Page 26 of Lucci

brEEZY

I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled as loud as I could. “You better do your fuckin’ big one, Storm!”

The Hellcat Barbies, a few niggas with Hellcats or Camaros, and some spectators were gathered to see some of the Barbies race.

Just because I didn’t do it didn’t mean I didn’t support my girls when they did.

I could get being competitive and wanting to win, but it was funny when men got mad because they were beat by a woman.

Storm was racing a military guy driving a Camaro.

The engines revved, and the crowd cheered.

I was trying my hardest to enjoy the festivities, but Lucci was on my mind heavy.

The best part about being single and not liking anyone, were the stress-free days and nights.

I hadn’t spoken to him in more than twelve hours.

Not only that, he had his location off. I was tempted to pop up at his house, but I didn’t want to do all that.

No matter how much I liked him or how good the dick was, I wasn’t trying to give off psycho vibes.

I had a little too much pride for that. If he wanted to talk to me, he knew how to get in touch with me.

Times like this, made me feel stupid for ignoring Gavin. Even if I wasn’t interested in him romantically, I was avoiding being his friend because I didn’t want to make Lucci mad. “Maybe the man is busy.” I mumbled to myself.

Tired of thinking about Lucci, I focused on the cars as they took off burning rubber.

Even while I was straining my neck to see, I couldn’t concentrate on the race.

The urge to check Lucci’s location was so strong, my index finger twitched.

I was pissing my own self off acting like I wasn’t pressure, and I couldn’t get a man if I really wanted to.

Lucci talked about preferring love over loyalty, but nobody was just automatically loyal to bullshit.

At least not me. Imagine me running around acting as if he was the only man that existed while he got ghost whenever he wanted to.

“Storm smoked that nigga!” Aubree yelled.

Trying to force myself to have a good time wasn’t working.

I’d rather leave than be a party pooper.

Physically, I was there but mentally, I was a million miles away.

I wasn’t even in the mood to tell anybody that I was leaving.

I just got in my car and pulled off. I was supposed to be going home.

I had every intention of it, but I found myself parking right beside Lucci’s Maserati after doing exactly what I said I had too much pride to do.

I popped up at his home unannounced and uninvited.

I rang the doorbell with bated breath. When Lucci answered the door seconds later, he had a gun in his hand. His eyes were red, and he looked stressed. Immediately, any anger I felt dissipated. “What’s wrong?” I inquired genuinely concerned.

“Just a lot going on. I’m straight though. What you doing here?”

“I haven’t heard from you, and I was worried about you. Is there anything you want to talk about?”

When Lucci leaned in the doorway that was an indication that he wasn’t going to let me inside.

That made me feel some kind of way. I couldn’t even lie.

“Nah. Talking isn’t really gon’ do shit.

I’m missing my brother. Got other shit going on.

I just have a lot on my mind, but I’ll be good. I appreciate you for asking.”

If Lucci wanted to be alone all I could do was respect it. Just as my lips parted to tell him that, he pulled his phone out of his pocket with a deep sigh. It must have been on vibrate because I didn’t hear it ring. Lucci observed the screen with furrowed brows.

“Hello?” he half barked. After a few seconds of listening, he sighed again. “Where is she? I’m on my way.”

Lucci eased his phone back in his pocket and eyed me.

“I need to run and check on Kiandra. I’ll hit you up when I get back in.”

My brows hiked as I peered at Lucci like he’d lost his mind.

I was real tired of the back and forth. I understood his situation with Kiandra, but I was the one he’d been having sex with every chance he got.

He’d been ignoring me all day. He was so stressed and in his feelings that he didn’t want to talk, but he was about to run to Kiandra?

I had to check myself because it could have been an emergency.

“What’s wrong with her?” I hated that my tone sounded flat. Like I really couldn’t care less, but I was asking anyway.

“Her friend is just worried about her. Says she won’t eat. She’s been crying for days. Her parents want to have her ass committed. I just want to tell her to get a hold of herself. Doing all that over me isn’t necessary.”

I nodded my head. He was ready to turn me away, so he could be alone, but he was about to go do what?

Kiandra’s heart was broken. The only way he could snap her out of the state she was in was to give her false hope and promises.

Was he going to feed her soup and wipe her tears away?

I really was over the back and forth bullshit.

After he’d been single for at least six months, he could holla at me, and if I was single, we could talk.

“Alright. You drive safe.”

I turned to walk away, and he didn’t even try to stop me.

Anger made my face flush. Heat radiated through my body as I started my car.

I needed space from Lucci. Real space. Not the kind that I forgot about as soon as he showed up at my door with those puppy dog eyes and sweet words wrapped in his deep timbre.

Maybe loyalty was better than feelings because something was telling me if he had to choose, Lucci would pick Kiandra every time.

Maybe not in the sense of being with her, but in the sense of running to her rescue.

He claimed he wasn’t in love with her but for as much as he cared about her and the way he treated her like a delicate flower, he may as well be head over heels in love with her.

I had no desire to compete with Kiandra for Lucci’s attention. She could have it.

He damn sure wasn’t the first man to ever disappoint me, and I was sure he wouldn’t be the last. At least I knew what it was, and I didn’t have to wonder anymore.

At home, I took a shower and got in bed.

I needed something to focus on. My house.

I was real close to reaching my goal so I could start the process of looking for a house.

When I got a house, the only thing I was taking with me were my clothes, shoes, and sentimental things.

For my home, I wanted to completely redecorate. That would keep me busy for sure.

I looked on Pinterest for decorating inspo until I had yawned numerous times and could no longer keep my eyes open. Finally, I stopped fighting it and let sleep take over.

My father’s mother played a pivotal part in my childhood.

She watched me a lot on the weekend when my dad had to work overtime.

My grandmother did my hair. She taught me how to cook and do laundry.

It was her that taught me what to do when I started my period.

She was the mother the woman that birthed me didn’t want to be.

It was also her birthday so despite my mood, I wasn’t going to miss the fish fry they were throwing her for anything in the world.

If it was one thing my cousin, Bo could do, it was fry some fish.

I didn’t wake up in the best mood, but I got cute and made myself go to my grandmother’s house.

For our family to be so big, there was minimal drama, and mostly everyone got along.

When we got together, it was a good time, and that was what I needed at the moment.

By the time I arrived, the street was already lined with cars, and her yard was full of people.

My grandmother had been living in the same house for seventeen years.

It wasn’t hers, but the landlord loved her and told her he’d never make her leave.

She was friends with everyone on the street that had been there longer than a year, and when she had large gatherings at her home, none of the neighbors complained about all the cars.

Shoot, they came over to get plates and kick it too.

“Let me drive your car,” my little cousin, Rodney, who was only twelve grinned wide.

“Um no. You have to learn how to drive first,” I chuckled.

“I know how to drive. My dad taught me, and Jericho lets me drive sometimes.”

“Is that right?” Jericho was Rodney’s brother. He was seventeen, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew how to hot wire cars and strip them of their parts. He was bad as hell and had been since he was old enough to talk.

“Yeap. The other day he let me drive off the street and around the corner,” Rodney reported proudly.

“Well to drive my car, you need a driver’s license. Holla at me in about four more years.”

“Ahh man,” he groaned making me laugh.

I had been around family for less than five minutes, and I felt better already.

“Hey, grandma.” I entered the kitchen and found her sitting at the kitchen table putting icing on a cake. “Why you in here working and it’s your birthday?” I hugged her before handing her an envelope that contained a birthday card with $500 inside.

My Aunt Monie kissed her teeth. “Child, I don’t know why you asked that question. You know she has to be in here to watch and critique.”

“Damn right,” my grandmother nodded. “Not about to have me eating no nasty food. Y’all always wanting to try some shit you seen on Tok Tik. Messing up good food and shit. I knew how to cook before social media.”

“It’s Tik Tok,” I laughed.

“Whatever. And thank you.” My grandmother placed the card on the table.

“Need me to do anything?” I looked around the kitchen. Monie was making potato salad, her daughter, Jasmine was taking a pan of macaroni and cheese out of the oven, and my cousin, Pam, was taking pieces of chicken out of piping hot grease.

“No, we got it all covered,” Monie answered. “Everything is about done. We’ll be eating in another ten minutes or so.”

I bobbed my head, grabbed a Sprite from the cooler and went outside to join my cousins and uncles at the spades table. “What it do, Breezy?” my cousin, Blake asked as I sat down. “When you gonna introduce me to one of them fine ass hoes in your car club?”

“I know you didn’t just play in my face like that!”

Blake’s eyes almost jumped out of his head as the woman that was pregnant with his child snaked her neck at him.

“Got damn I forgot you were sitting right there,” he genuinely looked stumped.

Blake looked down at the cup in his hand inspecting the contents as if he didn’t know what he was drinking.

The look of confusion on his face was comical.

“You better put that cup down before it gets your head knocked off your shoulders,” my Aunt Connie shook her head at him. She’d been smoking crack for as long as I could remember, and she was a better mother to her kids than my mother was to me.

“It’s all good,” Kacey seethed. “I see the kinds of things that come out of your mouth when I’m not around. Just wait until I drop this load. I got a trick for your ass.”

“Aight. We magicians and shit now, huh? Don’t get fucked up,” Blake warned.

“Spell magician you stupid mother fucker.” Kacey stood up and stormed away from the table while we all laughed our asses off. Blake was lowkey slow as hell. He could barely read on a third-grade level but was always somewhere in a woman’s face.

“That hoe tripping. Anyway,” Blake mumbled trying to save face. “Like I said, Breezy. When you gon’ stop playing and hook me up?”

“You want me to lie to you or hurt your feelings?”

Blake frowned. “What you mean hurt my feelings?”

“Every single one of The Hellcat Barbies has something going for herself. We don’t just have nice cars.

These are educated women with careers and money.

Most of them have boyfriends but the ones that are single are about their business.

You’re what? Twenty-six? You don’t have a job.

You don’t have a car. You have a baby on the way, and you live with your baby mama in her mother’s house and after what you just did, you might not even live there. ”

My Aunt Connie snickered while Blake’s frown deepened.

“I do have a job. I just got on at Wendy’s, and I’m about to start helping my homeboy detail cars on the weekend.

I get forty hours a week at Wendy’s, and he’s going to pay me $100 per car I do.

Even if I only do four or five cars in a weekend, that’s four or five hundred dollars,” he stated proudly.

“Congratulations,” was all I said, and I left it at that. I couldn’t knock anyone’s hustle, and him having two jobs was better than not having one at all. But he wasn’t on any of the Barbie’s level, and there was no way in hell he could expect any of them to entertain him.

His credit score probably wasn’t even a 500.

The man didn’t possess anything of his own except clothes and shoes.

I was willing to bet that he didn’t even have a primary care physician, a savings account, or life insurance.

I’d never in life attempt to put anyone that I actually liked and respected down with him.

Shit, if Kacey asked me, I’d tell her ass she could do better, and he was my cousin.

The man had to live in her mother’s house, and he’d still been bold enough to sit in her face and disrespect her.

That was one of the reasons that I’d been so into Lucci.

Even when he wasn’t happy in his relationship, he never cheated, and I respected the hell out of him for that.

I didn’t want thoughts of Lucci to sour my mood, so I finished off my Sprite and went to fix myself something stronger.

I wasn’t going to get drunk. All I needed was a buzz.

A buzz that would probably make me horny…

Stand on business . Inwardly, I had to give myself a pep talk.

I couldn’t fold. Not this time. Lucci was going to take as long as he needed to figure things out with Kiandra, and I wasn’t accepting anything less.

We’d played a dangerous game by jumping into something too fast. Now, I had to deal with the consequences.

I liked Lucci. I really did. I even liked Kiandra.

But I didn’t play second to anybody, so if he wasn’t sure where his loyalty lay, and he didn’t know who to choose, I’d make it easy for him. He could choose her every time.