Paths

BOYZ DONT CRY

A Year Later

Nairobi sat in Jacobi's tattoo shop, headphones in her ear as she tried to concentrate on the 5-page paper she was forced to write for her class.

His new Texas shop has officially been open for six months, and as he had promised, Jacobi was there when she was ready to spin the block. They weren't exactly a couple yet because Nairobi made it clear she wanted to take it slow. However, she spent most of her free time from class with him when she wasn't with her god sister.

Currently, he was working on finishing up a tattoo so that he could take her out for a Friday night date. While she waited for him, Nairobi decided that she would catch up on homework in the meantime.

Since she started though, she was heavily distracted. Her mind was somewhere else completely. It had been almost a year since she last spoke to Kaier. During her first few months of college, the two still spoke. They would reach out to each other every few weeks to check in and sometimes spend hours on the phone catching up. Sometimes Kaier would randomly send her money to her account or she would show up to her campus apartment with a box full of books at her door.

Although it was the most distant they had ever been, it was working for them.

When Nairobi went home for Christmas break, they unfortunately broke their own rules and had sex again. Which prompted Nairobi to do her best to stay away from him, in fear that they'd end up back where they started. She started to realize that they couldn't help but gravitate towards each other when in the same room. 

A few months into her spring semester, she received a phone call from a number she didn't recognize at 1 am. And to her surprise, it was a collect call from Edgewood County, where Kaier was a new resident.

He was pulled over while making a drop for his father and was arrested on drug possession charges. Luckily he didn't have nearly as much on him as he usually had or the charges would have been way more severe.

Pissed was an understatement, despite the fact that they hadn't had any conversation in the recent months Nairobi still wanted the best for him. Kaier expressed that she was the first person he called because he didn't want her to hear it from anyone else.

During that phone call, Nairobi spoke harsh words to him. Words that she greatly regretted after the call ran out of time. But she couldn't help herself, he had promised her that he wouldn't end up in that situation. She hadn't even completed her first full year of college and he had already broken his promise.

8 Months Ago

"Hello?" She groggily answered.

"This is a collect call from Kaier Brown," Came through the phone making her immediately sit up in bed.

A few seconds later the call connected.

"Hello?" Kaier sighed into the phone. "Nai it's me don't hang up." He spoke. Kaier knew that Nairobi would be more than pissed at him and she was even liable to hang up in his face.

"Kaier what the fuck." She snapped. "What happened?" She questioned him. Her initial reaction was to curse him out but she was trying to give him a chance to explain.

He sighed again, "I was making a drop for my pops and I got pulled over," He explained.

"What is the first thing I told you not to fucking do? Are you stupid or are you stupid?" She spoke more than pissed.

At that moment Kaier regretted making her one of his first calls. He knew that she would be disappointed but it didn't need more confirmation that he had done something dumb. "I know Nai, I just wanted to tell you before somebody else hit you up."