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“I see your point there.”
“Exactly.”
“To UnHinged,” he announced, pulling around the driveway’s curb to make a full U-turn.
The mini bar was always in motion and put to great use. I created an Old Fashion with the bourbon that was closest to my fingertips. The brown liquor and a few underwhelming ingredients later, I was sipping on my favorite concoction with a single cube inside for a slight chill.
I stared at the green box in my hand, tapping the top with my fingertip.Another year without either of them. My mind traveled to a deeper, darker place. Neither my mother nor father had been here to celebrate the last twenty-five birthdays of my brothers and I. It didn’t matter how much time passed, there was still a pain in my chest each time I thought about their untimely death.
In a very fragile mental state, my mother tragically ended both their lives. After visiting her at the institution she’d been confined to and witnessing the condition she and other patients were subjected to, my father discharged her at the peak of a psychotic break. She was only home for seventy-two hours before she slit his throat and then her wrists.
Mercer was the first awake that morning, noticing that neither of them had gotten out of bed. What he discovered on the other side of their door was any child’s worst nightmare. His muffled scream was an attempt to shield his findings from us all. However, I was next on the scene. It was Milo and Makai that we managed to keep away from the gruesome consequences of medication withdrawals and declining psychiatric health.
Chem was at his father’s home. He didn’t share the same father as us. Mom had him as a teenager, still in high school, long before she met our father. As her health declined, his father made the decision to care for him full-time to ease my mother’s stress and help her healing process along. He, too, loved my mother and hated seeing her hurting the way she was.
With everything in his heart, my father loved my mother. It wasn’t until her late twenties that she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The schizophrenia diagnosis came shortly after. From the age of thirty, she was in and out of mental facilities, my father desperate to whip her mind back into shape. There was therapy, medication, diet, exercise, and anything else that would help align her mind with her body and her heart.
Her decline broke my father’s heart. A woman he’d loved since she was nineteen years old was fading before his very eyes and there was nothing he could do about it. While strangers were upset with my mother after discovering their story and his death, anyone who truly knew them and understood their bond, knew that my father wouldn’t have had it any other way.
They were one. Moved as one. Acted as one. Their devotion to each other was commendable. To be together in death would’ve been satisfying for him. He wouldn’t have survived earth without her and wouldn’t want her to continue living in his absence.
A heavy sigh escaped me as I laid my head against the rest behind me.Shit never gets easier. It just hurts differently.
Approximately twenty-five minutes passed before we were out of The Peaks, traveling through Riverwood and Hawthorne, landing in Beacon Ridge where UnHinged was located. Beacon Ridge was the land of the grimy and the field for snakes, but it was where all the hottest spots were located for the most part.
Their locations were part of the reasons I preferred staying my ass at home. Most niggas, who weren’t about it, were walking licks for a sucker on the come-up. To save a life, someone else’s life, it was best if I stayed out of the way and up in The Highlands where crimes were domestic, never being committed by strangers waiting for you to slip.
“Backside, Boss?” Willie asked, peeking at me through the mirror.
I finished off the second Old Fashion I’d poured and nodded my head. The car continued through the parking lot, passing the overcrowded entrance and looping around back. I had no desire to entertain, pass up, or be in the presence of anyone out there.
Keeping it low-key, I chose to go through the private entrance that was reserved for celebrities, people making guest appearances, and niggas that needed to keep a low profile. Depending on who you asked, on any given day, I’d be considered either of the three. As far as I was concerned, I was just a man who cared less about public appearances and making good impressions on people that weren’t feeding my pockets.
Out of the car and into the club, I went with Willie behind me. He was a second set of eyes for me whenever in stuffed places and complicated situations. Just like me, he had no issue letting his guns blast. Through the kitchen and alongside the bar, we traveled until we reached the sections that were sealed and reserved with niggas that looked just like me.
There stood Makai with his arms folded across his chest as he rocked from side to side. I followed his line of vision, watching the set of voluptuous hips that belonged to the woman in the booth just a few feet away. It was no surprise she was standing next to a man. Makai had a thing for things that didn’t belong to him.
The quest to obtain them spiked his adrenaline. That was how he’d gotten into building the bodies of cars and eventually custom wheels. For a year straight, on his mission to learn how to drive, he stole a new car every night and returned it to its owner before they knew it was missing. Once, a car quit on him, pissing him off and forcing him to examine what was underneath the hood.
That car, and every car he borrowed after, went back to their owner in better shape than it was when he’d taken it. He used our shed as his makeshift shop and sent a full bill to the owners after his deed was done. To my surprise, most of them were eager to pay and hired him for work they needed to be done in the future.
“My motherfucking brother.” Milo noticed me first, slapping his palm against mine and pulling me in for a hug.
“Happy Birthday, man.”
“Another fucking year, dog. Blessed.”
“Are you, ’cause your whole set up looking a bit scarce. Ain’t enough bottles. Ain’t enough sparkles. Ain’t enough money being spent up here, Milo.” In all seriousness, I chastised. “Where the waitress at? I need her.”
“Big dog,” Makai greeted me, finally taking his eyes off the next nigga’s peace.
“Your eyes ain’t hurting nobody, but keep your hands to yourself. That woman belongs to someone else.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with stolen goods,” Makai joked as we touched elbows.
With a shake of the head, I sighed. “So, I’m babysitting you instead of Milo tonight, huh?”
“Milo the one you need to keep an eye on. This nigga the energizer bunny. Just doesn’t slow down.”
