Never Left Me (Completed)

Eleven

"Hell nah! See, that's a class I would skip."

"Yeah, honestly I hate all my classes this semester. I have this race, gender, and sexuality class that's so fuckin' annoying because I'm the only Black person. Every time race comes up everyone's looking at me for my opinion and that's pretty much every class."

"Bruh, when they all discreetly turn to look at you. Awkward as hell."

"Exactly. On the first class day this white boy sat next to me. Out of nowhere he turns to me then leans in whispering, Tupac or Biggie?" Gee does his dramatic scream laugh doing a jog around the laundry room not expecting that.

"Tell me you lyin'?!"

"Nope," she purses her lips before beginning to laugh herself. "These mutha fuckas and their microaggressions."

"You should've asked him The Rolling Stones or The Beatles."

They both smile glad that it's not awkward anymore. A conversation about the obvious hasn't happened, but after the night he helped Gen with her car there was just a shift.

For Magenta, it was her realizing she was letting her feelings come in the way of their friendship. His mother's house going into foreclosure made her realize she's lacked in being a support system. Gee also never wanted dating to ruin any of his friendships.

They both realize they don't want their relationship to change. Not right now at least.

Gee's still seeing Estelle even though it has tremendously slowed down on his end. He has bigger things to worry about as far as getting this money to help his mother.

Magenta watches Gee check the pockets of a pair of sweatpants before throwing them in the washer. He pulls out a wad of cash from them saying, "Heads up!" He throws it and Gen catches it putting it with the other money he's found wadded up in pockets that he had no idea about.

"That's a damn shame," she shakes her head. He's at least found a couple hundred dollars. That's when you know you've been touching too much money when this doesn't phase you.

The last couple of weeks, Genesis has had a whole operation to get the $15,000. He knows he's playing a risky game, but he's on track to getting it. All while not actually having to necessarily do anything himself. He did what Choice suggested.

He got a couple people to sell weed and pills on campus. He gets them the product to sell and they get their cut. That way he can still focus on class and football, while they do the footwork and he still makes his money. He didn't want to get into the whole pill thing, but he's able to make more money so he took Fade's suggestion.

"Oh, go check out my Instagram page," Gee tells Magenta.

She does what he says seeing all his old pictures are deleted unless it has to do with sports. No pictures of him with his friends back home who may be throwing up some sort of hand sign or flashing money. Barely any regular pictures of him even if it's just to show off a nice outfit.

"Looks so neat and professional. You got your followers up too," she notes seeing he's in the thousands.

"Yeah, but I can't really post what I want anymore. Gotta keep it clean. You see most of my posts are sports related now."

"Yeah, but it's good. You're building that brand and image."

"Yeah, they're 'cleaning me up.' No more practice fights, unnecessary roughness violations, or off-field incidents. My coach is trying to turn around the villain image I may have created," he smacks his lips. "You wanna shout out?"

"I'm good. You see I barely post and my profile is private. I'm not really a social media person."

"You need to build your shit up too. Create a brand. You wanna be in the music industry, right? A journalist and shit. You can be one of those girls who gets paid to post or sent free stuff. I could see you having a lot of followers if you started posting more."