"You crazy, bitch!" Ant rasped through clenched teeth as he struggled to rise from his knees, scratching and clawing at the door frame with one hand, while he clung to the side of his neck with the other. "You shot me!"
"Ohmigod!" Cleo rushed forward to grab his arm to help him stand. "Ant, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean...I was just...and then you...and then it..." Her words fell from her mouth in a tangled mess of fragments, and half ass excuses.
"What the hell was that?" Angela's door slammed open down the hall, the door knob, punching a hole in the hallway wall. "Was that a gun?" She rushed into the hall knotting her robe at the waist, as wrinkles marred the skin on her forehead. When her searching gaze fell on them, she finished her march in a sprint, bumping Cleo out of the way as she skidded to a halt. "What happened?" She asked, as she pulled Ant into C's room and guided him over to the bed.
"I...uh..." Cleo stuttered, pointing dumbly at the carpet where the gun still lay.
"She shot me!" Ant growled, while pinning her with a glare. "That's what happened. And I was gonna apologize. I shoulda stayed my brown ass in my room, minding my own damn business."
"Shot you?!" Angela's head snapped back like she'd been suckered punched by Ali, her bottom lip damn near touching the floor.
"Hell yeah, see?" Ant removed his hand to reveal what looked like a long shallow gash, running horizontally along the side of his neck.
Cleo frowned. The wound looked nothing like what she'd seen on television. In fact, his wound made no damn sense at all. Why didn't it look like a hole? After all they didn't call it a bullet hole for nothing.
"Cleo," Angela snapped without taking her eyes away from Ant's wound. "Run to my room and grab the purple bag I always take to work with me. It's sitting on the chair in the corner." When Cleo took too long to move, Angela spared her a glare, "Go!"
With a quick nod, Cleo spun on her heel and ran out of the room, feeling more stupid than a little bit. What in the world had even possessed her to touch C's gun? Lord. She was going to catch hell when he finally made it home. There would be nothing she could say to keep him from going in on her ass, and she'd have to take it, because she knew she was all wrong. Once inside of Angela's room, she snatched the oversized purple bag off the chaise longue in the corner, and then hurried back to C's room.
"It's a superficial wound. The bullet barely even grazed you." She heard Angela say as she approached the bed. "It doesn't even look like you'll need stitches."
"So that makes it better?" Ant asked with his head cocked to one side as Angela worked on cleaning the laceration on his neck.
"Considering," She answered as she took the bag from Cleo's extended hands.
"Considering what?" Ant tried to turn his head to look up at her.
Tapping him lightly on the cheek Angela forced his head to maintain the cocked position. "Considering you could be dead. Had the bullet gone deeper it could've hit your jugular. Now hold still so I can bandage this."
"Ant, for real. I am so sorry," Cleo said moving around Angela so that she could kneel beside him.
"Man," he said, glaring at her out the corner of his eye. "And what that mean? 'Specially if you would've had my ass stretched out cold on the floor. Think your sorry woulda brought be back then? Man, hell no."
"Anthony, I won't tell you again about your language." Angela warned. "Besides, where did she get the gun in the first place?"
"Where did she get the gun in the first place?" Ant repeated, sarcasm dripping from both sides of his mouth. "Well dog Angela let me think? Because I know she couldn't have found one here in this room. C's is way too passive for that."
Cleo's eyes flared. Ant was burning the blunt from both ends. From snitching on C's to getting fly with Angela, he must've loss way more blood than they thought. Maybe they should think about taking him to the hospital. Just in case.
Angela finished dressing the wound and took a step back to glower down at him. "Are you saying that, that gun belongs to Caesar?" She asked, pointing at the glock that still laid where Cleo had dropped it earlier.
Cleo stared dumbly at the gun, and then glanced at Ant to see if his momentary boldness would extend to putting C's on full blast. But whatever prompted him to buck and break code before, had evidently stopped pushing buttons, because now, not only did the cat have his tongue, but it must've swallowed it too. Homeboy didn't have a damn thing to say, not a lie, the truth, or even a fuck you. He just sat there staring at the wall, like she hadn't asked him shit.
Pissed, Angela's glare swung to her. Cleo threw up her hands and shook her head. If it was confirmation she wanted, no matter how obvious the facts were, she'd be damned if C's mom found it with her. Hell, she may be thirty-eight with him at the moment, but that didn't mean she still wouldn't ride out with him in his wrong. It was, what it was.
"So this is how it is, hmm," Angela said, glancing from Cleo to Ant, and then back again. "Neither, one of you is going, to tell me who the gun belongs to. Ant..." In a slow scrutiny, her gaze searched his face. When he still refused to respond, Angela's eyes narrowed a fraction, and then shot to Cleo. Who'd found a safe spot on the wall to stare at right over her shoulder. "What about you, Cleo...wanna tell me who that gun belongs to? Where it came from?" She demanded. Her voice slightly climbed in volume, as her perfect English, became tainted with a hint of a Spanish accent. Her R's rolling harder than a college girl on E.
"Liberty..." Cleo whispered, before she could think better about what she was actually saying.
Caught off guard, Angela's folded arms dropped to her sides. "Liberty?" She asked with her head tilted slightly to the side, while wearing a disbelieving expression on her face.
At that moment the wall failed to continue to hold Ant's fascination. His eyes were now glued to her face, watching her like she still had a gun aimed at his head. A twinge, something just a little less than an ache, tugged at the galloping organ in her chest. Damn. Did he ever plan on forgiving her? Unable to take the blank expression on Ant's face, she allowed her eyes to slip close as she dipped her head in a bobbing nod.
"Yeah Liberty," Cleo said. Might as well sale the dream, it was already out now. Besides she wouldn't have been put in that position if she hadn't plundered through C's stuff in the first place. This f-up was on her, so she had to granny drawers it up and handle her business. "I took it from her and brought it over here to show C's and Ant, but I didn't get a chance to because of the party and everything. Shoot I didn't even remember that I had it until after I came up here."
Angela's head dropped back, and she released a sigh that caused her shoulders to rise and fall. After a few moments of deep breathing, her gaze found Cleo's again. Shaking her head she said, "I am not surprised. It's just like Liberty to be careless enough to leave a gun unsecured for a child to find. I honestly don't know how you've survived this long." Cleo winced, at her words, and an apologetic expression quickly masked Angela's features. "I'm sorry Cleo. I shouldn't have said that, but what you pulled today could've gotten someone killed, yourself included, and that is unacceptable. When you're under my roof you are my responsibility, and I take that very seriously. Do you understand?"
Cleo dropped her gaze to the floor, while bobbing her head. "Yes mam, I understand," She muttered, her voice just above a whisper.
"Guns are not shiny toys that are to be showed off to your friends, they're dangerous and for that should be respected at all times. And by respected I mean given a distance, a wide berth if you will," Angela said, waving her arm at the neglected gun. "If you only saw half the damage those things cause, you wouldn't be so quick to pick one up. Trust me, working in that emergency room I have seen just about it all, and none of it has been even remotely pleasing to the eye. You was lucky tonight with Ant." Cleo looked up to glance in Ant's direction, and he gave her a little shrug. That probably was the only forgiveness she would receive that night, if ever. But hey, that was good enough for her. "Now I'm inclined to send you away, and tell you not to ever come back."
Shock and fear jumped Cleo like a gang of bitches in the street. Was Angela high? She couldn't do that. Hell, she'd drown without C's. Being with him kept her head breaking the surface of the slimy ass waters she swam through daily in the Ninth. "Angela please-,"
Angela held up her hand to silence her pleas. "Don't worry, I'm not going to, this time. But if this should happen again..."
Cleo shook her head. "It won't." Relief flooded her as air became a little less hard to breathe. In that moment she would've agreed to tongue kissing Dre, if it meant Angela wouldn't snatch away the welcome mat. Over the past month, not only had she grown more attached to C's, but also his family, and even Ant too. They saw her, and actually gave shit. Not just some, 'hey how you doing and not sticking around to hear the answer' type shit, they really did care. Because they were the kind who not only stuck around to hear about how things were going down in her world, but they stayed in her space to see it for themselves. After knowing real, there was no way she could go back to a life with just Liberty and still hold on to possession of her sanity, there was just no way.