****Aug and Sneak in m/m. Also added a link to Aug's pitch to XXL. ****
AMBER P.O.V. –
“Why are you shaking?”
“Cause I’m nervous.”
“Well calm down. It ain’t that serious.” August and I were sitting at a medium rectangular metal table, waiting for the guards to bring Sneak to the visitation area.
“I’m trying. I just… I know how important this is to you and I don’t…I do…” I wiped the tears that were forming in my eyes. “I don’t want to disappoint you.”
“Stop that shit fareal. We not putting pressure on you, but if there’s a chance you can get him out we want to take it. And you one of the top fucking defense attorneys ever. If anybody can do it , you can. So chill.” He grabbed my head, laid it on his chest and kissed my forehead. “Sneak ain’t no Smoke. He was one of the people telling me, I was being too hard on you when we broke up.”
He let me go, and I nodded my head. Clearing any remaining tears that were around my eyes.
The door opened, and a dark skinned man with dreads appeared in an orange jumpsuit. The guards stood by the door as he walked to the table.
“Wahhhhnnnnn!” He said out loud with his hands cuffing his mouth to amplify the sound.
Aug stood up with a big grin and imitated him. “Wahhhhnnnnn!”
They did a brotherly hug and walked over to the table.
“You lookin’ good bruh.” Sneak said as he sat down.
“You do too. Considering.” Aug looked around.
“Jail can’t stop my pretty.” Sneak said in his thick Nola accent and laughed. He turned his attention to me.
“This my girl.” Aug introduced him to me.
“Ey, you interned with the PD office out here?”
“Yeah.” I was surprised he knew that.
“You don’t remember me?” Sneak gave a cheesy smile.
“Nah, I don’t.” I laughed slightly at his silly smile.
“Y’all know each other?” August looked at us.
“I don’t remember.” I said.
“Yeah you do. I was 15, they got me on some weed charge. And you gave me this whole speech about how I need to get my life together. Because this is how they get black men, yada, yada, yada. And I said, I’ll listen when you become a real lawyer. And you threw your papers at me.”
“Corey?” I asked.
“Yeah. I knew you remembered.”
“Sorry about that. But you were getting on my damn nerve, being combative.”
“Young and dumb man. Young and dumb. Didn’t want to listen to nobody. Your words stuck with me though.”
“I’m glad they could help.”
“And now you with my dawg. How da hell his skinny ass get so lucky?”
“Don’t play me bruh.” Aug interrupted
“And y’all got a little girl?”
“Yeah.” Me and Aug said together.
“That’s good man. That’s good.” He said sincerely happy for Aug, but I could see the sadness in his eyes.
Aug looked down uncomfortable. I could tell he was feeling guilty.
“Corey, I can’t make any promises. But I do know that I’m going to try everything in my power to get you out of here.”
“Well if you good as my dawg say, I know I’m in good hands.”
“Yeah.” I sighed. Now the pressure was even greater.
“I got your file.” I pulled out his file. “The only thing I need to know is what happened when you were arrested.”
“Well they took me and Aug in.”
“Did they read you your Miranda rights?”
“Nah man. They just snatched us up.”
“You do know that’s illegal right? To be arrested and not Mirandize. Your other lawyer must’ve overlooked that, because on that alone you should be free.”
“Fareal?”
“Yeah you can’t do that.”
“But I plead so…”
“It’s still illegal.”
“So babe that mean he won already?” August asked me.
“There are no guarantees but that alone. That you guys were arrested and not Mirandized gives us an upper hand. You and Aug were interrogated in different rooms?”
“Yeah.” Sneak responded.
“For about how long?”
“Whew. They had us in there forever.” August added.
“Sholl did. It was like six hours or something.”
“I got it!” I gasped and started clapping.
“Babe, calm down.” August chuckled at my excitement.
“So Corey I can argue that because you were interrogated for an excessive period of time. How old were you?”
“17.”
“Times up!” The guard came over to get Sneak.
“Okay. For an excessive period of time, specifically for a 17 year old. The conviction is no good because the plea wasn't made knowingly, intelligently, and/or voluntarily. You were under duress!”
“I don’t know what that mean. But does it mean we good?” Sneak asked.
“We should be. I’ll travel back and forth to Nola if I need anything else.”
“Fasho.” I hugged him.
“We put money on your books bruh.” Aug hugged him.
“Thank y’all. And Aug you take care of this pretty lady.”
“I will bruh. Stay up.” Aug called back to him as he disappeared between the doors. The doors closed and I jumped up and down and intertwined my hands with Aug.
“I knew you had it. You worrying for nothing.” Aug smirked.
“I will get started on this right away.” I gathered my things.
“Thank you for doing this for us babe. It means the world to us.”
“Of course baby. Any way I can help.” I smiled at him and walked toward the exit.
“Mm-mm-mm.” I heard him say behind me.
“Please stop staring at my ass.”
He laughed and we left out.
LATER THAT NIGHT
“Trav was right, you did look like a lame.” I laughed.
I was sitting on the couch and Aug’s head was laid on my lap, watching television as I looked through a photo album with old pictures of him and his family. His mother went out with a group of her friends, so it was just us in the house.
“I was the man in high-school for your information.” He ate a spoonful of his vanilla, blue-bell ice-cream.
“Not with these tacky oversized t-shirts. And what the hell was this in your head?” I fell out on the couch at this horribly messed up musical symbol someone supposedly had designed in his head. It was mess.
“Give me the book.” He tried to take it.
“No. I promise I’ll be quiet.” I zipped my mouth shut.
He eyed me, then turned back to the television.
“Oh my God. You looked so adorable with the glasses.” I looked at a picture of him as a toddler, with some oversized sunglasses. “I hope if we ever have a boy, he looks just like you babe. You were so cute.”
“What do you mean were?”
“Cute skipped you in high-school, and emerged about a year ago.”
He sat up.
“Babe. I’m joking.”
He laid back down.
“Aww Mel took Netia to prom? Wow. That is so beautiful. Reminds me of the pic of you and Noonie when you took her to the dance.” I kissed his cheek.
I turned the page and busted into a hyena laugh when I saw a pic of August with some Gucci shoes on, doing the MJ on his tippy-toes stance.
“You thought you was cool didn’t you?”
I showed him the pic. He took the book from me and put it on the table.
“Baby, I wasn’t done.” I pouted.
He ignored me. His head on my lap. Still watching television and eating ice cream.
I massaged his scalp.
“I was talking to Governor Parker and he doesn’t want the house.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“I was thinking about giving it to Cha and the girls, but it’s entirely too large. So I think I’m going to sell it, and give Cha a portion of the money. So her and the girls can get out of that apartment. They need a bigger space. The girls can each have their own room. Not having to share.”
“That’s a good idea. They’ll love that.” He licked his spoon.
I took my hands out his hair.
“Why you stop? That felt good.”
I started up again.
“Let me have some of your ice-cream.”
He picked up a spoonful, then put it up to my mouth but it got all over my chin. He laughed.
“My bad.” He sucked it off, then pecked my lips.
He scooped more up in the spoon and fed it to me. Then laid back on my lap.
I was scrolling through my phone when I heard a…
“August.”
“What?”
“Oh my God you stink. Get up!” I covered my nose.
“That’s a little love cologne. That’s all.” He kept eating his ice-cream.
“Get off of me.” I pushed him on the floor and he dropped the ice-cream.
“Look what you did?” He chuckled laying out on the floor.
“Don’t fart around me no more.”
“I’m not going to hold it in.”
“Well at least warn me or go to the washroom!”
He sat up, picking the ice-cream carton off the floor.
“You smell so bad.”
He let out a hyena laugh. I threw a pillow from the couch at him.
‘Don’t front you like that smell.”
“No, it smells like the fucking zoo.” I put my nose in my shirt, and moved to the empty chair to try to get away from the smell.
He went to the kitchen to get a towel to clean up the excess ice-cream. He came back and got it up. Then headed for the kitchen, but not before he put ice-cream on my forehead with his finger.
I rolled my eyes and wiped it off.
He came back over and laid on the couch.
“Come over here and lay with Pop-Pop.” He patted to the empty space in front of him on the couch.
“No.”
“We about to live together. You better get used to it.”
“You are so nasty. I’m not sleeping next you and your farts.”
He smirked and stared at the ceiling with his right arm across stomach, and left behind his head. He seemed in a daze.
“What you thinking about?” I asked curious.
He looked down at me, as the chair was at the other end of the couch.
“Come lay with me and I’ll tell you.”
“No.”
“Girl the smell gone.”
I reluctantly got up and laid next to him. My head on his chest, and my leg over his. He wrapped his arm around me.
“I’m thinking about how I met someone over two years ago that changed my life forever. And how I’m going to do whatever it takes not to lose her again.” He kissed the top of my head.
I played with his shirt. “Aww you’re so wonderful babe.”
“I know.” He said cockily.
“Just for that, I take it back.” I sucked my teeth and rolled my eyes.
“You already said it, you can’t take it back.”
“Whatever.”
There was a brief silence.
“Do you regret what we went through?” I looked up at him, and rested my chin on his chest.
“Nah.. We needed all that. The good and the bad. Without both, we wouldn’t be here.”
“You’re right.” I pecked his lips. “I love you.”
I rested my head in the crook of his neck and played with his beard.
“I love all my heauxs too.”
I sucked my teeth and he laughed.