Co-Workers With Benefits

D I O N

The door bell rings and I get up to open the door with Xiomara still strapped to my chest.

"Hey man." Lloyd greets dapping me up.

"Sup bro."

I step aside so he can walk into the house and I shut the door behind him.

"Damn, you a whole dad now. You moved on, like, 100 steps without me." He smiles, bending slightly to see Xiomara.

She stares right at him with her little eyes, blinking every so often and he reaches out, giving her hand a light shake with his finger.

"She looks just like her mom."

I chuckle. "I know right." I turn around, heading towards the stairs. "Let's go."

Lloyd follows behind me up to the bedroom where Venice is leaning against her pillow, watching Tv.

"Elena's coming over in hour." She says as I walk in.

"That's cool." I nod. "Lloyd and I are about to start on Xiomara's room so you not allowed to walk in until we done, okay?"

"Another surprise? Dang...fine. My baby and I will stay here." She opens and closes her hands, silently asking me to hand Xio over to her.

I carefully remove the strap on her carrier and peck her face a couple times before handing her over to Venice.
As soon as I give her over to her mom, she starts crying.

"Aww, sorry princess. Daddy's just gon be right next door, Imma be back to come get you later." I give her a final kiss on the cheek, pressing another to Venice's temple before I head back out to the hallway, where Lloyd is standing, waiting for me.

"She started crying soon as you gave her away." He chuckles. "She definitely bout to be a daddy's girl."

"Mmhm." I agree.

I push open the door to Xiomara's room and Lloyd stares at all the boxes with wide eyes. He climbs over the big ones and steps over the smaller ones as he makes his way to the windows, grabbing a hold of a cardboard box.

"So, how we finna start."

"Okay, first we gon paint the walls, then we'll have to move all this over to the centre of the room, so the bed can be pushed up against that wall." I explain my idea to him, moving my hands as I do.

"Yeah...this boutta take a hell of a long time." Lloyd complains.

"I'll feed you?" I bribe.

"Deal. But I was just messing, I ain't got nowhere to be today."

"Fat ass."

"Shut up." He laughs.

I quickly rush back into the bedroom and grab the Alexa to play some music. I shuffle my playlist and You're mines still by Yung Bleu echos through the speakers as we start off by moving all the furniture over to the middle of the room and throwing some tarp on the carpet so we can paint the walls.

Lloyd takes one half of the room and I take the other, and we both paint the ceiling. We stop from time to time to get something to eat and use the bathroom and I often take a couple of breaks to give Xiomara and Venice a bit of love and speak with Elena a little as she tends to the baby.

By the time we've finished painting 2 layers over all the walls, it's already five in the afternoon and the Elena has just left. I open up all the window so the paint dries fast, then Lloyd and I decide to head downstairs to play a few games on my new PS5 (one of the gifts Venice got me for my birthday) as we wait for the wet paint to become dry.