Page 100 of All The Smoke
“She needs to know her place,” Bri spat, folding her arms in front of her.
“She knows her place, yo’ ass the one that don’t know yours, popping up at my crib and letting yourself in and shit.”
“My son is here.”
“Ourson, and that shit don’t matter. This ain’t ya spot. You have no jurisdiction here and you know he good when he with me so, yeah. Furthermore, I can’t get you to push up when it’s time to drop him the fuck off half the time, but you ran ya ass over here today.”
“Damn right I did when you’re being spiteful and?—”
I cut her off. “Brianna, I don’t care enough about you to be spiteful. As a matter of fact I don’t care about you at all. I had you served because you lack the fuckin’ competency to coparent. I’m not about to spend a whole gotdamn day trying to get my son from you because your childish ass is being difficult.”
She palmed her chest. “I’m the one being difficult? You’re the one that requested we drop off and pick up our son with my parents when you know I don’t fuck with them.”
“And I fuck with mine?” I countered.
“Anyways, you don’t sound like you don’t care. You actually sound like a hurt nigga.”
“Because I am,” I admitted. I wasn’t ashamed to say the entire situation affected me.
“You literally just said you didn’t care about me, but you’re hurt?”
“Yeah because IloveElijah, stupid.” I shook my head. “Nigga, my fucking brother and you wiggled your conniving ass way into his head and did that dirty shit. Now you expect me to look past the shit like it wasn’t nothing. Naw, not happening. We going to court to get set days to have Solo and have a middleman do the drop off and pick up.”
“Fine, we can do set days, but do we really need a middleman, Smoke? Be serious.”
“I’m deadass serious, Bri.” I chuckled. “I know your motive ineverythingyou do is to have some kind of reaction or access to me, so I’m cutting that off. It’s gon’ kill you to not be able to see and speak to me, but you did it to yourself.”
“But I?—”
I cut her off. “Go ahead and bounce. We ain’t got shit else to talk about. Solo with me ’til Monday and you gon’ get him from school.”
I had already ushered her toward the door and opened the shit. Once she stepped past that threshold, I slammed the shit in her face and locked up, not giving a fuck what she was saying. I was done talking to and dealing with her ass. She hit me where it hurt no doubt, so I was going to do the same to her.
Journeying to the kitchen, I grabbed a Gatorade from the fridge before going to the back where I found Kaori in the mirror pinning her hair up.
“Where you going?”
“Shower then home.”
My brows dipped. “Why?”
“Because I want to go home.”
“Kaori.” I sighed.
“I don’t like her ass and I don’t like her popping up over here like that.” She frowned at me in the mirror. “It’s inappropriate. Does she do that when I’m not here?”
“Hell naw.” I frowned.
“Okay.”
“Babe…”
“I believe you. I’m going to my grandma’s.”
“You know…” I reached for her hand and pulled her toward me between my legs. My hands immediately went to her protruding belly. Silas was very active her entire pregnancy, but the later she got in that shit, the less and less he moved around because he didn’t have the room. Still, my boy always greeted Daddy when I touched his mother.
“He never sleeps when he hears your voice.”
