For The Love Of A Goon 2: A Miami Hood Love Tale (3 page)

C
armen awoke from her sleep and jetted to the bathroom. She flopped down on her knees and puked her lungs up as everything in her stomach made its way up and out of her mouth. She was sick as a dog, and all alone with no one to care for her. Carmen stretched out with her warm body against the cold tile floor. She just wanted to lay there and never get up. The thought of having a second child, only to still be Trent’s baby mother and nothing else was the number one reason she didn’t want to bring another baby into the world. She used to see a future for herself, but lately all she could see was her shaky past with the man she’d loved for years. Carmen was indeed hurt by it all.

As she picked herself up from the bathroom floor, she stared deeply at her reflection in the mirror. She was torn on the inside as her soul cried out for help. She didn’t know what to do next or how to feel; she’d become very numb to it all.

Carmen was so used to being let down and disappointed by Trent, she felt as if this was life for her, and things would never get any better. With thoughts of Ro, her decision to keep the baby or not, and the fact that Trent had gotten another woman pregnant as well, Carmen screamed out loudly. She hollered and hollered as if someone was trying to kill her. Storming through her two-bedroom apartment, she ripped up pictures of her and Trent then she entered her bedroom.

Staring at her bed, she burned a hole through the comforter with her eyes. She thought about all the times her and Trent had lain between the sheets together and snatched the comforter and sheets off the bed. She slung them to the floor then fell down on her knees on top of them. Carmen kicked and pounded her fist against the floor as she couldn’t seem to contain her emotions. She felt like she wanted to kill Trent for causing her so much heartache and pain. She was pissed at the fact that he would be sleeping with her and another woman without protection and passing on STDs. It had all slammed into her at once, and it was taking her for the ride of her life.

Carmen rolled over on the pile of covers with her legs and arms spread like an angel. She was exhausted and out of breath from all of her kicking and screaming. It was just about seven o’clock in the evening and the sun was starting to disappear into the night sky, but Carmen refused to move from the floor. She continued to lay sniffling uncontrollably until she had cried herself to sleep.

The next morning, she awoke, still on the floor with an aching pain in her lower back. She stood and stretched her stiff, worn, muscles then ran off to her bathroom at the feeling of her morning sickness kicking in.

In the bathroom, she stripped naked because she felt as if her skin was on fire. As the sweat beads formed on her forehead, she began to feel weak. She couldn’t remember eating or drinking anything after Moe had brought her breakfast to the hospital the day before. Could it be that Carmen was so stressed out that she had forgotten to eat?

She straggled her way out of her bedroom and made it to the small kitchen area of the apartment. Fearing that she would soon faint, Carmen grabbed an ice cold bottle of water from her fridge and twisted the top. She downed the water then let her weak body lean up against the counter. Her mind was racing and heart was pounding heavily. She took deep breaths as she tried to get her heartbeat to regulate. When her head stopped spinning, she slowly walked back to her bedroom using the walls as her guide. By the time she made it to her room she collapsed on the pile of covers again. She lay there until she heard the loud tapping at her front door.

Unable to get herself up from the floor, she yelled, “Come in,” from the floor of her bedroom.

“C! where you at?” Moenisha’s voice traveled through the apartment as she walked through Carmen’s front door.

She walked around the apartment until she stumbled upon Carmen lying in the middle of the bedroom floor. “Girl, why the hell you on the floor?” Moe asked, stepping closer to her. “And why the hell are you naked?”

“Bitch, just help me up,” Carmen replied weakly.

Moe reached down and scooped Carmen up from the floor and helped her to the bed.

“Wait,” Moe said, “let me get the sheet and shit off the floor.” She turned around to pick up Carmen’s comforter and sheet set that she had thrown to the ground, but Carmen stopped her.

“No, Moe, I don’t want that shit on my bed. There’s some clean sheets in the hallway closet. Just grab me two of those,” she said, hovering over her bed as Moe took off down the hall to get the bed sheets.

“What’s wrong with the covers on the floor?” Moe asked, strolling back into the room carrying two thin folded bed sheets.

“Trent’s nasty ass been sleeping on them, that’s what’s wrong with the covers on the floor. I’m not about to lay my ass on them,” she replied, spreading the sheets across her bare mattress.

She slowly eased down, trying not to erupt her empty stomach again, grabbed her pillows, and curled up in the middle of her bed. Moe laid the second sheet over her body. “I’m glad your ass popped up. I’ve been sick as hell for the past twenty-four hours, and I’m starving,” Carmen admitted while giving her best friend her best puppy dog face.

“Girl, don’t give me that face.” Moe waved her off and took a seat on the bed beside her. “You knew you was going to be sick. You stayed sick your whole pregnancy with Kira. Umm, where she at anyway?” Moe peeped out of the room and peered around the corner to Kira’s room.

“She’s going to be staying with my mother until this is all over with,” Carmen replied lightly patting on her stomach.

“Good,” Moe blurted, “I mean not good about that, but good thing that Kira’s not here. Look, C, Dameeko and I need somewhere to lay our heads for a few days until we figure out where we heading next. I thought about calling my parents, but I stopped by here first,” Moe revealed.

“Of course you guys can stay here. Hell, I need some company anyway, with my lonely ass.” Carmen curled up with her pillows even tighter. “Where Meek at?” she asked.

“He’s outside in the truck,” Moe replied. “I’m ’bout to go get him. What do you want to eat?” she asked Carmen from the doorway of her bedroom.

“How about some of those famous cheese grits and some bacon? No, wait, all that grease might mess up my stomach. Forget it, let me get some bacon and some biscuits too,” Carmen said. “And Moe, don’t burn the shit up, please.” She tried her best to laugh although she was sick. She knew her home girl wasn’t the best in the kitchen, but she tried.

When Moe left the bedroom and went outside to get Meek, Carmen got out of bed and dug around in the clothes basket in the closet of her room. She was searching for her house coat. She found it, put it over her nude body, then curled back up on the mattress top. As long as she and Moe had been friends, she wouldn’t dare lay around unclothed while her man was around. No matter if it was her home or not. One thing between the three girls was respect and loyalty.

“Yo, sis,” Dameeko’s deep raspy voice echoed off the walls as he headed towards Carmen’s bedroom with Moenisha following closely behind him. “How you doing, ma?” he asked, entering her bedroom and approaching her bedside. “Moe said you wasn’t feeling too good, you straight?” He looked down at her and couldn’t seem to fathom why Trent hurts her the way he does. He would never think about doing such things to Moe.

“I’m okay, bro, just a little morning sickness.” Carmen smiled. “How you coming along?” she asked.

“I’m as good as I can be,” Meek lied and forced a smile.

Truth is, he was slowly dying on the inside. He had taken so many losses lately, and he knew nothing would ever be the same. It was like he had been placed right in the middle of the battlefield and had no other choice than to fight his way out. It was either that or let the streets take him six feet under.

“I just came in to holla at you. I gotta run off for a while. He turned and placed a kiss on Moe’s forehead. “You girls play nice,” he said before exiting Carmen’s bedroom and going on about his day.

“Boo, I’ll be in the kitchen,” Moe informed her before she ran off to prepare her bestie a meal. She opened Carmen’s cabinets and scanned the variety of dry foods and canned goods, looking for a box of grits. When she located them, she stood on her toes and snatched the box from the shelf, then took the bacon from the fridge.

Moe started to cook as she tried to set her mind free. At the moment, she and Meek were homeless. She had to come up with some kind of master plan in order to save them. She couldn’t go back to the salon. Ain’t no telling who would be waiting on her to show her face there. Her home of five years had been compromised as well. It was bad enough the place got shot up the night Nino was there and Meek was away at rehab.

The cops were already keeping a close eye on the place, and lately, they had been questioning the neighbors. It was like no matter what, they couldn’t catch a break. Moe just wanted to pack all of her and Meek’s things, and skip town. She’d thought about it more than once, but leaving her girls behind was not an option. Carmen and Roshel were her sisters, and they meant the world to her.

Moe quickly whipped up a pot of cheese grits and a few strips of bacon and piled it onto a foam plate. She pulled out Carmen’s kitchen drawer in search of a spoon. As she made her way down the hallway, she could hear the joyful sound of her friend’s laughter.

“I see someone is feeling better,” she said, floating into the room with the plate of food in her hands. “Sit up so you can eat.”

“Moe, you watched this yet?” Carmen turned up the volume on the TV and sat up in her bed as Moenisha placed the warm foam plate in her lap. “Look at these crazy bitches.”

She was referring to the latest episode of Atlanta House Wives. Carmen was a reality TV show junky, as if watching how fucked up someone else’s life was bought her joy.

“Naw, which one is this?” Moe asked, taking a seat beside Carmen on the bed.

She flipped off her shoes and made herself at home as she curled up on one of Carmen’s pillows at the opposite end of the bed.

“Episode three,” Carmen replied, stuffing a spoon full of hot grits into her mouth. “You know the one where everybody gets into that big fight?”

“They stay fighting. They need to put a real bitch on one of these reality shows. I’ll show their asses how to really knock a bitch out,” Moe said.

“Hell no, Moe. Your hood ass would be slapping chicks for fun.” Carmen laughed.

“Damn right, I’m smacking producers and all if they get in my way.” She sat straight up in the middle of the bed and faced Carmen. “On a more serious note, have you decided what you’re going to do?”

Carmen lowered her spoon of grits that she was just about to stuff into her mouth back down to her plate. “I’m still not sure, Moe. I don’t want to do nothing that I’m going to regret. And if I do it, Trent might not ever speak to me again.” Her facial expression changed from happy to sad quickly. “I know what you’re going to say, and I’ve thought about how much more pressure having a second child will put on me. I just don’t know what I’m going to do,” she confessed.

“C, whatever you decide, I’ll be right by your side,” said Moe.

T
he constant ringing of Trent’s cell phone was beginning to spoil Meek’s stakeout. The two were posted up in a Kia that belonged to Trent’s girlfriend outside the home of the guy who killed Nino. They pulled down the block and parallel parked the car as close as they could to the curb and just sat and waited. They had been sitting there in the same damn spot for an hour, and no one had yet to enter or exit the house. The repeated playing of the lame love song Trent had set to play every time his girlfriend called had annoyed the hell out of Meek.

“Will you answer that damn phone?” Meek finally said, annoyed out of his mind as the ringtone played again for the fifteenth time. “That shit ’bout to drive me crazy. What the hell you doing with that soft ass, girly ringtone away?”

“Man, that’s just my crazy ass ole lady blowing a nigga up. I can’t do shit now without her ass thinking I’m with another bitch since Carmen’s loco ass showed up at her house. Now she doesn’t believe shit a nigga say.” Trent shook his head from side to side. “But I ain’t tripping, though. I’m about to cancel that bitch anyway and find me a new girl.” He smirked as if being a dog made him proud of himself. Trent pulled out his cell phone, turned it on silent, then placed it underneath the radio in the car.

“So, that’s what you do?” Trent’s comments left Meek feeling some type of way as his head spun around and a slight frown appeared on his face. “You need to stop your shit, man.”

“What shit?” Trent asked. “Nigga, I’m just living,” he said with a smile. Trent felt there was nothing wrong with having more than one woman, as long as they didn’t find out about each other. If they did, that’s where the problems came in. “You know a nigga like me gotta keep me about three or four hoes on the team.”

Meek faced frontwards and adjusted his hoodie. “Look at what you’re doing to these women, man. They aren’t play toys, they’re real human beings who deserve to be treated as such,” Meek stated.

“Them hoes better be happy a nigga fuck with them period. Fuck how I treat a bitch.” Trent tilted his head to the side and twisted up his face as if Meek’s last statement had bothered him.

“Homie, you love your daughter, right?” Meek asked calmly as he tried to make a point with his words.

“Of course I love my little princess. She’s my world. What you ask for?” Trent laid back and prepared to listen to the speech he knew Meek was about to give him. Yes, he was older, but Meek acted more like the oldest out of the two of them.

“Because, I’m pretty sure the fathers of these ‘hoes,’ as you put it, feel the same way about their little girls. Imagine when Kira, your baby girl, your little princess, grows up and starts dating. Can you honestly say you would want your daughter with a guy like you, knowing your own track record?” He asked then waited for his words to marinate and for him to answer.

Trent rubbed his chin with his index finger and thumb as he thought about Meek’s question for a quick minute. “I see what you’re saying, my nigga.” He finally understood what Meek was trying to tell him. He would never want any man to do what he’s done to the women in his life to his daughter, Kira. Trent immediately started to feel like shit and began to regret every stupid word he’d said.

“You got the mother of your child sitting around crying and shit over you while you out here wilding. Man, that girl really loves your ass, boy. You think Moe would’ve came running back to a nigga if I’d done something like that to her?” He paused just long enough to take a breath, “Hell no, she would’ve been told my ass to kick rocks. Let me ask you something, do you love Carmen or was she just some kind of sex thing to you?” Meek asked.

“Yeah, I love her. Love her ass to death,” he admitted without hesitation. “A nigga just can’t put up with all that nagging and complaining and shit she be doing. That shit be killing my vibe when I just be trying to chill. Sometimes a nigga don’t be wanting to hear that shit, blood. You feel me?”

“I feel you, but have you ever asked yourself why she complaining and nagging? Most women that do, don’t do that shit to get on a man’s nerves. Sometimes she could be telling us things we really need to hear, and we as men are just too stubborn to listen. So, of course, everything that comes out of her mouth might sound like bullshit to you, but I learned that if you take the time to listen, you’ll know that woman only cares about you. Moe used to fuss about every and anything in the beginning of our relationship. It wasn’t until I sat down with her and actually listened to what she had to say, then I realized just how much she loved a nigga. She wasn’t doing all that shit just to be doing it, she was trying to let me know she was there and I didn’t need no other woman.”

“Man, I don’t see how you do it. I need a variety. I can’t hit the same woman every night for five years straight like you. That shit gotta be boring.” Trent giggled. “I don’t know man, I just love the ladies.” He smiled wide enough to show every tooth in his mouth.

“Aight, one day your ass gone look around and you ain’t gone have no one. Especially if you keep hurting every woman you run across.”

“Man, enough with all this talk about bitches.” Meek cut his eyes at Trent and cocked his head to the right. “I mean, all this talk about women. I’m tired of waiting on this motherfucker to appear.” He started the engine up on the Kia and fled the block. “I’m about to find this fool, smoke his ass, then go lay up in me some pussy.” He laughed out loud as if it was just a joke, but Meek’s facial expression didn’t change. “Man, I was just fucking with you, blood. But we about to find this fool.”

“Wait, man, how we gon’ find ole boy and we don’t even know what he looks like?” Meek asked. Although they had run into the nigga before at the club, Meek never got a chance to see his face because Nino was too busy pounding it in. “Let’s just sit right here a little while longer,” he suggested.

Meek wasn’t up for riding around Miami with the hopes of running into this guy. He was already too hot to be out in the streets anyway, and knew that what he did the day before would still have the hood hot with police and detectives looking for their suspect. Meek had shot out of the gas station in such a hurry, he didn’t even check to see if the person inside the blue Nissan had been hit or not. And to tell you the truth, he really didn’t give a damn because his woman’s life was in danger, and as her protector, he had to do what he had to do. If that meant knocking a couple of niggas off to make sure she survived, then so be it. He was down to do anything for the woman he loved.

He knew deep down in his heart that their love was special. There was something about the little feisty woman that had won his heart. When she came into his life, she changed the boy he used to be and turned him into the man he is today. Without a doubt in his mind, Meek knew that no matter what, up and downs, Moe would always have his back. That’s just how tight the bond between them was. She was the only person he knew was going to have his back one hundred percent. He would never mistreat the woman he loved.

Meek couldn’t see how Trent lived with himself after constantly hurting the mothers of his daughter, Kira, and his unborn child he had on the way by his girlfriend. Moe was by far the best thing that ever happened to him and he knew it.

“Man, where are we going? We need to go back to the house.” Meek finally broke free from his thoughts and said.

“We going back, we going back. Just chill,” Trent replied as he coasted into the Quick Mart gas station not too far away from the house they were stalking. “I’m about to run in the store and get me some cigars and snacks and shit. Hell, if we gone be sitting here all damn day, we might as well get high, nigga.”

Trent parked in front of the store, hopped out of the car, and ran into the store. Meek let his seat back, turned up the volume on the radio, and let his head fall back against the headrest of the seat. Although he was trying his best to relax, he couldn’t help but to keep looking over his shoulders. His paranoia was fucking with him and that shit wasn’t letting up. If he did get hit, he wanted to be on his feet, he thought as he grabbed the key and got out of the car.

“Bring yo ass, nigga.” He walked up to Trent as he stood next to the ice cream cooler trying to spit game at a young Latina girl who was holding hands with a toddler child.

“I’m coming. Let me get shorty’s number right fast,” Trent said, trying to fish his cell phone out the pocket of his jeans.

“No, man, we ain’t got time for that.” Meek stepped between the two and intervened. “We need to get back.” He eyed Trent sternly.

“Oh, yeah, sorry baby girl. I got to run,” he told the young woman and made his way to the front counter to pay for his things.

As the cashier rang up the handful of snacks Trent slung down on the countertop, he flirted his ass off with her. It was like he had to have every woman in his path. He reached into his pocket and Meek turned his head right on cue to catch the young Latina chick staring oddly from the ice cream cooler.

“Bro, put all that damn money up before you be done got us popped.” He stepped closer behind Trent to shield him from the many onlookers in the Quick Mart.

“Dude, what you so jumpy about? It’s just a few racks.” He lightly laughed it off while flashing a smile and a wink at the cashier across the counter. He grabbed his change and the black plastic bag from her hands. They hopped back into the little red Kia and pulled out of the lot. Trent whipped up on the block as if he was driving a racecar on nearly two wheels.

“See, I told yo ass to just wait,” Meek said, noticing the car that had appeared in the driveway of the home.

As Trent quickly parked the car, Meek put his ski mask over his head and grabbed his pistol. He ejected the clip to make sure it was ready to go, then pushed it back up into the gun. “Hurry up and get your shit,” he told Trent.

The two did the same thing they’d done the night his brother got killed. They crept up onto the lawn, then quietly up the steps. This time, whoever was on the inside had made it super easy for them by leaving the front door wide open. They entered the house and made their way to the back as they followed the noises coming from one of the back bedrooms. Meek stopped when he reached the bedroom door. He looked back at Trent and silently counted to three, using his fingers. Before he could get to three, Trent had already kicked the bedroom door in.

“Ahhhhhhh!” The loud scream of the woman rambling through the items of the dresser top pierced their ears upon entry into the room.

“Hands up,” Meek yelled.

The woman dropped everything she had in her hands and put them in the air as demanded.

“Please don’t hurt me. I… I… I… don’t know what’s going on.” She choked on her words as she began to fear that her life was in danger.

“Where’s your little boyfriend, bitch?” Trent asked harshly as he reached up and yanked the woman’s head by her ponytail.

“Who? What? Sir, I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she replied.

“Bitch, you know exactly who we’re talking about. The nigga who lay up in this bitch with you every night. That’s who. Tell us where he is and we might just leave you alive,” Trent stated.

“I don’t know him. He was my sister’s boyfriend. She’d only been dating him for a few months. She was killed yesterday at that gas station on third. I just stopped by here to get some of her things. I needed something to remind me of her. Please don’t kill me. I swear I don’t know that guy.”

By the time the woman had finished speaking, Meek’s stomach was all in knots and he had started to feel horrible. Just knowing that the person inside the blue Nissan was a woman made him sick to his stomach. But why in the hell would she be following Moe if it wasn’t to kill her?

“Leave her alone, let’s go.” Meek tugged on Trent’s arm, but he pulled away.

“You go ahead to the car. I’m right behind you,” he said, still tightly holding onto the woman’s hair.

When Meek made it to the steps, he heard loud popping noises coming from the back room of the home. He took off running to the car, hopped in on the driver’s side, and started it up. Trent came flying out and leaped over the steps in one swift motion. He ran to the car and hopped into the back, right behind the driver’s seat.

“Go, nigga, go!” he yelled, rocking back and forth, unable to keep still. This was like an adrenalin rush for him. A high unlike any other.

“What the fuck, dude? Why you shoot her?” Meek asked, pissed that another woman had been killed in the past twenty-four hours. “Why, man? Fuck!” He expressed.

“Nigga, you heard what that bitch said. Her sister died in that shooting at the gas station yesterday. A shooting that you did. If we had let her live, she would’ve followed us out. She probably would’ve copied my girl’s tag, then next thing you know, I’ll be getting busted all because she knew one of us had something to do with her sister being killed. I had to off that bitch. Hell, better her than me.”