Kiss the Ring (16 page)

No missed calls on either one.

Damn, Tank. Well fuck you too.

Her thumb floated above the keypad ready to dial 69 on her speed dial. She dropped the phone back into her handbag instead and moved back to the table to tear down on the food and took up the remote to turn on the flat-screen television on the wall. She turned it to
LIVE with Kelly and Michael.
She loved that corny-ass show and it gave her an hour not to think about anything important.

Knock-knock.

Naeema looked away from the blond actress from
Revenge
talking about the new season of the show. She had never seen it but she was thinking it was something she could relate to and get into.
Sometimes a bitch gotta do what a bitch gotta do.

She ignored the knock and turned back to the television.
Not my room and not my visitor.

“Queen, it's me . . . Vivica.”

She rolled her eyes and wished she'd jetted as soon as she woke up. Her plan was to fuck the breakfast up and then get dressed to catch two different cabs back to her house to get ready for work . . . not to fuck around with Vivica's cradle-robbing ass.

Hell, her child-molesting ass. What makes her any different than Mr. Warren? Not a damn thang.

“Open up, Queen.”

Knock-knock-knock-knock.

Naeema jumped up in aggravation and walked over
to the door, forcing herself to swallow back her desire to straight whup her ass as she let the woman in. She had to admit she looked cute in print leggings and a bright yellow blazer that didn't clash too badly with her pink hair. “Chill, Viv,” she said. “I was in the bathroom.”

“My bad,” Vivica said, opening her Michael Kors bag to pull out a stack of money. “Bas said to take you shopping 'cause you didn't have clothes with you.”

Naeema didn't take the stack. “I got clothes . . . at home . . . where I'm going in a little bit.”

Vivica pushed the money into Naeema's hand before she strolled around the suite. “Well, Bas seem to think you moving in here for a few days,” she said, peeking her head inside the bedroom. “Shit, not bad, bitch.”

Nothing happens that I don't want to happen.

Naeema chose not to trip off that bit of info with Vivica. She was clear that in this virtual chess game Vivica was a pawn and her loyalty was to the king, not Queen.

Besides maybe I can slow-stroke this bitch for more info.

Vivica dug in her tote again and pulled out a white plastic CVS bag. “I figured you needed underwear and a toothbrush,” she said, handing it to her. “You only a little bit bigger than me everywhere but that ass . . . so I guessed on the size.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“Sooooo . . .”

Naeema eyed her as her faux friend/real foe looked at her expectantly.

“I didn't think he was going to slay that bougie dragon princess but here you are. Boss bitch status,” she said.

“And who is the bougie dragon princess?” Naeema asked,
coming over to sit down on the opposite end of the couch from Vivica. “And why you ain't tell me about her before . . .
friend
?”

“That's Bas's business to tell, not mine.”

“So why tell it now?” Naeema asked, wondering how much more of Bas's business she was keeping.

“ 'Cause I know that you know a li'l somethin' about it now.”

She needed a break from Vivica and her secret-secret bullshit. She grabbed her handbag and walked back through the double doors to the bedroom. It was then she saw the paper on the nightstand. She crossed the room to pick it up. “See you later tonight,” she read.

Rolling her eyes she balled it up and tossed it over her shoulder. She had just turned on the shower when she backtracked and entered the living room. Vivica was still on the sofa flipping through the TV channels. “Viv, I can't go shopping. I gotta get home,” she said. “I'll holla at you later.”

“You want a ride home?” she asked.

“Can you drop me downtown?” Naeema asked, already planning to catch a cab from there to get home.

“A'ight, but Bas not gon' like you changing his plans.”

“I'll make it up to him,” she said over her shoulder as she walked back into the bathroom that was filled with the steam from the running shower.

Naeema slipped a shower cap over her wig and then dropped the robe to the floor before stepping into the shower.

She would play Bas's game of hideaway but first she was going home to get the gun she took from Rico.

• • •

Bas didn't come back to the suite for three days. No call. No show.

I coulda been making money.

And her boss, Derek, wasn't happy at all that she'd taken more time off indefinitely. Still, she knew that as long as she was the lone female in the shop, kept her body right and tight, and gave her boss, coworkers, and customers plenty of eye candy, her chair was waiting on her return.

Vivica played the go-between just enough to be bait to keep Naeema on the hook for Bas to reel her in when he was ready. When she wasn't sneaking off for a couple of hours every day to look for the identity of the vic of the cell phone grab Ms. JuJu had told her Brandon did, she ordered room service, played Candy Crush Saga on her phone, wondered why Tank had yet to call, mourned her son, and plotted on just how she planned to kill whoever murdered him. All while she waited on Bas to make his next move.

Bzzzz . . . bzzzz . . . bzzzz . . .

She leaned forward on the sofa to pick up her burner cell phone. It was Bas. Naeema set it back on the table. She was playing the role of Queen, who would've jumped at a call from him, but Naeema decided to make him wait. She set the phone back on the table and picked up the remote to turn up the volume on an episode of
The First 48.

Bzzzz . . . bzzzz . . . bzzzz . . .

Naeema turned the volume up higher and ignored the phone. Finally it stopped vibrating. She was already regretting not bringing some of her weed stash with her. Still playing the game of “just in case,” she didn't want Bas to be able to trace back to her real identity through her weed connect. Not everybody sold underground medicinal weed and sometimes the very strain of weed let you know who sold it. Still, she was ready to get fucked up, and the bottle
of Absolut vodka and cranberry juice she'd brought wasn't doing it.

Click
.

She looked over her shoulder at the sound of the door lock detaching. Moments later Bas's tall figure filled the doorway. He was dressed in all black but the look on his face was darker . . . especially when his eyes shifted to her cell phone sitting in plain view on the table next to her drink.

“Hey, stranger,” she said, reaching for the snifter to take a sip of the vodka and juice.

Bas walked over and snatched it from her hand, spilling some of it onto her, before he turned and threw it against the wall. THUD. The glass bounced off the wall but didn't shatter and the red liquid drizzled down the walls to seep into the carpet.

The fuck?

Naeema eyed him. She couldn't front that his action had made her pause like a motherfucker. She had made a calculated move that didn't play well. Her anger at him for not showing her respect was the move, the nerve, and the grit of Naeema . . . not Queen. Somewhere the line had blurred for her.

“Go get dressed,” he said before he dropped down on the love seat.

“I am dressed.”

“In something besides all that stretchy shit you wear,” he said, his tone rude as hell as he eyed the black- and gold-striped leggings she wore with a white tank. “Hell, I knew how fat your pussy was before I ate it the other night.”

“I thought you liked it,” she said, slipping back into the role of Queen to help calm his anger.

He didn't say anything else and Naeema stood up to head into the bedroom.

“I missed you, yo.”

She stopped and looked over her shoulder at him. His eyes were still locked on the television screen and his fists were clasped together under his square chin. She didn't say a word as she moved on into the bedroom.

Naeema emerged a half hour later freshly showered, makeup beat, and dressed in a white off-the-shoulder spandex top and a long fitted skirt that exposed her flat stomach. In her purse she had the gun she swiped from Rico. “More stretchy shit,” she said, doing a slow turn beside where he still sat.

“Queen, next time I offer you a shopping trip, please go,” he said, sounding more chill as he reached out to slap at her ass.

Naeema looked over her shoulder as she made it clap for him.

Bas slapped it again. WHAP!

“So . . . did you get everyone
situated
while you were gone?” she asked.

Bas stood up and moved toward the door. “Almost,” he said, holding the door open for her.

“Must be a serious-ass situation,” she said as she passed him to walk down the hall to the elevator.

“Right?” he agreed sarcastically.

Once they were on the elevator he stepped behind her and then pulled her back by her hips to settle her ass against his groin. He pressed a kiss to her neck. “You smell good,” he whispered against her pulse.

It was pounding.

Get your shit together, Naeema.

She stepped up from him and shimmied his hands off her hips with a back-and-forth motion. “Don't want to get into another serious situation before you handle the other one,” she said, her eyes on his reflection against the metal wall of the elevator.

“I get what I want . . .
when
I want it,” he said.

They strolled off the elevator together and crossed the lobby of the hotel. Naeema paused at a bright red Porsche Panamera sitting curbside. When Bas stepped forward to open the passenger door for her, she knew he was somehow involved in a stolen car ring or some shit. There was no way to explain his having access to luxury vehicles worth half a million dollars or better.

What if I get pulled over in this stolen motherfucker?

The stakes kept getting higher and higher.

“This your whip too?” she asked, looking up at him as she slid into the passenger seat.

“Somethin' like that,” they said in unison.

As they were cruising through the steady traffic on the downtown streets of Newark, Bas turned on the music. Soon the sounds of “Crooked Smile” by J. Cole filled the interior of the car. Naeema snapped her fingers and moved her hips in the seat.

“When this song first came out last year I had just—”

Bas looked over at her as she bit back the rest of the words. “Just what?”

Shaved my hair off.

But she wasn't sharing with him that the idea of a closely shaven head with her features had nagged at her until she finally tried it and said she would just grow it back if the
shape of her head was lumpy or whopped. In the first hours after the deed was done she had regretted shaving off her shoulder-length hair, and listening to that song made her finally say “fuck it” and embrace the change.

“I had just got fired,” she lied.

She was glad when he let the subject drop.

Naeema looked out the tinted window as the landscape changed from the tall buildings surrounding Penn Station to the storefronts of downtown to residential town houses. Soon the streets were lined with more lots where houses once stood than actual homes. Whether from the riots of 1967, the demolition of the high-rise projects, or natural disasters, there were still areas of certain wards of the city that couldn't seem to recover.

Naeema loved her hometown and she wanted the best for it.

“Shit,” Bas swore as a man stumbled back into the street.

He slammed on his brakes and their bodies jerked forward. Naeema reached her hands out and pressed against the dashboard to stop herself from lunging forward any further without her seat belt on. She cried out when the body fell back against the top of the roof.

BAM!

Two women came running into the street to start throwing hard blows against his body. One woman's shirt was torn in half and her bra was down under one of her breasts, exposing a big and bumpy brown nipple. One of them punched at the man's head as he tried to curl his body into a ball and her hand missed his head and slammed against the windshield.

“Ah, man, fuck this shit,” Bas spat as he reached for the door handle.

Naeema reached over and pressed her hand against the horn as Bas climbed from the car.

They seemed to fight the man even harder.

As she watched Bas easily remove each of the women from atop the man and the hood of the car, she knew two women straight fucking up a dude was nothing but pussy problems and dick drama. The man jumped to his feet once he was free and the headlights spotlighted the scratches on his face, the swelling of his bottom lip, and his clothes, nearly ripped to shreds on his body. As Bas spread his arms wide to try to hold back both of the women from jumping on him again, the dude turned and took off running up the middle of the street. His knees damn near touched his chin, he was booking it so hard.

Naeema laughed.

The women both pushed Bas out of the way and he stumbled back as they turned on each other and started fighting while the man's figure receded with each bit of distance he put between them. As they pulled at each other's hair and tugged like crazy, they both fell back between two cars parked in front of a large bank.

Naeema laughed harder.

Bas studied the hood and the windshield before he finally got back into the car. He glanced over at Naeema covering her mouth as she continued to laugh. “That shit is not funny,” he said, sounding irritated as he steered the car around the fighting women and the crowd surrounding them in the street.