Page 14 of He Thugged Me First

“Because everything with everyone starts out beautiful, and then it all ends up being the same.” That was one of my biggest fears. I feared that things never stayed the same, that change always brought forth unavoidable issues.

“Couldn’t this be different and you’re being a bit negative?”

“Possibly, but look at how things with Chase are.”

She shook her head. “That’s different, and you feel that, right?” She was peering at me over her glasses like my grandmother did.

“You said it yourself. You were ready to be taking your own direction from Chase when you got here, but you didn’t.

You’re not good at goodbyes. You just up and leave, hoping that’s how you say goodbye.

You did it with Mazzier when you were sixteen, and you tried to do it with Chase. The thing is he didn’t get the hint.”

I looked at her and nodded.

“So no, you’re not comfortable like we agreed on. You’re not good at saying goodbye,” she reiterated.

“How do I even?—”

“Learn, I can’t teach you. You have to, or you’ll forever be in situations that drain you and keep you unhappy.”

When I left Kenya’s office, I went to my grandmother’s house.

I had been meaning to go see her but purposely hadn’t.

She was always good at reading me to filth, so I filtered my time with her besides the fact that I worked a lot.

As I cruised through my old neighborhood, I smiled at the memories flashing through my head.

Most of them were with Autumn and Nadeen, and even some were of Mazzier and me.

When I was younger, everything was so easy, though I thought it was complex, but now that’s actually what it was.

Truth of the matter was that I was a creature of habit.

I didn’t bother stuff because I was too damn unbothered.

I was at the height of my career, but I was missing something.

I had found that something in spending time with Mazzier, but what the hell was I supposed to do with that?

I felt like I needed to learn how to be alone again, but did I want to?

Chase wasn’t enough anymore, and I felt like he knew that now.

Once I was parked in front of her house, I closed my eyes and exhaled.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been seeing Mazz the way I had been seeing him, but that didn’t take away from how being around him made me feel.

After I gathered my things, I got out of the car and walked up her pathway toward her front door.

Numerous times I’d asked her to move in with me or let me move her out of the hood, but she refused.

Grandma always said she had herself and that she was comfortable.

I always shrugged it off because she was her.

When I was younger, she was known as the hood’s grandmother because she cared for everybody and never turned a soul away. At her house is where I first met Mazz.

“About time you bought your narrow ass here.” She opened her front door and stepped out onto the porch, holding two glasses of what looked like iced tea, but I knew better. It was Pepsi. Grandma loved that shit, even though it ran her sugar higher than the temperature in July.

I cut my eyes at her and the glasses in her hands.

“Don’t you start your shit. You are not my doctor, Gaya.” She refused to call me Gayze, so she’d given me her remixed idea of her name. Even until this day, she was probably the only person who had ever called me such. When she was alive, my mother hated it and cringed every time she said it.

I giggled. “I know I’m not. You make that clear every time you come to my hospital and refuse to let me treat you.”

“Well.” She passed me the glass like I was gonna drink it. I never did. She was just wasting her drinks at this point. “Now what brings you here to see an old woman?”

“I missed you,” I responded with a smile.

“That so? Well, you work enough to let me know that ya hiding from something or somebody.” This was what I meant about reading me. My grandma was always the only person in the family that could see right through a person. I’m talking right freaking through, like a person was transparent.

“No, Granny. I just love my job.”

“Glad to hear that, but when are you gonna gimme some grandbabies? I mean ya sister went and gave me three by that rotten ass boy whose head is bigger than his body. Are they even together?” she asked slowly.

I shook my head. “I don’t even know. But that’s enough, right? I don’t think I’ll ever have?—”

“Nonsense. Even though you engaged with that boy with the crooked smile and dark eyes, I still think there’s hope.”

My grandmother never liked Chase. She believed that he meant me no good. At this point, I was believing I meant him no good, but that was a conversation for another time. My attention was taken from my grandmother and put onto my phone where Mazz had texted me.

Mazzier: What time you get off?

Me: Y?

“Who has you smiling like that?” she asked.

I glanced up at her from my phone with a smirk. “Could it be my fiancé, Grandma?”

“Hell nah. That negro makes ya frown and look like you suffocating in ya own body.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at her because she was right. I wouldn’t tell her that though, because I’d never hear the end of that.

“So who is he? Is he above six feet? You know my rules.”

Again, I couldn’t help but laugh. Growing up around my grandmother, she had four rules when it came to us dating.

Number one was to never bring home a man with a habit.

She hated Newports and drugs. That, of course, excluded marijuana, because Granny loved to smoke on Sundays while she cooked.

Rule number two was not to bring home a man who couldn’t keep his hands to himself.

She claimed she had no problem catching a case.

Rule number three was to avoid all jailbirds.

She claimed that all ya money would end up in the penile system.

Finally, her final rule was also never to ever bring home a man under six feet.

That of course was one of the numerous rules that my sister had broken.

Her kids’ father was five feet seven. She was pissed.

She claimed that my nephews were gonna be short, fat niggas because my sister wasn’t picky enough when it came to picking out a man.

I was interrupted from my thoughts by the loud music coming up the block. When I looked up from my grandmother, I glanced toward the street and saw what looked like Mazzier’s truck. Couldn’t be.

“There goes my boy, right on time with my lunch.”

I cut my eyes from her to his truck pulling into her driveway. What the hell was going here?

“Why are you over there looking all funky? Had you did what I told you back then, this would’ve been my grandson-in-law.”

Again, I was laughing because I thought about the advice she’d given me when it came to Mazz when I was younger.

When I was sixteen, I was too afraid to go to my mama about anything so of course I came to her.

My grandmother instructed me to bust his ass upside the head with a bottle and he’d get his act together.

She even went on to tell me how she got my grandfather to act right.

“We ain’t speaking today, G?” Mazzier asked as he ascended the stairs with two Styrofoam containers. He handed one to my grandmother before he purposely took a seat next to me on the bench.

Of course, I smiled before looking from him to my grandmother. Her nosy ass was peering at me waiting for my response.

“Hello, Mazzier.”

“I’m Mazzier now?” he asked, opening his food and picking his fries out of the container.

“Something going on here?” My grandmother finally spoke.

“No—”

“Yup, Grams. She’s playing with me.” He looked away from me at her.

I shook my head.

“Playing with ya how, boy? Y’all seem really comfortable.” She smiled. Yup, she was being her nosy self, and nothing could detour that.

I reached into his bag grabbing the fork before I used it to get a fork full of fries. If they had mild sauce, they were my weakness, and he knew that. I think I had gained about five pounds alone hanging out with this man.

“Had you responded to my message, then you could’ve got ya own.” He winked.

“You probably have a lot of females blowing down ya line and you didn’t see my response, because I did respond.” I continued to eat his fries and gaze at him. I swear each and every time I was in his presence, I got lost in it. It was like nothing else mattered and there was nobody else near.

“I don’t like being left out of the loop. Mazzier, how long have you been seeing my baby?”

“I’m not seeing her like I want to, Mama, but since I told you when I got shot even though she runs from a ni?—”

“Language.” She corrected me.

He never removed his eyes from mine as he spoke, and it was something erotic about that. I mean, even though it was clear he was talking to my grandma, I felt like he was talking to me.

“I saved his life, Granny.” I smiled and looked away from him.

“Mhmm. So you got my baby smiling like this?” she asked.

He shook his head coyly.

She laughed. “I’ll be right back, y’all.” She excused herself and walked out into the house.

“I didn’t know you’d be here.” I responded as soon as she was inside.

“Yeen ask.”

“I—” I started but I wasn’t able to finish my sentence because he pressed his lips against mine. He definitely had to stop teasing me or something had to give because this right here wasn’t okay.

“What are we doing, Mazzier?” I asked as he stood between my legs allowing his hands to roam my body under my dress. We had spent enough time at my grandmother’s house where she damn near probed both of us to death before I allowed him to talk me into going back to his house.

“What you wanna be doing, G?” he asked.

“I don’t know. We both have ba?—”