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“Bitch! Talk to your sister,” Merci fussed. “If you don’t talk to your sister by this weekend, I ain’t coming to see you.”
Kissing her teeth, Candi smiled. “You ain’t coming to Sapphire City for me, anyway. You trying to go to the park where I told you all the niggas be. Be for fuckin’ real, Merci.”
“But I was still going to see you, hoe.” Merci laughed. “Anyway, let me get to this laundry because I have to work tonight.”
“Yea, I gotta work today too. I’m about to head there in a little while,” Candi revealed.
“I know you miss that club money.”
“I do, but my peace of mind is much better. Talk to you later, hoe.”
“Bye, bitch!”
The call ended, and Candi was back, looking at herself in the mirror. These days, she didn’t even recognize herself. For the last few years, she was usually high on pills and decked out in designer from head to toe. Now, she was what she considered plain Jane and starting over. At twenty-four, it seemed too late, but as her therapist, Dr. Joy, told her, it was never too late to get yourself together. You would grow old, regardless. It was up to you to turn sixty and be the same person or turn sixty and love the person you became. Every day was a struggle for Candi, but she woke up, trying to love the person she was becoming.
Looking at the digital clock on her dresser, she assessed she had enough time to make a quick dinner so she could eat now and take to work later.
Candi worked at the Big E, a gas station adjacent to the hood. It wasn’t the best job but they paid decent and she didn’t feel out of place. When she first got to Sapphire City, she found a job at a call center but quickly decided it wasn’t for her. She hated the customers, employees, and managers. It had too much going on and almost pushed her over the edge and had her running back to Jade City. Once she got hired at the Big E, the idea went back to the recesses of her mind.
So far, the change of scenery had been great for her healing journey.
Life back in Jade City used to be fun—toxic, but every day she woke up knowing she was going to end her night lit. It was a never-ending cycle until it wasn’t. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t miss her sister Jazze and best friend Navee, but between the three of them, tensions had bubbled over. She resented her sister for reasons beyond Jazze’s control and she felt like Navee had outgrown the teenage shit they did before Navee was sent to prison.
All Candi’s partying caught up to her one night when she found herself in the car with a strange man. It was like she knew where she was but didn’t know where she was at the same time. That night would forever be etched in her mind because it was the night she realized how badly she had been destroying herself.
Prescription pills were her drug of choice, but from time to time, she’d do a line of coke if she was around a bunch of rich people. As one of the hottest strippers in Jade City, Candi was always in the mix with the ballers and shotcallers. Like her name, they loved them some Candi. In the most vulgar ways possible.
With all of that, Candi had to learn to pivot, feel, and move on. Sitting in shit caused her downfall.
Once she had eaten and packed up the rest for later, Candi cleaned up her mess before walking out the door. As she stepped out of the house, she sighed at the rambunctious neighborhood. The streets were worn as well as the sidewalks and had broken-down cars that took up the good parking spaces. She was used to the hood, but her current surroundings seemed more than just hood. It was ignorant and full of poverty and… all she could afford.
Candi had lived in the area for over six months and hadn’t had any issues with anyone. That was the best part of it all. She stayed to herself and so did everyone else, for the most part. The most that happened was domestic violence, with couples arguing and fighting all damn day. Besides that, she felt safe enough to live there. It was temporary. At least that was what Candi told herself on the daily. How she was going to get out of the area and make more money, she wasn’t sure.
Her passion and purpose had yet to be discovered. Until then, she was going to make the best of her situation.
“Bitch badder than a muthafucka.” One cat whistled as she walked past. He looked to be old enough to be her father with tattered and dingy clothes. The slides he had on his feet showed how bad his toes were. Thick toenails and decades of dried skin almost made Candi throw up when she looked him up and down.
Pushing her eyes forward, she continued her stride to her car. An older model Audi was her most prized possession. She had a brand-new 2023 Audi that she’d sold to a chop shop, then reported it stolen. That was the money she needed to pay cash for the car she had now and to make the move to Sapphire City.
She pressed her key fob to unlock the door and placed her things on the passenger seat before going around to the driver’s side to get in the car. Settled in, she started up the vehicle and pulled off while smirking at the old head who couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her. A good cursing out was what he needed, but Candi had to tread lightly since she was the new girl in town.
The local radio station played since she hadn’t connected her phone to the aux cord, in her thoughts. The further she got down the road, she noticed her car started to shake. Before she could turn the music down to listen, a loud pop scared her. People honked their horns as she tried to control the steering wheel because the car was swerving. Finally, pulling into a parking lot of an abandoned Title company, Candi jumped out to assess the damage.
“Fuck!” she yelled, seeing nothing but the rim. The rubber on her tire was still on the road.
Cars zoomed past her as she thought of her next move. Candi needed to get to work. She also needed to see about her car but didn’t have the money to do so. That was the one thing she missed about working at the club—getting paid every day. Now, she had to wait for Friday. Sighing, she pulled up her rideshare app to book a ride to work. She could only pray her car stayed safe for the next three days.
TWO
Dark, tinted windows concealed Jay’s illegal activity. Leaning back, he stuffed his cigar with some of the finest weed on the market, making sure to look up every so often to scope out the scene. When parked in the lot of the Big E, a hood gas station, you never wanted to let your guard down.
Jay hated his mom still working there but he couldn’t get her to quit. His pockets were heavy, and still, Jolene wasn’t giving up her independence.If her car wasn’t in the shop, getting fixed after her little fender bender, she wouldn’t need him to pick her up.
Jolene was a firecracker and didn’t take shit from anyone. She was also loved dearly by Big E’s frequent customers. She knew most of them by name and had even watched some of them grow up, just to turn around and witness them have babies of their own. Knowing how much the neighborhood fucked with her was the only thing that kept Jay from locking his mama away.
When it came to Jolene, Jay loved her with his whole heart. She was his backbone and did whatever to put food in his stomach. He was her only child but he had siblings on his father’s side. The relationship between him and his father was neutral. Big Pete tried to be a father but fell short a lot of the time. Big Pete tried his best to be a father from a distance since he still lived in Alabama, and as a teen, Jay and Jolene didn’t make it a priority to visit often. Now that he was an adult, he had more of an invested interest in going back to Alabama. With Jay owning land and a home there, it helped move the relationship with his father further.
While he puffed on his blunt, Jay scrolled through social media on his phone. He didn’t post much, but still, that never stopped him from partaking when he had downtime. As soon as he clicked into the app, Luna’s face popped up with a pretty, bald-headed baby pressed against her face.
