Intro
Good ol' New Orleans - a city like no other. A vibrant place overflowing with culture, where the food, the people, the music, and the history blend together into something the world can't get enough of. Day and night, travelers come to witness...
Most people saw Colla and thought he had it easy. Fresh kicks, clean fade, always got a new girl in his phone. He was the type to laugh through anything, even if the world was crashing around him.
But when the sun went down and he was alone in his room, it was different. The house was quiet—too quiet. His mama worked double shifts at the nursing home, barely home, and when she was, she was too tired to talk. His pops? Been gone since he was nine.
The only thing Colla had to keep him going was his mirror. That was his therapy. He'd stand there, brush in one hand, thoughts in the other.
Tonight, he stared at himself for a while. The gold grill in his mouth didn't make him smile like it used to. The diamonds in his ears didn't hide the tired in his eyes.
"Why I feel so empty, bruh?" he muttered under his breath.
His phone buzzed on the bed.
Text from Tre'Naee:
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"You ever gon' stop acting like you don't care about me or nah?"
He let it sit there. Read it. Reread it. Tre'Naee was one of the few girls that really saw through him. She wasn't impressed by the gang stuff or his designer clothes. She wanted him. The real him. The broken one he kept hidden.
But he didn't know how to love. Not when every person he ever cared about either left... or died.
He sighed, tossed the phone face down, and sat on the edge of the bed.
"I gotta get outta this life," he whispered. But deep down, he knew he wasn't just in the life—the life was in him.
