door and opened the garage. My brand new, onyx black, 2014
Aston Martin Vanquish was now sporting four flat tires, a busted
windshield, and numerous scratches to the body.

“
Are you fucking…” I walked closer to the car to
survey the extensive damage that had been done. I had brought this
baby home only three days ago, and it was completely damaged.
Behind me I could hear Nakami laughing her ass off. Before she
could get another giggle out her mouth, I was in her face with my
hands around her throat and her body pinned up against the open
door. She barely put up a struggle. In fact, I swear she smiled the
entire time. Reality hit me like a brick when I heard a dog bark
close by. I released her from the chokehold and pushed her inside
the house. I didn’t need my neighbors all up in my
business.