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I paused the movie before it could start over again and climbed out of my bed. My cheetah print house shoes were sitting right by my bed, so I quickly slid my feet into them and walked down the hallway heading toward the kitchen. I needed to refill my wine glass, and I was in the mood for some ice cream. Giovonte had just texted me maybe twenty minutes ago, letting me know that he’d arrived at the movies, so I knew that he wouldn’t be home any time soon. Maybe it was the little buzz that I had, that made me let his ass drive my car. That or the fact that my son rarely asked me for anything and because he was a good kid. As much as I wanted to tell him that I didn’t want him to have his hoochie girlfriend in my car, I had to be the adult in this situation.
My bowl was almost filled with butter pecan ice cream when there wa
s a knock at my door. I knew it wasn’t Mahogany knocking because we spoke earlier, and she told me that she had a date tonight. My son was at the movies, and I knew for a fact that my grandmother wasn’t coming over at this time of the night. It was oldies night at my daddy’s favorite club, so he was more than likely there.
The drawer in the kitchen was already opened since I had to get a spoon to scoop the ice cream, so I grabbed a big, butcher knife, held it in my hands, and headed for the door. There was a window on the side of the door, so I quickly looked through it and found myself smiling as I saw who was on the other side of the door. It was a face that I hadn’t seen in about three years since his mother died, and my son and I attended the funeral. I believe that was three years ago.
It was Toddrick, but everybody knew him as “Miami.” I met him in my teen years through Trip. They were friends, but they weren’t that close. I’ve always thought Miami was fine. Hell, any woman with a pair of eyes thought that he was God’s gift to Earth. For me, Miami was like that forbidden fruit. It was like an unwritten rule that I couldn’t mess with him since he was friends with Trip. In the ghetto rule book, you just didn’t do shit like that. You get people killed from passing your pussy around like that, especially with friends.
While Trip was busy creating gangs and being a part of them, Miami was a boxer. I’m not talking about some underground fighter who got the shit beat out of them and were paid maybe two hundred dollars a fight. I’m talking big shit, like coming on FOX at night and boxing with some of the greats. His name was Miami for a reason because he’d definitely held his city down.
Miami was great at what he did. In my eyes, he could have been the next Floyd Mayweather if he had kept going, but when his mother died, he just stopped. The way I went so hard for my son when it came to his basketball games is the same way that his mother went hard for him. Now that he wasn’t boxing anymore, he did more beneficial things. He’d opened a few rec centers here in Miami for future boxers. When it was time for the first day of school, this same man would pull up in the hood in a big U-Haul truck and give back a shit load of things for the kids. He did that same thing around the holidays as well. I was shocked to see him knocking on my door, but more than likely, he was looking for Giovonte.
Although Giovonte’s father was locked up, he had a couple of male figures in his life to school him, which was my daddy and this man standing on the other side of my door. I ended up opening the drawer on the small table that sat in the foyer and placing the knife inside because I didn’t want him to think that I was crazy for standing there and holding a butcher knife.
“What’s up, Choc?” his deep voice called out.
He called me by a name that he’d given to me years ago within seconds of meeting me. Like always, I found myself smiling when he called me that. I wanted to say that it was the wine I’d been drinking that had me secretly crushing on Miami, but truth be told, his ass was just that fine. Hmmm, and he smelled even better. I hadn’t been with a man in years so I couldn’t tell you the brand of his cologne. All my son liked to wear was Versace cologne, so that was really the only scent that I knew these days on a man. I didn’t know what Miami was wearing, but I liked it.
He had a light skin complexion; the kind that if he were a woman, he would be called a redbone. Beautiful, greenish-hazel like eyes, with a long beard and facial hair that would make the perfect seat for any woman’s face. He had a good texture of hair that held the most perfect waves on a man that I’ve ever seen in my life. When he saw me, he licked those big, almost pink colored lips. I’m not sure why, but my panties had become wet just from looking at him. There was a big, diamond-shaped tattoo right in the middle of his neck that was surrounded by flames. This man knew he was fine, and as he pulled down on his beard, I saw the letters M-I-A-M-I spelled out on each of his fingers right below his knuckles.
If I had to guess, I would say that he stood at least 6’5” and had to weigh a good 245 pounds of pure muscle. I’m not sure where he was coming from, but he was dressed up in a white, silk short-sleeved shirt with the first two buttons undone, showing off not only his neck tattoo but the top of the tattoos that were on his chest as well. White jeans hung from his waist, making him sag just a little bit. A pair of white Fendi sneakers were on his feet, and a big Cuban link with diamonds that were flashing in the night light was around his neck.
“Toddrick King. To what do I owe this pleasure? I don’t know whether I should ask for a hug or for your autograph,” I called him out on his first and last name.
I thought about Miami from time to time, but it was just based on me wanting to know how he was doing or anything of that nature.
“Don’t do me like that, Choc. Damn, what’s it been? About three years? Your ass still ain’t going to get no fuckin’ taller. Let me get a hug, yo,” he called out.
He’d opened his arms a little bit, and I slowly walked into his embrace. If he were my lover, my arms would have gone around my neck, but since we were just friends, I opted to wrap my arms around his waist, and he did the same thing to me. Now that I was closer to him, I got to smell his cologne for what it really was, and it smelled even better than before. We hugged each other in a way that proved that we hadn’t seen each other in years.
When he pulled away from me, he looked down at me for a few seconds, shook his head, and then turned his attention to the driveway. He’d come in a beautiful, royal blue Maserati Levante SUV, and I didn’t know if he was sexier or the car.
“I almost didn’t get out the car and knock when I didn’t see a car in the driveway, then I figured that you must have parked it in the garage,” he called out.
“Vonte has it for the night. He went on a date with his little girlfriend,” I said with a roll of my eyes.
He laughed at my facial expression when I mentioned my son’s girlfriend.
“Damn, I been gone for that long that this lil nigga done got himself a girlfriend now? I hit him up a few weeks ago and told him that when I come back in town, I was going to come scoop him and take him out. I’m back for good now, so I’ll get him whenever he’s free,” Miami said.
I don’t know why, but I found myself getting happy when I heard him say that he was back in Miami for good. After he stopped boxing, he was back and forth from Miami to Los Angeles because that’s where he’d moved.
“Come inside and wait for him. He’ll be back within the next hour or so,” I said and stepped aside so he could walk past me and into the house.
I closed the door behind him once he was in and watched him as he stared at the pictures that were hanging up on the wall in the foyer of the house. The picture that he stared at the longest was of Giovonte and me when he was a year old, and I was fourteen. It was Easter Sunday, and my grandmother had taken the picture of us on the porch. I wore a yellow dress, and I had a suit on Giovonte. If anyone didn’t know me, they would probably just assume that Giovonte was my little brother instead of my son.
“I swear it feels like just yesterday that your ole boy came outside and beat the shit out of Trip when he found out that you were pregnant. That day will go down in history. Look at you and Vonte now. Lil nigga going to be eighteen in a few months. You can’t tell me that time don’t be flying,” Miami said after he finished looking at the pictures.
“Yep, almost eighteen, and in a few months, he will be on his way to college. My baby isn’t much of a baby anymore,” I said.
The two of us were now in the den. I was sitting on one couch, and he was sitting on the other one.
“I know it’s going to break your little heart when he leaves you too. Y’all really all each other got, but you got to think of it for the positive. Let that man go out there and do greatness. I’m sure when he graduates and makes it to the NBA, he’s going to move you to wherever he ends up moving,” he let me know.
“We were just talking about that in the car last night. I know it’s going to be hard on me at first, but I’ll live,” I said.
“You stronger than me, Choc. My baby girl just turned three a couple of months ago, and I don’t be wanting her ass out of my sight. It kills me every time I get her for that one little week, and I have to take her back to her mama. Everything be telling me to stay in LA, but Miami is home for me, so I’d much rather be here. My baby mama does a damn good job of raising my daughter in my absence, though. I’ll be able to get her the entire summer, and we alternate between different holidays, so that’s fine. When that time does around, and she turns eighteen, I know I’m not going to want her to go away for college,” he said.
