Page 30 of Ony If It’s You

Chapter Nineteen

J avyous

“Baby, I’m only going for like an hour or so.” I laughed at Kehlani refusing to unwrap her body from mine.

“Why do you have to go?” she whined. “You’re going out of town soon and he’s going with you so that’s not fair.”

Again, I laughed and peeled her arms from around my neck. I placed my palms flat on each side of her as I hovered.

“I been ditching training and shit early for you and all this week baby, let me just kick it with my cousin for a couple of hours.”

Leaning down I kissed the tip of her nose then her lips.

“JV! Can I go?” Si entered our room and climbed on the bed.

The twins had finally come back home earlier and they both had been under a nigga the whole time too. None of them wanted a nigga to leave. If this was how it was with me only leaving a couple of hours, then I could only imagine what it was going to be like when I was on the road.

“Naw, li’l homie, you can’t go where I’m going.”

I kissed Kehlani’s lips one more time before lifting and allowing him to cuddle into his mother.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m going to a grownup spot.”

“The strip club?”

“Messiah!” Kehlani screeched but I laughed. He was always trying to figure some shit out.

“Naw, li’l man, not the strip club.”

“Javyous.” Kehlani eyed me.

“What you know about the strip club anyways?”

“Daddy said that’s where men hang out. You’re a man, JV, you’ve never been?”

I wanted to answer him, but his mother was grilling me, so instead I grabbed him by the ankles, pulled him my way and started to tickle his stomach.

“Stop, stop!” he pleaded and I tickled his stomach, sides, and neck.

He managed to get away from me and crawl back up the bed, so I stood up.

“Aight, I’ll be back. Si hold the girls down while I’m gone.” I winked and kissed his mother one last time.

“I’m the man of the house while you’re gone?”

“Yep, so make sure shit straight in this mothafucka for me, aight?”

“Javyous, don’t talk to him like that.”

“Chill, baby, this is man talk.”

“Yeah, Mommy,” Si agreed. “I’m a man.”

We both laughed while Lani rolled her eyes.

I dapped him up, then bounced, careful not to wake Jocey because she would have been worse than her mother trying to get a nigga to stay and I probably would have really caved with her.

She wasn’t biologically mine, but she was my little princess and had me wrapped around her little ass finger.

The ride to the Local Cue wasn’t long. It was about twenty minutes from the crib, so I got there quickly.

I called my pops on the ride over because he had hit me with the details on my upcoming fight.

I hadn’t really been speaking to him since the last incident in Vegas, but I knew that I had to talk to him eventually considering that he was my promoter.

“Gotdamn nigga, it took you long enough,” Dominique complained when I sat beside him at the bar.

“Had to make sure my family was good before I bounced nigga, shut yo’ ass up.”

I waved the waiter over and asked for a water and the balls for a table.

Dominique and I normally met here at least once a week if I was home so that we could catch up.

He was normally busy running the streets and I was on the road, but he had been having more and more free time lately.

I was sure that it had something to do with the fact that he had been spending all of his free time with Celeste, but I planned to pick his brain about it while we were together.

“Ol’ Cliff Huxtable ass nigga,” he joked as we made our way to the table. I’d won the last time that we were here, so it was his turn to set the balls up.

“You’re one to talk, nigga,” I clapped back and grinned when his eyes met mine. “Yeah, mothafucka, you been sniffing around Celeste’s ass since we met them.”

He waved me off. “Fuck out of here. She the homie. Go.”

He had the balls set up, so I leaned over to break.

“Yeah, aight, you do know her and my wife are best friends, right?”

“And?” He frowned.

“And she tells her everything, so I know what yo’ ass be really doing.” I grinned. I missed my last shot, so it was his go. He mugged me all the way to the spot he wanted to hit from.

“So, what you be doing? Sitting around gossiping with them like a hoe?”

“No, man.” I laughed. “I can’t help that I overhear shit.”

“Yeah, aight, your bitch ass be eavesdropping.”

He finally took his shot and missed horribly.

I had been playing pool since Nique and I were jits.

His pops had a pool table in the house, so I was always practicing, Nique on the other hand was always outside in the streets, so he wasn’t as skilled as I was.

That didn’t stop him from wanting to come here every week and get his ass kicked.

“Don’t be mad at me, man.”

“Anyways, you talked to Unc?” he asked, about to take a shot on the table since I missed.

“Briefly,” I replied before taking a drink from my water. “I finally called him back because I got a fight coming up. Why?”

“I don’t know, Celeste was telling me about them running into him in Vegas. She said the nigga was being weird to them or some shit.”

“Weird?” I frowned. “Weird how?”

“I don’t know really, she just said he was staring or some shit. You know how he is when he sees fine bitches and shit.”

“Well he couldn’t have been looking at mine then because she ain’t no bitch,” I replied, side eyeing him before I took my shot at the eight ball.

“You know what I mean, mothafucka,” he argued.

“Naw, I know what you said, nigga, and my girl ain’t a bitch, so watch yo’ fucking mouth. Cousin or not, you can taste teeth behind mine.”

“Damn, nigga.” He grinned so I did the same. Dominique never took shit seriously. “Relax, my bad.”

“Anyways, I’m gon’ holla at Lani and see what happened.”

“Word, Celeste said Ms. Phyllis got him on through right after that though.”

I just nodded. I was going to get at all three of them about it. Kehlani needed to know that she could come holla at me about anything and anybody, I didn’t give a fuck who it was. She was my wife, so she came before every-mothafuckin’-body. I’d paint the city red about mine.

“You want something from the bar?” Nique asked me as he set his pool stick up on the wall beside me.

“Wings and a water; garlic parmesan,” I answered as I unlocked my phone.

I had a notification on my screen that Kehlani had posted on her story on Instagram, so I opened the app to see it.

I didn’t too much fuck with the social media shit and she didn’t either really, but since going to that convention she had been posting more on her story.

It wasn’t really anything more than skincare videos, but I loved to see them.

She was the finest to me when she had a clear, fresh face.

Clicking on her story, I saw her in our bathroom with Jocey standing on the sink.

They were both massaging some shit into their skin and explaining what they were doing.

They looked like twins, one big and one small, as they smiled and talked.

A nigga’s heart was all warm and shit seeing them.

I scrolled through her page, just looking at old pictures of her and shit as I waited for my cousin until I felt someone watching me.

Looking up, I noticed a group of niggas sitting a few tables over, but one of them was scowling at me.

I frowned and pushed my phone into my pocket after locking it just in case bruh wanted to get his issue.

I hadn’t ever seen him before, so I doubted that he knew me.

That was the downside of me getting kicked out of public school as a child.

I didn’t go to school with any of these niggas, so I didn’t know them.

He looked a few years older than me anyways, so I doubted we would have been in the same grade anyway.

“Fuck you looking at?” I finally asked because he wasn’t going to look away obviously.

Smirking, he stood and made his way over to me with his little posse following him. I didn’t bother to stand from my seat for this little nigga because I was positive that I could beat him sitting down.

“You JV?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I’m Pharaoh, I’m sure Lani has told you about me.”

Her baby daddy.

“Naw, she hasn’t.” I smirked. “I don’t make a habit out of talking about niggas to my wife, especially not bitch ass niggas.”

He looked back at his people and laughed before facing me again trying his best to look unbothered.

“You must not have heard about me, my nigga…”

“Naw, I haven’t, but I know you’ve heard about me, so think it’s best you get you and your little clique the fuck from around me before you have a bad night.”

Just as he got ready to take a step forward Dominique reappeared, stepping between us.

“We got a problem?” he asked, eyeing the group in front of us.

“Naw, Nique, I was just telling your homeboy here?—”

“Cousin,” he corrected. “Blood cousin.”

The last part was a silent warning. Dominique played around a lot and goofed off, but he wasn’t to be fucked with and he played no games especially when it came to me.

My hands were certified and registered weapons, so beating this nigga’s ass would cause me problems I didn’t feel like dealing with, but I wasn’t above it.

Especially not where my respect was involved.

“Relax, Nique.” I tapped his back. “I’m good.”

“It’s like that, Dominique?” Pharaoh asked.

“ Just like that, my boy.”

He looked between us nodding before letting his stare rest on me.

“It’s cool, I ain’t gon’ fuck up our business over no bitch, bro.”

Before he could lift his hand to dap my cousin up, I snatched his frail ass up and forced him into the wall behind me.

“Who’s the bitch?” I growled in his face.

“I-I wasn’t saying it t-to be disrespectful,” he stammered.