CHAPTER 4
Apple was excited about Summer Jam. She had money for an outfit and to get her hair done, with enough spending money left over. She wasn’t thinking about Supreme or paying back the loan anytime soon. As far as she was concerned, Summer Jam and Cross were her main priorities. The money was in her hands, and she was going to have a good time with it. In her na?ve mind it was an investment. Cross would see her looking hot at Summer Jam, wife her, and as her man he’d either step to Supreme for her or he’d give her enough dough to pay him back. Either way, she told herself not to worry.
Mesha convinced Apple to save a hundred dollars on her outfit. She knew of a local booster who had the same outfit for cheaper. Apple was down. A hundred dollars less was a steal for her.
The girls met Jay-Ray at his Harlem apartment on Seventh Avenue. His place was littered with stolen clothing and other items, some with the store tags still on them. Apple was wide-eyed at the range of clothing Jay-Ray had in his place—Donna Karan, Gucci, Prada, Tommy Hilfiger, Dolce & Gabbana. He had it all.
Mesha and Apple looked around the apartment like two kids in a candy store.
“Damn, Jay-Ray! Where you get all this shit?” Apple asked.
“I got the hookup,” he said. Jay-Ray was the flamboyant type, sporting tight, skinny jeans, jewelry, colorful shirts, and he wore his hair long in curls like Ice-T.
“I see.”
“See, I told you, girl,” Mesha said. “Jay-Ray be havin’ the best shit.”
Apple browsed through some of the things that she knew would take months for her to afford. She picked up a pair of black Manolo Blahnik shoes with a price tag of $700. “How much for these?” she asked.
Jay-Ray looked at the shoes and replied, “For you, three hundred.”
It was a bargain, but the shoes were still out of Apple’s budget range. She put the shoes down and decided to go cheaper. As Apple looked through a ton of clothes in the bedroom, she knew, if she was able to take even a few items home, Kola would envy her.
Mesha picked up a pair of Apple Bottom jeans, smiled, and looked over at Apple. “See, here you go, Apple, wit’ ya name on it and everything—Apple Bottom.”
Apple laughed. “Nah, not my style.”
“Girl, you better get you a pair of these. They would kill on you, wit’ ya shape, and they for fifty dollars too. Niggas gonna love seein’ your ass in these.”
Apple laughed again. “Mesha, you crazy, girl.”
Mesha sucked her teeth playfully and replied, “Well, I’m gettin’ them. They my size too.”
Apple smiled and continued searching. She needed to find the right attire for the concert, something that would catch Cross’s attention. She wanted to be a diva. She wanted to be noticed by her love, and the right wardrobe said a lot about a bitch.
The girls spent an hour in Jay-Ray’s place looking and buying. He was cool with the length of time they spent there because he was making money. He had a team of teenagers under his wing, and shady employees he paid off in the department stores to get whatever he wanted. In the business of stealing since he was a kid, Jay-Ray had graduated to a professional booster by the time he reached puberty.
Apple smiled at the right thing to wear to the concert. She spent a total of three hundred dollars with Jay-Ray, who was pleased to have her business. She bought an assortment of things for her cash and knew that the money she’d spent at Jay-Ray’s apartment was a bargain, because the stuff she walked out with would have totaled up to a thousand dollars in a department store.
Apple and Mesha exited the building with smiles on their faces. They were like two kids on a merry-go-round. They joked and laughed and strutted down 125th Street joyfully.
“I’m hungry.”
“Me too,” Apple replied.
“McDonald’s dollar menu,” Mesha suggested.
“Girl, you read my mind.”
Being on a budget after having spent money on their clothes and shoes, the two rushed to the nearest McDonald’s and strutted into the packed fast-food restaurant on 125th Street.
“What you want, Apple? Just get us a table. It’s lookin’ crazy in here,” Mesha said.
Apple looked up at the dollar menu and said, “Get me that McDouble with two apple pies and a sweet tea.” She then slipped Mesha five dollars and went looking for a table to sit at. Apple had noticed the fellows in the place gawking at her and Mesha the minute they’d stepped in, but she ignored them.
Apple got a window seat, and while waiting for Mesha with the food, she looked through her bags of clothing, smiling with excitement. She couldn’t wait to be seen in her new outfits. She had the body and curves to fill out everything she bought. If Cross didn’t notice her at Summer Jam, then he had to be blind, because Apple knew she had it going on.
She looked around the restaurant and shook her head at all the hungry black people in the place. Most were overweight and out of shape, but not Apple. She was always watching her figure and knew that obesity wasn’t coming her way anytime soon.
Mesha came to the table with a tray of food and sat opposite Apple. The two began tearing into their burgers and downing the sweet teas that they loved, especially on a hot spring day.
“Oooh, I needed this. This tea going down my throat is better than sex right now,” Mesha joked.
Apple laughed. “Shit, you crazy, girl. I don’t know about that. It’s a’ight.”
“Whateva. You know it’s hot, and ya pu-ssy probably sweating like a runaway slave.”
“My shit a’ight,” Apple said. “See, she cooling. You’re the one in the skintight jeans who got these niggas lookin’ and breaking their necks at you.”
“Girl, and like you don’t, wit’ them shorts you got on, legs showing and teasing muthafuckas. You a mess, Apple.”
“I’m a mess that’s gonna be lookin’ fly at Summer Jam.”
“I hear that shit. You and me both, bitch,” Mesha chimed, slapping Apple five.
They continued eating their meals and feeling the eyes of men watching them from all over the room.
Mesha noticed two cuties in the place that she wouldn’t have minded getting with, but she was content with her boo, Naquin. The couple had been together since freshman year in high school, and he was Mesha’s first.
Mesha was a sultry, long-legged, ravishing beauty with light skin, hazel eyes, and shoulder-length black hair. When it came to beauty, she and Apple were running neck and neck. Still, they never hated on each other and had been friends since junior high school.
Apple was petite and curvy. Mesha was too, but she had thicker hips and more butt for the men to stare at. Both girls were able to stir up a man’s heart without even a thought. The two couldn’t even eat their food in peace without several men trying to approach them for conversation and a minute of their time. But the two girls, used to being hit on and approached, sometimes with good manners or just plain rudely, turned the eager men down.
“Ill . . . not,” Mesha commented about one of the guys that tried to come on to her. He was tall and shapeless, with a scruffy beard, and had hopes of getting her number.
“Stop being picky,” Apple said with a smile.
“You f-uck him then.”
Apple chuckled. “Never that.”
“A’ight then. Besides, when was the last time you got some dick? Or are you still tryin’ to save it for Cross?”
“I’m good. You know I get mines,” Apple replied.
“And when was that? The last nigga I know you fucked was Terrance. What? His ten-year sentence got you dried up now?”
Apple sucked her teeth and remembered Terrance as being only a fling, a substitute until the real thing came along.
“Then before him, Jason. Oh, and I can’t forget Ramee. Yeah, he fucked you and your sister.”
“And?”
“I’m just sayin’, girl . . . I ain’t tryin’ to get at you, but you need to stop waiting for Cross, and get booed up soon. You ain’t gettin’ any younger. You done passed up on some fine niggas that wanted to holla at you. Besides, when have you ever known Cross to wife up some chick? Shit, that nigga’s too busy treatin’ his dick like it’s some fuckin’ passport, traveling up in all them hoes, like he JetBlue or somethin.”
Apple sighed.
“I’m just sayin’, do you and stop waitin’ around daydreaming about this dude.”
Apple heard her out, but she was still determined to pursue Cross. He was the one who made her heart skip beats and her panties wet like she had dipped them in a river.
The two finished up their meal and left the chain food spot, only to be approached by two young thugs waiting by the exit.
“Yo, ma, let me holla at you for a minute,” one of the young thugs called out.
“Yo, shawty, let me holla at you,” the second said, chasing after Apple.
The ladies laughed and replied in unison, “We good.”
“I’m sayin, ma, y’all lookin’ good as shit. What’s ya name?”
Mesha and Apple continued smiling while walking away. They didn’t even bother looking back.
“Yo, ma, why y’all actin’ like that? I’m sayin’, what’s good wit’ y’all?”
When they were far enough away, they heard one of the thugs yell out, “Yo, f-uck y’all stuck-up bitches then! Wit’ ya stank pussies!”
Mesha turned, flipped him the middle finger, and shouted, “Fuck you too!”
They laughed it off and headed for Mesha’s apartment.
When the girls entered the lobby, they bumped into Supreme, who was exiting the building. Apple looked at Supreme indifferently as she walked beside Mesha.
Supreme smirked. “I hope you didn’t forget about me, Apple,” he said, as he kept it moving.
Confused, Mesha looked at Apple. “What’s he talkin’ about, Apple?”
“He’s a creep.”
“I don’t like him. You ain’t fuckin’ wit’ him, right, Apple? I mean, you ain’t borrowed money from him or nothin’?” Mesha asked with concern.
“No, Mesha,” Apple lied. “You know that nigga’s a pervert.”
“Yeah, he is.”
The girls made it up to Mesha’s apartment, where she lived with her seventy-year-old grandmother. They rushed into her room and began trying on the clothes they had bought from Jay-Ray. They modeled in front of Mesha’s easel floor mirror while listening to Hot 97.
Apple gazed at herself in the mirror, wearing one of the skirts. As she turned around in the outfit, she looked out the bedroom window and noticed Supreme and Guy Tony getting into a black Escalade. She exhaled noisily, thinking about her debt to him. She knew there was no way she was going to pay back Supreme’s money unless she got with Cross.
Apple didn’t have a job or a hustle like Kola. Suddenly, the happiness she once displayed earlier quickly turned into a troubling frown. She thought about she and Kola being twins, both having natural beauty like Queen Nefertiti, yet she was a broke bitch, and Kola was seeing crazy dough, being a hustla. She hated to be compared to her sister, but the truth was, some days she wished she was her sister.
As Apple watched the Escalade pull off, she thought about the wealth Supreme had and wondered why he would bitch over a few hundred dollars when he had probably thousands to his name. She shrugged off her debt. She knew she was probably a small fry, compared to niggas that owed him much more, so she wasn’t going to stress herself.
Mesha noticed the change in Apple’s mood. “Are you OK?”
Apple turned with a forged smile and replied, “Yeah, I’m good. I was just thinking about how we gonna do it up at the concert. Maybe I might snatch me up a baller.”
“Girl, wit’ that skirt and your fuckin’ legs, you might snatch you up a rapper, or maybe an athlete, to sweep you off your feet.”
The girls laughed and continued trying on different clothing in the bedroom. Apple twirled herself around in the mirror, loving how her backside looked in the skirt. She smiled, knowing she looked good.