Page 1 of All This Love
one
onyx
Under normal circumstances,I was a nigga that liked to speed, but as I cruised through the streets of Golden Waters, North Carolina, I took the time to enjoy the scenery. I was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, but it was vastly different than Golden Waters. Charlotte had the hustle and bustle of a large city, mad traffic, and an abundance of people. Golden Waters was a little calmer, a little more laid back, and the lakes, trees, and mountains were nice to look at. A nigga admiring nature and scenery probably sounded weird to most, but I’d loved being outside since I was a kid.
I could sit out on a pier or at a lake, smoke a blunt, and fish for hours. Going out in the country and riding dirt bikes and four wheelers was another favorite past time of mine. As a child, I couldn’t wait to be grown, so I didn’t have to be home when the streetlights came on. Now that I was an adult and could do what I wanted, Golden Waters was a little more my speed than Charlotte. The only thing that made Charlotte better was the money. I’d been selling weed since I was seventeen. I had clientele out the ass and made damn good money serving everyone from hustlers to niggas’ grandmothers. I had some of the best weed in the city, and my phone rang damn near nonstopon a constant basis. The diversity of marijuana smokers in the world was dope as fuck to me. From the elderly, sick people in constant pain, to doctors, and lawyers. I served anybody that wanted to fill their lungs with the finest herb around.
As bad as I hated turning down money, my trap phone was off, and it would remain that way for the next two days while I visited my father’s side of the family. I got picked on a lot as a kid because of who my pops was. When I got tired of being bullied and I started fighting back, people began to see how nice I was with my hands, and they left me alone. Eventually, it didn’t matter who my father was, people gave me respect. If they had anything slick to say, they learned to keep it to themselves because saying it to me was a sure way to get their jaw cracked.
My father, Emmanuel, was a well-known gang member back in the day. There wasn’t shit soft about Emmanuel, and he wasn’t to be fucked with. My father could fight but, if need be, he never hesitated to shoot. His name rang bells in the streets for being a thoroughbred. Until one night, he got caught slipping and a female busted in the bedroom of her man’s house and found him and my father in bed together. She ran and told anybody that would listen, and four members of my father’s gang jumped him and beat him within an inch of his life. Crazy thing was, out of four niggas, my father fucked two of them up. He put up a hell of a fight, and that gained him more respect than people cared to admit. However, after three weeks in the hospital, he was discharged and made the decision to leave Charlotte behind. I was nine years old at the time, and niggas had a field day picking on me and disrespecting my father in the process.
For a while, I hated him. I hated having to go to school and fight every day because he chose to be gay. As I got older, my feelings changed. My pops had always been there for me when I needed him, and I was riding with him. Fuck whoever didn’tlike it. My father was still very much masculine, and he didn’t do all that being out in the open with men and shit. He kept what he did behind closed doors, and I’d never seen him with a man. My pops was a mechanic and had his own shop. No one that didn’t know him personally knew he was gay. With his six foot even stature, light brown skin, muscular physique, and salt and pepper beard, women tried him all the time. They were clueless to the fact that they didn’t have a chance in hell with him. I didn’t know anything about a person being bisexual. I was sure it was possible, but what I respected about my father was that after my mother, he didn’t use women to try and appear to be straight. He liked what he liked, and he didn’t waste women’s time pretending otherwise.
Shit, my conception was an experiment gone wrong. My father was trying to prove to himself that he wasn’t gay, and he slept with my mother four times. By the time he decided it wasn’t for him and he didn’t want to do it anymore, she approached him with a positive pregnancy test. Parking my car in front of my father’s home, I grabbed a blunt from my center console and emerged from the car. Emmanuel was good at what he did, and his auto shop was pretty successful. He lived in a nice four-bedroom house that sat on a lake. Just my kind of vibe.
A few times, he’d asked me to come work with him. I was addicted to the fast money that I was getting in Charlotte. I even had NBA and NFL players that purchased weed from me. I was hesitant to give that up to work a legal job, but I was twenty-six and knew I couldn’t hustle forever. The older I got, the more I valued peace. Golden Waters definitely seemed like a peaceful place to live.
I wasn’t even done pressing the doorbell when the door opened. “What up gangster?” my father greeted me with a grin as I stepped over the threshold of his home.
“Chilling, chilling.” I walked over to the couch and sat down. It had been about four months since I’d seen my father.
“Mama just called me and told me the food was ready. I told her you were on your way here, and we’d ride over there together.”
Bobbing my head, I passed my father the blunt, and his eyes lit up. “Boy, that shit you be having is strong as hell. If I smoke this, you’re going to have to drive.”
I chuckled. “I can do that. For me, being high is as normal as breathing. Anything I can do sober; I do that shit better when I’m high.”
“I said I was going to stop asking you about the shop and let you come to me on your own if you decided that was what you wanted to do, but Earl is leaving next month. It would be nice if you took his place.” My father pulled on the blunt and immediately started coughing.
Patiently, I waited for him to stop hacking, so I could respond to him. I had a few hundred thousand dollars saved, but that wasn’t enough to live off. I needed a nice size cushion and a great salary in order to feel comfortable enough to walk away from selling weed. For the past four years, I’d made it mandatory to save at least $10,000 a month. Since I started saving it, I hadn’t touched any of it. While it was a nice nest egg, a nigga was still young, and that bread wouldn’t last forever. One thing I didn’t want to have to do if I started working a legal job was downgrade my lifestyle. I for damn sure wasn’t a fan of struggle, and there were too many people out here busting their ass working a 9-5 and barely keeping their heads above water.
“Why is Earl leaving?” I deflected a bit. “He’s been there since you opened.”
My father pushed out a deep sigh. “Lung cancer. Stage four. Doctor told him even with chemo at the most he might have six months.”
“Damn.” I truly hated to hear that shit. Earl had been working for my father for ten years, and he was like an uncle to me. He did more than work on cars. He helped to run the shop and keep it afloat. If my father couldn’t be there or just chose not to be at the shop, he never had any worries because Earl ran things just as smoothly as my father did.
“I know how yo’ ass is with structure and rules and shit. I know you like doing your own thing and not having to answer to anybody, but you can start out slow. Maybe three to four days a week for four to five hours a day. I don’t even need you to work on cars. Just help keep shit in order because honestly, I’d rather be underneath the hood of a car than sitting behind the desk.” My pops sucked a cloud of smoke into his lungs and passed me the blunt.
“I can’t pay you no $100,000 a year, but I can come damn close. My shop is one of the most popular ones in the city. I have a full work load every day from the time I open until I close. And the cost of living in Golden Waters isn’t as high as Charlotte. What you pay in rent for a condo in Charlotte could get you a mansion in Golden Waters.”
“I’m not even gon’ lie. Next month is kind of soon. I got pounds on the way and a shit load of clientele in Charlotte. But I like Golden Waters and maybe making a lil’ transition isn’t the worst thing in the world.” I surprised my damn self with the reply I gave my father. A reply that had him grinning like a Cheshire cat.
“Shit I’ll take that.” My father bobbed his head with eyes lit up like fireworks. “I’ll take that for sure.” I knew it wasn’t just about me working for him. I used to spend summers with my father, and we always had a good time. Once I got older and busier, we didn’t see each other as much. I knew he simply wanted to spend more time with me, and I wasn’t opposed to that.
We finished the blunt, and I drove to my grandmother’s house. My grandmother was originally from Golden Waters. She moved to Charlotte with her grandmother when she was fourteen and two days after her fifteenth birthday, she found out she was pregnant with my father. When my father was eighteen, my grandmother decided she wanted to move back to Golden Waters, and my father stayed in Charlotte. Until he was damn near beaten to death.
I had enough family in Golden Waters that if I decided to make the move, I’d know plenty of people to put me on to some customers even if it meant selling weed on a smaller scale than I did in Charlotte. My grandmother had been married for ten years, and her husband was from Trinidad. They could both throw down in the kitchen, and I got so full that I could barely move. We got a Spades game going, and the vibe was real chill. Yeah, I could fuck with Golden Waters on a regular basis for sure.
My pops had enough room for me to stay with him whenever I came to town, but I didn’t like to intrude on whatever it was that he might have going on. I was going to get a hotel room despite him insisting that I could stay at his house. At the last minute, I decided to forego the hotel room, but I needed to run by the gas station. I dropped him off and headed in that direction. I didn’t know enough about Golden Waters to know what went on, on any particular side of town, but I knew my father lived in a nice area. I also knew that the kind of cigars I wanted and certain snacks that I liked would more than likely be in stores closer to the hood.
I was driving a Genesis and had a nice lil’ watch that cost a few racks wrapped around my wrist along with a chain that ran me around ten stacks. And I pulled up at a corner store in the hood without a second thought. I didn’t blink when I saw two guys in hoodies standing outside of the store. If they mindedtheir business, I would damn sure mind mine. I had my heat tucked. Getting out of the car, I glanced at them briefly just to get a good look at them. I wasn’t avoiding eye contact, and I wasn’t intimidated by their mean mugs. Each of them only stood around 5’9, and one of them had a long scar going across his left cheek.
Making my way inside the store, I pulled up my slightly sagging jeans and as I reached for the door, two more guys came out. Once they exited, I entered. My high was fading, and I knew I’d smoke again and despite being currently stuffed, the munchies would kick back in soon enough. I collected the snacks and cigars that I came to get and left the store. I didn’t see any of the guys outside and assumed they’d left. Maybe because my ass wasn’t in Charlotte and felt like nobody knew me, I let my guard down a lil’ too much, and that was the dumbest thing I could have done.
As I reached for the door handle, a blow to the back of the head knocked me into my car. Pain exploded behind my eyes that was unlike anything I’d ever felt before and immediately, my hand flew underneath my shirt in an effort to grab my gun. Another blow made it feel as if something inside my head exploded, and I crumbled to my knees. Strong arms wrapped around my neck, and one of them held me in a headlock as another one removed my chain, and someone else pulled money from my pockets. I had around $1,200 on me. The pain in my head combined with my airway being restricted was the worst combination of pain and discomfort that I’d ever felt in my life. I wasn’t sure I could last through the pain, but that didn’t stop me from grabbing my weapon.
One of them attempted to grab my gun, but pointing the gun to the side of me, I shot blindly. “Fuck!” Ole boy released my neck as his partner hit the ground. Gasping for air and scrambling to get on my feet, I shot again as they took offrunning leaving their friend behind. My chest heaved up and down and stars danced before my eyes as I glared down at Scarface. The crotch of his denim jeans was saturated with blood, and he looked up at me with wide eyes full of fear. There was a fifty/fifty chance that there were cameras outside the store, but no fucks were given as I raised my arm and squeezed the trigger sending a bullet slamming into his stomach. I didn’t care if he lived or died. As I got back in my car, I vowed to find every last one of those fuck niggas and ruin their lives.
