Page 12 of Saint Baptiste 2

I scratched at the back of my head and began to pace. Bit down on my thumbnail, and just... paced. Panicked. My thoughts got to racing. Thought of ways to rebury that ugly shit yesterday dug up... no not yesterday... yesterday didn’t dig the shit up. Sage dug it up when she said I didn’t know what the fuck sacrifice was. Tuh! Mmhmm. Yeah alright. All yesterday did was trigger me and bring the shit back up.

I flinched.

Phone rang again.

I rushed over to the bed, picked it up and screamed at the sight of Sage’s name.

“Leave me the fuck alone!” I yelled before declining the call and immediately shutting the phone off.

I knew what she wanted. She wanted to talk about me seeing them yesterday. Valerie and her husband, Mr. Bill. Wanted to talk about what happened. Fuck them. Fuck what happened. They should’ve been happy what could’ve happened, didn’t.

I paced again. Back and forth. Back and forth. I was ass naked, just… pacing back and forth. Mentally stuck in that got damn hospital room.

The speckles of gray in her shoulder-length bob told the sad story of how long it’d been since we were like that. Face-to-face. Thirteen years. Well, closer to fourteen than thirteen. I was turning thirty-two soon. I hadn’t seen her since I turned eighteen. I couldn’t get her out of my head. You’d think it would be his face gnawing at me. But, it wasn’t. It was hers. My mother.

She looked good. Too good. She didn’t wear the fourteen years it’d been since we’d last seen each other. Time hadn’t been good to him at all. I couldn’t say I was surprised. He was ten years older than her. However, time had been pretty fucking good to her. Then again, I couldn’t say I was surprised about that neither.

Every night, my momma did what I now knew to be, a very vigorous skincare regimen. She never skipped a day. She took more care of her skin than she did Sage and me.

Like damn near every black momma in the hood, she was a victim of that Avon pyramid scheme. Mmhmm. That’s exactly what Avon was—a damn pyramid scheme. She sold a little something-something... had parties and shit like that, but she used more than she sold. That Anew anti-aging shit more than anything else. I could still remember every little detail about it. That white and blue packaging stood out against the black sink it sat inside of. Just a pool of Avon Anew, Valerie’s crack. She was young when she started to use anti-aging products, too. In her twenties. She was terrified of growing old.

Anyway, Valerie was fifty-four, but she looked ten years younger. How good she looked tormented me. Made me feel like she hadn’t stressed a single fucking day thinking about me. Had she missed me at all? Had she given what I told her any thought? Did she think about me? Or had every day been as great as she looked? And... what about karma? Had that bitch swung the block for her? Had she been punished for what she allowed? For what she did to me?

It was unfair. Her happiness. His life. Everything. It was so unfair.

I shuddered at the sudden sound of my doorbell chiming.

I wasn’t sure how long I was pacing with my arms crossed over my chest and my head cocked to the side, just... sinking. I lost time. That was just how far I’d gone. Taking a deep breath, I rubbed at the dull ache in my neck and redirected my steps to the master bath for a shower, as if there weren’t someone at my door.

The minute I got into the shower, I felt myself sinking again.

“Fuck this,” I mumbled, before pushing the shower door open to yell for Alexa to play Trina’s album Still Da Baddest on shuffle. I needed a distraction. If I was going to take a trip down memory lane it was going to be in better direction. Down a road with a lot less potholes, that was for damn sure!

I stayed in the shower until the water got cold. It felt good too. It was just what I needed because once I got out, I was refreshed and felt better. I had a couple of moments, but I didn’t ‘sink’.

After drying off, I grabbed my towel and stood at the vanity to do my skincare routine. Right before I was about to sit down, I felt a little nauseated and remembered I did have a damn hangover. Because I didn’t have anything on hand, I needed to Doordash a Vernors, Alka-Seltzer hangover relief, and something quick to put on my stomach, so I headed into my room to grab my phone.

My soul damn near jumped out of my body when I walked into my room to find Sage sitting at the foot of my bed.

“Ahh!” I yelled. She had the nerve to flinch. Ain’t that a bitch? “What the fuck are you doing here Sage? You scared the shit out of me, bitch!”

I was pissed.

Initially, terrified, but pissed immediately after.

“Sorry. I was knocking for a long time before I let myself in. I didn’t want to scare you while you were in the shower, so I just waited,” She paused and nervously giggled. “Still scared you though, huh? My bad, Kiki. I was just...” She paused and took a deep breath. “You’ve been getting my calls, right? Why haven’t you answered? I was—well, we were?—”

“I gave you the spare key for emergencies?—”

“It was an emergency,” she snapped with dipped brows. “You haven’t answered any of my calls and?—”

“Any of your calls?” I mocked with a laugh. “Girl go to hell...” Waving her off, I adjusted my towel. “You act like you’ve been calling me for days. Sage up until yesterday, I hadn’t gotten a call from you in weeks.” I looked up and locked eyes with her. “I wonder why that is.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and her brown eyes narrowed to slits. It didn’t take long for her to do what she always did; defensively turn her nose up like a bratty ass little girl. “The phone works both ways, Naoki.”

“Sage, what the fuck do you want?” I snapped, as I angrily marched by her to grab my phone off the bed.

“I told you,” She said, fidgeting with the trinkets dangling on her keychain following behind me back into the bathroom. “I was worried about you because you weren’t answering the damn phone.”

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