Baby Tone and I had walked into the kitchen and I turned around to find Chris on my heels. “Uh uh, nigga. Take yo stankin’ ass in the bathroom and go clean up,” I said, frowning at him. He smelled like alcohol and bad breath and he wasn’t about to funk up my kitchen. He smirked and turned around heading for the stairs.
I sat Baby Tone in his high chair and started to feed him as I talked to him about life and how much his daddy and auntie loved him and would have loved to been there with him. I showed him pictures of them on my phone constantly and he knew his father’s face to where he said “Da-Da” whenever I showed him. My son was super smart and I always insured him that he was loved. I finished feeding him and then sat him in his playpen so that he could play and watch
Sprout
.
“Jae, why the hell all my shit packed up into a duffle bag?” Chris asked, visibly pissed as he walked into the kitchen.
I sat down with my plate and pushed his toward him. I didn’t want to end on a bad note so I was trying to remain calm. I wasn’t mad at him but I was just ready to move on. Chris stared at me as I continued to eat my food as if he hadn’t just asked me a question. We sat and ate for a minute without saying a word.
“So you cleaning house or are you trying to get some space from me? What?” Chris asked as he sat his fork down on his plate and picked up his glass of orange juice and gulped it down.
“No, I just decided to give you your things so that you could go and be with your family. You know, be a father or something to your child so that you don’t have to keep trying not to be one to mine,” I said as I took a bite of my sausage.
Chris began to cough as he choked on his food. “Man, what you talking about?” he managed to push out in between coughs.
I grabbed my phone and pulled up the direct message that I had received this morning. “I’m not even mad, Chris. I wish you the best but I’m over trying to make this anything,” I said as I scraped the last bit of grits and eggs onto my fork.
Chris just stared at the phone for a moment before looking up and opening his mouth. I didn’t really care what he had to say but I would satisfy his ego by listening as if I did care. I stared at him, admiring his sexy ass beard and wished I could just take his face and body and put it with somebody else’s personality. You had to build a nigga nowadays in order to be happy. I was cool on relationships for a minute. I would rather just have a few friends because it seemed like one nigga just couldn’t be everything you needed. They needed too many hoes, so shit, if you can’t beat them, join them.
“Jae, it ain’t what it seems. I don’t be fucking that bitch and I don’t even want that baby. I told her to get an abortion a week ago when I found out,” he said like that was the magical key to make me suddenly feel differently.
I laughed because obviously he was lost and needed a reality check. “That’s the issue, Christian. You want to run around like a man controlling everybody’s lives and not seeing that there are things called priorities that you must get in order. If you don’t want babies then take precautions to avoid them,” I said as I stood up and cleared the dishes. I turned towards Chris and continued, “You wanted me to get pregnant but clearly wanted nothing to do with the child I have already. Now you have a bitch pregnant and want nothing to do with that child. That’s not the kind of man I want in my life and it’s definitely not the kind of man that I want my son to turn into.”
I shook my head as Chris put his head in his hands, shaking his head. I stood there trying to think about what all I needed to buy from Target in order to babyproof the house. Chris looked back up at me with tears in his eyes and I had to turn away because I had to keep myself from laughing in his face.
“Jaeda, you got to let me show you that I can be the man you want; even be that father figure for your son,” he begged and I shook my head.
“Chris, I’m done. Congrats on the baby but it’s time for you to go. I have things to do.” I got up and walked upstairs, grabbed his bag and walked back down to hand it to him.
As I walked him to the front door, Baby Tone looked up and smiled. “Bye, bye,” he said, waving. I laughed at his innocence and let Chris out.
Once he stepped onto the porch he turned around and kissed my cheek. “I’m not just giving up, Jaeda. I love you,” he said and I closed the door without responding.
I walked back into the living room and picked up my son, hugging him tight and kissing his cheek as he kissed me back. “I love you, my adorable prince,” I said and we headed upstairs to bathe and get dressed.
I pulled up to Gio’s house and grabbed Baby Tone out of his car seat. His fat ass was getting to heavy to be still trying to carry him in that infant car seat. I wanted to switch him into the next seat up but I said I was going to wait until he actually was a year old before I did so. As I grabbed his small hand as we walked up the driveway, I admired the all-white CLA45 AMG in the driveway. It was nice as hell. I was about to get on Gio’s head for going car shopping and buying new Benzes without taking me with him.
I pulled the keys out of my purse and unlocked the door. Gio had said that China was upstairs with a migraine and to just let myself in and he would be back shortly but by the look of things, he had made it back. I decided to still use my key, I didn’t want to wake China up by ringing the doorbell. I walked into the kitchen and my jaw dropped. I turned around swiftly to walk right back out.
“Damn, girl. Yo scary ass going to just walk out without speaking. You ain’t got no manners?”
I turned back around and faced Quentin. “Hello, Quentin. How are you?” I asked with a small smile on my face.
“Now was that so hard?” he asked as he walked towards me.
My heart started to race as I stared at him. I wanted to turn around and run the hell out of there. I was frozen in place as he leaned down and his cool breath brushed my cheek as he reached down and picked up Baby Tone and threw him in the air. I let out a sharp breath that I had been holding in for the past few seconds.
“What’s up, big boy? You walking now? You hanging with the big dogs now?” I watched as Q walked off with Baby Tone in his arms. “Let’s go talk about how we can get your mommy to stop being so scary.” I mugged Q behind his back but changed my expression as he turned back around and told Baby Tone to wave bye. I blew him a kiss and he blew me one right back.
I walked out the kitchen and took the stairs up to Charlie’s bedroom. I walked in and China was standing in there changing her diaper. “Hey, I thought you were taking a nap?” I asked as I picked up Charlie and finished dressing her as China discarded the dirty diaper. “Hey, Char Char. How’s auntie’s baby? I missed you, mamas,” I said as I began to play with her tiny toes.
She was a gorgeous baby and I couldn’t help but to want to have a little sister for Baby Tone one day but I honestly didn’t want another child if it wasn’t Tone’s. Dating somebody was one thing but I just felt like falling in love and having another nigga’s kids was like erasing the love and legacy that we’d created. “What’s up wit Q being here?” I asked China, and her ass started laughing like I told a joke.
“You must be really feeling his ass because he really got you flustered,” she said, highly amused.
“Girl, whatever. That nigga arrogant as shit. I just got rid of one headache. I don’t need another,” I said. I grabbed Charlie’s pacifier and stuck it in her mouth and placed her on my hip as we left out the room.
“Bitch, really? You finally cut Chris whack ass off?” China asked, looking at me with disbelief.
I shook my head. “I don’t know why you and Lexis act like I was in love with this nigga or something. No. He was just a sexy ass nigga with dope dick and a fire ass tongue. Other than that, I’m glad to be done with him,” I said, following China down the stairs and into the family room.
“I’m just saying, you kept him around for damn near a year dealing with his insecure ass. I figured you had some kind of feelings for him.”
I shook my head trying to figure out how to explain it so that China could understand me. “Nah, see, it was like he was just there. Like at the end of the day, my heart and mind are pre-occupied by Tone no matter who comes along and my love for him was so deep that at this moment, there is no room for another nigga to even squeeze in,” I said, trying my best not to get emotional. “Plus, Chris got a baby on the way.”
I filled China in on the direct message I’d received and the conversation I’d had with Chris when he came over. Once I told her that nigga was crying, we sat there and laughed hella hard, cracking jokes back and forth until we were in tears. As we were trying to stop laughing, Gio and Q had walked into the room and took a seat. Q was still holding my son and clearly they had taken a liking to each other because even though I was sitting right in front of him, he was content in Q’s arms.
“What ya’ll in here laughing about?” Gio asked.
“Nothing, babe. We were talking about crybaby ass Chris. Nigga cry more than yo nigga LeBron,” China said as we started cracking up all over again.
I lifted up and handed Charlie to Gio as I felt my phone vibrating in my back pocket. I looked at the screen and I saw that it was Pam calling. “Yo!” I said into the phone.
I listened as she told me that she was about to send me a picture to my burner phone. I reached into my Tory Burch bag and retrieved my other phone to I open up the message from Pam. I stared at the message for a second as I realized that this was the address to where Quita had been hiding out. I put both of my phones away and pulled out my Galaxy Tab and began looking up flights from Oakland to Ontario airport. I purchased three tickets and then I booked a rental car under a profile that I had scheduled for pickup later tonight. After I was done, I sent a text to B and Greg and told them to ride with me somewhere in the all-black truck, which was the code that we were about to put in some work and to meet me at my house in an hour. It was already two in the afternoon and our flight was scheduled to leave at five, which gave us a small amount of time to make sure that we had everything in place.
I looked up and everyone else was engrossed in the babies. I smiled at the fact that no matter the dynamics of it all, my son had a family that loved him.
I cleared my throat. “Come give mama kisses, baby,” I said to Baby Tone. He wobbled towards me and as soon as he reached me, he started leaving slobbery kisses on my legs. “Give me kisses bye, bye.” I kissed my son and held him tight. I always missed being away from my baby but I had business to tend to. “Okay, ya’ll, I’m out of here. My flight leaves in less than three hours. Gio, I will buzz you in when I get back, just make sure you turn your phone on,” I said, speaking of his burner phone. I kissed China’s cheek and gave Charlie multiple kisses before I leaned down and kissed Gio’s cheek as well.
“Damn, everybody gets some love except the king?”
I turned around and laughed at Q’s cocky ass statement. “Bye, ya’ll,” I said and walked out the door.
I hopped in my truck and took off. I pulled my phone out and dialed up Big Tank and let him know we were taking flight in a minute and I needed everything in place by sundown.
I
pulled up to the house and saw that Greg and B hadn’t shown up yet so I parked my car and hurried in the house. I rushed up the stairs so that I could grab a change of clothes that would be appropriate for what we were about to go do. I grabbed a long sleeve black body suit with some black tights, an all-black zip up hoodie and some all-black Timberland boots and threw them all into my Gucci carryon bag.
I looked up and realized that some of my boxes of shoes were out of place. I stopped and just stared at them for a moment. The last time I had gone into the safe was last week and I didn’t remember the shoes being out of place. Usually my nude red bottoms were the top box and then the black ones under it. I must have been rushing then because that was the order, but I couldn’t even remember back to that day. I mean, it was impossible for there to have been any other reason as to why they were mixed up. I vowed at that moment to get a little more rest because everything had a process and an order and even the smallest mistakes could be detrimental to the operation we were running.
I was tempted to open the safe just to check and make sure everything was straight but I knew there was no possibility that anybody else had been up here. Lexis was the only one with my spare key and Greg was the only one that knew about the safe, so each of them were missing a link. Plus, I trusted them to the fullest. I closed the closet doors and shrugged it off. As soon as I threw in my toiletries in the bag, my doorbell was ringing.
I headed down stairs and opened the door for them. I moved to the side to let them in but out the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a familiar car. When I looked again, there was nothing there. I definitely needed some rest because I was tripping. I needed to take a nap on the plane and during the 45 minute drive to our destination. I grabbed my keys and pulled my truck into my garage and made sure both of my vehicles were locked up and then I closed and locked my garage doors as well. I grabbed my bag and locked up my house. Ten minutes later, we were heading out and hopping into Greg’s Chevy Malibu before getting on the freeway headed to the Oakland Airport.
I had a weird, uneasy feeling but I pushed it to the back of my head. I hadn’t had any nightmares in a few months so I ignored the feeling and put my head back against the headrest so that I could focus. There was no small talk at all during the entire hour ride to the airport. Once I laid down the plan, we were all in our zones and focused on the situation at hand. There was no room for error. We had to make sure that we were in and out and that we made it smooth and flawless so that we could head to the airport.
We were flying into Ontario airport but flying out of John Wayne in Orange County, so we had to be back at the airport to catch the last flight into Oakland and it departed at 11:10. We would land at 7:05 in Ontario so that gave us an hour to get there, no more than 20 minutes, in and out the house, and then back on the freeway for an hour and a half to make it to the airport on time. Pam’s sister had everything ready in an under car at an apartment complex that we had rented out not too far from the Western Union that Quita returned to every week to send money to her mom. In the event that anything went wrong, we would go to the apartment and call Pam’s sister for her and her husband’s assistance if we needed it.