Page 1 of All The Smoke

S olomon “Smoke” Tate.

“Where Solo?” I asked, bypassing Brianna to enter her apartment. Like any other time I came, it was clean and smelled good. I had to get on her ass about the spot smelling like weed and shit when my fucking son lived there too. Since then though shit had been smooth. Well, somewhat.

“Hello to you too, Smoke.” She rolled her eyes as she closed the door.

“You been knew I was coming to get him this morning, Bri. Why you never have him ready when you know when I’m pushing up?”

“I’ve been cleaning, nigga, so I didn’t have to hear your mouth when you came.”

“AKA you been smoking in here around my fuckin’ son.”

“No,” she lied. All she did was fucking lie. “Solo has stuff all over the place all the time. Him and Brianni…”

I cut her off. “Bruh, they’re kids. If you didn’t want to be bothered with that kind of shit then you should have did what the fuck you were supposed to do with my bread.”

She waved me off. “Y’all don’t even believe in abortions in your family.”

“Naw, Bishop and my fuckin’ mama don’t believe in that shit,” I said, referring to my parents. My father was a bishop at the church. “I very much so believe in not procreating with mothafuckas that I have no intention of being with.”

“Yet we procreated.”

“Yeah and I still owe you a bullet to the dome for fuckin’ playing with me.”

Bri wasn’t even the one that told me she was pregnant at first, with her conniving ass; her best friend did.

Granted, her best friend told me the shit out of jealousy because she wanted to be with me but knew I was in love with Bri.

She had been begging a nigga to have a kid but I kept declining because I was mad young and wasn’t anywhere near where I needed to be in life to have a kid.

Yeah, a nigga was in the streets heavy then, working my way up the ladder to work as closely as I could with Rock and Keem, but I was still a small fry.

Plus, around the time she was asking I had started to pull away from the relationship.

I was fourteen when I met an eighteen-year-old Brianna and a nigga was in fucking love.

She was the baddest bitch on the block and was on my body as soon as she saw me.

Having a four year old on her hip should have been a red flag for me, considering I was still a child myself, but I ain’t give no fucks.

I didn’t think anyone of her caliber would even look my way, but the older I got, the more I learned she was just as much a bop bitch as the rest of the hoes. She just disguised her shit better.

It took me striking her best friend on some drunk shit to learn how much of a hoe she really was, fucking everything moving that had some bread, including the stud bitches.

Still, I was a young, dumb nigga so I kept her around and just started doing me and wearing condoms with her.

Bri hated that shit, and because she was so vindictive, she sabotaged all my shit, poking holes in them, and voila; nine months and three DNA tests later, we got Solo.

“Anyways.” She rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, any fucking ways,” I repeated then nodded toward the hallway. “Go get my son.”

I could tell from the look on her face that she wanted to say something smart in return but she knew how short my fuse was. So she stomped her little ass down the hall and a few minutes later her daughter Brianni appeared.

“Hey, Smoke.”

“What’s up, Nini.” I smiled and hugged her when she was close.

“Nothing. I’m going to Shake It, Skate It tonight. Can I have some money?”

Reaching into my pocket, I produced a blue note and handed it to her.

“Don’t spend all this shit tonight and don’t tell ya mother that I gave it to you.”

She nodded and smiled. “I won’t. Thank you.”

After she pocketed the money, she rushed down the hall to put her shit up.

Brianni, or Nini as me and my people called her, asked me for shit often and most of the time I did the shit, but only when she asked me directly.

Brianna tried that shit all the time, asking for shit the kids didn’t need or want, so I had to shut her ass down.

Nini wasn’t my kid, but I had been around for a few years so I always looked out when she asked for shit.

Minutes later Bri surfaced again with my lil man still asleep in her arms. He was dressed in one of the new outfits I had gotten for him, a lil UNC blue Chicago Bulls set and he should have had on the matching shoes I’d gotten for him but he didn’t.

“Fuck is the nines I just dropped off to yo’ ass, Bri?”

“In his room. I don’t want him to mess them up.”

“You didn’t fucking buy them so that shouldn’t matter.” I frowned. “Nigga is five. He not gon’ keep his shit crisp.”

“But he?—”

I cut her off, not wanting to hear it. “Go get ’em.”

“He needs them for school,” she argued. “I don’t want him to mess them up before then.”

“Then buy him more because he gon’ wear the ones I bought for him today to this fucking game. Fuck you mean?”

“But…”

“From now on I’m gon’ keep the shit I buy and you get ya own shit for him,” I cut in again. “I ain’t ’bout to be doing all this shit over some stuff that I paid for, bro.”

“Fine,” she snapped and stomped down the hall to get his sneakers after handing him to me.

I woke him up once I took a seat on the couch and made sure he was good.

It was the weekend and his mother was so fuckin’ quick to get rid of them that she would half ass some shit and I would have to tweak the fuck out.

He looked straight though; face was clean, had on lotion and shit.

Things I typically had to talk shit to her ass about.

“Are we still going to the game tonight, Daddy?” he asked sleepily as he fucked with my chain that looked just like his, only mine said Smoke while his said Solo.

“Yeah, that’s where we going as soon as we leave here.”

“Is Bishop going?” he asked. My pops was the one that got us the tickets to the Royals game.

I wanted to decline the shits because I had no desire to be anywhere with him or my mother, but my son loved them and looked forward to spending time with all of us.

He was actually going with them after the game and I’d get him back in the morning because I had some business to handle later.

“Yeah, he rocking with us,” I answered just as his mother entered the room again with his shoes.

“And Gigi?”

I smiled. “And Gigi too.”

I changed his shoes then stood, standing him up so he could walk on his own. I babied him because he was my baby, but he was still a little boy and I wasn’t going to be carrying his ass around and shit.

As we headed out Bri asked if I would give her some bread because she was taking Nini out, but I kept it moving on her ass. I wasn’t giving her shit simply because I’d already given baby girl some money and because I wasn’t doing shit for her.

At first I was still breaking Bri off and taking care of her personal bills shit, but when I found out she was fucking niggas for bread literally, selling content on the internet, I fell back.

I wasn’t with that hoe ass shit and she wasn’t using none of my money to do the shit.

I still paid her bills though, bought shit for my son, paid his tuition at school, and looked out for her daughter from time to time but that was it.

Her ass was on her own as far as her personal needs.

I paid the landlord personally as well as paid her lights and water in person.

She was free to do what she wanted as long as my son wasn’t present.

She also knew no niggas could stay at her crib while I paid her shit.

If she wanted to get a boyfriend, cool. If she wanted to move him in, that was fine too.

She just knew his ass was gon’ be the one paying the bills.

I was doing her a favor by paying the bills and she’d better thank my brother for that shit.

I got Solo in his seat then climbed in the driver seat of my Challenger and took off into traffic with Loco and Sire’s album on full blast. Solo’s little ass was in the back bobbing his head to the music as he looked out the window.

I smiled at the sight because my son was my lil road dog.

Besides my brother and two homeboys, he was all I had.

My fucking heart . I didn’t do a lot of shit right and I wasn’t living right, but I was gon’ do everything in my power to make sure he was good.

He would never want for shit, him or Noah, my older brother.

As I weaved through traffic, a call from my boy Scoot came through.

Me, Scoot, and Bino went way back. I met them in elementary school when they called themselves being bullies, but they met they mothafuckin’ match when they pushed up on me.

Niggas mistook me being a church boy, a preacher’s kid, for me being pussy so they got the shock of their lives when I dusted both of their asses up in the bathroom at school, leaving ’em both in there leaking.

They came to me days later apologizing, begging a nigga to be their friend.

Because I didn’t have any, I agreed, but made them cut all that bully shit out.

I wasn’t trying to intimidate mothafuckas and shit like that.

I just wanted to chill and be me. If a nigga got out of line I would beat his ass and put him in his place, but I didn’t want to be known for issuing ass whoopings unsolicited.

“What’s good?” I answered on the dash of my car.

“Not shit. Fuck you at?”

“Traffic with the lil one,” I answered, glancing in my rearview to look at my son who was all in my shit.

“Sup, Uncle Scoot!” he shouted.

He spoke to Solo. “What’s good, lil man! Fuck y’all going, Smoke?”

“Bishop got tickets to the Royals game tonight.”

“Word, I forgot you told me that. We still doing that tonight?” he asked, referring to our reup with Rock.

“Yeah, we are. I’ll hit you after I get Solo to my parents’ crib and shit.”

“Bet.”