Boss Bitch Swag Page 4

  “What up, my nigga?” Ren shouted out while he grabbed me up and pulled me into a masculine hug. “Fuck you been?”

  “Me? Nigga, you the one who dropped off the face of the earth.”

  Seeing Ren took me back to the good old days. My family looked at him as just another branch on the tree, and vice versa. Every Sunday night, my moms made her famous southern fried pork chops, and Ren always made sure he had a seat at the table. Moms would make three extra chops for him, and he always cleaned his plate.

  “Who is this?” Ren questioned, turning his attention to Jasmine.

  My baby was looking fly, as always. The mall was full of people, but she stood out from the crowd. Men Black, white, red and yellow all broke their necks to get a better view, but I didn’t mind. They could look all the fuck they wanted; she was going home with me.

  “This my babymama, Jasmine,” I informed Ren as I put my hand around her waist and pulled her as close to me as humanly possible. “Jazz, this my boy, Ren. We grew up together,” I continued, introducing my past to my future.

  “Hi.” Jasmine flashed him a quick polite smile, then turned her attention back to me. “Baby, I gotta use the bathroom,” she whispered in my ear so Ren wouldn’t hear.

  “Go ‘head. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Jazz kissed me on my cheek, then went on about her business. I watched her for a minute just to make sure she was cool. She hated when niggas tried to holla at her in my presence. I was always checking somebody over her fine ass.

  “Man, I was sorry to hear about yo moms,” Ren offered me his condolences. “She was good people.”

  For the first time in a long while, my mother’s face flashed through my mind, and I was back to missing her, back to missing our family the way it used to be. Having Jasmine living with me took my mind off all that, but the moment she left my side I was vulnerable again. I knew Ren wasn’t purposefully trying to hurt me; he was just paying his respects - but bringing up my mother only brought up pain right along with it. It was still too soon, and I was still too raw.

  “Thanks, man.” I bowed my head and humbly accepted his gesture. “That means a lot.”

  “I wish I coulda made it to the service, but they had a nigga doin’ twelve months over some bullshit.”

  “You wouldn't have wanted to be there anyway.” A wave of sadness suddenly washed over me. “I didn’t even wanna be there. Then when Mon got killed -”

  “Monica got killed?” Ren’s face was right in step with his emotions. He was shocked, and it showed; my nigga was all torn up on the inside. Ever since he was little, Ren had always had a crush on Monica. He always told me he was going to wife her up when he got a little older. I found the shit to be hilarious, but Monica just thought it was annoying. Her baby brother’s friend wasn’t the man she saw herself marrying. My dude wasn’t even a man yet. Neither one of us were.

  “How yo moms doin’?” I redirected the conversation. My motives were tricky; I was tired of talking about my broken family, but I was also interested in hearing about Ren’s. They were a very important part of my childhood. His uncle Chauncey taught us how to roll our first blunt. His uncle Reggie showed us our first porno. His aunt Beverly showed us our first real live naked woman. Well, she didn’t really show us; we peaked through the bathroom door while she was taking a shower - but it still counted. I had wet dreams about that woman for years.

  “Moms still crazy as hell,” Ren laughed. “She ain’t changed a bit.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh right along with him. Ren had the most ghetto fabulous mother in the entire world. She didn’t take shit from anybody. She was black as night and pushing three hundred pounds with bright red hair and gold fronts in her mouth. Mrs. Jones was tough, but she was a good mother. She loved her kids to death and didn't want them to get caught up in the everyday trappings of the hood. And just like my moms watched out for her son, Mrs. Jones always kept a watchful eye on me.

  Ren and I exchanged numbers before splitting up and going our separate ways; I headed towards the women’s bathroom to meet up with Jazz while he headed towards Footlocker to check out the new Jordans. Some things never changed. My nigga always did love Js. We used to skip school and stand in line for hours whenever a new pair came out. The next day at school, we were like celebrities; everybody wanted to be down with us. That was just the beginning for me. That little taste of power made me crave it more. Over the years, I fed it just enough to keep it alive, but my time was coming. 21st Street was already mine...soon the entire north side of St. Louis would be as well.

  Chapter 10

  The following Saturday night, I invited Ren over to my apartment to watch the Mike Tyson-Bruce Sheldon fight live from Las Vegas. The pay-per-view bill was gonna be almost double that month, but I couldn’t have cared less; there was no way I was missing that bout.

  My cousins Pee-Wee and Marco also blessed me with their presence. It had been a while since we all kicked it, but I planned on making up for that. I had plenty weed, plenty beer chillin' in the fridge, and plenty food for when we all came down with a serious case of the munchies. Earlier that morning, Jazz picked up two huge platters of hot wings from the grocery store. She then headed to Subway where a six-foot party sub was waiting under my last name. When my baby got home, she re-heated the wings in the oven, covering them first with an extra bottle of sauce - just the way her man liked. Once they were ready, she put them out on a table I didn’t even know we had, along with the sub and six big bowls of various chips and pretzels; that was all we needed. After Jazz made sure that we all had a cold drink in our hands, she grabbed her purse and the keys to my truck.

  “Bye, baby.” She bent down beside me and kissed me on my cheek. “Enjoy the fight.”

  “Bye.” I grabbed her and gave her a real kiss; if there was no tongue, then it just wasn’t our style. Jazz was kind of shy at first. She didn’t want our company to see us bring the heat; my baby was a lady in the light but a big-ass freak in the dark. After the surprise wore off, she kissed me back – and got my dick hard quicker than any chick ever had. When I told my niggas I’d be back, I knew they understood. A ten-minute quickie with Jazz was the fix I needed to hold me over until I saw her again, and I was positive she felt the same way; she couldn’t wipe that wide, sneaky grin off her perfect face.

  “Tell yo mama I said ‘hi,’” I reminded her with a pat on the ass while we walked from our bedroom door to the front door of the apartment.

  “I will,” she promised. “You know she loves her some Boss.”

  Jasmine’s mother was cool when she wasn’t drunk. It didn’t take me long to win her over. Once she saw how well I treated Jazz. it was a done deal. She confided in me that she wanted a better life for her daughter than the one she lived at home with her; in return, I confided in her that I wanted the same. Jazz deserved the best, and I was clawing my way up to try and give her that. She was my motivation.

  “Man, you let yo gal go out the house like that?” Ren asked me in a very insinuating tone as soon as Jazz walked out the door. “You must be a bigga man than me...I don’t know if I could let mine out in a dress like that.”

  “Nigga, that dress cost me six hundred dollas.” I tossed back the ice cold beer my baby picked up for me earlier and took a long swig. “She betta wear it somewhere.”

  “Feel me!” my cousin Pee-Wee agreed.

  Pee-Wee was a nickname that started out as a joke. He was only sixteen and was already six-foot-two and two-hundred-and-thirty pounds. He excelled at high-school football and was expected to get a full scholarship to play college ball. The future was looking good for my cuzz. I was proud of him. He promised to hook me up if he made it to the pros. It wasn’t at all necessary, but if got me tickets to a Super Bowl even once – he’d be my nigga for life.

  “But where she goin’ dressed like that?” Ren continued on with the shit. “Where she goin’ by herself that she need to be dressed like that?” He stood up and pulled a full box of Black an
d Milds from the pocket of his baggy Polo jeans. In the process, a thick roll of cash fell out onto the floor, and I remembered him well enough to know that it was no accident; he wanted everybody in that room to know he was getting’ paid. Ren always had been a flashy nigga.

  “She’s takin’ her mama to a play at the Fox,” I explained as I took the Black and Mild he was offering me from his hand. “After that, they goin’ across the street to The Steakhouse to eat.”

  I sat back down on the couch and scanned the room for an ashtray. My cousin Marco saw me and knew exactly what I was searching for. He looked around his legs, knowing he’d just used it to put out a roach. It took his high ass a few seconds longer than it should have, but he finally found it between two of the sofa cushions.

  “Good lookin’ out.” I offered my cousin a nod after he stood up and handed me the ashtray. “I appreciate you,” I joked as I started to feel my beer. Marco and Pee-Wee just laughed. Between the three of us, I’d always been the jokester. They brought it out in me; whenever I got around them, I felt at ease. It was comfortable and safe. Nobody fucked with you when you were with Pee-Wee. At five-foot-eight, Marco might have been the smallest, but he wasn’t to be fucked with either; he was the wildest, the one nobody could calm down once some shit popped off. He was probably also the most dangerous. That was good for us - but bad for anybody that had beef with us.

  “I’m just sayin’,” Ren pressed on, “she fine as hell - and nigga, you know just like I do that the more fine a chick is, the more scandalous she is.”

  “My baby ain’t like that,” I defended Jasmine. “You don’t know her.”

  I never would have admitted it to any of them, but for a minute I ran with Ren’s theory. Maybe things with Jazz were too good to be true. I knew how she got down before we got together; she never even tried to hide it from me. I also knew how much she hated her old life - at least, that’s what she told me.

  The fight was over almost as fast as it began. If you blinked, you probably would have missed the whole thing. Tyson was declared the winner after only one hundred and nine seconds in the ring.

  “Man, I can’t believe I paid for this shit,” I complained. “I straight got swindled.”

  “That nigga Tyson a fuckin’ monsta!” Marco declared, making some pose that made him look more like The Incredible Hulk than it did Tyson. “Could you imagine gettin’ in the ring with him?”

  “Fuck nauh.” I shook my head at the thought. “Shit, he'd have to catch me first.”

  Since the fight was over, I switched the channel to BET. They were playing the same videos as earlier, but nobody cared; all four of us were high as kites, so we were easy to entertain. The barely-dressed, dirty dancing video chicks did the trick. I reached for my half-empty box of Garcia Vegas, getting ready to roll another blunt – when I caught myself looking over at my cell, wondering why Jazz hadn’t called.

  “So what happened with you and Gina?” Ren asked, even though I had a suspicion he already knew the answer. He was just as close to Gina’s family as he was to mine, maybe even closer. There was no way he was back and hadn’t seen or heard about at least one of them. They covered an entire floor of the projects, and they loved to talk - especially about somebody else’s business.

  “Ain’t nobody thinkin’ bout that rat,” Marco answered the question for me.

  He, too, had fucked Gina - along with Pee-Wee and half the other niggas in the hood. At nineteen, Marco was the oldest of the group. He was a full-time college student who hustled part-time to make ends meet. Him and his babymama already had three kids. I knew it was tough, but he never complained about it. He got up early every morning and went to his classes. After he knocked them out, he hit the block and earned the money to pay for them. Without a scholarship, he didn’t have many options.

  I hushed the entire room as a reporter interrupted with breaking news: 2-Pac had been shot. We all fell silent. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The reporter went on to say that Pac was shot four times coming from the same fight we’d just been watching. The mood in the room was somber. For us, the day Pac got shot was like the day JFK got shot for white folks: everybody remembered where they were and what they were doing.

  “Well, fellas,” Ren said, standing to his feet. “I'd love to stay here and kick it with my niggas a li’l longer, but I got this li’l fine-ass bitch ova on Nineteenth waitin’ to get dicked down,” he bragged. “I’ll holla at you lata, man.”

  He gave me a strong pat on the back, then swiped his car keys off the coffee table and headed for the door.

  I didn’t even respond. I couldn’t; there was too much on my mind. Jazz was out driving my truck, wearing a dress I paid for - and I didn’t even know for sure who she was with. On top of all that, my favorite rapper gets shot. I know I didn’t know Pac personally, but his music was a part of me. He was the only person alive that I felt got my pain. His lyrics mirrored my life. “So Many Tears” was my anthem. I lived that shit; every single line described either my past or my present. There was even a reference to my situation with Jazz. I hated thinking about her that way, but I was too high to help it. The girl was too damn fine for her own good - how was I supposed to trust her alone? It was all good when I was there to keep my eye on her, but I had no clue how she acted when I wasn’t around. Maybe the old saying was true: maybe you couldn’t turn a hoe into a housewife.

  “Boss, I know you love that girl like a muthafucka - but just be careful,” Marco began to feed my paranoia even further. “Listen to yo big cuzz; yo man Ren’s crooked, and yo girl might be, too.” He said what he had to say and didn’t speak another word on the subject for the entire time he was there. Marco wasn’t the type to preach; he was just looking out for his little cousin. We’d all been through a lot, but he knew I was never the same after my mother committed suicide. I wouldn’t let myself be close to anyone anymore, not even Marco and Pee-Wee; that changed, though, in the few months I was with Jazz. Marco thought she was good for me; he just hoped her intentions were good as well.

  Marco and Pee-Wee stayed around for another few hours. Once they were gone, I was left alone with a mess to clean up and all kinds of crazy thoughts running around in my head. The weed usually calmed me down, but in that moment it was having the opposite effect. I couldn't stop imagining Jasmine with Ren. I pictured his hands all over her body, the same body I held every night, the one I made love to every morning. Making love was another new one for me. I got pissed at myself for letting that bitch turn me out. She made me fall in love with her scandalous ass, but I couldn’t even be mad at her; I knew what she was when I started fucking with her. That was my bad...the next time I’d know better.

  Chapter 11

  “Boss, wake up.” Jasmine’s voice brought me out of my sleep. “Baby, go get in the bed ‘fore you get a crook in yo neck.”

  I sat up on the couch and wiped the sleep from my heavy eyes. It was too late: I already had a crook in my neck; it was stiff as a board thanks to the beer and the pint of Hennessy I cracked opened while I was waiting for Jazz to bring her ass home.

  “Where you been?” My voice didn’t even sound like mine; it belonged to some other nigga, one that didn’t trust anybody - especially not a bitch.

  “At my mom’s. We get along a whole lot betta now that we don’t live together.” She sat down on the couch right next to me. “Baby, guess what?”

  “What?” I really didn’t want to play her game, but I wanted to keep her talking. That was her weakness; she ran her mouth too damn much. Most chicks did. I knew that if I let her keep talking, she’d eventually talk herself into some trouble. All I had to do was sit back and listen.

  “My mama got a job. She gonna be workin’ in a bank as a teller.” She began to let her motor mouth run. “She starts Monday. She even started back goin’ to AA. I think she’s for real this time. I mean, even if -”

  “Where else you been?” I cut her off. I had to. Good for her moms and all, but at that moment I didn’t
give a fuck. I wanted to know what she wasn’t telling me; all the other bullshit could wait.

  “We went to the play - which was hilarious by the way - to The Steakhouse, and then we went back to her house for a while.” She smiled. “And just talked. I can't even remember the last time I saw her so happy. It was nice.”

  She could put those dimples away; they weren’t working on me anymore. I knew she was guilty of something - I just didn’t know what.

  “Jazz, just tell me where the fuck you really been,” I told her flat out. “Who you fuckin’?”

  “What?” She kicked off her heels and rose to her feet. “What did you just ask me?”

  “Jasmine, I swear to God if I find out -”