Hazard to Myself

“We don’t need anyone else! Just Us!” Harley shouts at my back as we go into my apartment.
She pretty much yelled the whole ride over. At least Mike got to escape back into his apartment.
“You’ve never done anything like this before.”
“Are you jealous, Harley? Is that what it is? You’ve always been my leading in a manner of speaking and now here comes little of Catt who you’re so sure is going to take your place. Did you not hear what I said to her at lunch?”
“Yeah, but-
“But nothing.” I flop down onto the couch.
“I don’t know. I just saw something in her…” I trail off. “Me…after my parents died: alone, timid, afraid. I didn’t want to feel those things anymore so I became this.”
She sighs.
“Is this what you wanted? For me to talk about my parents and feel like crap at the very thought of them?”
“Grace-
“I don’t wanna hear it. Just leave me alone.”
She heads off into one of the bedrooms she’s made her own while I wallow.
Once again I’ve come to a time where I think about what was. It was a month before I would graduate eighth grade. Harley was over at my house the night before it happened. They were late coming home Friday night and still not home when we woke up Saturday morning. That afternoon, a policeman and a policewoman stopped by.
I’ll never forget their faces when they saw me: sadness, heartbreak, pity worst of all.
They sat me down on the stoop outside and explained to me that my parents had been killed by some boy who wanted their car. He shot my father in the head and my mother in the chest I found out later. The idiot did it in a good neighborhood so was caught almost immediately.
He didn’t have a good excuse, just a stupid face. He was just a few years older than I was then. We locked eyes for a very long time. He didn’t care. He wasn’t sorry. For that, I hated him. So much so that I shot him, barely, with an officer’s gun.
There was commotion and panic but he survived and I got away with it because I was grieving, which I really was at the time. And that’s where it began. Criminals got to live and good people didn’t; people with families didn’t. I haven’t shot anyone since but I’ve come close enough. Who knows what I could be pushed to do.
My door opened and I was grateful for the distraction.
When I sit up, Donte’s standing there with a trickle of blood running down the right side of his lip and droplets of blood on his shirt.
“My God!”
I hurry to him and pull him into the kitchen.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
I busy myself making a homemade icepack and soaking a towel. He explains while I dab at his face.
“Me and some of mine ran into a bit of trouble. The same old nonsense, ya know. We scuffled. You should see them other niggas.”
I place the icepack on his knuckles and hold one to his right jaw.
“Are you okay?” I ask again.
He grabs my hands, “What happened?”
“Hmm?”
“You’re too busy right now, jittery.”
“Nothing,” I say looking away.
“You’ve been thinking about your parents.”
I hated talking to him about them because with him I felt like a girl. With him I wanted to talk and cry and laugh and be myself.
“I’m always thinking about them.”
“This is different.”
I put my hands on his face, “I’m concerned about you.”
He smiles lightly accepting that I don’t want to talk about it.
He pulls me to him and kisses me hard, pressing me so hard to his chest I thought we’d become one. I step between his legs where he sat on a stool. It seems like now-a-days we can’t be in the same room without doing something like this.
I don’t know if it’s because we haven’t been doing it lately but it was like I found him more and more attractive. Maybe it was just my hormones.
I step back, “I’ve got some clean shirts for you in my room.”
He smiles, “Alright.”
In my room, I remove his shirt and kiss his bare chest. I’m loosening his belt while he unbuttons my shirt.
“Lucky me,” he says when he sees that my bra unclips in the front.
He undoes it, picks me up and lays me down. We must be of one mind because neither of us says anything about a condom. His mouth just goes around my breast when my door opens.
“Whoa!” I shriek.
He quickly gets up and slams the door.
“Sorry. Sorry! I thought…well, I thought-
“Just get away from the door, Cam.”
You could hear his steps swiftly moving away from the door.
He looks at me, “I’m sorry. I know he ruined the mood.”
“Yes. But I know you’re more upset because you haven’t gotten this in awhile.”
He laughs, bends down over me, supporting himself on his bruised fists and kisses me.
“One day you’ll love me back.”
“How do you know I don’t already?”
“You’d tell me.”
He doesn’t wait for a response; he just walks over to my closet, pulls out a black t-shirt and puts it on.
I walk over to him and tug at the shirt while kissing his neck.
“You on one today,” he says picking me up.
“Just five minutes,” I whisper.
“Who the hell are you and how the hell did you get in here?” I hear Harley say with some attitude.
“Okay. Put me down.”
I re-clip my bra and button my shirt.
“Maybe next time?” he says.
“Maybe.”
I look at him in his black shirt and want him even more knowing that I can’t have him. I kiss him one last time then open the door.
“Down, girl,” I say to Harley.
“Who is this?” she demands.
“Harley, calm down,” I demand back in an undertone.
She rolls her eyes, crosses her arms and waits.
“Wow. She’s sure got you-
“And the same goes for you, rude boy who opens doors without knocking and intrudes on his superiors.”
I can see Don suppress a smile out of the corner of my eye.
Cam lowers his eyes.
“Alright, Grace, this is Cameron Phillips. Your new recruit.”
“Temporary recruit.”
“Temporary.”
“Hello, Cameron. What’s with the duffle?”
“Uuuuhhh…”
“No, Don. That wasn’t the deal.”
He pulls me away.
“He lives on the streets.”
“Then you put him up. I don’t trust people and then you bring me this street urchin with his fleas and gritty filth and expect me to-
“I’m not asking.”
“I don’t care.”
“We’re not about to play the power game here.”
“Oh, I think we are. We’re not a team, Don. Your guys and mine don’t work together. They tolerate each other because of me and you; because of what we have. It’s bad enough I let you talk me into this.”
“It’s not like you don’t have the space,” he says spreading his arms.
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?!”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Take him and get out.”
“What?”
“You’re reminding me very much of Jeff right now. I’m sick of you niggas in the game thinkin’ yall finna run me over cause I’m a girl and I’m not slangin’ that stuff,” I say with my finger in his face. “I’m in here, alright? I’m not to be trifled with and you know this. Act like it.”
“I-
“Um-um. Leave them alone when they’re like that,” I hear Harley warns Cameron.
He’s trying to stare me down.
He grabs my shoulder and squeezes. It hurts.
“That all you got?” I prod.
He shakes his head and heads for the door.
“I’m not kidding, Don.”
He keeps walking. That is until he hears a gun being cocked. He turns and sees me pointing a gun at Cameron whose gone stone faced now.
“I’ll trust him better dead than alive. You?”
“You’re not going to kill him. I would explain why but I know you don’t wanna talk about it.”
“…Fuck you,” I say as I shoot at him but purposefully miss.
I go into my room and slam the door.
“We’ll talk later,” I hear him shout. Then the door closes.