**** I don't think Wattpad alerted some people I updated Chapter 19 yesterday. If you haven't read it, you can do so.
That pic of Aug and Nicki where he hooked up to the breathing machine. That was so sweet of Nicki and he looks so adorable. But I hate seeing him like that. I'm just glad to know though that he's alive and recovering. My prayers are still up. Keep yours up too!
Aug and his mother in the m/m ****
AUGUST P.O.V-
“Travis scoot over you squishing me.” Muk yelled out in her strong NOLA accent.
“Lay off the cookies and ice cream, then we’ll have more room.” He scooted closer to her in the backseat to make room for the others getting in.
“Travis boah you testing me. Been saying lil jokes the whole damn flight.” She shook her head and clenched her fist irritated.
“August how I’m supposed to fit in here?” Stacy looked in the backseat.
I was picking up Muk, Trav, Stacy, my mother and grandmother from the airport and they all had to fit in Cha’s Audi.
“It’s plenty of room. Right here on daddy lap.” Travis patted his lap, indicating for Stacy to sit.
Stacy got in and slapped him upside his head.
“Oooo Girl you better be glad I like it rough otherwise I’d…”
My mother looked at him while standing on the curb, waiting to get in.
“Sorry Mama.” He swallowed and sat back.
“Shelia you sit up front. I’mma sit back here with the kids.” My grandmother said.
“Naw Mama you take the front seat so you can stretch your legs.”
“I don’t like sitting in the front. If it’s an accident, the passenger always the first one to die. I ain’t ready to go yet.” She looked at Stacy. “Baby scoot over.”
Stacy gave a disgusted face and scooted closer to Travis, who was laughing at what my grandmother just said.
My mother gave him another look, then he immediately stopped laughing and looked out the window.
My mother got in the front seat.
My grandmother got in and they all squeezed close together in the back enough to close the door.
Travis put his arm around Stacy.
“Move your hand.”
“This so we can have more room.” He scooted closer to her.
“August.” Stacy looked at me through the mirror.
“Bruh you might want to move your hand.” I thought back to when Stacy whooped my ass.
“Muk should’ve been in the front. Just one of her butt cheeks take up half the car.” Travis sucked his teeth and put his hands in his lap.
“Travis say one more thing.Ooooo I swear mayne.” Muk warned.
“Or what?” He put his chin up to her ‘like do something.’
She started laughing. “I’m not playing with you today.”
“When we get to see the baby?” My grandmother asked looking in her purse.
“Tomorrow Nana.” I adjusted my mirrors.
“Tomorrow? Unh-unh. I ain’t waiting till no tomorrow. I want to see her today.”
“The purpose of the Sip’N’See is so you can see her for the first time at the event.” I said annoyed. I was already irritated cause me and Amb had just got into it, on top of all these niggas doing thee most.
“Don’t sass me boy.” She reached up and popped me in my neck.
I tucked my lip and started the car.
“A Sip’N’See. What is that anyway? Some stuff some white folks made up to get more gifts. We black, we don’t be doing all that. Just let us see the baby and that’s it.”
“It’s the new thing.” Stacy explained to my grandmother.
“Yeah me and Stac gon have one when she have my baby.” Travis licked his lips at Stacy.
“Please. I wouldn’t have your baby if somebody paid me a million dollars.”
“Stop fronting girl. You know you want all of this.”
“Can y’all just shut up and ride?” I snapped at Trav and Stacy who were trying my patience. I started the car and drove off.
“Well does the baby look like you?” My grandmother broke the silence.
“Mama.” My mother turned around to look at her.
“You know these tramps will say anybody the daddy to get that child support.”
“She don’t need his child support. Aug broke Nana.” Travis gave his opinion nobody asked for.
“He may be broke now but she looking at that potential when he graduate. She trying to get in good now. Trying to be a golddigger before my baby get a chance to even dig the gotdamn gold. That’s what them older women do to these young boys. Trap em. And sadly your brother was a victim."
“Mrs. Blair no offense but Amber’s ex-husband was rich.”
I sighed heavily. I really felt like pulling the car over.
“Y’all leave Aug alone. Let him drive.” My mother interjected.
“Aww baby don’t go getting sensitive. You just broke right now. Next year you won’t be.” My grandmother said with the sweetest sympathy.
If she wasn’t my grandmother I would put her ass out this car.
“August you gotta take me to see Amb today. I can’t go another day without seeing my boo.”
“Well you can take the bus cause I’m not going back over there until tomorrow when I gotta help her put this shit up for this thing.”
My mother looked at me.
“Sorry Mama.” I looked out the side window, then back toward the front.
“Oh God. I know what that means.” Stacy said loud huffing and puffing.
“What?” Muk asked being nosey.
“They got into it.”
“I thought y’all was good?” Muk looked at me through the mirror.
“Aug and Amb are the bi-polar-est couple I’ve ever seen. One minute they good, next minute it’s a mess.” Stacy shook her head. “Disfunctional love at its finest.”
“Ain’t no love here and we not a couple.”
“Riiiiiight.” Trav rolled his eyes. “As much as you was crying over her nigga.”
He mocked me, “She don’t love me no more man. I saw it in her eyes.” He faked cried.
Everybody laughed except my mother.
“Travis you stop that.” She turned around and looked at him.
“August you are so full of it. I thought you were in anger management. When I see your therapist tomorrow I’m going to be sure to tell him it ain’t working.”
“It is working. She just be frustrating me man.”
“What good is it if you not going to put it to use when someone is frustrating you?”
“Amb just know what buttons to hit. And she be hitting them on purpose.”
“What, she got another a man?” Muk asked.
“Hell no. She know I don’t play that.” I blurted out. “Sorry Mama.”
“I thought y’all wasn’t a couple?” Stacy gave me a skeptical look.
“We not.”
“So what you mean she know you don’t play that. Sound like jealous couple talk to me.”
“I’m not talking after you.” I fanned my hand at Stacy.
“She told you your dick was too small?”
“Travis!” My mother angrily screamed.
“What? I just wanted to know.”
Stacy slapped him upside his head. “Your mother and grandmother in here you nasty.”
“Hit me one more time I’m gon…”
“Gon what?” Stacy looked in his face.
He got within kissing distance of her. “Kiss them juicy, plump, sexy perfect lips. Do it again.”
She muffed his face.
“There’s only one thing got August like this.” Stacy said.
“What?” Everybody asked in unison.
“She told him she wasn’t moving to Philly.”
I sucked my teeth. “That ain’t it.” I lied.
“Yes it is. Stop lying. I know you. All 90 pounds of your skinny self.”
“I ain’t no 90 pounds. And besides I been working out.” I flexed my arm muscle.
“Aww I see a little…nothing.” Travis felt my arm. I snatched it away.
“You don’t need her up there with you Aug baby. You need to focus on school. Her and that baby that probably ain’t yours gon be distractions.”
“Everybody leave August alone. This is supposed to be a happy time for him.” My mother defended me. “Stop ganging up on him and ruining it.”
“Why you always defending him like he three years old?” Travis whined. “You ain’t never defend me like that.”
“Travis I’m not talking after you.” My mother patted my thigh. That meant, we’d talk about it later.
“I swear man. Don’t nobody in this family treat me right.”
“It’s cause you don’t deserve to be treated right.” Stacy snapped.
“You know what?” He looked at Stacy.
“Don’t say anything stupid to me.”
“I’m not. I was just gon tell you, I never saw a woman with a mustache so beautiful. Look at how it sit under your nose. Turning me on."
I busted into laughter.
She rolled her neck at him and touched above her lip.
“Yeah Stac I can give you a shape up later if you want.” I looked at her through the mirror.
“Ms. Shelia your sons are no good.”
“Trust me I already know. Smoke my only good one.”
“Ha!” Travis said real loud.
“Where is Smoke?” Stacy asked.
“Everybody looked at each other.
“He had to work.” My mother lied.
The real reason Smoke didn’t come was because he was still upset and still felt heavily I was traitor going back to Amb. But I couldn’t let his opinion stop me. Especially now that Munch was in the picture.
We pulled up to my apartment complex and everybody got out. I popped the trunk so they could get their luggage and we went up to the apartment.
AMBER P.O.V. -
“Now you want to come visit?” I rolled my eyes as Tanya took Sata out of my arms and held her up.
“How is godmama baby?” She pulled Sata to her face and kissed her.
Sata giggled.
“I came to help you decorate. Which it doesn’t seem like you’ve done anything.” She looked around. “Ain’t the thing tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is August? He supposed to be helping you.”
“He went to go get an Attorney.” I said going to get the bag of decorations.
“For what?”
I looked at her, then got the decorations out the closet.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. He’s upset because I told him I don’t want to move to Philly. I didn’t even say I didn’t, I said let me think about it.”
“When is he leaving to go back?”
“Three weeks.”
“Oh that’s too soon. Plus you got to get Sata ready, he trippin’. Where would y’all live?”
“He has an apartment up there.”
“How many bedrooms?”
I raised my one finger.
“Oh chile please. He better sit down with that. Not with no baby, that’s not gon work. Y’all gon be living like a can of sardines. Ain’t that right Sata?” Sata started crying.
I took her from Tanya.
“She’s a daddy’s girl.” I rolled my eyes.
“She know when somebody talking about her daddy.” Assata immediately smiled. This girl was ridiculous.
Tanya picked up the bag of decorations.
“I don’t even mind the size of the apartment. It’ll only be for a year. If push came to shove we could always upgrade. Although he might be against it if I pay for it. It’s just…” I sat on the couch in the living room.
“Who would care for Sata while you work?”
“That’s the thing. If I move, I couldn’t work. Sata’s too young for day care and that’s where I have a problem. I’ve worked my entire life to be somebody in my own right. To have my own car, own house, own career. And I just don’t want to be somebody’s housewife. Even with Nate, I had my own identity because I worked. If I move to Philly with August, I’m just going to be at home all day. Cooking his meals. Washing his clothes. Making sure Sata is okay. Who will I be? I won’t have any value outside of Sata and Aug. I don’t want that.”
“I never thought about that. Although with Rell’s new found fame, honey I don’t mind being a housewife. Shit. Laying up on a beach somewhere in Turks and Cacaos. Not having to pay for anything. That’s the life baybeh.”
“You’re using my brother and I don’t like it.” I laughed.
“I’m not using him. That’s what’s owed to me after all he put me through when we were married. This is his chance to get it right.”
“You are ridiculous. But even if Aug had money like Nate, I still wouldn’t be comfortable just living off of him. I want to have my own identity. I don’t want to be introduced as ‘oh this is Amber Alsina, who once used to be a great attorney but now she’s simply the wife of the Great Dentist August Alsina.” I said in a white man’s announcer voice.
“That’s all I’ll be. Mrs. Alsina. The Amber won’t even matter.”
“But you hated law.”
“No I hated being a defense attorney.”
“So you still want to be a lawyer?”
“No.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t want to be somebody’s mindless housewife until I figure it out. I want my daughter to be proud of me because she had a mother that contributed something to the world besides asking her father, “Did he want his eggs over easy or scrambled.”
Tanya’s phone rang.
“This Rell let me get this.”
Tanya took the call.
I got up and shook my head. “Let’s go get you something to eat Munch.”
AUGUST P.O.V. -
I joined my mother at a picnic table behind the ice cream stand. She had told me she wanted to talk, but with everybody there we had to make an excuse to get out. We settled for just going to get ice-cream.
“I love this Atlanta night sky. It’s beautiful.” My mother said eating a spoonful of her ice-cream.
“It’s aight. Don’t beat Paris.” I smiled. “I gotta take you and Munch there one day.”
“I’ll be looking forward to it.” She nodded at me.
“Get y’all some crepes.”
“Them pancake things?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh boy they got those in Nola.”
“I know, but they taste different in Paris.”
“Hmm.” She got another scoop.
“That’s all I ate out there.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I had like bacon, strawberry, banana. That one was nasty tho.”
“You didn’t want nothing else?"
“I ain’t trust nothing out there. Amb ordered me some horse meat.” I laughed. “It’s funny looking back on it. I was mad when it happened tho.” I smiled thinking about how much fun that was.
My mother sat quiet for a second then began to speak.
“You getting upset about Philly wasn’t about Assata was it?” She looked at me.
“What-chu mean?” I furrowed my eyebrows and licked my ice-cream cone.
“A child should never be used as a means of manipulation.” She looked at me seriously.
“I’m not manipulating anybody. I just want to be with my daughter.”
“That’s true. But you want Amber too. And you feel like the only way to get her to be with you, is if you use Sata.”
I looked down ashamed. My mother was spot on. I got so upset because I had given everything to try to change myself for Amb and it seemed like it wasn’t enough. I wanted to be back with her as bad as I breathed. I couldn't take this friend shit.
“Aug, I know you love her baby. But you can’t force someone to love you back. Who wants that type of love? A love where you got to damn near hold a gun to somebody head to make them love you back. That’s not love, that’s fear.”
I bit my lip, trying to hold back my tears.
“The tigther you hold sand, the faster it slips away. When you let it just be free in your hand, it stays.”
I felt the wetness on my cheeks. I sniffed and wiped my eyes.
My mother kissed my forehead.
“Let her be free baby. If she loves you. She’ll make that choice.”