Street Love

Bros Over Hoes, Wife All Life

B. Knowles

My heart was in great conflict with my mind, but I could never fuck over a brother. We bathed together, grew up together, called the same woman grandmother—this was my real life family. Emanuel Hughes, the male version of Beyoncé Knowles, Huey and Riley, ying and yang.

I couldn't wrap my head around around betrayal from this man I called brother.

"So what all you heard?" He asked me as I sat on our grandmother's porch, blowing O's like the good old times.

That's all I could resort back to as our most recent memories haven't been pleasant.

"Fuck what I heard, tell me what it is," I exhaled my personal and looked at his brown eyes that had so many stories to tell.

"I got too high and fucked around with some weird nigga from uptown, Tee found out at the kickback and them niggas from uptown wasn't feeling that so they shot up the Airbnb."

His eyes watered as he pulled the blunt away from his lips. I could tell he was lying when he made subtle adjustments in his appearance like tapping his nose or pulling his ear—he did neither.

"So the la hoe that the uptown nigga go with wind up finding out we were fucking," I cut him off.

"Y'all still fucking?" I frowned with disgust.

"That's not the point, but yes," he admitted.

I inhaled and exhaled every amount of anger I felt rising in my core. "So his girl found out, who is friends with friends of Onika. She said she would tell the entire city about us and that's why we're here now, I would never, Beyoncé and you fucking know that."

"So you still fucking the nigga that got Tee killed?" I asked to make sure I was hearing correctly.

He nodded and we swapped blunts. "I'm going to take his bitch out just like he took my nigga," Manny admitted.

I was stuck as the drama was not registering at all. All this turf war and talk about niggas that's fucking each other, recklessly moving behind some dick. Now I didn't know who to fucking trust, but I knew my woman was right when she told me Megan's ass was playing both sides.

I was the pawn all along, I'm the one who was getting used by this hoe and I thought I had my shit together.

"That bitch was in Nika's shop a week or two ago, too. Nigga had to play it cool like I didn't know who that was because Nika-"

"Will tear a bitch head off behind you," he finished with a grimacing look on his face then a small, sad smile.

"Why you couldn't just tell me, man?"

He shrugged, letting tears fall down his face as he kept on shrugging. "It's not easy for me like it was for you, B. You don't get to be a real steppa and gay, you just don't get the same respect with this shit as you would being a nigga with bad bitches."

My doobie was a half way done, this the fastest I had inhaled weed in a minute. My thoughts had consumed me at this point, everybody was an opp to me nobody could be trust.

Even my pistol sat on my waist loaded and ready to end Manny if he jumped stupid. It took more than a few missed calls to gather us here at grandmother's because we had become transactional business partners instead of best friends and family.

That shit was eating me up.

"Still, bruh. You got all this heat on me and my woman because of the mindless actions I've taken out of my love and loyalty for you, dude. This just ain't no shit that can be swept under the rug, this ain't no shit that we can just bounce back click-tight from, ight? You gotta give a nigga some time to think about how I'ma go about dealing with you," I let the blunt fall, too high to lock my fingers for its safety.