Soft:

by Caroline McGill, J.M. Benjamin, Boston George, T. Styles

Genres: African American Urban; African American Women's Fiction; Anthologies

Synopsis

New York Times bestselling authors Ashley and JaQuavis have put together a collection of street fiction's finest. Caroline McGill, J.M. Benjamin, Boston George, and T. Styles present fresh new stories of money, murder, betrayal, and revenge. Their unique approach attempts to explain the allure of the dope game through the eyes of some unforgettable characters. Just when you think it's over, a new story picks up and takes you on a whole new journey! This is a sure classic and the beginning of a great series. Take a ride with the kings and queens of the street.

Release date: October 24, 2011

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Kentland, Maryland was hot as shit the day Trixy Greggs stepped her funky ass up to me. I was sittin’ in front of Carmen and her sister’s house smokin’ a blunt when she walked up with some bullshit. You’d never know it, but six months ago, we were cool; that is, until I bumped my head after returning home from vacation one night, resulting in a memory loss. When I came to, my best friend was missin’, people were mad at me, and my boyfriend, Milli, was actin’ different.

“That’s fucked up what you did to Quita!” she said, sweat pouring down her face, causing her makeup to streak. “Just ’cause she spanked your daughter for pissin’ on herself.”

“Bitch, that’s between me and Quita, and you ain’t got shit to do wit’ it.”

“What you gonna do, slice my throat too?” she taunted.

“If that’s what you want!” She took a step closer, and I said, “Trixy, I’m warnin’ you. Step outta my face.”

She laughed and said, “ And what kind of mother are you? If my baby was taken by Child Protective Services, I’d be tryin’ to get her back, not outside runnin’ my mouth.”

“Bitch, get your rotten-pussy ass outta my face.”

“Come on, Trixy,” her best friend Shonda said while pulling her arm. “This bitch ain’t worth it.”

“Fuck that!” she said, shaking Shonda off. “I wonder if Milli feel the same way.” She smirked.

Bitches loved sayin’ Milli’s name outta they mouths. He ran Kentland, and every bitch in Kentland wanted him, but he chose me.

“What you tryin’ to say, Trixy?” My True Religion jeans were damp with sweat.

“Come on, Trix.” Shonda interrupted again, her light skin flushed. “You don’t want shit to go too far.” The look on their faces told me they knew something I didn’t.

“Why don’t you just move the fuck from around here? Don’t nobody even fuck wit’ you no more!” Trixy said.

“I wanna know what you meant by saying Milli’s name outta your mouth,” I said, ready to drop her ass.

She laughed and said, “All I know is, you betta not kiss him on them sexy-ass lips of his anytime soon.”

I snapped. When I came to, half of the cheap-ass weave she had in her head was on the ground by my feet, and she had bald spots in places her hair shoulda been. I had beaten the brakes off of her ass in a pair of black Dior heels.

“You think I did somethin’ now, you betta be glad my Benz wasn’t parked on the curb. I got shit in my trunk for bitches like you!”

I saw my friend Nicky push through the crowd. “Come on, Ginger. We gotta go—now!” She pulled my arm as the police sirens grew louder. They were close.

“You ain’t did shit but make me mad!” Trixy said. “And before the night is over, you gon’ see me again.”

“Bitch, take your bald-headed ass in the house and look in the mirror! I did more than just make you mad!”

Trixy was right about one thing: After that shit she just pulled, she was definitely gonna see me again.

Me and Nicky were on the way to my house when about fifteen kids blocked our path. Five of them belonged to Nicky’s cousin Stevie, and they all looked dirty and nasty, but Crystal’s fresh seventeen-year-old ass was the worst of them all. I couldn’t stand that little bitch, and I think she knew it.

I caught her sitting on my car one day and asked her to get off. She rolled her eyes, and later that day I saw scratches on my paint job. She was just like her mother—a little whore in the making.

“Hey, Aunt Nicky, you know where Mama at?” she said, resting her hand on her hips.

She was talkin’ to Nicky but looking at me.

“I like your shoes, Ginger.”

“Thanks,” I said nonchalantly.

Everything I wore was designer, including the Fendi shades I propped up in my shoulder-length hair and the white Armani T-shirt that clung to my back.

Crystal’s younger sister, Melli, who I believed was slightly retarded, stood next to her. She never said much but hi and bye.

“I want some sunflower seeds and a pickled sausage,” Melli said outta nowhere.

“Shut up and wait!” Crystal said, yanking her arm. “Aunt Nicky, we hungry and can’t find Ma.”

“Well, she ain’t with me. When I see her I’ma give her your message,” she said, pushing past them.

Crystal stomped away, yanking her sister by the arm.

“That’s sad. Stevie ain’t get Melli no help yet. She act like she retarded.”

“She ain’t retarded!” She laughed. “Just slow.”

“Y’all keep thinkin’ that shit if you want to, but something’s wrong wit’ that li’l girl.”

When I turned around, I saw Melli looking at me. Oh, well. I was too hot and mad to give a fuck if she heard me or not. I just had my third fight for the week, and Milli was gettin’ tired of my shit.

“Why you and Trixy beefin’?” Nicky asked.

“I wish I knew. I know if she don’t keep Milli’s name outta her mouth, I’ma put somethin’ to her ass, Nicky. I’m all the way serious ’bout that shit.”

“You ain’t got to tell me.” She laughed. “Everybody in the neighborhood know you got a temper.” I put my shades on and she said, “She ask you if you remember again?”

“She ain’t ask me, but I’m sick of people not believin’ I don’t remember shit. What I gotta lie for? If anything, I feel like people keepin’ shit from me. Nobody understands what it’s like to lose your memory, only to wake up and have your best friend missin’. You heard anything about Leona?”

“Naw, but you know I’d tell you if I did,” she said, searching my eyes.

“Shit just don’t feel right,” I said. “I feel like me falling and Leona being missin’ connects somehow. It don’t help that her parents think I had somethin’ do with it.”

“Ginger, I don’t know about her parents, but people around here are upset. It’s been six months, and the police be around here every other day askin’ questions. And her father being a police officer makes shit worse. You ever thought about moving?”

“What, and leave Milli?”

“Take him with you.”

“He don’t wanna move, even though we don’t really live together anyway. Plus, he make too much money over here.” I swallowed hard because I wanted to ask her somethin’ I didn’t want to know the answer to. “You think Milli cheatin’?”

We stopped walkin’ and she said, “Ginger, there’s a luxury tax when you fuck wit’ rich niggas. You don’t get to floss wit’out a price, and it’s time you recognize that shit.”

“I hear you, but there’s a luxury tax when you fuck wit’ a bad bitch too, Nicky. It ain’t like I can’t get another man to do for me what Milli do.”

“Can you? And if you could, why would you? All rich niggas cheat, Ginger. It’s their right. Just one bitch ain’t enough.”

She just said some bullshit, but I said, “So you sayin’ he’s cheatin’?”

“I think he’s a nigga, and niggas gonna do nigga shit.”

“Nigga shit or not, if I find out he’s fuckin’ around on me, I’d cut his ass off quick. And he betta hope that’s just it.”

“That’s on you—but it wouldn’t be me. Look at your arm. How many bitches you know wit’ a four carat diamond bracelet? You should let some shit pass.”

She was referring to the diamond bracelet Milli got me when we first got together. I cherished this bracelet because it was the first thing he ever bought me.

Nicky knew a lot about rich niggas ’cause hustlers loved her. She let ’em do what they wanted as long as the money flowed. A little shorter than me at five foot four, she had a big personality and big-ass titties. It didn’t hurt that she was a cute redbone.

“I know you twenty-six years old . . . one year older than me, but you talk old as shit sometimes,” I said.

“I just know niggas. But to answer your question, I don’t think he fuckin’ Trixy.”

Maybe that’s why she let her cousin Stevie fuck her ex-boyfriend Raheem, who she was wit’ for two years, and get away with it. Nicky was all about the money, and nothin’ else mattered, not even love.

“Now, if you want somebody else to have him, then let him go,” she continued. “He wouldn’t be on the market long.”

I wish I would see another bitch wit’ Milli. That nigga had me in a new Benz every six months. His name wasn’t Milli for nothin’! At twenty-six he was already a self-made millionaire.

“Come on, Nick. That ain’t even in the talk.”

“Well then, drop that shit and focus on gettin’ your daughter back. When you gotta go to court for slicin’ Quita anyway?”

“Next week.”

“Umph. Well, I would steer clear of trouble if I were you. Let me go in the house real quick. I’m comin’ back later to hit a jay wit’ you,” she said, runnin’ up the street.

When I walked up the steps in front of my house, I tensed up seeing the dark brown blood stain. It was the place where I fell and lost my memory. No matter how hard I scrubbed, it never went away; and no matter how hard I wished, my memory of that night never came back.

Once inside my house, I was lonely. Lately, Milli hadn’t been the same, and I missed him. What was the use of havin’ money if you alone all the time?

I locked the front door and grabbed the trash bag in the kitchen to put it out back. The moment I opened my back door, I saw Gerron, my next-door neighbor, doin’ push-ups in his backyard. Sweat poured from his body, and his muscles buckled under the hot summer sun.

It didn’t help that he was so damn sexy. Who works out in no shirt and a pair of jeans? He looked like Columbus Short from the movie Stomp the Yard, but a few years older. He had the same full lips and smooth caramel skin and body.

We had a funny kinda relationship. I used to be able to talk to him about anything, but after I fell, even he treated me differently. I went over his house a couple of times to talk to him, to ask if he remembered anything about that night, but he kept saying he didn’t know anything. I think he was lying.

I took the lid off the can and acted like I didn’t see him when he said, “You up there fightin’ them cluckin’ bitches again?” He stopped doing his sets and stood up.

“You talkin’ to me?”

“I never stopped talkin’ to you. I just ain’t wanna talk ’bout what you wanted to talk about.”

“How you hear ’bout the fight?”

“I know everything.”

And then he looked at me with those eyes—the eyes that almost get me in trouble whenever I’m around him.

“Stop lookin’ at me like that,” I said.

“Why? You finally admittin’ you want a nigga?”

“Not even. We could never take it there, ’cause I have a boyfriend and you a stick-up dude.”

“Come on, Ginger!” he said, patting his face with a white towel. “First off, you don’t know what I do to earn my paper.” He breathed heavily. “You goin’ off what these muthafuckas ’round here say. Have I ever hit that nigga you wit’?”

“Naw.”

“A’ight then.” He smiled slyly. “Now, come on over here so I can taste that pussy.”

My heart jumped. He never talked to me like that, and it made me wonder why. Part of me was angry, but the other part was turned on.

“Oh, so what? Now you gonna disrespect me?”

“That’s disrespecting you, by askin’ can I taste your pussy?”

“What . . . what you think?”

He laughed and said, “Yeah, a’ight. Then why you still out here?”

“Boy, this my house, and I do what I want to.”

He laughed. “Look, bottom line, you wit’ a nigga who could care less about you, yet you push away a nigga that’s been feelin’ you from day one. But you gonna need me one day.” He put the gun that was sittin’ on his step in his waist and threw his white T-shirt over his shoulder. “I just hope it ain’t too late.”

I hated his ass! Don’t get it twisted; Gerron was sexy, but not sexier than Milli. Milli’s six foot two inch frame floated over my five foot six inch frame just right. Plus, Milli could afford me, and Gerron’s money was too iffy. You could make but so much robbin’ other niggas.

When I went into the house, I got me a bottle of water and decided to call Milli, since I hadn’t spoken to him all day. I grabbed my cell outta my Gucci.

“What it do, babes?” he said, answering the phone after the third ring. His voice was raspy and sexy as usual.

“I can’t wait to see you tonight.”

“Why you sound like you stressin’? That cop been ’round the way again askin’ ’bout Leona?”

“Naw, not today.” I sat on the couch and flipped my shoes off to rub my sore feet. The air from the open window cooled me off. When I saw my hands were red with blood from beatin’ Trixy’s fat ass, I went in the kitchen to wash them.

“Let me send you on that vacation.”

I walked back into the living room and sat on the sofa. “I don’t wanna leave if you not goin’ wit’ me.”

“I told you I can’t get away right now, but I still want you to enjoy yourself. Shit, take Nicky wit’ you.”

“Maybe,” I said, not feelin’ like bein’ stuck wit’ her for a whole week. I think he wanted me gone for a while, too, because the cops were hassling me. But if I left, what’s to say the cops would have too?

“Man, let me know when you ready,” he continued. “And why you ain’t answer your phone when I hit you earlier?”

“The house phone?”

“Yeah. I told you I was gonna call you back.”

“Oh . . . uh . . . I was up the street.”

“What you doin’ up there?” he said as if he knew I was in another fight.

“Talkin’ to Carmen. They invited me to a party.”

“Oh. They ain’t still talkin’ ’bout the fall, are they? I’m tired of niggas gettin’ in your business.”

“Not really.”

“You know I’m diggin’ all the way in that pussy when I see you, right? You been playin’ wit’ yourself lately?”

“Yeah, but I want you to do it for me.” I figured I might as well tell him about the fight since he was in a good mood thinking about my pussy. If there was one thing he loved to do, fuckin’ was it. I caught him several times jacking off. I thought he had a sex addiction.

“Baby . . . I fought Trixy today.”

“What the fuck happen this time?”

“She said some shit I ain’t like.”

“Why you can’t walk away from the ordinary and step up when necessary? You actin’ young and dumb, always believin’ these bitches when they tell you I fucked them. Your temper is outta control, G. . .