Ty

 

Ty hadn’t slept well. He’d hardly slept at all. Too many questions still plagued his mind. And the man in black was at the forefront. Had he made an unknown enemy? If so, then his enemy needed to confront him face-to-face. Sneaking and being inconspicuous was silly to him. After he finished his bowl of granola and an apple juice, he went back to his bedroom to dress for the day.

As he laid out a pair of fresh kicks, dark blue denim jeans that looked almost black, and a white collarless shirt, he took his father’s dog tag off the dresser and laid it next to his outfit. In nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs, Ty sat heavily on the edge of his bed and stared at the indented metal he’d had overlaid in platinum, so it would never tarnish. It had been taken off his father’s body as he lay dying in a foreign land. Ty knew in his heart that his father would never regret his sacrifice for the country that sheltered his queen and his son. Lieutenant Commander Aasir Kamau Jenkins loved this country and he’d loved his brothers who’d fought with him. He used to come home from deployments with amazing tales of heroism about him and his SEAL team. Ty and his mother would sit fascinated for hours, and it still wasn’t enough, only wanting to hear more. He never tired of marveling in his father’s bravery.

He remembered how his mother would care for his father’s uniforms when he returned as if they were a knight’s armor. Every night, she laid his evening attire out for him and helped him settle for bed. Ty used to watch, sitting just outside their bedroom door, while his father let his soulmate relax him. Sometimes, just sitting with his head in her lap was all it took. He’d watch his dad drop all defenses around her.

“Look at her Tyrell. She’s the only soul on earth who can bring me to my knees with just a look. Only my queen has that power, son. Only her. If a man restrains his weak flesh and takes a partner intelligently then he’ll be blessed all his days… he’ll find a good thing. SubhanAllah (glory be to Allah)”   

Had he lived in his father’s village in Kenya, Ty would’ve been preparing to take a wife at sixteen, well past puberty and already considered a man—to marry his first wife, that is. Polygamy was another common practice where his father came from but he had abandoned some of the common Islamic principles when he’d become a U.S. citizen, instead, choosing to marry only one woman and having never felt he needed more. She was everything to him and for him.

Ty was tired of the rhetoric that there were slim-pickings in their city. There were plenty of good ’brothas in the hood who made an honest living and only needed a strong partner to help him build his empire All men weren’t out to just hit it and quit it. Ty was one of the good ones who believed in the serenity of monogamy. He had very strong principles on that issue and he knew they’d never change. They’d been ingrained in him since he could understand his father’s language. The language of righteous men. 

Ty put the dog tag around his neck and tucked the precious metal inside his shirt, symbolically keeping his father close to his heart. He listened for several minutes before leaving and walking down the short hallway. He was almost to the stairwell when the last apartment door at the end of the hall cracked open, revealing a woman dressed in a midriff and skintight skirt that stopped just below her ass cheeks. She even had on spiked heels at eight in the morning. To an unsuspecting man, she’d nearly materialized out of thin air, a sexy vixen sent by the devil himself. What man could resist? Not many did.

Ty could, and he always would.

“I see you’re up early, Ty,” she purred through pretty plump lips that were void of any enhancement or gloss.

Ty blinked, clearing the lust that tried to invade his mind as the fragrance of her obvious attraction messed with his head. The aroma of her Hispanic-inspired breakfast attacked his senses.

“I thought I heard your door. Would you mind helping me by putting my smoke alarm back up on the wall? I had to knock it off with the broom when it wouldn’t stop blaring this morning and now I can’t get it back up.”

Ty slowed his pace.

“Be kind to the neighbor who is related to you and the neighbor who is not.”

Ty believed in doing what was right, and his unmarried neighbor needed him to lend a helping hand. If she’d had a husband, there was nothing she could’ve said to make him enter another’s man’s home without his permission. As the situation stood, he knew he couldn’t refuse when she was asking so little. However, he’d seen many men go inside her den of passion under misconceptions. Some came out happy, most did not. Either way, they never left in the same mindset as when they’d arrived. She was a con-woman of the highest magnitude. The halls in Ty’s apartment building were littered with ballers, hustlers and street pharmacists, regularly coming and going. There was a lot of money floating through these corridors. Alejandra had a system that’d worked for her for years. She reminded Ty of a black widow.

His father had warned him about those females. Just as a black widow’s web was her best hunting tool, Alejandra’s apartment was where she trapped her game. As men moved up and down her hallway, she could sense the ones who would make a potentially delicious meal. Meaning lucrative. Once she had her fresh catch inside her sanctum, she’d treat him like a king, lessening his defenses, slithering past his guard, only to sting and liquefy him after. All men ever wanted was to be revered and respected. Once her prey was comfortable, relaxed, sleeping off her good loving, that’s when she’d drink up the fruits of her labor. Men were always released from her clutches, but when they got home they realized their wallets were a lot thinner than when they’d arrived, sometimes even a piece of jewelry or two lighter as well.

Ty checked around and behind him when he entered her home, making sure they were alone. It was exceptionally clean, and nicely decorated. She was a woman who knew how to keep house. There wasn’t any dust on the black, glass coffee table or a purple, furry throw pillow out of place. Nothing inside her home indicated that a man resided there. Some decorative pieces—strategically placed in her web—looked designer, expensive, maybe even imported. It was a woman’s palace paid for by men’s labor.

Ty hurriedly made his way to her small, eat-in dining room, not wanting to linger, hell, not even wanting to be seen coming in or out of her place. When two single individuals were in a room alone, there was always a third lurking presence. Temptation. Her high heels clacked behind him on the linoleum floor. While she watched him boldly, he didn’t stare at her body although she struck as many poses as a Victoria Secret model trying to get him to do so. Not speaking, he picked up the battered smoke alarm from her glass-top dining table and made fast work reattaching it to the wall, giving it a quick test.

She stood close to him… very close.

“How tall are you, sexy?”

Six-one. “Tall enough to fix your smoke alarm,” he said with zero interest in wanting to answer any more questions.

She smiled broader and thrust her chest higher, still trying to draw his gaze lower. “Yes, you are. Muy guapo. Definitely tall enough for me. You could probably fold me over my own table, handle me however you please and—” She hurried and put her hands on his chest. “I know, I know. You already say no interesado. But, at least stay and let me feed you. Strong man like you has got to be hungry. Who’s taking care of your needs, tall, dark and beautiful? Hmm. Donde esta tu amor? A man like you should have a ride-or die chick by his side.”

Her accent seemed to get stronger as her desire rose. Before Ty knew it, he’d been cornered in her dining room. The wall at his back, her table full of forbidden fruits and food to his left and her big breasts the size of honeydew melons, against his front. She licked her lips and inched her tight skirt higher. “I can be that woman, yes?”

No.

He wasn’t trying to be rude, but he was letting her know that she couldn’t trap him there. He walked up on her, and made her retreat backward. Alejandra was used to dealing with weaker men. Ty was sleep-deprived, his warring mind still plagued with unanswered questions, but he was always woke. He wouldn’t lie with her. He felt no yearning, no temptation, not even from her vast array of foods she’d laid out as a lure. If his mind wasn’t stronger than his flesh he would’ve already had her skirt bunched around her waist and sprawled on her table, taking what he had. Then after he’d ’dicked her down, she’d loose her sweet nature and demand what Ty didn’t have to give. Her schemes would’ve worked on a lesser man.

He was not that man. He was his father’s son.

“Alarm is working.” Ty crowded her, towering over her slender pecan brown body. “Have a good day.” He left before she could finish her stuttered, ‘wait’. 

“Cheddar, you know I don’t do any drugs or weapons.” Ty had already put the large, sealed package into his backpack. As soon as Cheddar handed him the name and address of his new customer, Ty’s hairs rose on his arms, and alarms sounded in the back of his head. Rock—known as Black Rock on the streets—was a notorious dealer and hustler around their hood. Getting involved with him was asking for trouble.

“Come on, T. You know I wouldn’t do you like that.” Cheddar grinned and gestured toward the bag. “It’s straight. Trust me.”

Ty didn’t trust anyone.

Cheddar’s sister walked by and gave Ty a long look as she moved toward the kitchen. She still had on her school uniform, her navy pleated skirt stopping just past her fingertips. Ty never understood school uniforms. They were supposed to make clothing less distracting while in a learning environment, but it appeared to do the opposite.

“That’s why I only let you in my crib, bro. Them other cats, I make them go around the back.” Cheddar glared at his baby sister as she sauntered by again with an ice-cold soda. “Sasha has walked by at least five times in the ten minutes you been here, offered you a drink twice and you done hardly glanced her way.”

Ty knew of the problems Cheddar had protecting his little sister’s virtue. But he didn’t have to work so hard when Ty was in the house. Ty knew his soulmate would be an adult, so why bother glancing a child’s way? She was only in eleventh grade, but the horny idiots around the way treated her like she was mature enough and ready to be a woman. Ty had thanked her politely for the offer of food and drink, but had declined.

Cheddar slammed his forty-five onto the wooden coffee table. “Had to put my piece to the back of some fool’s head the other day, T, thinking he can put his hands on my sister. But you. I trust you. You got respect for a man when you enter his house. I appreciate that.” Cheddar put his fist out and Ty bumped it with his own, then went back to counting the money Cheddar had paid him this week.

“You pulled your burner and didn’t use it?” Ty said seriously, tucking his money deep down into his jeans pocket.

“I didn’t need to. He knew I had it. That’s all he needs to know.” Cheddar stuck his thick chest out as if that motion put emphasis on what he said. His dreads hung down his back and touched the sofa cushion. He’d confessed to growing them since he was a boy. Ty wondered how a man could put that much dedication into growing his hair like that, but couldn’t put the same devotion into growing his mind.

Ty stood. “You’re right. That’s all he needs to know. He knows what you got, now he’s gonna make sure he’s got more. What about when Sasha walks the nine blocks to school? You gonna be there with your burner then? Because he might.”

“If you’d walk me to and from school like I asked, you wouldn’t have to worry about it!” Sasha piped up from her bedroom.

Ty looked expectantly at Cheddar. “She’s not married. She has no father in the home… only her big brother. The responsibility falls on you.”

“Man, she gotta be at school at fuckin’ eight in the morning!” Cheddar balked.

Ty stared at him with a stern expression. “Don’t get mad at another man for seizing an opportunity when you were sleeping on the job.”

Cheddar frowned but seemed to take in what Ty said. He tucked his forty-five back into his pants and stood, his voice full of bass. “Sasha, wake me up by six forty-five and make sure the coffee’s fresh!”

Ty smirked and gave Cheddar another pound. “Catch you later, man.”

“Peace,” Cheddar mumbled, locking the multiple locks behind him.