The meeting wrapped up, and Trevor left me with some assignments, letting me know the next steps that I needed to take to get the ball running. From there, I stood with Loco, reached over, shaking Trevor’s hand, thanking him for his time. We exchanged numbers and made plans to keep in contact.
After that, Loco and I left out of his office, walked throughout the hallway in silence, and before I knew it, we were back to standing by the elevators, waiting to get on.
“How you feeling?” Loco asked me.
“Shit, I’m excited. Ready to get the ball running. How you know Trevor? He gives me that he used to be a street dude, and now he just cleaned up. I can hear the professionalism in his voice, but a few times, I could hear that hood shit trying to slip out. He used to be in the streets?” I asked him, and Loco laughedat my question, as the elevator doors opened. The two of us stepped on together.
“I go way back with Trev. He wasn’t moving dope, but he was doing shit just as bad. He used to be one of the biggest scammers in the city. Credit card fraud, getting a hold of fake checks, all that shit. He was always lowkey with the way he did it. Nigga used to drive a Honda, and you never saw him with expensive clothes, or flashy jewelry. That wasn’t the life that anyone expected him to be living though. He was a star athlete in high school. He played receiver. His senior year, he tore his Achilles, and all that football shit went out of the window because none of the colleges were willing to sit around and wait for him. Nigga was a liability. Once he healed, he jumped into that fast money, doing fraud. I met him when I was hustling, and I’ve fucked with him ever since. He jumped out of that lifestyle around the same time that I got out the game. He’s been running this business ever since, and he’s good at what he does. If he wasn’t, trust me I wouldn’t have referred him to you,” he said, and I nodded.
“That’s what’s up. He got kids or anything?” I wanted to know, and Loco shook his head.
“Hell nah. Trev going to die a bachelor. You heard him boasting about all the pussy he be getting. In all the years that I’ve known him, I’ve never known him to be in a serious relationship. I’ve seen him with some of the baddest hoes out, but he never committed. Some niggas just ain’t got it in them to commit. That man married to his job. Plus, he always said that he didn’t want children, and he stuck to that,” he shared with me.
We were in the elevator, and Loco turned to look at me. I could tell he was getting ready to say something else.
“Ay, you want to know something? Just wanted to put a little birdie in your ear. When I first started fuckin Uzi, and shit got serious with us, you want to know what I did? Just like you,I went scouting. I was looking for a way to clean up my dirty money and invest it. Nigga, I was in love, and all that shit that I used to talk about not wanting to have kids went out the window. I knew the kind of raw sex that I was having with Uzi was going to lead to children, and that’s when I started finding ways to go legit. I say all this to say that I know you had Riot move in with you. I know niggas ain’t reaching in the nightstand at two in the morning to get a condom. I know the kind of sex that occurs when a woman moves in with a man. You trying to be a daddy, nigga? That’s why you looking for a way to clean up your money?” he asked, standing right in front of me, and tapping me on my chest.
His question made me laugh, and I pushed his ass out the way.
“You know fuckin well that I’m not thinking about being a daddy. That shit not even in my deck of cards right now. I’m getting older. A nigga getting wiser. I just want clean money coming in. That’s all. My girl on birth control. Loco, she love the fuck out of me, but I know she not bringing a kid into this world for me, and it’s cool because I don’t want her to. Nigga, I’m living dirty, and you know that,” I let him know, and he nodded.
“I was once living dirty too. Uzi used to be in my face, talking big shit, telling me that she wouldn’t give me kids. Nigga, she gave me four, and I’m over there putting in work, day and night, trying to get a 5th,” he finished, and I laughed.
“It ain’t happening, man. I even asked Riot what she would do if she got pregnant, and with her chest, she looked me in my eyes and told me that she would get an abortion. I believe her too. If I even joke at the birth control not doing its job, she gets mad at me. We young, man. Ain’t nobody worried about kids. Let me enjoy my lady. I’m so selfish when it comes to her that I’m not even trying to share her with anybody. Not even kids,” I said, and with a smile on his face, he nodded.
The second we stepped off the elevator, his phone started buzzing in his pocket. I watched him as he answered it, and being as though he kept the phone in front of him, I knew that it was a facetime call. Judging by his smile, I knew that it had to be his wife, or one of his children. They were the main ones that could get this nigga to light up like this.
“I’m telling you that you gotta have a tracker on me. How you knew I was finished with the meeting? You called me literally as I was stepping off the elevator,” Loco said. When I heard the laugh, I knew that it was Uzi on the other side.
“It’s just perfect timing, Papi. You know damn well that I don’t have a tracker on you. How did the meeting go? I miss you,” Uzi said.
Loco had been with his wife over fifteen years, and the love was still there. The two of them gave me hope. The way I was in love with Riot, I wanted our shit to be like this fifteen years from now. I didn’t want us to be together all these years, and we turn into one of those couples that hated each other’s guts and only stayed together for the sake of the history that we shared.
“Shit went smooth. Dolo cooking up something real nice. When he gets his shit up, and running, make sure you hire his staff at your hookah lounge. Gotta get Benelli to put him on at her boutique too. Ya’ll better get at him while ya’ll can. Something tells me that his business not going to be easy to book,” Loco sold me to Uzi, cheesing big, putting the camera on me, so that she could see me.
She was driving. Uzi stayed on the move, always having her hands in something, so it’s no telling where she was coming from, or where she was headed to.
“I’m proud of you, Dolo. I can’t wait for you to get your business up and running. We’re going to need some men over here at my hookah lounge, so when you’re ready for business, just let me know,” you could hear the excitement all in her voice.
“I appreciate that. Thank you for showing love,” I said, after reaching over, and taking the phone out of Loco’s hands.
“Now that I got you on the phone, now is the perfect time to check you about not responding back to the group chat. Why haven’t you been responding to the messages about the trip that’s coming up in two weeks?” she asked me, and I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.
When it came to a group chat, I promise I was the worst person to ever have in one because I wasn’t going to ever respond to shit. My own mama gets mad at me because she has me, and Diego in a chat, and she likes to sendTikTokvideos to us, and she’ll get mad at us for not responding back to it.
“I don’t know shit about a trip coming up in two weeks. What trip?” I asked her, and she sucked her teeth.
“That’s because you don’t read the messages in the chat, Dominique. You know we take a trip every year in the winter, summer, and spring. We’re going to Turks in two weeks. We’ve been in the group chat talking about it for months. When we made the list, we included you, so you need to be there. Bring Riot with you,” she said.
“Who all going?” I asked, needing to know.
“Everybody that went on the trip the last time. All my sisters, their men, the kids. My best friend is coming, with her man, and their kids. Everybody, Dominique,” she said it in a way like she was annoyed with me, and it made me laugh because I started thinking about Riot.
I knew I was annoying the fuck out of Riot when she started calling me by my first name. I think that was just a thing that women did because my mama did the same shit.
“Riot not going to come. I had to damn near pull teeth to get her to go to Mexico, and the only reason why she really came is because the supplier damn near threatened me to bring her. I already told you how she is. She going to say it’s too manypeople. Too many people that she doesn’t know. She weird like that,” I said, knowing that if Riot was right here with me, and she heard me call her weird, she would be pissed.
“She knows me, Nyne, and she knows Benelli. Nigga, she knows you. My baby sister going to be there too. Beretta and Riot are damn near the same age. Beretta is just a year older. Beretta is coming with her best friend too, so that’s someone else for Riot to hang around. Get her out of that shit, Dolo. You can’t be the only friend that she has,” she shot, and I laughed.