His Uptown Girl. Liz Talley

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      CHAPTER FOUR

      TRE STARED AT CICI sprawled on the couch and shook his head. Passed out in the middle of the day, which meant she hadn’t gotten Shorty D up for school. More important, it meant she’d missed work again, and this time the manager of the Pet Pro wouldn’t give Cici the benefit of the doubt. Three strikes and you’re out. That’s how it worked in life. Everywhere.

      He kicked the couch. “Get up, Cici. You missin’ work.”

      She didn’t move.

      “Cici,” he said, kicking harder. Twice. Three times.

      “Mmmf...” she groaned, throwing an arm over her face. She still wore the clothes she’d gone out to the club in—a bright blue skintight shirt and a skirt that rode over her thin thighs. “Damn, Tre, I tryin’ to sleep.”

      “You missed work. Kenzie’s been crying for an hour straight, and it’s my damn day off. I shouldn’t have to do your job for you.”

      Cici smacked her lips and groaned, rolling over as if she could hide from his words. “I don’t give a shit. I’m sleepin’, bitch.”

      “Bitch?” he said, anger curling in his gut. “That’s all you got to say to me? Callin’ me a bitch?”

      Cici didn’t say nothing. Just nestled into the back of the couch, dismissing him. She was still drunk. Probably high, too. He beat down the fury inside because Kenzie needed to be dealt with. Along with his brother.

      Tre grabbed the empty beer can tottering on the edge of the scarred coffee table and walked toward the bedroom where Cici slept, where her three-year-old daughter stood wailing at the threshold. “Come on, baby girl.”

      He scooped up Kenzie, ignoring the snot pouring out of her nose, and strode into the kitchen. After tossing the beer can in the trash, he sat his cousin on the counter, shoving a dirty cereal bowl aside. Kenzie didn’t stop crying. He figured if his mama was a drunk ho and ignored him, he’d cry, too. “You hungry, baby girl?”

      Kenzie immediately stopped crying. Sniffling, she rubbed her eyes. That meant she was.

      Tre grabbed a paper towel, wiped Kenzie’s face and looked for a sippy cup in the nearly empty cupboard beside the sink. There were obviously none clean.

      Shorty D came in holding a bag of chips and a game controller. “Ugh, she stinky.”

      Tre hadn’t noticed, but, yeah, Kenzie needed a diaper change. Panic rose in his throat as he surveyed the sink full of dirty dishes, the stack of unpaid bills, the toddler sitting in her own crap, and his brother, who’d stayed home from school for obviously no good reason.

      What the hell was he doing?

      All those dreams he’d woven in his mind, wearing a nice business suit, with a sweet ride in the driveway of a condo in a nice Uptown neighborhood, were so ridiculous...so damn far away he couldn’t even taste them anymore. The money he’d squirreled away in an old Nike shoebox in his closet laughed at him—it wasn’t enough to buy the books he’d need for college much less pay for a semester of tuition.

      And the only thing he’d taken pleasure in, his music, was gone. The saxophone rescued from his bed many years ago by the police had been sold last summer.

      His life was shit.

      “What you doin’ home?” Tre asked his brother, giving Kenzie a somewhat stale granola bar from a box sitting on the counter.

      “I didn’t get waked up and missed the bus. Besides, I don’t feel good this morning,” Shorty D said, picking up a drinking glass sitting beside the sink and squinting at it to determine if it was clean.

      “You look fine to me so go get dressed. СКАЧАТЬ