My first novel will debut on 02/27 (Tomorrow!)
Here is a Sneak Peek!!!!!
Chapter 1-Jameyah
“So you just gon’ throw away what we got because of one night? Because of one slip up?” he asked as he grabbed one of my suitcases and threw it across our California King sized bed. He stood there, glaring at me.
Picking up on the level of ‘pissed-off’ that I was, he stepped back. Reacting, I snapped and threw everything from my underwear drawer that I had in my hands into one of my bags. “No, I am not leaving after one slip-up.” I grabbed his phone and went to the text message app. “I am leaving because of Tia. I am leaving because of Brittini. I am leaving because of Erica. I am leaving because of Lashay. I am leaving because of Porsha. I am leaving because of Kimora.” Each name came out more hateful than the one before. Following him as he walked away from me, “wait Tramont there’s a few more slip-ups that I want to dedicate this long-overdue moment in time to. Let me keep scrolling.”
“Jameyah!” He yelled, grabbing his phone out of my hand and hurling it at the wall. Seeing it shatter was my cue to finish packing my stuff.
“Babe, I love you. I am all for you. Jameyah, I am here, baby. With you. Where I want to be.”
“Do you believe yourself?” I scoffed. “You believe the crap that comes from your mouth. Don’t you?” I laughed because, at this point, I had to laugh to keep from slicing this nigga’s throat, taking care of his body, and going on about my business. After eleven years of me being a faithful fool to a loyal screw-up, I was tired, and at this point, I wanted to take what was left of my twenties—I wanted to take what was left of my life, and I wanted to live. I was tired of going through phones, following him to different cities to see which trick he was wining and dining, and tired of women calling me saying that they were pregnant. I was tired. I wanted to curse his ass smooth out, but there was nothing that I could say now that I hadn’t said before, so I was just going to pack and wait for Mel to come get me.
My phone chirped as I was going back and forth from the closet, shoving all of the clothes that I could into trash bags. Tramont and I had lived together since we were fifteen—yes, fifteen—years old, playing house because we belonged to two trifling women that never deserved to be mothers. At fifteen, we both had jobs, and we made the choice to get a spot together, and we had been rocking ever since. My home life was so dysfunctional then, that the only reason that my mother knew that I was gone was because the water and electric got shut off due to me not sending in the payment. Just trifling.
Snapping back into reality, I heard Mel, my oldest brother, at the door yelling, “Meyah! Meyah! Nigga, open the door before I bust this hoe down!”
“Jamel, I said that I needed you to come pick me up. I didn’t say that I was being held hostage,” I said, letting him in and closing the door. Out of all of my siblings, Jamel had the shortest fuse. You could literally blink too long in his direction, and this fool would raise all kinds of hell. He was the last person that I should have called, but since my car was in the shop and my other brothers, Jardani, Jeon, and Jai’Vaun were busy, and my only sister, Jah’Loni, was out of town, Jamel was my last line of defense, and he had a truck to lug my stuff.
In the eleven years of being with Tramont, we had a lot of things that decked out our four-bedroom townhouse and made it feel like ‘home,’ but I only wanted my clothes, shoes, handbags, and my Keurig Espresso machine. He could have everything else.
At the mention of my brother’s name, Tramont made himself disappear like he was Houdini. He may have been dumb, but he wasn’t ignorant. Everyone knew that when it came down to it, my brothers would draw blood behind me and Loni. I guess that was the perk of being the sisters to four no-nonsense brothers. I loved all my big brothers, even Jamel’s crazy ass, and just as hard as they rocked for me, I rocked for them, and Loni was always right there with me, ready to back door. My brothers were all father figures to me in their own way, and they made it their mission to make sure that we didn’t turn into fiending streetwalkers like our mother.
I had learned a long time ago that I had to forgive my mother; forgive her for not caring for me, forgive her for not having ‘the talk’ with me, forgive her for never batting an eye at the fact that I never made below a ninety-two in school, forgive her for not making sure that we had food to eat, forgive her for coming home when she hadn’t been home in weeks and just started beating me out of my sleep, and the hardest was that I had to forgive her for not knowing who my father was. Through different people, I had received unrequested and different stories on my possible father, but one name was always the common denominator, and that was Brutto King.
Before my grandma passed, she told me that she believed that Jai’Vaun, Jeon, and I had the same father. But her sister, Aunt Dia, said that we could be anybody’s. Aunt Dia shouldn’t have said that to a bunch of kids, but it was sad because she was telling the truth. Honestly, we all looked like Jamie, my mother; we were just different shades on the color wheel. Jamel was a dark chocolate, like he was straight from Wakanda and had been bathing in the sun all day. Jardani had a smooth mocha complexion, and Jeon was more or less on the honey side. Jai’Vaun was caramel, Jah’Loni was a high yellow bone, and I was white. I mean, I knew that I was black because I had some of my mother’s features, and she was too selfish to house any child that wasn’t hers, but it looked like someone just sucked all of the pigment that I should have had out of my body. I got called so many names by the ghetto chicken heads in my neighborhood as a kid— “White Girl,” “Light Bright,” “Invisalign,” and “Casper,” just to name a few. They teased me because of my color and my long, curly, red hair. On top of my complexion, I had gray eyes, which were supposedly compliments of my ‘father’, Brutto. I was the only one of Jamie’s kids that didn’t have her distinct eyes. It was crazy because, as a kid, so many of the people that Brutto ran with back in the day called me Little BK, after his initials, Brutto King, identifying me with a man that I had never seen, met, or talked to, but that was a story for another day.
As Mel threw the last of my bags in his truck, shaking me from my thoughts, I set my key on the counter, locked the bottom lock from the inside, pushed back my tears, and closed the chapter that I thought would end in ‘and they lived happily ever after.”