Shattered (12 page)

I
was so excited the day of the show. I felt like I was going to the prom. After I got my mani-pedi, Peaches hooked my hair up. She even let me borrow her fly-ass black Zac Posen dress that I was gonna rock with my Prada slingbacks. She seemed just as excited for me, slipping it in a wardrobe bag so I could carry it home. That’s the thing about Peaches, she always had the real nice shit. I mean, I had a couple nice things, but I found most of my stuff at Filene’s Basement. Or if it wasn’t a gift from whoever I was dating, I’d take a few dollars and splurge at Nordstrom or Lord & Taylor every now and then. I loved that Peaches was never stingy with her clothes.

“I’m glad you and Toya finally doing something together. You know? I don’t know nobody who ever been inside the Kennedy Center before, and that’s a damn shame,” she had said before giving me a black-and-silver necklace like it was a corsage. Peaches winked, and I knew it had exactly what I wanted. She also gave me a tiny coke bag of my own. Guess I had said one too many times how nervous I was.

After I left her house, I headed over to North Capitol Street so Rich could hook up my taper. There was three dudes ahead of me, but every time I jumped up to get in another barber’s chair, Rich warned me how fucked up they was gonna cut my hair. I laughed nervously and decided to wait for him.

“How you been?” he asked when I finally sat in his chair.

“I been all right. What about you?”

“I been good. You and your girlfriend have fun the other night?”

I smiled and said, “Yeah.”

“You looked like it.”

“Did you and your boys have fun?”

“It was all right. Too crowded for me. I don’t like going out to shit like that, though.”

“For real? Why not?”

“It ain’t my style. Plus, whenever I got a girl, ain’t no real reason for me to be at no damn club.”

“Unh. But you don’t like the music?”

“Hmmm…yeah, but it ain’t like you really dancing in a place like that. Too packed for dancing. Just a bunch of drunk niggas trying to catch chicks slipping.”

I laughed. “I guess you right.”

“I’d rather do something different.”

“Different like what?”

“I don’t know. I like doing
real
shit.”

“Real shit, like what?”

“I think I’ll keep that to myself for now,” Rich said with a smile in his voice. “Who knows, maybe you’ll find out one day, maybe not.”

“Hmmm…,” I said. Let me find out Meeka was right, that Rich
was
feeling me. He was sexy as shit, and I liked that he stayed low-key in the store. I could tell niggas respected him. They always asked his opinion, made sure he was good when they went to get something to eat, or checked to see if he was watching something on the TV before they messed with the channel. After Rich brushed my shoulders off and I paid him, he asked me if I had a boyfriend. I shook my head but wondered why it was so easy to dismiss Audri. Maybe cuz of how stank she had been acting ever since her little incident in Atlantic City. Instead of asking for my number, he just nodded. I was surprised he ain’t ask me for it.

Later, when I was getting ready at home, Audri kept shaking her head from across the room.

“What?” I said finally. I mean, it seemed like she wanted my damn attention so bad.

“Just funny how you seem to have money for going out and shit when they ’bout to cut the damn cable off.”

Tssk. Ain’t this some shit. “I told you my big sister bought these damn tickets.”

“Right. Your big sister,” Audri said, trying to scratch inside of her cast with an unraveled wire hanger. “I thought y’all ain’t get along.”

“We don’t,” I said, irritated that she was even suspecting anything different.

“Like I said, that shit is funny.”

I sucked the back of my teeth again. She was blowing the fuck out of me. I wasn’t letting her ruin this night. First of all, my makeup looked too damn good to be frowning and rolling my damn eyes. Secondly, just cuz she feeling like shit don’t mean I have to. She been moping around too much. In the house all the damn time, questioning my comings and goings, hating on my outfits, just overdoing it all the time.

“You know who I talked to today?” she asked.

“No, who?” I said, fixing my strapless bra.

“Cha-Cha,” Audri said, talking about her dancer with the short, fire-red boy cut.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. We spoke for a minute. She told me some wild shit that shocked the fuck out of me.”

“Oh, yeah. What’s that?” I asked, spraying on some perfume.

“That not only did my
girlfriend
used to do parties before I met her, but that she
used
to work the strip, too.”

Fuck.
I dropped the bottle on the dresser. Glass and perfume flew everywhere.

“It’s true, huh?”

I was quiet and kept my back to her.

“Well, goddamn. I’ll take that as a yes. Funny how you never told me that shit…Make me wonder, though. Like who are you really?” she asked with anger in her voice. “Why you with me? Huh?”

I stayed quiet. Wasn’t nothing I could say that was gonna make her back down.

“Shiiiit…and tell me, what was really up with you and your brother?”

“What?” I was up on the bed and in her face before I knew it. My fingernails clawed at her cheeks, but Audri was much stronger than me. She knocked me to the ground with one arm, like I was a feather.

“KiKi, calm your ass down. I should be the one who’s pissed the fuck off! I gotta find out from somebody who used to work for me that you did that shit! How the fuck you think I feel? How that shit make
me
look?”

I sat on the floor, livid. My leg shook nervously. I felt sweat dotting my forehead. Leave it to a money-hungry bitch to throw salt in my shit. Jealous heifer.

“I mean, on the real…I guess I can understand why you ain’t say nothing,” Audri said, shaking her head like she didn’t understand. “I can’t believe you keeping secrets from me. Why?”

I blew out a breath. Why we have to have this conversation tonight? Finally, me and my big sister was gonna bond, and Audri wanted to ruin it. Light scratches left her cheeks red. Audri took a deep breath, then said, “I’ma apologize for what I just said about that situation with your brother. I fucked up. I should’ve never even went there.”

Audri reached for my hand. I hesitated, but soon she interlocked her fingers with mine and pulled me up off the floor.

“Shakira, my bad, all right. You forgive me?”

I rolled my eyes and let her kiss my lips. She pulled me in her arms, and soon I was kissing her back. I hated being mad at her, but this was too much. Audri kissed down my neck, ran her tongue behind my ears, across my shoulders, and even traced my underarms. It felt so good, my nipples tingled and my coochie throbbed.

“You still my boo, though,” Audri whispered. She laid back on the bed and pulled me on top of her. Before I knew it, my bra and panties was on the floor, and I was riding the hell out of her face. Arching my back the same way I did when I rode dick. She loved how I moved my hips. Shit, I tried to write cursive letters on her mouth with my pussy lips. Back and forth I rocked so she could get all this sweetness. For some reason, I always squirted whenever Audri ate me. The shit she did with her tongue—like she knew me better than I knew myself—was unreal. I collapsed on the bed, exhausted. Audri smiled and pulled me close to her.

“You good?”

“Always,” I said, smiling.

“Good.” Audri was quiet for a while, playing with my sweated-out hair. Then she said, “You know I’m sorry about what I said earlier, right?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You know that Ryan shit fucks with me still,” she said, rubbing her forehead. I looked into her gray eyes and wished she ain’t look as conflicted as I felt about what happened to me. If I spent time thinking about all the bad things that happened to me, I knew I’d self-destruct. It was easy to just move on to the next thing that would take my mind off of Ryan, just like how Nut helped me to forget about Dizzle and how Kareem helped me forget about Nut. It was how I coped. Doing a party for a nigga who ain’t mean shit to me was just that…a party for some dollars. Sleeping with dudes for money all these years numbed me from being able to feel what Audri must’ve felt when she learned I had been keeping secrets from her. I couldn’t help it that my past seemed to follow me around like a shadow.

“When Cha-Cha told me that shit, it just made me feel like you wasn’t being honest with me. Your past is your past, but you gotta always be honest with me. You understand? You got my heart, man.”

I nodded. I wanted to be honest with her, but guilt washed over me. How could she forgive me for lying to her? Why did she still treat me this way? The feeling was overwhelming.

“I gotta use the bathroom,” I said, kissing her lips and pulling away.

I needed to do a line. Bad. I emptied some of the coke Peaches gave me out on a hand mirror, and then I used a book of matches to slice up the powder and make three neat rows. I snorted a line.

“Hey, want me to…,” Audri said, barging in the bathroom. “What the fuck!”

I tried to hide the mirror, but it was too late. Audri tried to snatch it from me, and the mirror fell on the floor.

“Oh, shit! Look what you did!” I dropped to my knees and used my acrylics to sniff it up. “Look what you did!”

I could feel Audri’s eyes drilling into my skull, but she was crazy if she thought I was gonna waste it.

“KiKi…you gotta go. You gotta pack your shit and get the fuck up outta here. Tonight.”

“No!” I blocked her out as I scraped the powder up.

“I want your scheming ass to get the fuck out my house!” Audri said, jerking me up off the floor. She tossed me out of the bathroom, then grabbed a handful of my clothes out of her closet and threw them on her bed.

“No, Audri. I don’t wanna leave!” I begged. When she went to grab more clothes from the dresser, I hurled the ones she threw on the bed back toward the closet.

“KiKi! I don’t give a fuck where you go, but you gotta get the fuck outta here. I don’t know what new shit I’ma find out about your ass!”

“But, Audri…,” I cried as I dropped to the floor. I couldn’t believe she was putting me out. For snorting coke? Come on now. It wasn’t like I was stealing from her or lying to her. She was putting me out for absolutely nothing. I could stop if I wanted to, but she ain’t even give me a chance to say I’d quit it. “Audri, you want me to stop? I’m not gon’ do it no more. I promise. Audri, you hear me?”

But she ain’t say nothing. She just kept throwing my shit on the bed. Shoes, shirts, belts, bags.

“Audri!” I shouted. “Stop! Look, Audri…I only do it cuz I can’t handle it by myself. You don’t know about me. You don’t know all I been through!”

Audri shook her head and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Baby, I ain’t mean to lie, but I knew you would leave me if you knew,” I cried. “And I don’t want to be alone.”

Audri rubbed her hands over her face. I knew she was trying to hear me out, but from the twisted look she gave me, I must’ve been asking a lot. “Coke, though?”

I wiped tears from my cheeks and nodded. “Baby, I need it…cuz it makes me forget about what Ryan did to me…and about all the other shit I wish I could forget.”

Audri shook her head again, either not believing me or not understanding what I was going through.

“When I take a hit, you just don’t know…I feel so good. Wanted. Loved,” I whispered.

“See, KiKi, that’s the problem…I should make you feel that way.”

Her words took my breath away. Ten minutes later, Audri stuffed all my shit in my car.

“I wish you the best.”

“But I thought you loved me!” I cried.

“I did…but I can’t be with a cokehead.”

Her words stung so bad, I shook. I flung her keys out the car window and cried.

When I pulled up at Toya’s, I was a mess. My eyes was swollen, my face bloated from crying so much, and my car filled with balled-up clothes, shoes, handbags, and makeup. I wiped my face and sat outside wondering what I was gonna tell Toya. So much had happened tonight. I just wanted to forget it and enjoy whatever was left of it. I couldn’t have Toya’s judgmental ass talking shit about me, too. Since I was supposed to meet her at her apartment so I could ride with her to the Kennedy Center, I called her from downstairs to see if she had a steamer. She said she did, so I grabbed my shoes and the Zac Posen Peaches let me borrow and ran upstairs.

As soon as Toya opened the door in her gorgeous body-hugging red dress, she said, “Did you forget we was going? Cuz you look horrendous.”

If I hadn’t just went through what I went through, I would’ve told Toya she looked beautiful, that her makeup was on point, and that her hair was stunning. But at that moment I wasn’t in the mood. “Look, I just broke up with my girlfriend, and I wanna forget about it, okay? Can you help me do that?”

Toya shook her head like she was the one who got put the hell out. “All right. Hurry up! We gon’ be late.”

She steamed my dress for me while I jumped in the shower. I took a hit before I did something to my face and hair. Forty minutes later I felt like I was in Hollywood, walking on the red carpet at the Kennedy Center.

A slew of nice town cars were dropping people off in the front. Everyone was dressed real nice. As soon as we was inside, I went to the bathroom. I had to take another hit cuz it seemed like everybody knew I ain’t belong.

When we left the bathroom, I felt like I could do anything. “Toya, watch this.” I stretched my arms high over my head like the dancer on the banner hanging from the wall above us. I walked on my tippy toes and raised my leg out. Fuck, I could do that shit, too. When I jumped up, Toya looked at me like I had just pissed on her leg.

“Stop embarrassing me, Shakira!”

“What? I can do it, too,” I said, jumping again but landing awkwardly. My heel bent the other direction and broke. I grabbed her so I wouldn’t fall. “Oops.”

“Get off of me!” Toya said, yanking away. “You’re such an embarrassment.”

I laughed until I realized I was standing by myself. Toya left me in the lobby and went inside. I had to find my seat by myself. It was already bad enough I had to carry my broken shoe in one hand. The usher asked me for my ticket stub, but Toya had it. The usher told me to wait until more people took their seats, and then she’d let me peek inside to see if I could find Toya. But them people was taking forever. I couldn’t wait that long. I pushed pass the usher and screamed, “LaToya Scott, where the fuck are you?” as loud I could. Everybody turned around to look at me, and none of those faces was Toya. “Toya! Where you at?” Before I knew it, security snatched my arm and led me out of the theater and then all the way out of the building.