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*UNEDITED*
Chapter Two
TWO WEEKS LATER
Dashiell “Dash” Graham
“Virgil got a Patek on my wrist going nuts. Niggas caught me slipping once, okay, so what?” Drake spit through the speakers of my blacked out Mercedes as I pulled up to my building. I had every intention to swing right into my parking spot when I saw a large U-Haul truck haphazardly parked half in my space with the other half sticking out in the street.
“What the fuck,” I mumbled, ready to go off on the mothafucka that was slowing me up from getting inside my parking spot and getting in the crib.
My hazard lights blinked as I swung open the driver’s side door and stepped out with the engine still running. I walked up to the back of the truck and saw two girls standing there arguing over who was going to pick up a box.
“Yo, you gotta move your shit,” I said, announcing my presence.
They both stopped their bickering to look at me and all three of us froze.
“You…” she said.
“You,” I repeated.
It’d been a couple weeks since my encounter with “the shorty from New Year’s” as I called her. I was accustomed to women throwing themselves at me, but there was something about her that was different, innocent even. The last place I ever expected to see her was standing outside of my building.
“Oh shit,” her friend mumbled. “Is that…that’s not…damn, bitch.”
“I’m sorry, we’re almost done. We just got a few more boxes left to move into the building and I’ll move,” Shorty told me.
“Or you could help us…it’ll make the process go much faster,” her friend chimed in.
“Bellamy, I’m sure he’s busy. He looks like he just wants to get to wherever he’s going,” she said without redirecting her gaze toward me.
“I’m just sayin’, if he want his parking spot as bad as he says he does, then maybe he should put those muscles to work and help us out.”
Shorty rolled her cat-like eyes. “Please excuse my friend. She has this condition where she says the first thing that comes to mind.”
“It’s called honesty,” she retorted.
“You good. I’ll help,” I told them.
“Really?” Shorty asked.
“Yeah, on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You never block my space again.”
“Your space as in…you live here?”
“Yeah, I do,” I said, waving my key fob in her face.
If Shorty had been a cartoon character, she would’ve melted into a puddle and slid right off the back of that truck. She was shook.
“Wait, are you serious?”
I nodded. “I don’t give a fuck enough to lie to you.”
“What a coincidence! My girl is your newest neighbor,” her friend announced.
My eyes widened for a split second and then went back to normal. “Word?”
“Yup…”
“Well it sounds like you two have it all covered and I can go ahead and get out of here. Call me later, Gotti. Smooches!” her friend blurted out before hopping off the back of the truck and scurrying down the street to her own ride.
“Good help is so hard to find these days,” she said, rolling her eyes once more.
“It sure is. Consider this your housewarming gift. Pass me the box,” I told her.
*****
“Thank you…” she said as I placed the last box inside her empty two bedroom apartment.
“You welcome.” She looked around the space filled with cardboard moving boxes and plastic bins before reverting her gaze back in my direction. “You got somethin’ you wanna say?”
“It’s just that I didn’t expect to run into you again—”
“So soon, right?” I asked, cutting her sentence off at the knees.
“No, ever,” she said brashly. I could see Shorty turning red inside and out. “I—I’m sorry. I just, I’ve never done anything like that before, and I just figured if I never saw you again then I wouldn’t have to worry about being embarrassed about it.”
“Then you really gon’ hate what I’m about to tell you, sweetheart.”
“What’s that?”
“I lay my head about six floors up from you.”
“Wow…yeah, this is…mortifyingly awkward.”
“I mean, I’m good, but how you wanna play it? You wanna act like you don’t see me and I don’t see you, or what?”
She nervously shook her head, looking more like a child than the grown ass woman she was. “Nah, we don’t have to do all that.”
“Cool, well I’m about to go move my car.”
“Um, yeah…sure that’s cool.”
“Unless…”
“Unless what?” she asked.
“Unless there was something else you had to say to me.”
“Oh, no. I was just going to offer you a bottle of water or something for your trouble.”
I chuckled. “It’s like thirty degrees outside, Shorty. The last thing I need right now is a bottle of ice cold water, but good looks though.”
“I have hot chocolate in here…somewhere,” she offered.
“Nah, I’m good. Maybe next time.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Next time? I mean, sure, yeah. Next time is cool,” she said while bobbing her head.
“Bet,” I said before turning away and exiting down the hallway back to the elevators.
Gotti
I flopped my tired body against the couch after he left. Although I’d moved the truck, I knew I needed to return it so that I wouldn’t get charged an extra day for no reason. But before I could do anything, I needed to take a second to get my bearings. There was just something about being in that man’s presence that made me want to surrender everything, even my common sense. It angered me how I could barely form an intelligent sentence around him when I was months away from graduating with a dual master’s degree in criminal justice and political science. He must’ve thought I was just another dumb broad or something.
After a few more minutes of self -loathing and sulking, I picked up my phone to call Bellamy.
“Why am I hearing from you not even an hour after seeing you?” she answered.
I scoffed. “Um, because we’re done moving the boxes that your ass left us with!”
“Girl, that was the Christian thing to do. Who am I to get in the way of your opportunity to get your back broken for the second time by the Black Adonis.” She giggled. “Ain’t that what you call him?”
I rolled my eyes while secretly cursing myself for telling her the nickname I’d given him in the first place. I should’ve kept my indiscretions to my damn self, but Bellamy had a way of pulling even my deepest, darkest secrets out of me.
“Whatever. I didn’t call to talk about him. I called to see if you can meet me at the U-Haul place so I can return this truck today.”
“Bitch, please. You know damn well you wanna talk about that nigga. I don’t even have to see you to know his face is plastered all over the walls of that brain of yours and your pussy too!” She snickered.
“Ugh!” I groaned. “Bellamy, like what the fuck am I supposed to do? He was just supposed to be a distraction. A one night diversion from the pain. Not my fuckin’ neighbor!”
“Take a chill pill, Gotti and just see where the shit goes,” she advised.
“I can’t do that. He’s not even my type and you know that.”
“Girl, fuck a type! Did you see how fuckin’ good he looked? Plus, a vibe is a vibe. Just go with it! At the end of the day, y’all both grown, so what’s the big deal? It was one night of hot, sexy, uninhibited sex! You’re single, bitch! You’re supposed to do single shit. The only one feelin’ bad about the shit is you and I don’t know why because we both know if given the chance to hop on that chocolate pole again, you’d do it in a heartbeat.”
I absolutely hated it when she was right. “Whatever.”
“Riddle me this, then bitch. Do you wanna see him again?”
I sighed. “I don’t know, maybe before, but now that he lives here, no. That’s awkward, right? I mean, what if I see him with another female when I’m leaving the building or coming in? How am I supposed to act?”
“How do you wanna act?”
“Ugh, you’re no help!”
“I’m the most helpful bitch you know! But because you’re my girl and I love you, I’m going to leave you with a word. You ready?”
“Yeah, I’m ready…”
She cleared her throat. “In the true words of my girl, Cardi B, grow up, bitch and suck a dick!”
We both burst out into a roar of laughter. “Just shut up and meet me at the U-Haul place. I’m about to leave now!”
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