Page 3 of Only a Gemini Will Do

Kadeem sat nearby, hunched over a stack of cash as he slowly counted what was left of our emergency stash—dirty banknotes and some crumpled U.S. hundreds that hadn’t been exchanged yet. I took a puff of the cigar nestled between my pointer and middle fingers while staring at the ocean as if it would solve all my problems. Maybe it was me, but the world seemed more beautiful in Brazil than it ever did in the States.

“We’ve got about two months left,” he announced, his voice clipped as he studied the money before him. “Maybe less if yo’ ass keeps buying those cigars.”

I didn’t respond. Instead, I watched the smoke curl into the air before it disappeared. I wasn’t thinking about whatever he was talking about. The only thing on my mind was her.The hurricane. Her apartment. Her smile. The sound of her moaning my name. How fuckin’ wet she got for me.I remembered everything.

“Yo, Earth to Kareem. You zoning out again, nigga,” my brother observed before balling up a C-note and throwing it at me. “We need a plan before we run through the rest of the stash and become sitting fuckin’ ducks.”

I finally twisted toward him to see his lips pressed in a hard line. “Says the nigga who blew two bands at the strip club last night for no reason.”

He sucked his teeth. “I’m serious, nigga.”

“I know . . . I just keep thinking about Florida.”

Kadeem raised an eyebrow. “Florida? You mean that girl.”

I nodded slowly. I couldn’t lie. I missed the hell out of Sawyer, even the attitude.She was supposed to have been a distant memory, but every time I closed my eyes, her face was the first one to pop into my head.

“I don’t know why, but I keep seeing her face. It’s got me wondering maybe if things had gone differently . . .”

Kadeem snorted as my voice trailed off, filling the silence with his chuckle. “They went the way they were supposed to go, nigga. If not, we’d both be rotting in a cell right about now, and she’d be boo’d up with some other cornball ass nigga just like my baby mama.”

I heard the hate in his voice. He was salty about his own situation and the fact that his baby mama had his sons calling another man daddy while we were on the run, trying to hold onto our freedom. We may have shared the same face and DNA, but we handled shit differently when it came to matters of the heart. Since Kadeem couldn’t have what he really wanted, he took his frustrations out on any beautiful Brazilian woman with a pretty face, round ass, and a tight pussy he encountered. Neither of us had even learned a lick of Portuguese outside of how to say hello, thank you, the days of the week, and where the bathroom at. Yet, he’d found a way to communicate without using words or emotions. Hearing him put them through the mattress every other night only made me think of shawty more.

“What you need to do is get over her and get under one of these Brazilian hos. As many beautiful females as there are walking in this city, you could have a different one every night if you wanted,” he suggested.

I looked at him. “Like you?”

Kadeem cheesed. “Exactly like me. I’m talking short ones, tall ones, skinny ones, curvy ones. My dick ain’t been dry since we got here.”

“I don’t want a different one. I know what I want and it’s not fuckin’ here.”

Kadeem cocked his head to the side. “You telling me we’ve been here three whole months and not one of these bad assbitches caught your eye? You gay or somethin’, nigga?” He chuckled.

I cut my eyes at him. “Fuck outta here, nigga. You know what I’m on.”

He was playing dumb, but that nigga knew as well as I did that a thousand hos ain’t have shit on one loyal girl.

He slid his hand down his starter locs that stopped at his nape. “There you go with the Florida shit again. You really think this shit is worth it? You barely know the broad. You had one or two nights with her, and now you all googly-eyed in love and shit. Shawty must have that crazy snapper.”

“I’m about to find out.”

“How?”

I hesitated before reaching into my pocket to pull out a receipt and handed it to him. “I sent her a ticket. She lands on Friday.”

He squinted at the paper before shifting his attention back to me. “You for real?”

I dipped my chin. “I ain’t been able to get her out of my head since Florida, so I figured I’d fly her out. It’s safer than me being out there.”

“And you’re expecting what to come from this?”

I bit the inside of my cheek as my head tilted to the side. “I don’t know. Something, maybe nothing at all. But I had to try.”

“What if she doesn’t show or is already with the next nigga? Or what if she does? You know what that could mean, right? One wrong move from either of us, and we’re being extradited to the U.S. to be locked in a cage. You trust a stranger with your freedom that much? Because I don’t.”

My eyes narrowed. “Trust me, I know the risks, aight? I need to see if what we had can be replicated anywhere, or if it was a one-time thing.”

Kadeem got to his feet and proceeded over to lean against the balcony next to me. “I get it, I do. I saw how you were with her, even if it was just for a few hours. And I miss my kids every damn day. So I know how it feels to want something you can’t have, but it is what it is right now. Just know that if you bring her here, you gotta be prepared for whatever shit comes with it. Don’t let your heart be the thing that gets us killed, nigga.”