Page 7

Social media is a fucking disease.

A parasite, foreal. The instant and fake validation gets into your mind and corrupts you and makes you ugly as fuck.

Or maybe that’s just what happened to Sahara.

The Sahara that’s standing in front of me, hooting and hollering and yelling, isn’t the same eighteen year-old girl I met in Psych 101.

That Sahara was quiet, and snorted when she laughed, and kept her wild brown curls pulled in a haphazard bun off her face. She wore thick coke bottle glasses that hid her cerulean blue eyes and freckles. That girl wore oversized overalls, loved going to the movies, and loved books even more.

At first, Van told me to keep an eye on her. They were new to town, and Sahara was green. We became friends and study partners.

Then somewhere along the way, we became more than that.

I told her about running with Foe Dub. She told me about how Van and her ex raised her.

We connected on a spiritual level, I thought. You know, being closer to our older siblings than our parents. And even though I still never let her all the way in, I figured if I were to settle down, it would be with someone as pure as her.

Until I blew up. And muthafuckas found out she was my girl, and her follower count went from two-hundred to twenty-thousand overnight.

Now, this Sahara burned her hair out from straightening it, so she’s gotta wear a weave. She got Lasik. All her clothes are designer.

And now? She’s starring on that damn wasteland of a show, Side Pieces of Kenton.

Why be on that when you’re not even my side?

She claims she rehabbed her image because as my girl, she had to be on my level. I thought she did that shit to compete with Wyn, for whatever reason.

Now I think this is just who she wants to be. An influencer.

A bird.

But shit, I am just a man. And she knows what she’s doing, calling me over here to argue in nothing but this see-through robe.

Sahara’s always been model thin, but that skinny bbl she got last year looks as natural as those things can look, and at the right angle, the shit is fire.

“You gone keep yelling at me or you gone come get what you really called me over here for?”

She rolls her neck and folds her arms, but them pupils dilating tell on her every time.

I walk over to her, stopping right before her chest could graze mine.

“Just say you miss a nigga. Maybe I’ll say it back.”

I slide her robe off her shoulders and take in her body more. When my eyes roam my favorite place, I see her thighs clench and smirk.

“Fuck you, Rahshad,”

she whispers.

“That’s what I’m finna do.”

I drop my basketball shorts and boxers in one go, before pulling my shirt off. I back her up to her window and turn her around so that she’s facing out into downtown.

“You want muthafuckas to see what we got right? Let’s give ‘em a show.”

I separate her cheeks and slide home, feeling her clench around me. One of my hands clamps down on her neck, while the other grips her hip, and I go to work.

Sex with Sahara has always been fire. She was a virgin when we met, a blank canvas, and I molded her to my dick.

She’s wetting me up almost immediately, moaning my name, making the window foggy.

“Touch yo fuckin’ toes,”

I growl, slapping her right cheek. That shit lowkey hard, but I imagine it rippling.

She obeys me, and I start drilling her. Like any other time I initiate sex with her lately, I start thinking about how I saw she took out her birth control without telling me. I hate that I even had to find that shit out on my own.

I never had to do a deep dive into Sahara before. What you saw was what you got. Van kept her out of all her shit, and before I blew up, the most scandalous thing she did was search up actors shirtless.

But when she started switching up, I started keeping tabs on her, and I’m glad, too, or I would have been had a slip up with her ass.

In a way, it’s my fault. I changed just as much as she did. I’m just as fake as she is, foreal. We two peas in a pod.

Damn, I’m getting soft.

I take a step back, letting my dick slip out and hit my leg like a deflated balloon. This shit embarrassing as fuck, especially when Sahara stands up straight and whirls on me, brows furrowed.

“Wh-what? What’s wrong, baby?”

she says, concern heavy in her voice.

I put on my clothes, not bothering to clean myself, and plop down on her couch.

“I’m sorry, I just got in my mind.”

I lean back and rub my eyes, trying to relieve the pressure behind them that’s building.

Sahara takes that as a cue to straddle me, still naked.

“Baby, talk to me. What’s wrong?”

I sigh and peer at her.

“Same shit, Sahara. Different day.”

Her dainty hands rub up and down my arms, like she’s using the friction to build the courage to piss me off. It’s been the same conversation for weeks now. She asks me what’s wrong, like she doesn’t know my OG and Raya are dead. Then, she proceeds to make me even more mad.

“Let me make you feel better, Rahshad,”

she coos, reaching for my shorts.

I grab her wrists and slide her off me before standing up.

“Ima get up with you later.”

I guess that’s the wrong thing to do. ‘Cause she hops up and pushes me toward the door.

“I’m so tired of your fucking attitude! Why did you even come over here!”

When she goes to push me again, I turn around and grab her wrists, pulling her close.

“Don’t put your hands on me, Sahara.”

My low tone makes her pause, but the anger’s still there in her pinched eyes and pursed lips.

“I don’t get you. You don’t support my career–”

I laugh in her fucking face and let her go.

“You have a fucking communications degree. Why are you on a reality tv show about side bitches when you’re not my sideline?”

She folds her arms again.

“Could have fooled me the way you were on a date with that black bitch. The blogs are saying she’s your baby mama.”

“One: watch yo fucking mouth. I’m not gonna tell you that again. And two: you don’t even believe that shit. I’m not tryna have no kids, and you know that. Macy is Dal’s best friend. You met her at Brina’s baby shower… oh yeah, that’s right!”

I clap in her face.

“You ain’t come to film getting slapped at some hookah lounge.”

“Oh, fuck you, . My ‘career’ you shit on? Bought this fucking highrise.”

“No, shorty. I bought this fucking highrise. That bbl, and that jag you drive. Yo ‘career’ pays a light bill in this muthafucka, maybe. Paid off all yo loans for you to try and be the next viral moment, then got the nerve to drag me in it. You mention my name or put them cameras in my face again, I’m suing you and that fucking network.”

I turn and walk toward her door, but stop when a pillow knocks into the back of my head.

Sahara shrieks like a banshee.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

My body suddenly feels tiny, too small to contain everything brewing inside of me. I grab the overpriced vase off her stupid end table and launch it into the opposite wall.

“MY FUCKING SISTER IS DEAD, NIGGA!”

Sahara has the good sense to look petrified, and I feed off that shit.

“You wanna know what’s wrong with me, Sahara?”

I start taking steps toward her, over the glass and dumb ass marbles that filled the vase. For every step I take toward her, she takes a step back. Now she’s quiet. Now she’s scared.

“All of my immediate family is dead. My granddad; dead. Nana; dead. Pops; dead. Mama; dead. My baby s-sister… she’s dead. Oh, but that’s not all. My best friend? That nigga’s dead, too. The only nigga on this planet still breathing–barely at that–is my brother, who’s really my cousin. And my homie wants to kill him, too. I’m so fucked up I have seizures when I think too hard. And then I have yo simple ass telling me the answer to all my problems is to have. A fucking. BABY.”

I flip her coffee table away from us, just because I can. Because it feels good, and I paid for it anyway.

Sahara’s all the way at the window, trying to become one with it. Tears spill over those ocean eyes of hers, but I don’t feel shit but the anger and despair that I’ve become familiar with. I latch onto it. It’s better than the emptiness that occupies me any other time.

“I wasn’t saying–”

“You was, sweetheart. But I’m not you. I can’t block out the fact that my peoples are gone. And having a baby not gone make me feel better.”

“You won’t even try!”

she cries out.

“You have kept me at arm’s distance for seven years, Rahshad! Seven years!”

I just shake my head. What a waste.

“Don’t call me, bro.”

I back out of her apartment and wait until I get into my whip to let the floodgates blow.

Countless memories of my baby sister assault me. Me holding her in the hospital. Me trying to get her to walk. Her at my high school graduation. Me at her kindergarten one. She was my biggest cheerleader, and I was her superhero.

She had so much life ahead of her. She should be here. We should be together.

I pull over to the side of the road and put my car in park. My eyeballs haven’t stopped sweating, but that’s how I get. A nigga has always had big feelings, and usually, letting it all go helps, but not now. Not for a while, if I’m being honest.

I fumble with the glove compartment and take out two things. The paperwork I was going to file to get full permanent custody of Raya, signed and ready to go. It was nothing to get a judge to sign off, not when they saw my OG’s rap sheet and my resources.

The other is a full pill bottle.

How I got it when Raya couldn’t even get her own medicine is a testament to this fucked up system. Money always talks, but my OG, she was so adamant on not relying on me, of hating every fiber of my being, she wouldn’t accept shit, and now look.

“I’m so sorry, Raya,”

I whisper, eyeing the pill bottle. I got some Hennessy in my car… I could take this shit, park at a view and watch the sunset. Be with my sister before midnight. Ain’t nothing here for me anyway.

Set will be aight. He went thirteen years without me before I popped up and was fine. The guys and Brina got him.

Maybe he’ll understand foreal. Maybe he’ll get that I just wanna be with my sister.

I go to open the pill bottle when my phone starts vibrating.

Call from: Set.

I sigh. Should I even answer? I stare at my dashboard, waiting for the name to go off.

It does, and I open the pill bottle. I don’t want him being the last person I talk to. That may fuck him up.

But when he calls again, I groan and answer. He never calls twice.

“Wassup?” I mutter.

“. You good?”

I put the pill bottle down at the urgency of his voice and look around to make sure he not here. Nigga sounds like he just ran a marathon. Like he knows the thoughts that won’t quiet in my mind.

“What’s wrong?”

He blows air into the phone.

“I had the craziest dream about you. Shit woke me up from my nap and all… you busy?”

I glance at the shit in the front seat before shaking my head.

“Nah. Not really.”

“Come to the crib. I’ll even let you bust my ass on the game.”

“Nigga, you don’t be letting me win,”

I chuckle.

“You right ‘cause yo ass be cheating. C’mon. I made Tiny’s jambalaya, extra spicy too so Brina can sneeze out my kids.”

That makes me laugh harder, ‘cause he dead serious.

“Aight nigga. Gimme thirty.”

“Make it twenty. I miss yo rock head ass.”

He hangs up and I stop squeezing my steering wheel.

With one more look, I put the custody papers and pill bottle in my glove compartment and make my way to my bro’s house.

“Can you even see your feet, sis?”

Brina, Set, and I are in their theater room watching some medical show with too many seasons.

Set did his shit with that jambalaya, and both of us were too tired to really play, so we let her rope us into watching this, since he knows I’m not trying to watch that fucking reality tv show he’s lowkey obsessed with.

She’s all stomach now, so big her t-shirts don’t go over it, so it’s bunched up at the top. Set’s got a hand palming the side of it as he’s stretched out next to her, and I’m stretched on the other side.

She cuts her eyes to me.

“I’ll be sure to inform your nieces or nephews that their Uncle called their mother a fat ass bitch.”

“Nah, she can’t see her feet. But that’s aight because I can see ‘em.”

“Casey, he just called me a walrus.”

I laugh in her face, which makes her sensitive ass tear up.

“You so extra. I just wanted to know… you think you got that big because you carrying two? Patience ain’t really get that big.”

Set palms his face with his messed up hand and bucks his eyes at me, but I genuinely want to know.

Brina pauses the tv and rearranges herself on the modular sofa, so that she’s facing me. When she folds her arms, Set’s other hand goes right back to her bump, like he’s gotta be connected to her.

“Why are you all of a sudden interested in the female anatomy? Sahara finally trapped yo ass?”

She narrows her eyes at me, but I wave her off.

“I quit her ass this afternoon actually. You know she tried to get me to be on that dumb ass show?”

“They are filming a new season right now… ah shit, I know Ronnie gone get in that ass fasho.”

Set cuts his eyes to me and smirks.

“Nah mama, he asking because he tryna see ‘bout Macy. Kenton Tea caught his ass leaving a lamaze class with her the other day.”

Brina’s dramatic ass gasps. “dy!”

I cut my eyes at my dumb ass brother before lifting my gaze to my self-proclaimed best friend.

“Macy’s cool peoples. She needed a partner so I went, that’s it.”

She deflates and clutches her chest.

“Oh, thank God.”

At my furrowed brows, she licks her lips and scratches her scalp.

“I love Mace. She’s a sweet girl. But she’s too much for you.”

“What’s that mean?”

Now I fold my arms. Ain’t no female too much for Shotta, suicidal or not.

“That means, Mace is crazy as fuck, Dub. You know she shot her baby daddy? Nut feels like gossipping with yo ass gone set you off, so now I gotta hear all about how she off her rocker, and apparently got a legion of niggas ready to be stepdaddy–”

“She’s not a ho,”

Brina cuts her eyes to Set.

“but she’s… just not into commitment.”

“Neither am I, B.”

“That’s different. Sahara just isn’t for you. Mace actually avoids commitment. For good reason. You heard Casey; she shot the father of her child.”

Shit, prolly for good reason.

Macy feels like because she hasn’t told me his name, that I don’t know she had a six-month affair with Dr. Daniel Enoch; Patience’s mentor, and very married. My program’s been gathering all the intel in the cloud I can on his ass.

Damn, I’m kinda glad I didn’t end it all. I have shit to do on my to do list still.

I shrug.

“He ain’t die. I mean, we just friends, but the shit you saying not deterring me, if I was on that.”

“Yeah, but them Triplets gone deter yo ass. Nut said that Dal said that big nigga YC real close with her. Please don’t have me body B’s cousin over a girl that’s likely to shoot yo ass anyway.”

Brina done turned my bro into a gossipping ass, reality tv show watching nigga.

“Yes, . Please. I don’t need Big Mama on my ass about them,”

Brina pleads.

“Why are they even called that? What? I haven’t had time to pull their info.”

Set grabs the remote but Brina snatches it from him.

“We are not watching that fucking show,”

she hisses.

“This shit boring, mama. I’m out the game; I don’t give a fuck about them niggas–no offense.”

She mushes him on the forehead.

“You will care because they’re my family, and you’re coming with me this year to Big Mama’s birthday… my daddy’s Trenton the third, his oldest uncle is Trenton Junior. He’s Macy’s goddad, was best friends with her dad. He had project triplets, you know, three kids all around the same age by different mamas. There’s Cain Young, YC, the oldest; Prince Charming Young, YP, the middle; and True Young, YT, the only girl. Uncle Junior has another son, but he’s a year younger than the Triplets and not in the family business.

“The Triplets though… insane in the membrane. They’re closer to Nutty’s age, but I still had heard about their get down growing up. I just didn’t connect the dots between them being my cousins until I was older. And before True went to jail for, guess what, shooting her ex, she and Macy were really tight.”

“So you see, baby bro, you need to stay away from trigger happy ladies, especially pregnant trigger happy ladies. Stick to the prim and proper hoes.”

Brina snorts.

“Any girl who willingly gets on that show is far from prim and proper.”

“Hey!”

Set barks.

“Don’t do Ronnie and Deja like that.”

I wave them both off.

“Niggas not on that. But a nigga named Prince Charming can never put no fear in my heart.”

Me and Set chuckle as I throw up the Birch sign. Brina just shakes her head at us, practicing her disappointed mom face.

“Poor dy. She’s finna put yo ass through the blender.”