Page 22 of Delirium 2

I smirked. “Second Monday. It’s not. I already checked the schedules.”

He turned his mouth down. “Aight, bet it up then. Trip to the city. We on that. Been a minute since we blessed them niggas with our presence anyway.”

I stretched. “Hell yeah. Well overdue.”

If scheduling allowed it, I liked to pull up to locations to check on things personally. Yeah, we had people to do quality checks and shit like that, but I preferred to be hands-on. Before the business picked up, I was very hands on. On location multiple times a week, various places, using the private jets to carry me where I needed to be. That was at the beginning though back when we had a clientele list of around five. That number had since then quadrupled. And while some would still consider that small scale, I didn’t. I didn’t want to do business with a lot of muthafuckas. I liked to know who I was connected to. And so far, the people I was connected to was solid as hell. I didn’t want shit to disrupt the flow of what I had going on so… if shit with Jay wasn’t solid, I needed Big G to damn near come down and tell me. Because He couldn’t, I just had to trust my gut, follow my intuition and do my due diligences.

5

SEREIA

“Bitches don’ moved to Wildermere and forgot about her peoples,” said Alani before passing the blunt she was smoking to Danielle.

I sucked my teeth, resting against the back of the table behind me. I was sitting on one of the picnic benches. “Bitch if you don’t shut the fuck up. I ain’t forgot about shit. The only off day I have is Saturday. That nigga Exodus is nuts, but he don’t play about the sabbath day.”

“I never understood that,” said Lake. “Them niggas stayed in church but be out here on wild shit. You say he don’t play about the sabbath. He prayed with you. What kind of manic?”

I lightly laughed and brushed a piece of hair from my face, shifting my eyes towards the entrance gate. I was in The Woods with my cousins, in the courtyard, kicking it. I hadn’t seen them all week which was weird as hell. Most of my distance came from me working but a lot of it was because of Sabrina.

The minute I walked through the gates, I was hit with all kind of questions. Questions I ignored. I didn’t have shit for them. I wasn’t one of them ones. I didn’t sit up talking about shit like that. I especially didn’t want to talk about it because talking about it meant thinking about it and well… hello… who wanted to think about that? So, I walked right by them, over to Lake’s building. Ignoring them didn’t stop my chest from tightening when I passed my building though. Tightening because there was so much grief attached to The Woods now. I didn’t know how much more of these trips I could take, honestly. Emotionally, it was safer for me to stay in Wildermere.

Speaking of… work had been somewhat of a breeze. I was worried about changing briefs and showers, but it wasn’t too bad. First Lady didn’t poop often. Maybe a couple of times a week which I appreciated a hell of a lot. When it came to showering, not even that was weird. I’d set up my phone, play some gospel music, and wash her up. A couple of times, she reached for the towel and did it herself. I still kept Hezekiah Walker playing at a low level for her. She seemed to like that. Three thousand a week was easy.

“Y’all trying to go to the city with me?” Alani asked, dancing to Trouble by Southwest Rah blasting from Dani’s phone.

“When? For what? With who?” Dani asked, passing me the blunt.

“I don’t know,” said Lake.

“You just don’t know because you know Five ass ain’t gon’ let you roll,” Alani said in a joking tone. She was serious though and always had something to say about Lake’s situation. I minded my business unless I was asked otherwise.

“Let? Bitch, I’m grown as hell.”

“With a nigga damn near as controlling as Sean,” Lani continued to joke, taking shit too far.

I squinted at her, twisting my face up. “Bitch what? Did you really just say that? Fuck is wrong with you? Dumb ass.”

She tossed her head back with annoyance, growling like she wasn’t in the wrong. Sucking her teeth she turned the corners of her mouth up. “I didn’t even mean it like that. I was⁠—”

“Talking like you want me to beat the fuck out of you the way D-boy use to,” Lake shot back, taking a dig at how she was just in a domestic situation herself.

“Really bitch?” Lani asked, jaw dropped.

“You went low; I went to hell.”

I couldn’t stand it when they argued. And they argued often. All of us did. Nine times out of ten it would be Lani who’d start it, though. She had so much fucking mouth. What she said was really out of line.

“You really did take it to hell, cuz,” I said with a laugh.

Alani squinted at me. “You think that’s funny, but when I said something about Sean⁠—”

“Sean just killed Sabrina. You didn’t have to mention him at all,” I snapped.

“It’s a problem when I do it, a joke when she do it. That’s that fake shit I be talkin about.”

I sighed, looked away and scratched at the back of my head, immediately locking eyes with Vellz who was heading out way with his niggas. He chucked his chin and smiled. I gave him nothing.

“Stop whinin’ bitch. You shouldn’t have said anything about Sean. Period,” Kiara said. “Anyway… what’s going on in the city?”