Page 1 of On Everything

Ciara

Slamming the mailbox shut, I crumpled up the piece of paper I’d just read.

“I am going to kill his ass!”

The letter in my hand was a statement from a credit card company addressed to me.

Worst of all, the charges were for places I had never visited and things I had never seen in our twelve years of being together.

I got with Kairo when I was sixteen years old and we have pretty much been broke since then.

Extra money came around like holidays for us, so splurging was unheard of in our household.

I won’t say that our marriage has been all bad because of our finances.

Kairo and I had plenty of good days where we would make do with what we had.

There were nights where we would build large pillow forts in our small one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx for movie night.

Or times like when we did homemade hibachi and almost burnt down our building trying to do an onion volcano.

Everything we did to have fun was either free or had a coupon attached to it, so that’s why this credit card bill had me mad fuckin’’ irritated.

What was all this romantic shit listed about?

There is a $200 charge at a flower shop and a $300 tab at The Loft Steakhouse in Brooklyn.

Kairo had never done anything like this with me, so who were these charges for?

Especially on a card with my name on it that I did not approve of.

I been working hard to maintain a decent credit score to get a nicer apartment for us one day that is not in the Castle Hill Projects.

Getting a nice spot was a dream of mine.

But apparently, Kairo had smaller ambitions that involved impressing females who wouldn’t loan him a grape for a fruit fight.

I can’t believe almost twelve years later, and his ass is still placing this burning feeling in my chest that I have right now.

There was sweat dripping down my temples, and my hands were squeezed tightly into a fist. If only I didn’t love his ass so much, I would have been left him high and dry.

I don’t know what I did to deserve such mistreatment from a man I always held down since the beginning, through all his extra bitches and his trips to jail.

Kairo and I first got together when we were upperclassmen at Truman High.

Kairo was a player, a ladies’ man, the boy that got all the cute girls in my class in trouble for skipping school and sneaking out with.

Kairo never looked my way until I had a fight with Cheyanne Lopez for picking on my overdue box braids.

I whooped her ass all the way under the lunchroom table and that ended me up in after-school detention for two weeks.

Of course Kairo’s ass was in there for reasons I didn’t know, but he was in detention so much it was a part of his schedule.

The entire first day of detention, I felt like Kairo was looking at me out of the corner of his eyes, but he didn’t say anything to me until we hit the sidewalk on Baychester to wait at the bus stop once we were dismissed.

He ran up behind me, tugging his backpack filled with God knows what inside. Back then, boys we're selling weed, pills, whatever it took just to keep up with others. There were more locker raids at Truman High than in the Projects.

I still remember how his voice had highs and lows because it hadn’t deepened all the way.

“Hey. I’m Kairo.”

“Hi, I’m Ciara.”

“Yea, nice to meet you. I just wanted to tell you that you may want to walk with me down to the bus stop. There are some creepy ass niggas hanging around that stop at this time of day. I wouldn't want anyone to try and take you.”

“O- o- k. Thanks.”

I remember stuttering in shock that Kairo Chalvez was even talking to me.

To the outside world Kairo was just another bad ass teenage boy, but to the girls at Truman High, he was the dream man to have as your man.

There wasn’t one girl at my school who would have turned down his offer to walk them to the stop that day or any other day; I mean, he was Kairo Chalvez.

For the next two weeks of my detention sentence, Kairo and I found ourselves getting closer and closer each afternoon. We walked to the bus stop side by side, sharing laughs and making inside jokes about dumb shit like teenagers do.

We would also stop by Harold’s Deli close to my apartment every single day, because we both had a soft spot for their Ham and Cheese on a roll, a classic combo that never failed to hit the spot.

We’d sit at our usual corner table inside the small deli, where I think his cute face, nice clothes, and funny jokes really hooked me.

After that, there was no seeing Ciara without Kairo.

I fell deeply and fast for the bad boy at school.

I lost a lot of friends because of Kairo, some of my family, and even a few children because of the bullshit he put me through.

There were things I would never tell a soul that I did with and for Kairo.

Not even my best friend, Pernelle, who I told everything to.

She was the first person to tell me Kairo was no good for me.

Sometimes I wish I hadn't been so headstrong back in the day, trying to prove that I deserved to have the popular guy in school.

Look what it got me. Years of heartbreak and looking like a dummy to everyone who knew our story.

I pressed my back against the hot metallic surface of the mailboxes, fighting to keep tears from running down my face.

When I finally lifted my chin from the pavement, just my luck that my fine ass neighbor, Ant, was walking toward his mailbox looking like a cool lime-flavored popsicle on a summer day.

I quickly straightened my posture, trying not to slouch in front of him.

He always looked good, and though he was dressed in sweatpants and gym clothes most of the time, he had a way of making it look like high-end fashion.

It was his athletic build for me. He had that tall, dark, Xavier Legette body type.

Sometimes when Kairo is gone, I stand in the window of my apartment to watch his chocolate skin glistened like melted chocolate when he jogs up and down pathway in front of our building.

Despite the trash cans, cluttered grounds, and worn down building, he was quite a view from my third floor window.

“Ayo Cici, you good?”

His deep voice rattled the drums in my ears.

“Hey, Ant.”

I spoke almost below my breath.

“You good?”

“Yeah, I’m good. See you later.”

I forced a smile before turning away from the usual small talk we had between us.

Whenever I ran into Ant, those long conversations were my way of being in his presence just a little longer to enjoy the eye candy that he was up close.

He wasn’t too talkative, but I would ask him the right questions that I knew would get him going.

That chocolate skin and those muscles that were always exposed made me clinch my thighs at times, but I never thought about cheating. That was the difference between me and Kairo. He didn’t understand the boundaries between wishing and acting.

When I glanced back, I saw that Kairo had his gym bag slung over his shoulder, most likely filled with protein powder, protein bars, and things like a change of clothes.

He is a personal trainer and has been encouraging me to join his personal training club to better my overall health during our small talks in the hallway.

I wanted to take him up on his offer because of my slight weight gain, but in reality, I barely had enough cash for my rent.

Other necessities like a personal trainer are not in my budget.

I can’t even afford to eat takeout most of the time.

After going up the stairs getting the only exercise I can afford, I walked inside my apartment, slamming the door behind me.

"Kairo! Come out here now!"

I yelled after stepping inside the door and forcing it shut with my hip. The heat inside our apartment matched the temperature outside because Mr. Lopez still had not come to fix our air conditioning unit.

The temperature wasn’t helping how I felt right now.

In fact, it made me madder just thinking about why we were forced to live in the simmering heat this summer.

The truth is, Kairo and I were late on rent because he thought he had a guaranteed win on his bet for the Super Bowl.

His ass put up our February rent money online and felt just because his favorite team was playing in the big game, that he had a guaranteed win.

It instead didn’t work like he wanted it too and left him in debt, which meant I was in debt too.

“Kairo! I know you hear me!”

"What is it, Ciara? I’m getting dressed!” Kairo’s voice carried from the back room.

He was getting ready for his graveyard shift at the plant he works at from 7:00 pm to 6:00 am in the morning.

It was only his month number two there and he has already told me a million reasons why it wouldn’t work out for too long.

It was too hot, the pallets were too heavy, or his favorite excuse, I could make double this on the streets and faster.

Selling drugs was probably the one thing I never wanted him to do again the most. I did that visitation thing with his ass a few times in our relationship, and I already told him I’m not doing it again.

Kairo was doing good now. He had an honest job; he wasn’t in the streets every night doing fucked up shit.

At least that’s what I’ve been led to believe since he got out about a year ago after his last six month bid.

I walked into our bedroom that had an overpowering scent of weed and my lavender candle that he used as both a deodorizer and an ashtray. I swear I can’t have a nice candle without him or his homeboys fucking it up with ashes.

“Ciara why the fuck are you hollering my name like that when you know I’m getting dressed for work?”